The Problem When We Play Auto-Correct: the difference between dominion and domination

 Exodus 14.19-31

      Anyone who texts or types knows a thing or two about this devilish thing called “auto correct.” It’s an automatic editing function that anticipates what you are typing. It automatically corrects your words to match words that are programmed into it. The problem is, that sometimes auto correct anticipates incorrectly, or doesn’t “know” a particular word – it’s not part of its vocabulary - and assumes your word, or at least its spelling, is wrong. Other times it’s as if the program simply cops an attitude and tosses out the one word you really want to use. 

      There are a number of “churchy” words that auto correct really doesn’t like. For instance, it will routinely kick out the work ‘lectionary’ and it consistently changes ‘pericope’ – the word for the scriptural text assigned for a day -  to ‘periscope’ – something that you might use aboard a submarine. 

When word processing systems don’t like your word choice, they will sometimes just underline it with an obnoxious squiggly red line; other times, they allow auto correct to take over, and replace the word with something that is similar but doesn’t even come close to meaning the same thing. Auto correct likes to take control.

       Case in point: This week I attended a monthly Clergy Discipling Group. We are a group of pastors who gather for prayer, bible study, and ministry support. Imagine my surprise when I took a second look at the calendar printed in the bulletin last week. Perhaps you saw it - that your pastor was attending a “Clergy Disciplining Group.” I want you to know that, really, everything is fine! It truly is a “discipling” group.

        In life, it is easy for us to act like “auto-correct” at times, to change the core meaning of something to something else that may or may not be like it.

        Back in chapter 1 (v. 26) of Genesis, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” That’s quite a gift that God presented humankind. It’s quite a responsibility God gave us as well. Dominion is defined as power, authority, sovereignty or control. But the biblical emphasis on dominion does not mean destruction, but responsibility. The Christian is called upon to exhibit this dominion, but exhibit it rightly: treating the thing as having value itself, exercising dominion without being destructive. 

            God created so many things for the good of the world and for our good use and care. But we confess that all too often, humankind has resisted the call to responsible use and care for what God has given us, and instead simply takes, uses, and corrupts our natural resources and elements held sacred within the natural world.  The results have been catastrophic to entire ecosystems, lands, rainforests, waters, species of creatures, and now, oceans and climate. All too often we wipe our hands clean of the responsibility part of dominion, and, in an attempt at exerting our domination over creation, to resort to overuse, misuse, and abuse of the resources God has made.

            What God has given into our care as gift, we take as our right. What God created in balance, humankind has brought to destruction and death through its use, misuse, and overuse, and our world is paying the price. We auto-correct God’s intention, attempting to transform it from gift to entitlement. Rather than exercising dominion, we desire to exercise control. Rather than taking seriously the stewardship aspect of God’s gift, we seek to exercise domination over the resources of the earth.

            As we observe Climate in the Pulpit Sunday, we confess our culpability in the degradation of the natural environment, and the effect our choices are making on our planet. We ask God’s forgiveness and pray for the wisdom and earnest desire to repent of the harmful choices and actions we’ve taken. Today we reflect on our call to care of the natural world God so generously creates. It’s not easy. It sometimes requires tough choices.

            Science tells us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Bible tells us is that what God has created is good, and that we should use, care for, and preserve it diligently. Good, diligent care means acknowledging that there is an environmental cost to every action we take; and then working conscientiously to make the best choices that serve our needs while still caring for the health and welfare of our world.

            While acknowledging that we don’t fully understand the role that natural cycles of meteorological events play might in our weather systems, we can no longer deny that human activity has detrimentally affected our climate, resulting in rising seas, and increasingly frequent storms of increasing intensity while also, ironically, playing a devastating part in the sub-Saharan droughts and famine.

            The truth is that humans have exercised an immense power over Creation dating back to Adam in the Garden of Eden. Rather than giving us a call to exercise domination over the natural resources of the world, God has appointed us as their caretakers. This is a call and charge to humbly serve and care for creation; to work it, serve it, observe and preserve it.

            As Moses led the people of God out of Egypt, God parted the seas and gave Moses the responsibility to lead and care for these people that God put in his charge. In the parting the Red Sea and later, when Moses produced water from a rock at God’s command, God gave Moses limited powers over the natural world for the sake of God’s people.    

When Moses lifts his staff over the waters, he follows Divine instruction; he interacts with nature in order to let the oppressed go free – in order to do God’s will. The Israelites are saved from a continued life of slavery through Moses’ obedience to God.

