Created in the image of God: An MLK reflection

Genesis 1:26-27 & 31

26Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them… 31God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

 

Galatians 3:23-29

23Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 24Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

 

A kindergarten teacher was observing her classroom of children while they drew. She

would occasionally walk around to see each child’s artwork. As she got to one little girl who was working diligently, she asked what the drawing was.
The girl replied, “I’m drawing God.”
The teacher paused and said, “but no one knows what God looks like.”
Without missing a beat, or looking up from her drawing the girl replied, “They will in a minute.”

            Have you ever wondered what God looks like?  I’ll give you a hint, God looks something like you and me.  But we do not look exactly like God; we are marred by sin.  Today I want to look at the passages above and see how we were created to bear the image of God, how sin has broken that image, and how that image can be restored again through Christ Jesus.

We put my sister-in-law on an airplane to Guatemala yesterday where she will be doing a 6 week medical rotation working in a Guatemalan clinic.  She is planning to go into Family Practice after she graduates from Med School this spring, and we are all glad to hear that.  Not that we are glad that she is going into Family Practice, but more that she chose not to go into surgery.  You see, she is a little bit of a klutz (and I do have her permission to tell this story J).  She tends to break things…often.  And it usually seems like those things are ours.

A few years ago Stacy bought us a small sculpture as a gift.  It is something that she picked up at Ten Thousand Villages, and it depicted a man and a woman embracing.  Notice, I used the past tense “depicted”.  She broke it.  The embrace shared by the man and woman had to dcome to an end and they became individual entities.  This image of man and woman had been cracked, broken, and left as a vague reminder of what it had once represented.

I thought of this little sculpture cracked, separated into two pieces, as I read our scripture for this morning, because I believe that we are cracked sculptures as well. 

Our passage from Genesis talks about God’s greatest creation: humanity.  We know that God created the heavens and the earth and everything in them.  Then God moved on to create the most involved, most complex organism on all of the earth.  God created humankind.

And God wasn’t just going on nothing or working from an idea in His head when God created human beings.  God had a clear design from which to form humankind, a clear pattern to make humans from.  Because God created us in His own image.

Some of our older translations read, “God created man in His image” (NIV).  This use of the word man is not referring to a male but to mankind or humanity.  This is where my years of studying Hebrew actually pays off!  The Hebrew word for an ambiguous man is “ish” and female is “isha”.  God didn’t just create males in God’s own image; both males and females bear the image of God. 

We don’t really know what God looks like, but since the Bible tells us that humanity was created in God’s image, we can assume that God looks something like us.  Somehow, together, men and women bear the image of God.  As Scot McKnight says, we are all eikons, image bearers.  Eikon is the Greek work for image, and it is the word used in the Septuagint in Genesis 1:26 when it speaks of humans being created in the image (eikon) of God.  This is where we get the word “icon” from. 

So after God had created all of creation, God sits back, puts his feet up, and he announces that all of creation is good.  Extremely good.  Including human beings.

But things didn’t stay that way for long, did they?  Sin entered into God’s perfect system and marred the image of God that human beings bear.  We became cracked eikons, cracked image bearers.  And since that time humanity has reflected varying amounts of God’s image.  I say that we reflect varying amounts of God’s image, because even though we are cracked eikons, cracked image bearers, we still all reflect this image of God because we were all created in God’s own image.

I have really appreciated the works of NT Wright in helping me to understand what sin is.  Wright says that sin is failure to reflect the image of God or failing to recognize the image of God reflected in others.  That means that when we are not acting like God would have us act, we are sinning.  And when we treat others as less than the image of God bearers that they are through any number of dehumanizing activities, we are sinning.

Some of the greatest atrocities in the history of the world have been enacted by human beings.  The Crusades, nuclear war, the Holocaust.  The list is endless.  Just a few weeks ago we spoke in Sunday School about what we seemed to agree to be one of the lowest points in the history of the United States, and that was the period where the ownership of slaves was an accepted practice.  Sadder still might be the fact that people misused and abused the Bible to justify slavery and many Christians didn’t think anything of it.  Christians owned other people created in the image of God.  Christians owned other eikons.

I don’t think that I need to convince you today that slavery is wrong.  It clearly fails to recognize the image of God reflected by other people, and people’s actions in abusing our fellow human beings fails to reflect the image of God.  We are a bunch of cracked eikons.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Our scripture from Galatians talks about how the Jewish people had been imprisoned by the authority of the law.  It was through observance of the law that the Jews were justified with God; through the law they were able to come closer to bearing the image of God that they once reflected so well.  But now there was something else that trumps the law, something revolutionary, something we call faith.  And it isn’t just any old faith that now is justifying people with God and allowing them to bear the image of God once again.  It is faith in Jesus Christ.

