Please note, the recording froze briefly toward the end of the scripture. Read Psalm 103 here.

Psalm 103
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
 “There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no attention to itself, though it is always secretly there. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life.” These are the opening words of one of my favorite books, in fact I’ve given more copies of this book away than any other. It’s called To Bless the Space Between Us, and it was written by John O’Donohue, a magnificent Irish priest and poet, philosopher and teacher. “It would be infinitely lonely to live in a world without blessing,” he writes. “The word blessing evokes a sense of warmth and protection; it suggests that no life is alone or unreachable. Each life is clothed in raiment of spirit that secretly links it to everything else.”

What is that invisible spark, that quiet light, that resides within us all and that seeks connection with God and with one another? What is that kernel of energy that, like a split atom, generates infinite drive for union with God, self, and other? One of the hymns we sing often at Plymouth contains the line, “I will hold the Christlight for you in the shadow of your fear.” What is that Christlight within us and how do we let it shine and spread from our selves to illumine the life of another?

Positive connection between one soul and another is possible, and the connection can be made through blessing, which builds a bridge of spirit and goodness, health and healing, between one person and another. And it’s something we don’t do as often as we might. When was the last time you offered someone an explicit blessing?

At the end of every service, you receive a benediction, literally a “good word” or well-wishing from the minister. It is the most obvious blessing in our order of worship, and we take it very seriously as conferring spiritual blessing on you. And there are other blessings as well. Every time we celebrate communion, the minister offers a prayer of consecration over the simple elements of communion, setting them aside as holy with a blessing. When we baptize children or adults, we bless them in the name of the triune God. And every week, at least during non-pandemic times, we do two things with the offering: We sing it forward with a Doxology (usually “Praise God from whom all blessings flow!”) and then in the Unison Prayer of Dedication, together we all bless the offerings that have been made. We can bless things as well as people, and that is what we do today, on this Consecration Sunday, as we bless our pledge commitments for 2022.

I learned something new while preparing this sermon: the Old English root of blessing is blêdsian, which means to consecrate with blood. David Steindl-Rast says that “Blessing is the lifeblood throbbing through the universe.” Before you get totally grossed out, think about this from a religious studies point of view. What did most offerings in many religions look like? They were often sacrifices: sometimes grain, sometimes material wealth, sometimes animals. People bought doves outside the Temple in Jerusalem for sacrifice. We still repeat Jesus’ words, “This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood.” We see it as lifeblood, a metaphor for the container or vehicle of vitality and spirit. And when we collect the offering, where do we put the plates after we sing it forward? We put it on the communion table, and if I were an anthropologist, I’d probably conclude that our communion table is an altar and that we are making a sacrifice of our wealth for God.

So, what does consecration and blessing mean for us, who are 21st century followers of Christ? I turn to the 103rd Psalm, our text for today: “Let my whole being bless the Lord. Let everything inside me bless his holy name…and never forget all God’s good deeds.” I appreciate the way the Common English Bible renders that phrase, “Let my whole being bless the Lord,” rather than the more typical “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Think about that for a moment, how do you let your whole being — body and soul — turn toward God to build a sense of connection that allows gratitude, love, healing, and wholeness to flow in the channel of your blessing? How do you orient your life so that it isn’t just saying a word of blessing on a Sunday or even before a meal, but rather that your actions, thoughts, and deeds become a form of blessing that you offer to God?

When Paul advises us to “pray without ceasing,”[1] he is not asking us to kneel down all day, but rather to orient our lives such that our lives themselves become a blessing, a channel of positive spiritual energy flowing between God, us, and others.

In the Celtic tradition, there is a great tradition of blessing things, people, and occasions. These were often learned by heart and offered in spoken word from one person to another or even while milking a cow or banking a fire at the end of the evening. In a few moments, we’ll offer a Celtic blessing from the Iona Community as we consecrate and bless our pledges for 2022, continuing that ancient tradition with contemporary words.

