How Like a God

Scripture: The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Lectionary 23), A.D. 2014 A

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

“So God created mankind in His own image. In the image of God He created them; male and female, He created them.” So states the first account of Creation in Genesis. Made in the image of God—now what do you suppose that means?

Some say that the image of God is substantive. That is, they believe that human beings share certain key traits with God on a spiritual level. We have free will, for example, and an ability to reason that separates us from most if not all animals. We have imagination and fantasy, which are the abilities to understand reality in the abstract and to invent new things that don’t exist. We can suss out math and science. We can distinguish between the way that things are and the way that things ought to be, which is the basis for morality, for right and wrong. All of these things make us unique in the physical world and distinguish us from beasts.

Humankind, after all, was created by God to be His partners, His “sub-creators,” tasked with stewarding Creation. We were given dominion over the earth not to tyrannize it but to care for it, to nurture and cultivate all life. Made from earth and enlivened with God’s own Spirit, we are a bridge between the material and the ethereal, a hybrid of angel and ape. And then there’s that pesky conviction that we each possess an immortal soul. All of which makes us less like ground and more like God. Perhaps this is what it means to possess His image.

Others say that it’s not about being like God but about being claimed by God. We are made in His image in the same way that coins are minted in the image of presidents or kings. We are claimed as His own, as His special possession. We carry His signet ring, as it were, His authority delegated to us as His agents. It’s more about function than form. The King of Kings has fashioned us all for a purpose; we are not fully alive unless we are living out the King’s will in proper relationship to Him. Only then do we carry or bear the Image of God.

A third way of looking at it is not to claim not that we are molded in God’s image or that we carry God’s image, but that we reflect God’s image. As mentioned above, we have reason and free will, and so we have the freedom to choose proper relationship with God our Father. Only then, within that relationship, do we reflect the image and glory of God. Variations on this theme are quite popular in Christian writing. C.S. Lewis spoke of our lives as little mirrors, and the more thoroughly we scrub them of sin, the more accurately we align them with true light, the more beauty we reflect for others. Mary, the Mother of God, is often spoken of like the moon—because, like the moon, she shines not with a light of her own but with the reflected light of her Son. The Image of God here is found in our loving the God Who already loves us.

No matter how you look at it, the Image of God is about the nature and purpose of humanity: we are built by God’s grace, in God’s own image, to reflect God’s love and glory. We are the chosen crowns of Creation. And we’ve screwed all that up pretty royally.

I mean, that’s the flipside of being made in God’s Image, right? On the one hand it can really puff us up, thinking aren’t we’re something special. On the other hand, it reminds us of just how short we’ve fallen of our intended glory. Again in the words of C.S. Lewis, “You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve ... That is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth.” We were born to reign. But in God’s world, the only way to reign is to serve. And we just would not serve, would we? Non serviam, as the devil likes to say.

For this reason, Luther believed that humankind had lost the Image of God, and that only fragments now remain. Made in the Image of God, yes; still in the Image of God, no. Aquinas wrote that we had been made from mud but elevated to divine perfection in the Garden of Eden, because there we shared union with God. In that union in the garden we knew not sickness nor age nor death. Our bodies were physically perfect, like the Greek gods of myth. We were stronger, faster, more agile than any could hope to be in this fallen age. We possessed subtlety, which in medieval understanding was the ability to pass through solid objects, and agility, which included both flight and a sort of teleportation—even the ability to be in multiple places at once. Or so it was believed.

These abilities, you may recognize, are the same ones exhibited by Jesus after His Resurrection, and attributed to the holiest of saints, such as St. Nicholas or Padre Pio. Incidentally, these are also things the undead can do, because vampires were held to be the devil’s parody of humankind: the anti-saint, if you will. Perhaps that was the Image of God, those outlandish stories of a superpowered mankind perfected by the Holy Spirit. Maybe the Image of God was a time when we lived like gods, a time now only vaguely remembered in ancient myths and modern comic books.

Or maybe, just maybe, there’s more to it than that.

In the Old Testament, images of God are forbidden. It’s right there in the Ten Commandments: No Graven Images, No False Idols. Such was the sin of the Israelites time and again as they tried to give God a form and a face. They fashioned golden calves, like the ones they knew back in Egypt, and said, “Here are our gods!” They imagined up a wife for God, a concubine whose throws of passion caused rain to fall and fertilize the earth. Her temples were a lot of fun. Time and again they carved wood and cast bronze, claiming, “This is what God is like! That is what God is like! God is strong like the bull! God is virile like a man! God is majestic like the hawk!” Strength and sex and wealth—that’s what we all want, right? And so that’s how we imagined our God, trying to cast Him in our image.

But time and again God would thunder, “No! These are your desires, not My own! You have no idea what I AM like, and so I forbid you to keep conjuring these false images that lead My people astray into folly and sin!” If you can’t make a true image, don’t make any. Indeed, if you scour the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures, you will find only one proper image, one authorized image, given for God: the image in which mankind is made. Forget the idols. Forget the golden calves. Forget the little wooden tiki gods. That’s not even close to the true image of the Almighty. If you want to see what God looks like, look to humanity—not simply to individuals but to the community.

See how, in order to flourish, human societies must put the needs of others before our own selfish desires. See how we must seek out justice for the oppressed, food for the hungry, protection for the weak, so that we may live in peace. See how we must serve in order to rule, how we must die a little each day in order to fully come alive. Society, healthy society, is about sacrifices and self-giving and the inherent dignity and worth of every individual. It is about love—personal love, abstract love, communal love, spiritual love. That’s the Image of God, male and female. That’s what God is like. He is unitive, generational, many and yet One. God is love. You want to have an image for God? Fine. Go love your neighbor. That’s where you’ll find God.

This becomes all the clearer in the New Testament, when God at last takes on a form of His own: He comes down to us in the flesh as Jesus Christ. First God made Man in His own Image; now God remakes Himself in ours. Beyond this, God takes His Flesh and Blood and Spirit and pours them out in us through the miracles of Baptism and the Eucharist. He makes us all one in the Body of Christ, and promises that this union is so strong, so unbreakable, that He will be with us always, even unto the end of the age. Jesus Christ is the visible Image of the invisible God. And this image cannot ever be lost. We cannot fall from this grace, because it is always open to us, Eden unbarred. In the Body of Christ, God has an image, has a face, has hands we can touch and a voice we can hear. And we, brothers and sisters—we are that Body of Christ now.

On this Rally Sunday we gather together to rededicate ourselves and our families to the mission of Jesus Christ still at work in this world. To know that God is with us, here in this assembly of sick and broken sinners, is an astonishing comfort. It’s also a bit terrifying. For now we are called to live together, to live in community, not just because that’s how we were built but because that’s how God chooses to dwell in this world. With all of our mistakes, our wounds, our shortcomings, we are the Image of God for all peoples. We are the revelation of Who God is.

The purpose of God’s Law is to forge a community of love, because God is present in the life of this community. The Law teaches us that we must be holy—and that we cannot be holy. Wherever shall we turn? Fret not, dear Christians, for Christ is with us, here and now. Look to His image; reflect His image; be remade in His image. This is His work, not ours. And He surely shall not fail.

Thanks be to God, Who looks like a beggar, not a bull. In Jesus’ Name.  AMEN.