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Scripture
NRS Genesis 1:26 Then 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." 27 So God created
humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he
created them. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be
fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over
the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing
that moves upon the earth." 29 God said, "See, I have
given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and
every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30
And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to
everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I
have given every green plant for food." And it was so. 31 God
saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was
evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
You may have
heard the story ....about a little girl in Sunday school ....who was drawing a
picture.... using all of her crayons. Her teacher asked her ... what she
was drawing. "I'm drawing a picture of God," the little girl
responded. "But nobody knows what God looks like," her teacher
said. To which the little girl replied, "They will when I'm finished."
(Pause)
John Wesley
began his preaching career in an effort to bring the Word of God to the people.
The Image of God is one of his first sermons given at St. Mary’s, the church in
Oxford on November 15, 1730. He begins this sermon with these words chosen in
order but not totally inclusive. “But to
this it has constantly been opposed: if man was made in the image of God,
whence flow those numberless imperfections that stain and dishonor his nature?
Why is his body exposed to sickness and pain, and at last to a total
dissolution? Why is his soul still more disgraced and deformed by ignorance and
error, by unruly passions, and what is worse than all, as it contains them all,
by vice?...I am ashamed to say there are those of our age and nation who
greedily close with this old objection, and eagerly maintain that they were not
made in the image of the living God, but of the beasts that perish; who
heartily contend that is was not divine but the brutal likeness in which they
were created…The substance of his account in this: God created man upright; in
the image of God he created him; but man found out to himself many inventions.
Abusing the liberty wherewith he was endowed, he rebelled against his Creator,
and willfully changed the image of the incorruptible God into sin, misery, and
corruption. Yet his merciful, though rejected, Creator would not forsake even
the depraved work of his own hands, but provided for him, and offered to him a
means of being ‘renewed after the image of him that created him’.”[i]
John Wesley
would want us to know that the scripture clearly tells us that we are created
in the image of God. From the beginning we did not evolve from Apes, from goo
to man, as some would like to report, but we were created in the very image of
God. No as to that image and what it means there is has been great discussion
and argument over the years. So today I want to share the essence of Wesley’s
understanding and my own as we explore the image of God.
There can be
no question greater for the people of humanity as to how and why we were
created and why we are here. We were created by God to be the essence of God’s
eternal love so that the world would understand God’s essential nature. God
created us to be in relationship with God and with each other, not in the
current reality of that relationship but in a harmonious relationship. As
evidence of this, we know that deep within our very natures in a desire to be
in relationship. We are not born, none of us, with a desire to live alone. That
may come later after years of interaction burn those created bonds and we
desire to live alone on desert islands for the remainder of our lives. But we
are not created that way. We are endued with the power to distinguish right
from wrong, an inherent sense of being good versus being evil. We are given a
will equally perfect that is both blessing and curse. I often say that we are
born with that inherent nature to want to be God while understanding that we
are not God. So God formed us in the image of God, the image of love that we
might love God and love one another in perfection and harmony. God gave us the
ability to choose, the inalienable right to make decisions as small as what
will I drink today and as monumental as what will I believe.
Wesley
suggests that in order to have the liberty of free will we must also be set
about for the trial of that free will. He believed that the essence of this
story is the trial that there is something forbidden and the free will to choose
obedience or disobedience in that trial. So Adam comes into this place of
choice and chooses unwisely. Like a parent who established rules and
consequences of infraction of those rules, the discipline comes from our
choosing the wrong course of action. It is that action of Adam that has
condemned us all. Wesley believed that not only did it bring sin into the world
but that the eating of the fruit of the tree brought illness and disease into
the body. It is an interesting concept and thought that Wesley brings in his
sermon, that the consequence of eating of the Tree was death, and death has
come through the consequence of consuming the fruit of the very tree we are
told to leave alone. The eating of the fruit has had the consequence of
producing the corrupted physical and spiritual nature of humanity throughout
the ages.
I think it is
also interesting to realize that Wesley was arguing against the Darwinist
viewpoint that was gaining favor in his day, that we are a part of the
evolutionary chain that began with creation in a moment, evolved through cells
into substance and substance into walking human beings. Wesley on the other
hand argues that we have the story of creation as an upright physical human
being, similar to other species on the planet but not of the same substance;
rather we are created in the image of God as God intended. Some things don’t
change over the course of three hundred years and this argument continues.
From the
liberty of choice we became then the slave to vice. Addiction in its many forms
claims all of us. We may find ourselves addicted to substances that are not
good for the body like drugs or consumption of sugar, my own addiction. Or we
may find that we are addicted to materialism in its worst example, spending
beyond our means. But none the less, we find ourselves enslaved to those human
addictions that hold us prisoner to the vices of our lives. Instead of love and
perfection we now are slaves to selfishness, greed, envy, lust and the list
goes on and on.
It is here that
Wesley takes a turn and reminds us that we can recover from being in the
corrupted image of God and work towards becoming part of the incorruptible
image of God. Paul reminds us that in Adam we all died to sin and in Christ
Jesus we all live. In that very image of creation is the spark that can turn us
back toward the Garden of Eden, back toward the reason we were first created
and back toward perfection and paradise. We have been given a second chance by
the very Creator that brought us into this world. That through the gift of
Jesus we have been claimed again by the Creator to be the image of God that was
intended from the beginning of creation itself. That through the gift of Jesus
we can become the people of God. We do that Wesley admonishes by being humble.
When we reflect on who we are and what we have allowed ourselves to become
through the essence of free will, then we can begin to work towards a different
reality of life. I often share that true discipleship comes first from
self-reflection and knowing who we are. It is then that we can begin to replace
ego with humility. Humility towards our fellow human beings that we interact
with every day where we replace a sense of superiority and judgement with
understanding and compassion. Humility in understanding that we are truly not
in control, God is, and we need to be obedient to God. We replace that sense of
self with a sense for others. Wesley would go from Oxford outward into a world
where he believed that mission, compassion, mercy and grace are the
cornerstones of this relationship that we are created for.
We have been
created in the image of God, an image of relationship and an image of love.
God’s love is unwavering and never fails us. Even when Adam faced the
consequences of disobedience which is death, God provided a path back to the
Garden through Jesus.
When I was
younger I had a number of people that I idolized. Among them were people some
of you have heard of and some will not know. Folks like Chuck Yeager who broke
the sound barrier, John Wayne, and President Kennedy. I find myself even today
using their image as an image to work towards. Now we know that in every human
idol, except Jesus, there is the corruptible nature. But truth is that we all
have in our minds an image of who we want to be. The choice is yours. Is that
image in your mind the image of creation, who God intended us to be, or who the
world wants us to conform to be? The choice is yours. Which will you choose?
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