When we do that, I hope that you’ll think of blessing not of the slips of paper that we put in the basket or the online pledges that you may have made, but think of all the work of our members and friends that those pledges represent. Money is like stored energy that derives from our labor, and we are offering it to support the mission and ministry of this congregation. I am thankful that we recognize that all good gifts come from God and that when we offer them to God in gratitude, they form a tangible blessing that helps extends God’s realm through the activity of this church.

The other wonderful thing about blessing is that it cannot be bound by geographic location or even physical separation caused by a pandemic. A blessing cuts right through the distance!

So, we gather as God’s people, here in the sanctuary or in a hundred living rooms and family rooms of our online worshipers, and we gather to express gratitude with the commitment of our financial resources for 2022. And we gather to bless them, opening a channel of positive energy between the work they represent and the mission and ministry of this congregation.

May the whole being of each person who comprises this congregation bless the Lord, and may God’s blessing be on each of you. Amen.
 
© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

[1] 1Thess. 5.16

Rev. J. T. Smiedendorf
Plymouth Congregational Church
Fort Collins, CO
Isaiah 65:17-25*

What do you want?  I mean what do you really want?
We are moving into a social season of intensified appeals to want. Advertisers will increasingly try to entice your wants, shape your wants, even redirect your wants. Although what is most powerful is when an advertiser can get us to see their product or service as a fulfillment of a want we already have, especially a deep want, a deep intangible want. It’s not just a car, it’s security and reliability. It’s not just a truck, it’s power and manly status. It’s not just a toy, it’s happiness. These are the deepest wants, the intangibles, the deep ones that have to do with meaning and purpose, values and identity, love and acceptance.
 
Something that is offered to us as a community of faith is the journey into life giving depth. It’s not that living life in a sacred manner might not involve the delight of a desired product or service, a needed new car, a comforting massage.  It’s that there is a call of faith to living into a depth that sees through the illusory or shallow aspects of stuff and amusements into what is of lasting or life-giving value, what we really deeply and truly desire and need.
 
A faith of resilience and wisdom knows that there are things such as enough, and such as when and where, and such as first things first, and such as beauty and truth.  Such a way of life knows when it is the right time for a new car or a massage.
 
From the place of the soul, the question of what do you want can also be phrased, ‘what do you long for’? In your heart of hearts, for what do you long, for yourself and for others? Or even what do you dream and desire for the world to be? I like that term desire. I have a sense of desire as calling forth something that we feel in the body, something deep in us.
 
And deep want is the place to which we are faithfully invited when we consider the identity and the expression of being a steward. Stewardship is more than just our October theme. It’s an ‘always theme’ of being a person or a community of faith. Next Sunday, Consecration Sunday, we are asking for each of us to pledge a contribution for 2022 so we can plan responsibly for our ministry and mission in 2022.
 
Yet, all of this occurs within the larger, ‘the always’ context of faith and stewardship, the context of valuing and trusting and serving something greater than ourselves. Some years ago at a church retreat, the congregation I was serving summarized that something greater as the flourishing of life.  We could call it the Realm of God, or the Body of Christ, or Shalom, or justice, peace and the integrity of Creation. Isaiah called it a “new heavens and a new earth.” We could call that kind of something greater a faithful vision of what we really want, what inspires us, touches us, and calls us to celebration and action.
 
This talk of of vision and hoping for something reminds me of the book Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. This book has a subtitle: How to Face the Mess We are in without Going Crazy. In it, Macy invites us into facing the global environmental crisis by viewing hope not as a feeling based on a prediction of what will happen, hope based on a likely outcome, but into hope based on desire, based on intention, based on our highest vision of what we want for the world, what we most deeply value becoming real. Out of that vision of value and deep desire, we act out our hope. Our hope is active in our living out of and into the vision of what we deeply want.
 