So I come back to this sculpture given to us by my sister-in-law.  She has dropped it, cracked it into pieces.  It now only vaguely resembles the image of two people embracing.  It is a cracked eikon.  There are two options that I see for this broken sculpture.  We can throw it out and forget that it had ever adorned our bookshelf.  Or we can take super glue and put it back together again.  We chose the latter.

This sculpture is not perfect.  There are still cracks and chips in it.  But now it does more closely resemble what it was originally intended to resemble.  It does bear the image of two people embracing.

God had the opportunity to throw out humanity when we became cracked eikons as well.  But rather than throwing us out and forgetting that we ever adorned God’s creation, God sent Jesus to redeem us, to be the glue that holds us back in the shape that God had intended for us.  In Christ, we can reflect the image of God perfectly once again.

This does not mean that we appear perfect on the outside.  This does not mean that we have it all together, that we don’t still have our problems, that we don’t still have our cracks and chips like this sculpture.  But it means that God no longer sees those cracks and chips.  That we reflect the image of God perfectly to God once again. 

And I believe that this is what Paul is saying in Galatians 3:28, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  It doesn’t matter what race you come from, it doesn’t matter what your gender is, it doesn’t matter what your status in society is.  In Jesus Christ, we are all whole, united as one.  And as people united by Christ, we do (or should) bear the image of God.

Tomorrow we as a nation will observe a holiday known as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  His actual birthday was January 15^th, and he would have been 80 years old this past week if he was still alive.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an ordained Baptist minister who grew up in the poverty stricken south where segregation by race was common in the schools, stores, and even on the buses.  Racism was as common as the air we breathe and the water we drink.  It was everywhere.

King knew that this was not right, that this was not honoring God or honoring the image of God reflected by God’s people.  King knew that Christians should not treat anyone as anything less than people created by God in God’s own image.  So as King grew older he found ways to combat racism, poverty, poor working conditions, and war, all in the name of Christ.  And through methods that he believed to be in line with his understanding of who Jesus Christ was and who Christ was calling him to be as a Christian, King was able to make a significant impact to the society in which he lived.  King’s work led him to be the youngest person to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 35, along with countless other awards. 

King knew that his work was dangerous and that his life was always in jeopardy.  A bomb threat had delayed his plane to Memphis the day he delivered his last sermon.  And in his last sermon on the night before he was killed, King said that yes, he would like to live a long life, but that wasn’t the most important thing to him.  What was important?  King said, “I just want to do God’s will.”  He was shot and killed for doing just that less than 24 hours later.

A recording of King’s last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church entitled “Drum Major”, which had been originally given in February of 1968, was played at King’s funeral. In that sermon King had made a request that at his funeral that no one would mention his awards and honors, but that it simply be said that he tried to “feed the hungry”, “clothe the naked”, “be right on the war question”, and “love and serve humanity” (Wikipedia).  King knew that when you do these things for people created in the image of God that you are doing them for Christ himself.

Have we made progress since the days of Martin Luther King in the areas of civil rights, racism, and overall honoring other people created in the image of God?  Yes, I think we have made progress as a nation.  That should be clear to us as the first black president of the United States is inaugurated the day after Martin Luther King Day, this Tuesday.  We as a nation have come a long way from the lynchings, the segregation, and the lack of respect of other people that my grandparents’ generation lived with.  But we have not fully arrived at where we need to be.  Not as a nation, and not as Christians.

This past fall we as a country were in the middle of an exciting presidential race.  John McCain and Barack Obama were running against one another in the closest race we had seen…in four years, I suppose.  People were divided on who was the better choice.  Christians were divided on who was the better choice. 

And of course there was no shortage of mudslinging going on.  Some of it was even amusing.  But some of it really broke my heart, especially the defamatory remarks made by “Christians”. 

One woman told Sonya and me, “We Christians need to vote for John McCain because we can’t let that black guy get elected.”

How do you reply to that?  No reason was given.  I could have respected her opinion if she had said, “We need to vote for McCain because he is pro-life” or “he will create more jobs” or insert what ever other political reason you want.  But this woman, first of all she dehumanizes Obama by not even bothering to call him by his name and simply referring to him as “that black guy”.  Second of all, she doesn’t give any reason why “we Christians” need to vote for McCain and I’m left to believe that she didn’t want Obama to be president simply because he is black.  Even worse, I’m left to believe that she thinks that as Christians we should not vote for a black man because he is black.  I’ve read the Bible, I’ve studied Systematic Theology, I must have glossed over that section.  Yes, we have come a long way since the days of Martin Luther King, but we still have a long way to go.

