How we do what we do matters. Our way of being in the world can be more impactful than what we actually do. Like at the beginning of service, I often ask you to take a deep breath with me to settle us in this space together and help us connect with each other, with God, and with the Word. But what if we breathed together in a way that was competitive or comparing? We’d be breathing together, sure. But would it have the hoped for impact of creating a focused, prayerful presence? It would likely do something else, right?

I recently have seen pictures of digital freeway signs that say, “It’s a lane, not a birthright. Let them merge.” Have you seen this? We’ve likely all been that person who hasn’t let someone merge. As one who’s been on both sides of this interaction, I can report it’s stressful for everyone. And yet this dominating way of driving is so common, we need our departments of transportation to make us laugh so we’ll stop being so mean to perfect strangers who, given enough time and compassion, we would love and care for. We’d have so much compassion, we’d even let them merge into our God-given lane on the freeway.

But for the most part, we can’t help ourselves. We live in ways that are all about winning, competing, and comparing.

Many of us folks understand the world in this way. It’s a world where we win or lose, kill or be killed. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. We may not resonate with the word domination, but it’s likely there hiding in the shadows in our desires to be right, to keep up, or to be better than someone else.

I would say there are times when we do need to dominate, like if we were being randomly attacked by a cougar. I don’t think that’s the time to look for win-win solutions. But driving on the freeway is not that. Neither are most instances in our lives.

What are other examples you can think of?

• Oddly aggressive parents at little league games or the stereotype of the “stage mom”?
• Brushing our teeth so hard our gums retreat for safety (ha!)
• Being cruel to our bodies, forcing ourselves to look a certain way
• How we treat the earth
• How we treat the animals who ultimately become our food
• How we debate politics
• How we refuse to rest when we’re tired or sick

We seem to have a logic of domination that imbues our society. There is a logic of violence towards ourselves and each other. Even the way we talk to ourselves can be devastatingly cruel. Our internal critic voices are often not nice or even constructive.

At every level – personal, between friends and family, community, work, nation, and the world – we swim in oceans of domination.

Best I can tell, we all need to take nice, soft, non-competitive breaths and soften into our bodies as they beautifully already are. We need to settle into the reality that the promises of God are already here, already given, and we don’t need to compete, compare, or win a thing to be enough as we are. And that’s true for everyone as much as it’s true for you.

Our texts today all seemed to be pointing to this idea – that we need to be gentle and thoughtful in our relationships with one another. Jesus refuses to walk the path of domination. Isaiah refuses to defend himself against those who reject God’s prophet. In James, we also hear admonitions to be careful about how we speak to one another, to be careful of the violence than can come from just our words.

This is particularly present in the gospel where Peter proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, which Jesus forbids them to say anything about. Now the messiah was supposed to deliver the people through military defeat of the occupiers, but you can’t marshal a resistance army if you don’t say anything. And then when Peter tries to talk him out of this crucifixion business Jesus was talking about, Jesus calls him Satan.

It’s pretty clear. The path of domination is not Jesus’ path.

Jesus teaches us the way of love in the world, the way of God’s transforming power in the world is not through domination. It’s not through winning. It’s through laying down our lives, our egos, our small selves for the sake of love for the other.  That doesn’t mean we acquiesce and don’t speak our truth. Jesus doesn’t hold back in this gospel. But neither does he choose the path of going to war.

So, how is domination showing up in your life these days? Are you trying to win a battle in your life? Over yourself? Over your body? Over money? Over others? Are there people who are trying to dominate you or keep poking you with arguments in your life?

The biggest arena where I see this showing up is in our political worlds. I don’t know about you, but I feel like we’re all holding our breath a bit, wondering what is going to happen with our upcoming election. Not just wondering about who is going to win but what is the fallout going to be. I am worried about how we’re going to manage these months to come.

We all live in politically diverse communities, including Celebration. So, no matter what happens on election day, each of our communities will likely be a mixed bag of reactions and emotions. Given these tensions among people and communities we deeply care about and love, how we travel through these next couple months and beyond really matters.

We’re human, so our inclination is to want to win. We want our candidates and worldviews to win for many reasons we all hold dear. That’s a given. But, how we treat each other during this time matters.

In our James text, he calls our tongues fire that are both sources of evil or of blessing. The way we talk, share, teach, and engage each other in conversation can start an evil fire in our midst or it can be a source of blessing, love, and respect. We can set the world ablaze with love or hate or fear.

We do not need to agree on all the things to live in the flow of love and grace with one another. This church community is testament to that truth. But how we relate to one another, talk to one another matters. We may need to soften our needs to be right, to win debates, and to force others to submit to our way of thinking. And if we’re really amazing, we might just open our ears and hearts to allow ourselves to be changed by others. We may just learn something, like Jesus with the Syrophoenician woman in our gospel text from last week.

To do this, I believe, we need to see Christ in each other. We need to hold fast to the reality that God loves us all, regardless of all the reasons we may have for not loving each other. We are called to love, to see the divine in the face of the other. That can be hard to do.

James tells us that we should be careful about who among us are teachers, because there’s a lot of authority and power in being someone who speaks and is listened to. Well, I’d say these days we are all teachers, particularly now with social media. We’re all given our “bully pulpits” to share our opinions and ideas. In the words of Luther, we are all priests. Being a disciple of Christ is enough to make you a leader in this church. And so, we are all tasked with bridling our tongues for the sake of God’s love in the world.

As followers of Christ, we are guided to not live our lives in domination mode no matter how tempting or satisfying it may be to do so, in the short term. There is a larger satisfaction in following a path of humility that helps us rest in God’s love for us and all of creation.

We are called to live to both give and receive kindness, grace, curiosity, respect, and love to all people regardless of:

• Whether we agree or not
• Whether they are sneaking into your lane right in front of us after zooming past all the other cars patiently and responsibly waiting in traffic
• Whether they were cruel to you in the hallways at school or on social media

We are called to live in ways that honor our shared humanity and our shared identity as beloved creatures of God, regardless of all the ways we are different.

Lutheran churches like ours across the country are often places of political diversity. And what a gift that is for us to practice being in relationship with each other in ways that do not involve winning or domination. We get to practice that here and take that out into the world. We get to communicate to people that their identity as a child of God is more important, more precious, more real than whether or not we agree on other things. That doesn’t mean we give up on what’s important to us in terms of how we live in the world. But it does mean that we are not free to hate, de-humanize, demean, mock, or otherwise dominate other people. We are called to live as Jesus teaches us.

After service today, we’ll be celebrating Iona and Aidan and the soon to be arrival of their cherished baby boy, Oliver. Today we are focusing on new life, love, community, and God’s creation. I can think of nothing better for us to focus on than God’s love as it is alive and flowing through Aidan and Iona’s newly expanding family, as well as the love of God that flows in each of our lives in all of the stages in which we find ourselves.

This love, this grounding in Christ is a sure and good foundation for all of us. This is our true lane for to us to hold fast to, and let all the folks in who want to enter in with us.

AMEN