As noted by Macy in Active Hope and by others in the field of change, starting with the end in mind may be the best way to begin. Starting with what we really want, starting with a deep imagining of what we want to see happen. We can do that now. Perhaps for Plymouth Church, perhaps for Fort Collins, perhaps for Colorado or for all Creation. The Strategic Planning Team has offered a vision of five years forward. Review their vision.
 
And you can move into the future perhaps 10, 20, or even 50 years. Close your eyes and see if it deepens your imagining. Imagine with all your imaginative senses what it is like to have our deepest hopes come to be. In positive terms, not imagining what you don’t want or what isn’t there, but focusing on what you do want and on what is there, imagine what you desire for the flourishing of life. What is that like? What do you see? What do you smell? What do you touch and taste? What do you hear?
 
Those who research this process encourage us to set aside “the how” in this phase of the process and just focus on the what. When we have filled that positive picture up, we take time to feel in our hearts the desire for it and the joy in its coming. Only then do we ask the question, how did we get here? The imagination is used to trace backward in time the steps that led to that change until we come back to the moment in which we stand. We come back to the now moment and are able to more adequately act with effectiveness to move on the path toward that greater something we seek.
 
I can think of instances in the life of churches I’ve served and even my own life where I couldn’t imagine how I would get to somewhere or some way, but those churches did and I did. Somehow the vision did manifest. With a focus on the vision and persistent steps, and sometimes with unexpected gifts and graces, the new was and is birthed, even the hard-to-believe "NEW."
 
This morning’s sacred reading from our Scriptures is an example of vision, a description of what (Third) Isaiah understood God really wants to have happen with human beings; to have fairness for those who labor, that they be rewarded with adequate fruits of their labor, that people are healthy and live full life spans, that there be an end to violence. Described beautifully in images that we can use to more deeply enter this reality, this desire, these images invite us to see elders and children together, to taste fruit and feel the shade of the vines, to hear the pounding of the swords into plowshares (Longmont UCC).
 
And, here and now, as much as ever, we are called to have a vision of the Realm of God, a place where there is balance in the relationships of humanity and in Creation so that we see polar bears walking on plentiful ice, and hear the songs of songbirds aplenty, and see the sight of whales breaching, and of students filling classrooms in productive learning, and of workers performing jobs with good pay and benefits, and smell good nutritious luscious food in the air, and hear the sound of music and laughter.
 
If our prayer that heaven may come upon the earth is to manifest, we must be on the path of stewarding our individual and communal lives, and that includes feeling and holding that vision of what we truly deeply want: the flourishing of life that the God of Grace and Justice wants for Creation.  
 
What do you see and feel and smell and hear when you imagine that vision of what God wants for the world? What vision do you see and feel and smell and hear when you imagine what God wants for Plymouth Church? What can you do with your time, talent, and treasure to help manifest it?
 
May we be about the business of vision, the imagining that opens us and guides us and sustains us being vital, joyful, and wise stewards of the life that we have received.

Amen.

*Isaiah 65:17-25 (Third Isaiah, back in Judah but struggling)

17 For I am about to create new heavens
    and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
    or come to mind.
18 But be glad and rejoice forever
    in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
    and its people as a delight.
19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
    and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
    or the cry of distress.
20 No more shall there be in it
    an infant that lives but a few days,
    or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
    and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
21 They shall build houses and inhabit them;
    they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 They shall not build and another inhabit;
    they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
    and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
23 They shall not labor in vain,
    or bear children for calamity;[a]
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord--
    and their descendants as well.
24 Before they call I will answer,
    while they are yet speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
    the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
    but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
says the Lord.
For the word of God in Scripture
For the word of God among us
For the word of God within us
Thanks be to God

Mark 10.17-33
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
 I begin today with a story about a man and his wife, who in some ways are very different from us and in some ways very much like you and me. Let’s call them Paul and Theresa. They lived in Bordeaux, France, and they were from wealthy families. Perhaps they were more influential than most of us, but like us they were two people who had been moved by their faith in God. And that potent kernel of faith was a driving force in their lives. For many of their contemporaries, faith was just sort of there…it wasn’t central to how they lived their lives, and it existed more or less in the background of their day-to-day affairs.

