Musical Prelude and Service.

Geneses 1:26-28 & Mark 10:41-45
Last week I spoke about the first of the creation stories in Genesis. I reflected about how creation is a deliberate and thoughtful labour of love. One act of creation builds upon the next. It takes time and it takes work.
Today’s text completes the act of creation as God creates humanity. Essentially the creation of humanity is the culmination of all that came before.
Again, this is not a story of what actually happened. It is a theological reflection told by the Jewish priests of the day. It was a lesson – an explanation developed by the religious authorities of the day. It spoke about the people’s relationship to God and to the rest of creation. And, I suspect it also helped to distinguish the Hebrew people from the empires and kingdoms, the other dominant cultures that surrounded them.
Consider this: God created humanity in God’s image. All of creation bears God’s image. Other creation myths of the region speak of creation in violent terms or as human beings being slaves to the creating God. Or the kings and emperors as Gods. People to be worshipped themselves.
For the Hebrews, we bear the image of God. The Israelites do not make graven, engraved or sculpted images of God. Instead, they themselves, the people are the image of God. We are called to mirror, to represent God and God’s love in creation.
And we are given dominion over creation. Consider what that means from a political or a sociological perspective. Who or whom do we serve? Where is the power and where is the responsibility?
God gave dominion over the rest of creation to humanity.
Dominion. What is meant by that word? This has actually been something of a debate for quite some time. We generally presume it relates to domination. As in complete power and control over the subject.
But that is most likely not accurate.
Obviously, the use of the word dominion in our English Bibles is a translation from Hebrew. The word in Hebrew is Rada. As I noted, what that means is it has been a point of debate for centuries, perhaps millennia. As a verb, something that is done, Rada suggests caregiving. Having responsibility for the subject.
Rada as an action does not in Hebrew suggest exploitation. Dominion in this context represents being in relationship, taking responsibility for and caregiving. Humanity, the early Hebrew priests argue were created to care for and be in relationship with God’s beloved creation.
God created the world, the sun, the moon and stars, the land the air, the seas and all the plants and creatures found in this wondrous creation. God gazes upon all that they have created, they call it good. And then God creates humanity and gives them dominion, responsibility to live with respect and care in this beautiful world.
In Mark, a few of Jesus’ disciples get into a squabble over who will sit at his right hand. Who will be his chief deputies when Jesus creates God’s kingdom.
A few of those disciples desire that privilege; assuming it will come with power, wealth perhaps, and the renown of being the favourite and most trusted of Jesus.
And Jesus basically says, you don’t know what you are asking for.
In Jesus’ world, to have power; to hold authority, means first to serve. To look out for the welfare of the whole community. To lead means to serve. It doesn’t mean to have the power to exploit and to enrich yourself. His disciples are looking at the examples set by so many rulers in their world and in their history. Kings, governors, emperors who achieve great power and status and immediately profit from their standing.
They get richer and more powerful yet. They are able to use their access to power to accumulate more. More land, more power, more wealth, more ‘friends’. To have power, means others serve you. Not the other way around.
But Jesus envisions a new world. One where we who follow Jesus serve the world. We care for and nurture God’s beautiful creation.
We bear the image of God. God created us to hold dominion over the rest of creation. We are to live with respect in creation. To be in relationship and to see and feel the ways that creation groans in pain from the ways we have abused this wondrous world.
God desires us to walk gently, to live with empathy and to offer healing and compassion to the world God created with love and care.
I can’t imagine you need me to read out a litany of the ways humanity has exploited and abused our environment. The ways we have taken this world for granted. How we have chosen to ignore the warning signs that the world is being altered in ways that we will, somehow have to answer for. How we are already needing to adjust our lives due to the radical changes in the environment. Floods, wildfires, droughts and extreme heatwaves. Shorter winters; which on first glance don’t seem too terrible, except that it means a more hospitable environment for insects we aren’t equipped to deal with.
You name it. Our world is changing, and we don’t want to acknowledge it or take responsibility for it. And yet God keeps calling us to listen to the world, hear it calling out to us and to respond, with care and compassion and assume our responsibility, our dominion to serve the world, to serve creation which has given us so much and be the image of God in this world.
God created the world, God created in a labour of love. May we take up our mantle and live with the love and care God granted us.
And may we continue to say, Thanks be to God. Amen
Rev. Warner Bloomfield

Music provided with permission through licensing with CCLI License number
2701258 and One License # A-731789