            Just as we understand Newton’s third law – that action/reaction stuff, we must understand that whatever we do has a cost, a risk, a reaction at least equal to and in some cases, bigger than the initial action. It is all the more important, therefore, for Christians today to develop a much more exciting and faithful view of stewardship – of dominion that takes seriously the welfare and not just the harnessing of natural resources for our use. Our work in this world is to right the wrongs of systems of greed and domination that have so severely impacted the climate and the creation.

            In the text from Exodus, Moses led the marginalized Israelites out of oppression. Dirty methods of energy production, irresponsible use of natural resources, and the production and irresponsible waste and disposal of natural resources do just the opposite. They disproportionately harm the “least of these” by polluting the air, soil, and water. More than ever we need to auto correct from domination back to dominion again.

            The same God who loves the world calls us to actively pursue justice, including environmental justice. God knows what a struggle this is for us most days. God knows how deeply we fail at taking seriously our stewardship of the earth. So, God sends Jesus to walk along side us while we wrestle with a new commitment to responsibility and advocacy for the environment.  May God grant us healing for our fractured relationship with the natural world, that as Christians we might grow in rightly valuing the gifts of the earth.

            May we who have been redeemed by God’s love, through the power of  Jesus Christ, be empowered through the Holy Spirit to make wise choices, and be assured of God’s forgiveness when we falter. May our wise choices be our response to what God has done for us. May we participate in the generous work of God, as agents of God’s common grace as we devote our skills, talents, and treasure toward building up and caring for the beautiful and awesome products of God’s creative work. May we grow in our understanding of dominion expressed in sacrificial service that serves God and the common good.          

            The Apostle John tells us that God loved the world (Greek cosmos, the entirety of creation) so much that he gave his son to save those who believe in him. Our lives and work here are not about ourselves, but instead the good of the entire created order. We have a unique and critical role to play, however small it may look to us, in fulfilling God’s purposes for the world.
In doing this work we will truly find our purpose.

 

           

 

           

Building a Bucket List

Luke 12:13-21 and Colossians 3:1-11

If I actually had a bucket list, two items that would be sure to be on it would be taking a hot balloon ride, and going on an African safari – the kind where the only shooting that takes place comes from a camera.

So, when I came across this story, it really appealed to me.

A man named Danny and his wife took a hot air balloon trip early one morning while visiting Africa. Perfect!

As the balloon rose gracefully, they saw a herd of wildebeest running frantically across the vast expanse below. 

          As they watched, the herd suddenly stopped and began looking around as if they were confused. Danny asked their pilot why the herd had stopped so suddenly; what were they looking for?

          The pilot told them that the wildebeest, which migrate by the millions across the grassy African plains, are not good learners.  An entire herd will take flight at the slightest indication of danger. They run wildly for a short time, and then stop, forgetting why they began running in the first place.

          Meanwhile, lions, who are good learners, simply follow the stampeding herd at a leisurely pace and wait for them to stop. When the wildebeest forget why they are running, dinnertime arrives.

So I wonder, are we more like the wildebeest or the lion?

          Can you imagine running and running and running and then forgetting why you are running at all? 

          The truth is we all fall prey to this cycle at times, running here and there and back again, busy in our work or school, busy in our family, busy with our social and financial obligations, busy running to something, busy running away –  eventually overcome with our busy-ness, only to forget what it is we are running after to begin with, and why it was so important to us to be. So. busy.

This forgetting is more than the experience of walking into a room and failing to recall why we went there to begin with.

          Rather, in all our running and chasing after things that ultimately give way to confusion, we forget the things Christ has taught us about trusting in God, and about how we should live.

We forget the ways Jesus showed us about living in community, loving our neighbor, and forgiving those who have trespassed against us. We forget the priorities that God set before us – love me, love neighbor, love yourself.

We sometimes forget that caring for the outcast, the marginalized, and the sinner was at the top of the list of what Jesus taught us to do. Those were the things that were important to Jesus – connecting with, and caring for our neighbor. Sadly, when we forget this core instruction from God, our attention and focus naturally turns inward.

          The parable from our gospel today, shows us what happens when a rich man forgets that it is God who gives us all we need. We see what happens as he is consumed with running, running, running – amassing more than he can possibly use up himself, so that his “running” turns into building, building, building.

So, there is this telling conversation he has with himself, when he realizes that he has run out of storage space for his hoard.

The man thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops? I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’” 

It is all “I, I, I, I, I, and my, my, my…..” This is his focus and his mantra – it is all about me, myself, and I.