Paul and Theresa were unlike most of us, though, because in addition to their property in France, they had large land holdings in Italy, and Theresa’s family also owned some of the best and richest land in Spain. This is a true story about real people who lived not in our time, but in the later years of the Roman Empire, in the late 300s. Their wealth and influence were difficult to calculate, because they had such vast properties, scattered across southern Europe. One historian writes that their wealth was comparable to a modern multinational corporation.

Then tragedy struck the family. Like so many of us, when big changes happen, doors close before us and new windows of opportunity open. Do you know the kind of changes I’m talking about? Those moments test our mettle and sometimes provide the occasion for metanoia, for changes of heart, and new beginnings. Here is what happened: Paul and Theresa’s only son died. For them it must have seemed like the end of their world, because to them – like many of us – family was everything. For three long years, Paul and Theresa searched their souls and eventually reached the decision that they would live lives devoted to Christ, living essentially a monastic existence. They thought about Jesus and how he had said to his followers when his own family wanted to get through the crowd to reach him: “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Not quite the modern family values some of us espouse.

In the course of this decision, Paul and Theresa essentially renounced the family ideal that was absolutely central in their culture, in other words, they committed “social suicide.”[1] They were what many considered Franklin Roosevelt to be: traitors to their class. They opted out of the uppermost stratum of Roman society for something even more powerful.

But that wasn’t all…Paul and Theresa knew what Jesus had said about wealth: that it was easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for them to enter the kingdom of God. They began to dismember and sell off their estates and to distribute the money to the poor. Can you imagine a multinational corporation, dissolving itself, and giving the proceeds to the poor?

Paul and Theresa moved to Barcelona, and in the cathedral there on Christmas Day in 394 Paul was ordained as a priest. He was the first member of a Roman senatorial family to be ordained not as a bishop, but as a mere clergyman. More social suicide.

Soon thereafter, Paul and Theresa sailed across the Mediterranean to a village called Nola, outside Naples. And it was there Paul had visited the tomb of St. Felix when he was much younger. It was there that Paul and Theresa used all their remaining wealth to build a shrine to St. Felix, a Syrian immigrant who had been tortured for his faith in an earlier era. The fine mosaics at the shrine of St. Felix were excavated by archeologists in the 20th century, and they are beautiful. Paul and Theresa built a basilica there dedicated to St. Felix. They built hostels for pilgrims to come and visit the shrine, and they provided monastic hospitals for the free healing of those who were ill or dying. They made it possible for even the poorest to come to this shrine for worship and healing.

What would you do with all that wealth? If you were going to give it up, how would you craft your renunciation so that it did the greatest good? And what factors inform your choices?

Paul and Theresa saw themselves as imitators of Christ, the Christ who an ancient Christian hymn says, “though he was in the form of God…he emptied himself taking on the form of a slave…and humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”[2] That is the life they tried to create for themselves.

Paul (who is actually St. Paulinus), was interested not just in getting rid of his wealth, but doing so in a way that he thought was like transferring his treasure to the kingdom of God.

What would you have done if you had wealth at your disposal…even if it wasn’t immense wealth? How does your faith inform and influence how you would fund something to do what Christ did?

-  -  -  -  -

Going back to Mark’s gospel, what is your reaction when you hear Jesus pause — feel compassion for the rich man — and then tell him to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor? Are you somebody who thinks that Jesus is being unrealistic? Does it seem like Jesus is always talking about money? Perhaps you think Jesus is being too demanding with the young man…after all, Zacchaeus the tax collector (also described as a rich man) gave up only HALF of his wealth and won favor with Jesus. What is YOUR reaction? How does it make you feel? Do you wonder what it would be like to stand face to face with Jesus and to have him ask you to renounce your wealth? How would you respond if that were the case?

