Today we have another story of creation… one from much later in Israel's history than Genesis 1… and a much gentler tale than the cosmic, cataclysmic creation of the earlier account… where humankind is its crowning glory. Instead… today we have a story of a garden… a man… a woman… and a troublesome tree… and relationships between humans and the created world.

Yet in that Genesis 1 account lurks a word that colors our reading of Genesis 2. The word is "dominion." A Hebrew study of the word's origins is a little complicated… but essentially it means: to subjugate, subdue, or crush… exactly what we would expect from its translation into English as the root word for dominate. Unfortunately, this concept of domination has had dramatic effect on how human beings treat the natural world… at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Yes, exploitation and conquest of the natural world… is sometimes done stupidly and mindlessly… but often because of greed accompanied by corruption… leading to some severe outcomes… both for humanity and for the natural world in which we live.

Bill and I just got back from a 2-week vacation that included a college graduation, Bill meeting his new great-granddaughter for the 1st time, and visits with friends in Tulsa. Parts of it were trips down memory lane for both of us… in the Ozarks of western Arkansas and the green hills of northeastern Oklahoma. But one of the sights that came into being after we both moved on to churches in different parts of the country… was the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma… and that preserve was on our bucket list. The area in which it exists is called the Osage… after the Osage Indians who were forced onto large parcels of this rather immense prairie land by the federal government.

I should probably explain why you would have to preserve the prairie grassland… because many of us would assume prairie grass covers Oklahoma. That is not the case. True prairie grass was pretty much removed by homesteaders in western Oklahoma and Kansas who came to farm the land… and it's not coming back. True prairie grass grew as much 6 feet tall… and its roots were just as long. They formed a thick mat that protected the soil against periods of drought… and were ubiquitous in this region. It must have taken great effort to uproot this stuff… but the farmers prevailed. Then along came a years-long drought and nothing was left to keep the soil from blowing away… and… you got it… the Dust Bowl.

Probably the most devastating environmental disaster in our country's history tragically destroyed the lives and livelihoods of a decade of Americans… and set off a vast climate migration. Today we just arrogantly assume that happens only in 3rd world countries… just like we've falsely assumed other tragedies could never happen to us.

So why couldn't the prairie grass just be re-planted, you might be asking. Despite attempts… this part of God's creation can't be reproduced by agricultural technology… even today. It's just gone… a victim of human error and ignorance… and human disregard for the nature of the land. The farmers obeyed Genesis 2's admonition to till the land… with the full encouragement of the federal government… and ignored the rest of that admonition… to take care of the land.

But the Osage is a different story. It was always Indian land and vast cattle ranches… so the grasses survived intact. The person who owned the land forming the Preserve donated his vast ranch to a private trust run by volunteers… and it appears they just maintain the ranch house and do education for people coming through. The land itself apparently does the rest… just by existing. It is awesomely gorgeous.

We were there on a day of white clouds and deep blue sky… with a horizon that seemed to go on forever. Lush grasses covered the hillsides. Not a telephone pole or building in sight. Nothing but a gentle spring breeze singing over the silence. The grasses like a green and gold sea rolling in the breeze… and the occasional buffalo and its baby lumbering across the road. You could imagine Indians galloping their horses across this landscape… at one with nature. I could almost hear the sonorous voice of James Earl Jones reciting Genesis 1… "and God created… and it was good."

It was the garden… without the troublesome tree… without human hubris messing stuff up.

There are places of great beauty like this all over the country… but they exist only where human beings have been restrained from destruction… because there is always that pesky tree… and our human propensity to want domination over nature. The Osage is no exception. It has a dark history… which you will recall if you ever read the book or saw the movie Killers of the Flower Moon.

The tree of good and evil in this paradise proved to be oil… and some ranchers and oilmen chose to eat fully from it. You see, the government gave each one of the Indian families a headright… meaning they not only owned the land… but the mineral rights under it. Probably was an oopsy from the government… but it stood… and many of the Osage Indians became wealthy.

White landowners and oilmen saw the Osage tribe as unworthy owners of a valuable natural resource… so they conspired to terrorize and pillage and murder to get their hands on the oil and the land. Interestingly enough, the great-grandfather of the current-day Drummond family… may have been in cahoots with the ringleader of all this evil. The family were staunch Scottish Presbyterians… who must have believed strongly in the word "domination"… with the result that the current Drummonds are one of the 5 largest landowners in the country. You might recognize the name Rhea Drummond… the Pioneer Woman of online cooking fame.

As for the Osage Indians… they became impoverished… at least the ones who survived.

