Thank you! I am just back from 10 weeks off on renewal leave, a time of much hiking and writing. I come back refreshed and ready to go again. 10 weeks off! Over this summer, I got to spend considerable time with my mom in Lubbock, Texas. She said, "10 weeks off. When you go back, you better have some good sermons!" I said, "Gee, thanks, mom, no pressure!" I do think I have a good word for you today.
One of the reasons for taking off this time is that I have been a pastor for 35 years, and it had been 10 years since my last extended renewal leave. But the main reason for taking off now was that my wife has just retired from more than 30 years of teaching. Cathy has been an English teacher, so words are important to her. In her first year of teaching, she was with 8th graders. At the end of that year, one of her students handed Cathy a thank you note. It read, "Dear Mrs. Barton, you were such a sweat teacher." Cathy would have preferred to have been a sweet teacher. Cathy's last assignment was a high school down town here, teaching sophomore English. This next part really happened just this way. The front office sent out a memo to all teachers, "If you are planning to retire this, please submit your name to this office, so we may present you with a plague." Cathy would have preferred a plaque.
Words are important. In that first creation story we read from Genesis, we have a God speaks everything into being. God says it, and it happens. Aren't you glad that God said light, and not blight. God is like a coach calling in the plays to be run. Pay attention to what our first coach first says to human beings, "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over all creation." This is the start of a sermon series called Life Coach. Now I picked up a magazine yesterday that had all kinds of coaches in it for health, for business, for relationships. One ad in the magazine said that you could become a life coach for $500 with a 2 day workshop. We are going to have little more depth than that, looking at wisdom collected over thousands of years by faithful people trying to follow God's ways.
Now I am an Aggie, and I keep everything simple, so I can understand it. So I don't want to be mysterious about what I want you to take home with you. God, our first coach, says to us, "Dominion, not domination." God is not giving humankind a license to exploit, to use up.
I read a sermon by a rabbi on this passage. He said the limit that God placed on humankind, "you have free rein in the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you are not to eat of it, not even to touch it," means that we are not to gobble up the earth. He said it is a crucial teaching for every generation. The earth has amazing abundance. We are to take care of it, to tend it. Dominion, not domination.
Which led me to oil. I had a lot of time to reflect over these 10 weeks out walking in the beautiful woods. I wondered how much oil is there left? I googled it, and there is quite a bit of evidence that says maybe only 40-50 years left. When I got back, I talked to some of our church members who work in the oil patch to get their perspective. I was all prepared to be against fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline. Martin Payne and Gordon Deen said, "Be careful about demonizing oil. There is a great demand for it."
They taught me new words, like Peak Oil, the maximum rate of oil production. We may have already reached it and may be on the downward side of Hubbert's curve. New techniques like hydraulic fracturing which injects water, sand, and chemicals into shale, breaking up the rock and releasing oil, gas, and gas liquids, has pushed the curve out. Horizontal drilling has helped find new pockets of hydrocarbons as well. They remind me that we can always squeezed more oil out of the ground, but how much and at what price.There is a finite supply. It will end. Our solutions are short term.
I appreciate Martin Payne's writing so much. Go find him on his blog. I appreciate his witness so much. Here he is drilling wells, but his cattle operation is all grass fed, not in feed lots. He is interested in perennial grains. These are food grains that may not produce as much every year, but you don't have to replant every year, plowing, and fertilizing, and watering. They have been around for thousands of years. I wanted to brag on him, by saying that the last car he bought was a Prius, a hybrid. He corrected me, saying, "Don't make me a saint just yet. The last car I bought recently was a Ford Mustang GT, 420 horsepower!" Martin put me onto one more new word, he says, "There are no silver bullets, only silver BB's!" This care of the earth will take lots of little steps by all of us.
All of us believing people are going to need to take small steps to take care of God's creation. It will involve conservation. It will mean looking for alternative sources of energy--wind, solar, algae, biomass, geothermal.
Dominion, not domination.
I am hopeful. The change in our language has made me hopeful. We are getting God's coaching. It is no longer called trash, or the sanitation department, but Austin Resource Recovery. They are no longer scraps or leaves; they are now composting. It is no longer paper or plastic sacks, but re-usable bags. We have gone from big power grids to individual solar panels.
You students going back to school, "Words are important." Dominion, not domination.
The creation story we have in Genesis was not written as it happened. No, it was told and retold, written and edited over thousands of years. The version we have was actually last edited in the 6th century B.C., a time when the Hebrews were in exile in Babylon. At a time when they were powerless, when they were dominated by a foreign power, they re-told the story of the One who had ultimate dominion, the Lord God who created everything that is. They remembered the story as a counter to the Babylonian culture with its grasping, destroying, gobbling up nature.
We Christians have it in our creed, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth." We Christians also see God not just as a coach, but as a player-coach, one who has "skin" in the game. We believe that in Jesus God took on our flesh, and got in the game with us. This Jesus models for us what kind of dominion to practice. He rules like a shepherd, caring for his sheep, even dying for his sheep. Dominion, not domination.
I would have you re-imagine creation. Not as a commodity to be used, or used up, but as our teammates. We are all on the same team with Jesus, who talked about how the birds of the air and the flowers of the field were cared for as well as humankind.
I have been infected by my 10 weeks off. I spent a lot of time in God's creation. See these pictures: Cathy and I got to hike some 150 miles of the Appalachian Trail in central Virginia, our older son Joel and I spent a week in Iceland where we saw this waterfall called Gullfoss, and I got to climb the highest point in New Mexico, Wheeler Peak.
I love our worship space here at Westlake UMC. We have the rock walls with the native stone and the exposed wood surfaces. I am glad we have not stained glass windows, but clear glass that allows us to see the trees, and plants, birds, and animals. We invite creation into worship. Our sacraments bring creation near. We have the bread and grape juice of communion, which have come from the fields. We have the water of baptism in the font. Water is soon going to be a bigger issue than oil. Dominion, not domination.
We have the people around us, part of God's creation. Over my break, I got to hear the following encounter. A mom bought a blouse for her daughter's birthday. This daughter was very socially conscious and ecologically conscious. The daughter said, "Is it made in America?" It needed to be produced locally. "Did you get it from a re-sale shop?" It needed to be re-cycled at least. The daughter's husband said, "Could you first just say 'thank you?'" We are all on the same team.
How will you practice taking some small steps, going for silver BB's? Grey water, re-setting thermostats, insulating, carpooling, solar panels, reworking your language?
God the Creator, our first coach, says, "Dominion, not domination." That's the good news I have for you today.