Jesus isn’t easy on those of us with possessions, and by the standards of the ancient world, almost everyone in this room is rich, which means you have food, housing, access to education and medical care…it doesn’t mean having two cars, nor two houses. Jesus seems to intuit that this rich man is deeply, unhealthily attached to his possessions.

Here’s the bottom line: virtually all of us are rich compared to the rest of the planet, and we live far better than royalty in ages past. So, what are we called to do with our wealth if we want to be faithful followers of Jesus?

Imagine what we could do in terms of mission and outreach at Plymouth if we had an annual budget based on every member tithing 10% of their income. And we do have members at Plymouth who tithe! Median household income in Fort Collins is $74,300. So, if 350 average-income families gave $7,430 our budget would be $2.6 million — more than two-and-a-half times what is being proposed this year. Do you know what kind of impact we could have on homelessness in Fort Collins with that income every year? Imagine how many kids in South Africa, who have been orphaned by AIDS, we could feed, clothe, and educate. Think about how many more kindergartens in Ethiopia we could build and support. Closer to home, we subsidize housing for one housing-insecure CSU student each year…what if we made it 10 students?

For most of us, giving ten percent wouldn’t kill us…and it might actually save someone else…and maybe save us in the process. We do a good job of talking our progressive talk, but I for one could do a better job of putting my money where my mouth is…and where my heart is. I wonder if there is a disconnect for those of us living in the affluent society not simply about how we can make a difference, but how we are called by Jesus himself to share our wealth, and how it might liberate us.

Here is the question I put to myself, and I also put to you to wrestle with: Where is my heart…and what am I going to do about it? Jane Anne and I are still talking about our pledge for 2022, and this year we have pledged $12,000 to Plymouth. We could probably do even more, because we are blessed by being compensated well for our work, and like some of you we have a kid in college, we are saving for retirement, and we have some extraordinary healthcare costs.

What I'm trying to do is hold up a mirror not to embarrass anyone or make anyone feel guilty or to exclude anyone because they aren’t in a financial position to give anything. Rather, I'm trying to introduce us to the possibilities that we can make a difference…that the kingdom of God is among us and that we are called to form Beloved Community.

We can write Jesus off and say that he was simply using hyperbole when he told the rich man to sell all he had and give it to the poor, or we can try and take it seriously.

We can write Jesus off when he says that it will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich woman to enter the kingdom of God, or we can try and take it seriously.

We can write Jesus off when he commends Zaccheus the tax collector for giving half of all his possessions and distributing them to the poor, or we can try and take it seriously.

We want faith to be easier…and it just isn’t. There is no magic bullet, no pill we can pop, no creed we can recite, no confession of faith we can offer that will make the narrow way of Jesus any less rigorous. But here is the good news: we are here to walk this road together. We are “All Together Now”…forming Beloved Community. We are here to seek new ways of being faithful, to live transformed lives and to work together for the kingdom of God.

Amen.

© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 
[1] Peter Brown, Through the Eye of the Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD. (Princeton: Princeton, 2012), page 209.

[2] Philippians 2.6-12

Psalm 8
The Rev. Dr. Ron Patterson
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, CO

A week or two ago while I was weaving, something many of you know I always do when I visit Ft. Collins, I took a lunch break, left my loom bench, and took a seat at the large knitting table at the local yarn store where I spend a lot of my free time.  Often there are a dozen or more knitters or crocheters sitting at the table.  That day there was only one and this person likes to talk and so as ate my lunch I listened.   

They said that I would not be seeing them in the next week or two, because they would be home baking for a large church meeting to be held at the local non-denominational church they attend.  I began to listen at that point rather than just politely nod while they talked and I ate. 

I could not help myself.  I shared with them that all the church meetings I have attended for over a year now have been online, no pastries, no cake, no cookies, not even coffee.  In fact, I told them that our entire General Synod, over 3,000 people, met online this summer.  Did their church expect many for this meeting?  Hundreds, they said; and they planned to be baking for the next two weeks to prepare.  