Do we believe Paul when he says that there is no longer slave or free person, Jew or Greek, male or female but instead we are all one in Christ?  If we believe this, then we must act like it.  Sure there are still differences between people.  You and I are not literally one and the same.  But when we allow ourselves to be divided by ethnicity, gender, and social status, we are not honoring the image of God reflected in others.  Sure, people reflect the image of God in varying quantities, but as God’s most prized creation, we all reflect the image of God.  And when we fail to recognize that in all people, we become less of an image bearer ourselves.  We are cracked eikons becoming more cracked.

But I come back to this sculpture, broken by my sister-in-law, but repaired by the grace of super glue.  And it reminds me that Martin Luther King was not the only person who had a dream.  God has a dream as well.  God has a dream that one day his children would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.  God has a dream that one day sons of former slaves and sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of fellowship.  God has a dream that one day all of humanity will recognize their sinfulness, will recognize their status as cracked eikons, shattered images of God, and return to the one who can make them whole again.  For in Christ there is no such thing as a shattered humanity.  There is no such thing as a Jew or a Greek.  There is no such thing as a slave or free person.  There is no such thing as a man or a woman.  But instead God’s dream is that we all be one; one gathered body of believers perfectly reflecting the image of God.

Be the Change

Kevin Gasser

Staunton Mennonite Church

11/9/08

 

Amos 5:18-27

The Day of the LORD

18 Woe to you who long for the day of the LORD!  Why do you long for the day of the LORD?  That day will be darkness, not light. 19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him. 20 Will not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light—pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?

 

 21 “I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies.

 22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them.

 Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them.

 23 Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.

 24 But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

 

 25 “Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the desert, O house of Israel?

 26 You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god—which you made for yourselves.

 27 Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the LORD, whose name is God Almighty.

 

            One of the simple joys in life is a cold glass of water…the colder the better.  I want my water so cold that it is almost frozen.  32 degrees Fahrenheit.  And the best way to achieve this temperature is by simply dropping a few ice cubes in a glass of tap water.  Not exactly rocket science.

            I’ve always enjoyed a luxury in the homes I have lived in…an ice cube maker.  You open the freezer and automatically there are a large number of ice cubes just waiting to chill your drink.  Or if you’re truly blessed, you can get ice through the door.

            But our refrigerator in our current house has been without a working ice cube maker since well before we moved in.  So knowing absolutely nothing about ice cube makers, I embarked this past week to restore our ice cube maker to its original form.

            I knew that there was a leak in the water line down in the basement, so I began by repairing that line.  I ran to the local hardware store and got the brass fittings that I needed and in a few minutes I was hooking up a repaired water line.

            Not more than a few minutes had passed before I began to notice something: water dripping through the floor.  I am not the smartest guy in the world, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that I did not have one leak in the water line, I had multiple leaks.  And it wasn’t justice that was rolling down like a river through the floor boards, it was just plain old H2O. 

            I do my share of household chores, but rarely without being asked.  So as I went back to the hardware store and worked with the same salesman, I asked him what he thought my wife would think when she got home from work and saw that I had mopped the kitchen floor.  I wondered if I would needed to tell her the only reason I pushed around that mop was because I needed to dry up a couple gallons of water??  But in the end, I was able to restore my ice cube maker to its original working condition.  We have ice once again in our home. 

            Our scripture for this morning is about restoring something as well.  Our scripture is about restoring the world to the way God intended it to be.  And I hope we can see from Amos that we as Christians are not called to simply escape from this world, nor are we called to forget all of the problems of this world while we keep to ourselves.  No, as Christians, we are called to change the world, to restore it to the way God intended it to be.  So let’s jump into our scripture.

            It is never good when a section of scripture begins by saying “Woe to you”.  That’s never a good sign.  Good things aren’t about to happen.  Woe to you who desire to see the day of the Lord.  It seems to me that the prophet Amos has an issue with those who want to see God’s kingdom fully realized here on earth.  Amos says that the day of the Lord will be darkness, not light.  It will be like you are trying to escape a lion only to meet up with a bear.  And the bear is the least of your worries because in the safety of your own home there is a snake hiding out, ready to bite you.  In other words, you can’t get away.

            As followers of Jesus Christ we often talk about, think about, focus on the Day of the Lord, the day when Christ will come back and set the world back to the way it should be.  We look forward to the creation of the new heaven and the new earth, when these things come together and Christ will rule forever and we will spend eternity giving him praise.  We look forward to eternity in heaven.  And there is nothing wrong with thinking about heaven.