And once the oil ran out… so did the money grubbers. The nearby town of Pawhuska… a place of fancy buildings and banks and wealth… well… it went downhill and stayed there until recently when the Pioneer Woman developed it into a merchandise mart for her brand. We had lunch in her restaurant and obviously there's a big tourist trade. I don't doubt her generosity and largess… but nothing I could see will support and grow a middle class in the long term.

Then we drove 20 minutes to my hometown. It was an idyllic place to grow up… the birthplace and home of Conoco Oil. Its corporate offices were there… as well as its research center and a large refinery. The company supported the community and vice versa. The town's educational level and standard of living were quite high. But then greed and corporate raiders did their thing… and eventually Conoco moved everything out except the refinery. The town is a sad shell of its former self… with a drug and crime problem to boot.

Now I tell you about our march through a slice of mid-America… not because what we observed is unique… but because it unfortunately isn't. Rather, we saw a microcosm of America's beauty and ruin… sin and redemption… wealth and poverty. Would I have noticed the contrasts so much if I had never left home? Probably not. But coming back I saw them in stark relief… a study in how our nation's longstanding sins of greed and domination weave themselves throughout our history… like a dark thread that shows itself more prominently every few years… and eventually leads to tragic results. You might say… a rich few eat lavishly from the tree in the garden… to the detriment of all life and the earth itself. They arrogantly name themselves as benefactors of progress… to justify their endless exploitation of the natural world and its people. But what they produce is not progress for the common good… but satisfaction for their own greed… which does irreparable harm to the rest of us.

Nothing but nothing is sacred… be it a national forest… or the waters that keep us alive… or the Boundary Waters of Minnesota… or the air we breathe… or the Great Lakes… or an island of unusual biological diversity off the coast of Albania… or rolling farmland that used to be gorgeous… but is now permanently scoured down for a data center. Nor are other people sacred… or even part of somebody's consideration on their march to more wealth and power.

What have we let loose… by arrogantly assuming that we humans are the center of creation… and therefore have some crazy God-given right to willfully destroy it?

What can we do? Well first, stop buying into that bogus idea of unlimited progress. Yes… God gives humans an abundance of resources for living well… but not at the risk of the planet… and not for an elite few. When most of those resources are in the hands of a very few people… a good life for all people becomes more and more precarious… as well as do the freedoms we have enjoyed. It does very little good to recycle so some rich guy can sell our garbage to the Chinese… who just throw it in the ocean… when the web of life… of which we are a part… is under existential threat.

We must reject this idea that God has ordained that human beings dominate… and have some kind of holy permission to crush under their feet all other living creatures. Remember… the Christian Nationalists call themselves Dominionists… and we've seen the crushing expand more than we thought possible. One wonders where it will go next.

Even some rabbis look with skeptical eyes at that Hebrew word in Genesis 1… the one we've always read as dominion. Some believe that the text was wrongly transcribed 700 years ago when someone accidentally put an extra dot under the letters… thereby changing the word completely… and that the original really meant "to lower oneself."

Let's look closely at Genesis 2… in the interest of taking it seriously. The scene is a garden… not a competitive marketplace. The man is no longer the center of the universe… but has the lowly job of tilling the earth. So that out of the earth grew every good thing that God put there. In other words… the man and God were co-creators of the world. God took the man and put him in the garden to till and take care of the garden. And God gave him relationships… the animals and the birds… which he was supposed to name. And so he did. Naming had great significance in the Hebrew tradition. To name something was to acknowledge its very great worth. You have a relationship with someone or something you can name.

God then gave Adam a female partner… not as a subordinate object… but as bone of his bone… his equal helper in taking care of the garden.

What is not in this passage?… Any hint of hierarchy. All the creatures and the vegetation and human beings are equal.

Nor is there any mention of personal sin and salvation… even though we might try to make the tree all about that. No making human beings the subject of theological self-flagellation… but rather vessels of truth and love and goodness.

And then there is the tree… signifying a good world… yet not a perfect one… but that's for next week. Genesis 2 is truly a vision of God and humans and nature… living in harmony and for the mutual good.

As Christians in this time… I believe we need to embrace that vision as our own… for we have seen… and are seeing what happens when the order of God's creation is crushed by actions of domination and exploitation and greed.

I can't tell you how to personally embrace the vision of Genesis 2… that's for each person… each church to discern and decide… and find its way. Yet in closing let me simply share some wise words from Barack Obama:

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones that we've been waiting for. We are the change we seek."

So let us pray to find ways of becoming partners with God… in the ongoing creation and care of the world.