Once again, I could not help myself.  Did that mean that those attending would all be vaccinated?  And then I realized that I might have overstepped from curious to nosey and so I apologized for asking.  But they responded, well, some of them might be wearing masks.  And then I went full nosey and said “Are you vaccinated?” and this person smiled and said: “Let’s just say, I’m taken care of.”  At that point I silently picked up my lunch, put on my mask and left the room.  
​
I’m led to make a few observations before I get into my sermon this morning to set stage for what I hope to communicate.  First, I am not particularly proud of that interaction, and might even suggest that the devil made me do it.  However, that would not be fair to the Prince of Darkness, because I over-reacted, perhaps unfairly, all on my own to a couple of things this person said that gripe my heart and fry my spleen.  

Calling a church ‘non-denominational’ is often, in my experience, code for conservative, non-inclusive, male-dominated and guilt driven.  And often, the participants in these congregations have no idea of what their leaders believe, because they conceal their message in user friendly packages that include tons of catchy music and lots of warm fellowship, unvarnished patriotism and messages designed to make everyone feel good.  We have our faults in the United Church of Christ, tons of them, but we don’t try to hide who we are behind an innocent sounding word like ‘non-denominational’.   My guess, perhaps incorrect or even judgmental, is that her church has a denomination, they just don’t want you to know about it.  

And second, the evasive answer to my way too nosey question might be covering an attitude that does not reflect the unconditional love of Jesus and the call of Jesus for us to love God and love one another.  There are good excuses not to be vaccinated, but for the love of God, don’t cover it with some sickeningly sweet varnish that implies that God has you covered in such a way that suggests you bear no responsibility for your neighbors.  Wear a mask or take other precautions.  

This person said that they are taken care of—and once again, this might be terribly unfair of me, but what they might have meant was that their church peddles anti-vaccination conspiracy theories or that their pastor has told them that if they love Jesus they don’t need a vaccine to be safe or they might even believe that their faith can keep them well.  Maybe, but maybe not.  I got my shot hoping that it might protect me, but I got the shot because I believe in loving others enough to keep them safe.  

Thank God I belong to a church that says upfront that I don’t have to leave my brain at the door to find a faith home or to grow and that this preacher and these pastors don’t try to tell you what you have to think or do, but insist that you join us in prayerful, respectful dialogue with one another and with the best scientific thought available, because I believe that reflects what it means to love God, one another and ourselves.  

And I open this sermon with that story which might reveal too much of my rudeness and too little of my compassion or understanding, because I want to talk about who God is and who we are and what I believe we need to be about in this world as followers of Jesus; a world where some of the follows of Jesus seem to be up to something entirely different and dreadfully dangerous that threatens not only our future, but our freedom with a belief system that turns the way of Jesus into a power grab and a tool of repression and a direct rejection point by point of what Jesus said and did. And those are strong words but let me tell you what I mean.  

My text this morning is Psalm 8. This is the Psalm that went to the moon on Apollo 11, and this is the Psalm that shows up a few times each year in the lectionary because this Psalm weaves cosmology, anthropology and theology into a powerful tapestry truthfully answering the three questions that I think define human existence, the same three questions that too many religious traditions glibly fib about.  

Question one:  who are we?  The Psalmist says we are just a tad lower than the angels and that you and I stand at the pinnacle of God’s creation.  Question two:  who’s in charge?  A creator who acts in love and calls us to respond to life and to circumstances within and beyond our control with the same love.  Question three and this one is a bit tricky:  What are we supposed to do with our lives?  How are we supposed to respond? How are we supposed to live?   Now the faithful answer as Jesus suggested it, is to love God and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  

But there is a tiny problem.  The Psalmist throws the word “Dominion” into the mix which seems to suggest that the creator God has given all of us a job description that we might not like, might not really want and might as a collective humanity have messed up royally by misunderstanding what it meant over the last few millennia, especially in the Western European thought world. 