            The problem arises when we become so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good, when all we focus on is some pie in the sky and neglect the world in which we have been placed.  Yes, the second coming of Jesus will be a great day for those who know him as Lord, but the Bible tells us that that day won’t be great for all people.  Even people that think they are in good with God will find themselves running from the lion only to meet a bear or a snake.  If we don’t believe in a universal salvation where everyone will be saved, then the second coming of the Lord shouldn’t be something that we want to come soon.  Because we all have a lot of work to do before that day comes.

            In verses 21-22 we have God speaking through Amos, saying, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.  Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon.”  God goes on to tell the Israelites that even their music and their praises directed toward Him are worthless.  God is tired of these things.

            But wait a second.  Isn’t it God that has required these things of the Israelites?  Isn’t it God that commanded that they hold religious festivals, make offerings, and praise Him?  The problem is that these things are worthless to God if you are not following him daily in life.

            Do you really think God needs us to keep certain festivals?  Does God need us to make offerings to Him?  Does God need us to sing Him a song every now and then?  No, God doesn’t need these things, but he wants them.  He wants them only if we want to give them to him.  We can’t be forced to worship God, and if we do worship God only because we feel obligated, that worship is worthless to God.  And we are not to use these religious festivals and times of worship as a way to escape the problems of this world, to ignore the work we have been called to do.

            So we aren’t supposed to sit around and wait for the Day of the Lord.  We have work to do as followers of Jesus Christ.  And if we are just going through the motions our worship is pretty much worthless to God.  So what are we to do?  We are to join in God’s revolution.

            The word revolution can be taken many different ways.  Revolution can mean to stand up to the oppressive powers so that people can have a certain amount of freedom, like in the Revolutionary War.  Revolution can mean a drastic change in the way things are in a society, in the way we work, in the way we live, and in the way we see one another.  This is the way we use the word revolution when we speak of the Industrial Revolution.  But the way I want us to use the word revolution today is in its most simple understanding (in my mind).  A revolution is to go around.

            We say that the earth revolves around the sun one time every 365.25 days and around its own axis every 24 hours.  We talk about engines running at a certain number of revolutions per minute with the crank starting at one place and returning to the same place a number of times in a minute.  To revolve means to go from one place and come right back where it began.

I believe that we as Christians are called to a revolution.  We are called to work to bring things back to the way they were.  Now I am not saying that we need to try to return to some high point in church history when everyone went to church, when stores were closed on Sundays and we could pray in schools.  I am not suggesting that we go back to the good old days of 50 years ago.  Our revolution is to return the world to a pre-fall state.

            Verse 24 speaks of this revolution, this returning of things to the status that God had originally intended for society.  “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”  Don’t just sit around and hope for the second coming of Jesus Christ, and don’t waste your time worshiping God if you are not willing to serve Him.  Instead, we are to bring about this revolution, this return to God and godliness.  We are to work for what God wants; we are to work for what is right.  And if you get nothing else from my message today, I hope you remember this: We as Christians are not called to escape the world, we are called to transform the world for Christ.

            I know that this is easier said than done.  Even the apostle Paul struggled with this.  He writes in Philippians 1:21-24, “21For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 22If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! 23I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; 24but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.”  Yes, we all know life will be better on the other side, but it is more necessary for us to remain in the body for now.  We have work to do.

            The Beatles sang, “You say you want a revolution…we all want to change the world.”  There have been a lot of people that have wanted to transform the world, and for good reason…there is a lot wrong in the world.    But the change we want to see in the world must always be in the name of Christ and our methods for changing the world must be Christian. 

In 1951 at 23 years of age, a young medical student and a friend decided to take a motorcycle trip across South America.  These two young men were witnesses to all sorts of injustices against humanity: poverty, isolation, and discrimination.  And these men were changed by their experiences and wanted to make things right.  They wanted to bring about a revolution; they wanted to change the world.

            The young medical student, Ernesto “Che” Guevara said to his traveling buddy, “We cannot have a revolution without guns.”  And while I respect Che’s desire to end poverty and to bring justice to the people, I cannot justify his guerilla warfare tactics.  The ends do not justify the means.  Che wanted to change the world, but he did so with little regard for Christ.

            But I believe that Che was wrong.  You can have a revolution without guns.  And that revolution can be successful.

            Great Britain began to colonize India around the year 1600, claiming the land in the name of the Queen.  The problem with that is that the land was already a possession of the Indians.  Over the next three hundred years or so, the Indians were treated as second-class citizens, often being used as slaves, not being given the opportunity to make decisions for their own country.  But a man came along and he became the leader of a revolution, an attempt to set things back the way they had been.  This man was Gandhi. 