          The writer of our first reading, from Ecclesiastes, calls this ‘vanity’ –it is “meaningless,” “useless,” and “absurd.”

          In the parable we see the vanity of the rich man who is obsessed with what the epistle to the Colossians refers to as the “things that are on earth”. These are fleeting things that we have a tendency to place importance on—everything from material wealth, to status, to power over others – the writer of the Epistle names the pursuit of all these things idolatry.  

While it is sensible stewardship of the resources God gives us that we save and reasonably plan for our future material needs, a component of stewardship as Jesus teaches it, is to trust that we are given ample resources to share and to use for the betterment of others.

Knowing that God provides for our daily needs, we are freed to trust that God also provides enough for us to share.

This message is at the core of all the stewardship stories in the bible, from manna daily given to the people of God in the wilderness, to Jesus teaching the Lord’s Prayer, which comes just before this text.

God carefully and lovingly gives us all we need. It’s the same message our own stewardship team diligently establishes in their messages to our community throughout the year.

However, there is more to this text than a message for the stewardship of material goods, as important as that is. For if we look at the beginning of the passage, we will see that this entire story begins with someone asking Jesus to settle a property dispute within their family. So this is also a message for the stewardship of human relationships.

Maybe you’ve known or witnessed the pain and turmoil that families sometimes experience when huge battles erupt over the inheritance of property upon the death of a loved one, whether a will had been left or not. Bitter divides form over such arguments, and lifelong scars and estrangements often result. So we can understand someone coming to Jesus and wishing for him to speak with authority on this matter.

But note Jesus’ response; “Be on guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Instead, in Christ we have been granted abundant life to share both now and in a future we cannot yet see.

So, according to Jesus, greed includes not only those things that we yearn for that we do not have, but also those things we already possess but would do just about anything to keep.

Greed is indeed a deep pit into which we fall and cannot, on our own, climb out of.

The epistle lists so-called earthly things that we run after. I wonder what other things we can name? Living in a consumerist world, what are some of the earthly things that we chase after, long for, and amass for ourselves? I suppose such a list would include

·        winning the lottery

·        money

·        food

·        clothes

·        jewelry

·        the latest technology

·        beauty

·        youth

·        travel

·        power

·        land, property

·        ‘toys’

·        popularity

In contrast, Paul’s letter to the Galatians picks up this theme and reminds us of the good gifts or fruits of the Spirit, which God provides; gifts that build human relationships, gifts that are godly. That list looks quite different. It includes things that reflect on the love of God in Christ Jesus and the things he modeled for us, which help us dwell in authentic Christ-like relationship with our neighbors:

·        love

·        joy

·        peace

·        patience

·        kindness

·        generosity

·        faithfulness

·        gentleness

·        self-control

The good news of the gospel is that as life in Christ truly includes a radical reorientation of our values as individuals and even more as community, we are freed by the grace of God in Jesus Christ from the need to run in circles, consumed with worry after the things that are on earth.

We are freed by the grace of God through Jesus Christ to know that as the love of God is limitless, we will always have enough to share, and are already forgiven for the times when we struggle to do so.

As followers of Christ we find joy when we willingly and happily share with our neighbor the material, physical gifts we have – food, clothing, shelter, money for utilities and gas but also of this grand pool of love and welcome that we have been given.

As we are freed to let go of the things and the greed that has previously driven us, we are enabled to reach out to our neighbor in authentic love and invitation.

Let us therefore embrace Jesus’ word, that we might be rich toward God who, by the power of the Spirit promises to give us eyes to see that all we have is a gift from God’s gracious hand.

Let us know the gift of this community of faith that reaches out to share the gifts we have first received – time, talent and treasure, that all may know the abundant life of Christ.

Through the Spirit and in community, undistracted by the vanity of pointless running, let us see and hear the very people Jesus saw and heard; the lonely, the disenfranchised, the weak, the poor, the powerless – our neighbor – all those we are empowered to love and embrace.   

Let gratitude and grace define us and define our lives. May we have ears to hear God’s call to remember that our lives are not rich because of what we have accumulated or done, but because of what God has done for us in Jesus, on the cross, and through the abundant life that begins in our baptism and never, ever, ends.

Let us remember that in this God-given abundant life there are always more people to invite in and to embrace with the love, joy, gentleness, patience, kindness, and generosity and all the rest with which we are gifted.

Let us pray that Jesus will continue to show us the way, for surely Jesus’ own bucket list must include his desire that this abundant life of richness toward God be the single possession and treasure that all people will one day share.