Here’s what I mean by that.  This Psalm celebrates the reality of the Genesis mandated role of the human being as God’s partner in creation.  The theology of our Western Christian tradition suggests an anthropomorphic cosmology, which I know sounds like baloney to those of scientific mind, but that is history and that is why for centuries in places where Christianity dominated, human dominion was too often seen as human control of the earth with tragic consequences for the environment.  This view encouraged the idea that humans had the God-given right to control, to subjugate and to dominate the creation. Dig it out, drill it out, develop it, exploit it, burn it, transform it, mass produce it, market it, sell it, throw it out and then start over.  Western Christians in one sense crucified the earth without seeming to know or understand what they were doing.  And this idea spread empowered by Western colonialism.   
 
But all was not lost, because in so many places and in so many traditions, some of the followers of Jesus and other faiths and often no faith, have begun to take a second look at what dominion over the earth really means, and many of our sisters and brothers, many of us,  have repented the old idea of dominion as domination and partnered with the best scientists to understand that human actions, energy policies, agricultural policies and all the rest have consequences short and long term for the health of our planet and the survival of our species.  Many of our best leaders in the church and elsewhere are saying that to be a Christian or to be a human, demands that we become environmentalists realizing that the actual witness of the biblical writers insists that the earth and all of creation is our neighbor as fully as the person sitting next to us.

Many years ago, I watched as a minister baptized a baby.  As the minister held the little one lovingly, surrounded by the proud parents and grandparents and a supportive congregation.  The minister said, “You and I have borrowed the future from this child. In how we treat one another, in how we live our lives, in how we take care of this earth, we make payments on a mortgage we hold on this baby’s future.”  That’s how I understand the gift of dominion you and I have been given by God. 

Now, let me return to the story of my bad behavior at the knitting table and about what I heard and understood, perhaps incorrectly about my table companion’s response to my nosey question about their vaccination status.  
What I heard in their answer was a different understanding of dominion.  What I heard, and perhaps projected on to their comment was a set of ideas held by some conservative Christians.  

They are known as dominionists—they have taken the gift of dominion or partnership with the Holy One in the sacred task of co-creation and turned that idea into a license to dominate and control not only creation but human destiny.  

They believe that it is the destiny of the United States to be dominated by Christians and that biblical law should determine the law of the land.  They deny the separation of Church and State.  They reject freedom of conscience.  They defend their ideas by claiming religious freedom for themselves while at the same time denying it for others who do not share their political beliefs. This is a Christian nation they argue and if you are not a Christian in the same way they are, you should have limited rights or perhaps no rights at all.  

One of the strangest sights if you were paying attention to the insurrection on January 6 was the number of Protestant Christian flags and crosses being carried by the rioters that day.  Did that surprise you?  

It was not a coincidence because dominionist ideas were driving that crowd, ideas that include the notion that certain anointed politicians will hasten the domination of this country by Christians. Sure, January 6 was political, but politics partially driven by religious fanaticism is a terrifying undercurrent revealed that day and since in the actions and attitudes of several prominent politicians, including several sitting senators and members of the house.  We need to know that.  We need to act as the followers of Jesus who know better. 
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In one sense, I know that I have gotten a bit carried away by all of this. Our progressive and inclusive stands in the United Church of Christ on so many issues urge us to be God’s tolerant people, accepting of all, inclusive of all.  But when one way of looking at the Christian faith slams the door shut on the rest of us or enables conspiracy theories that threaten others or the earth or the poor or people of color or immigrants with ignorance or white supremacy disguised as patriotic piety, then we are called to sing the words of Psalm 8 with renewed devotion.  

We are God’s children called co-creators by the divine.  We are a little less than the angels, bearing the very image of the Holy One.  We are sisters, brothers, siblings of one human family.  We are not miserable sinners worthy of hell, saved by the cross alone, rather we are joyful saints invited by Jesus to follow the way of life.  We come to a world table today not as strangers but as welcome guests.  We remember that our wholeness is guaranteed by the one who was broken because of a love that will never let us go.  O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! 

​Amen.