            Gandhi didn’t believe that the way to bring justice to the people of India was through warfare and killing.  Instead he taught that “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”  If you want to see a change, you must live it out.  And in 1947, Great Britain gave India back her freedom.  A revolution had taken place without guns.

            Now you are probably thinking, Kevin, that’s great that Gandhi could lead a revolution like that in a non-violent way.  But what have Christians done to change the world for God?  Plenty.

            Martin Luther King Jr. through non-violent acts brought about a revolution for African-Americans in the 1950’s and 60’s.  He was a Baptist minister, a Christian.  King lived with injustice every day, but worked through the methods of Christ to bring justice, love, and equality.  And I would say had a strong role in paving the way for Barack Obama to be elected as our next president.

            And what about the revolution in South America?  In 1948 a system known as Apartheid was put in place as a system of government which enforced segregation by race.  People were categorized by the color of their skin and only given certain rights while having other rights taken away according to their ethnicity.  There were efforts to group people by the color of their skin in certain regions of the country so that people did not have to interact with other races on a daily basis.  And they didn’t dare cross these territorial boundaries.

            I have a friend that grew up as a black person in South Africa during the late years of Apartheid.  He looks back on his life in South Africa and says, “It was just a part of life.  I knew I couldn’t go certain places because of the color of my skin.  And we knew we had to run from building to building while trying to avoid the tanks.”

            But thanks in part to Christians like Desmond Tutu, former Archbishop of Capetown, Apartheid was brought to an end.  Tutu has been called a voice for the voiceless and continues to work with racial reconciliation in South Africa as well as working to increase the awareness of HIV and AIDS prevention.

            I have only touched on the lives of a few people that have been able to lead revolutions in the name of Christ.  We could name others: Mother Theresa and her work with the poor in Calcutta, William Wilberforce in his efforts to end slave trade.  Even local heroes like Elaine Rose with the Jericho and Damascus Road Project working with ex-convicts and Temple Myers as a leader in the SACRA organization working with the poor in the Staunton area.  Hundreds, even thousands of people are working locally with groups like Habitat for Humanity, the Blue Ridge Food Bank, the Valley Mission, Salvation Army to bring a revolution, to bring the world back to the way God intended it to be.  And they are doing it all in the name of Christ.        

            Well there is one more revolutionary we need to mention.  Jesus was quite the revolutionary.  Not in the militant sense like the American Revolution or Che’s work in South/Central America.  But Jesus was a revolutionary in that he sought to change the world, not escape it.  And he didn’t just teach revolution, he lived it.  Jesus didn’t just teach that we are to turn the other cheek, he lived it out, even to the point where he was crucified on the cross.  Jesus didn’t just teach that we are to love our enemies, he had compassion on and healed Samaritans, Roman Soldiers, Phoenicians, and Jews.  Jesus started a revolution almost 2,000 years ago that is still going on today, a revolution to return things to the way God intended them to be, a revolution that will be completed when he returns to rule the new heaven and the new earth.  If anyone needs proof that a revolution can come without guns, just wait until the Day of the Lord.  Better yet, if anyone needs proof that a revolution can come without guns, we need to show them with our lives.

            So what is our revolution?  As I look at the Scripture for today I can see our 21^st Century society reflected in the people of Israel and vice versa.  People have forgotten the Lord and people have forgotten each other.  Our society is one that is “All about me.”  How can I get more money, more pleasure, more stuff.  Even if it is at the expense of someone else.  Many people are gathered in churches this morning going through the motions of worship, thinking about Christmas, or the perverted form of consumerism that we call Christmas which has less to do with Christ and more to do with us.  We hear people saying “Maranatha” inviting the Lord to come back.  But we are not ready for that yet.  I know I am not ready for Jesus to come back.  I need to get my stuff together first and I need to make sure to help other people get their stuff together as well. 

            The revolution that I would like to see is that people around the world would come to know Jesus Christ and his righteousness and follow him.  The revolution that I would like to see is for justice to roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.  The revolution that I would like to see if for God’s kingdom to come, for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.  And the first step toward that revolution is to be the change that we want to see in the world.

            If we want to see poverty come to an end, we must work for poverty to come to an end.  If we want to see peace prevail, we must live peacefully with everyone.  If we want to see more people following Christ, we need to be Christ unto all people.  And we need to remember that we can only do it with God’s help.  We are called to live out a revolution, we are called to be a revolution.