With Empowerment, Responsibility

O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Psalm 8

I’ve always lived in a house shaded by huge trees. The house I bought with my husband when we were first married was nestled between tall oak trees. They provided wonderful shade which kept our house cool on hot summer days. They also provided lots of food for the legions of squirrels that made our corner lot their home.

About every four or five years, the entire contents of the acorn crop for that year would fall from the trees in about 1 week, and the noise from those falling nuts was like hail, pouring down 24 hours a day.

In the autumn, we spent hours raking and playing in the leaves with our two children, who were very small in those years.

It was a lot of work to maintain a grassy yard under those oak trees, but we managed to have a decent lawn with the help of grass seed developed to grow in the shade. My gardens contained day lilies, hosta, impatiens and begonias, all plants that thrive with very little sunlight.

About 8 years ago, when it was clear that my family had grown out of our little starter house, we bought a larger house on a larger lot, with larger trees. This time, we were “blessed” with two 70 year old silver maples, one in the front yard and one in the back. These trees also provided cool shade, a home for all of the squirrels in the neighborhood, and many, many leaves to rake in the fall. But we soon discovered that silver maples have a life expectancy of about 70 years. Branches would fall to the ground with each gust of wind, and the squirrels had hollowed out a huge nest in a section of trunk that hung directly over our den. The trees had to be removed.

Except for the great expense to have them taken down, I was thrilled to get rid of those trees. They were messy, and I was looking forward to a yard filled with sunshine. I wanted to grow flowers that didn’t love shade, and I wanted vegetables. In my own yard, I could now plant and grow whatever pleased me.

That spring, I cleared out the garden full of day lilies next to the garage, and I planted a salsa garden. Eight tomato plants and four pepper plants didn’t seem excessive at the end of May. They were so tiny, and I wanted to have a good crop.

If you do any gardening, you can imagine what happened. I spent many sunny afternoons trimming branches and clipping buds from a garden that went wild. The plants were actually choking each other out, and I had to tend carefully to the garden, thinning and trimming the excessive over planting that I did in the spring. I worried that I wouldn’t have any vegetables at all! My enthusiasm for a bountiful crop, and yes, my greed, might have eventually caused my garden to die.

The psalmist reminds us of the great gift that God has created for us. Praising God, he writes, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” The psalmist then reminds us not only of the power we have been given over creation, but of the responsibility that comes with that power. “You have given human beings dominion over the works of your hands, you have put all things under their feet.”

In creation, God has given us a great gift. We can do with it whatever pleases us, and we do. We live in a culture of excess. Yesterday I filled up the gas tank on the big red truck that belongs to my husband, and the bill came to almost 50 dollars. With our Costco membership we can buy our crackers in 3 pound boxes. The honey bees are disappearing, possibly because of the millions of invisible cell phone signals that are disturbing their natural radar which helps them find their way back to their hives.

We have dominion over the work of Gods hands, but I think we might misunderstand what dominion means.

In Psalm 8, the word dominion conveys a concept of partnership between God and God’s creation. In her book Gaia and God, feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether reminds us that “nature is not private property to be done with as one wishes, but stewardship over an earth that is God’s.” Those of us who live in the light of God’s grace must be aware of that, and remember that safe in our relationship with God, we are given the privilege and responsibility to be partners with God in care for, love for and intimate relationship with the natural world.

Just because we know how to, and because we can, does not mean that we should. We need to downsize instead of supersize. We should use more public transportation. We should stop buying bottled water. Studies have shown that most tap water is just as good for you, if not better, and the cost to our environment to produce and dispose of all the plastic is staggering.

In 2005, the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment discovered that the global food production and distribution system is the main cause of pollution and the greatest destroyer of ecosystems and biodiversity. It’s not industry or oil, as we usually think, but the global food industry. Agriculture poisons and makes the soil infertile, monoculture crops involve increasingly invasive hybrid strains, aquifers get polluted. Unsustainable amounts of water are needed for irrigation, crazy logic sees staple foods transported for thousands of miles, fish stocks are plundered, farms are places where animal lives are just cogs in an assembly line.

We have learned that small everyday acts like changing the type of light bulbs we use, can help our environment. Just think what effect our food choices could have: we really could make a decisive difference. The rules are simple: buy products which are local, fresh, in season and organic; get information by reading the label and, even more important, by getting to know producers; cook for yourself, avoiding precooked and preserved foods; practice healthy restraint, preferring quality over quantity and refocusing our attention on the importance of food. While gaining benefits and respect from virtuous behavior, it won’t be a sacrifice but a pleasure.

Come to my house this summer and I will get you started with fresh ingredients for salsa.

We are blessed with a wonderful world. Our ability to manipulate our environment, to harness and exploit the power of our natural resources is not proof of God’s blessing on our nation. It is evidence that we tend to rely on ourselves, and forget that the primary actor in Psalm 8, and in the world, is not human, but God.

We have been given dominion over the work of God’s hands, and with that empowerment comes responsibility. Dominion thought of in terms of our precious relationship with God and with nature brings with it the responsibility to value the interdependence of God, all creatures, and creation as well as the responsibility to care for the earth as we have been cared for and loved by a God of limitless love.

Amen.