Series: Perfect Imperfection Part III: Made in the Image of God C. Gray Norsworthy Johns Creek Presbyterian Church August 9, 2015

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1 Series: Perfect Imperfection Part III: Made in the Image of God C. Gray Norsworthy Johns Creek Presbyterian Church August 9, 2015 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. So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. - Genesis 1:26-27, NRSV He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers all things have been created through him and for him.- Colossians 1: NRSV This week I tweeted a link to an article called The Selfie s Deeper Tale. (By S.D. Kelly, posted July 15, 2015, Christianity Today) In case you do not know, a selfie is a picture taken with a smartphone of one s self and posted online for others to see. This is how the writer talked about her experience with selfies: Not too long ago I took my first selfie. I figured out how to take a front-facing photo, maximize my arm extension, and include my friend and the concert-stage backdrop in the frame. I uploaded the photo and self-consciously attached a series of hashtags, most of which pointed out that I never take selfies because, as everyone knows, selfies are terrible. That people snap photos of themselves for the rest of the world to see reeks of entitlement, self-obsession, and boredom. Right now on the Internet, billions of lonely little images are floating in the cloud, a steady stream of self-aggrandizement. No matter the amazing backdrop in each say, the Eiffel Tower or the Grand Canyon what s most amazing is the fixed point in every photo: me. Wherever you go, there I am, an image on your screen, waiting for your likes and comments. I ll take anything, as long as you respond. And that may provide a clue into selfies enduring popularity. She goes on to talk about the fact that the selfie has been around for a long time. Just think about the self-portraits of artists such as Rembrandt and Van Gogh, and even some of the oldest cave paintings of the painters themselves. But, the writer also suggests that selfies expresses a basic human need for us to be known for who we are. That takes us to one of the most basic questions of life: Who are we? Who am I? Who are you? Psychologist Erik Erikson said that these are some of the most basic questions we all ask from time to time usually beginning in adolescence. These are questions about identity that we may resolve to some degree as young adults, but then they may come back around. Sometimes they return during a mid-life crisis, or during times of loss such as losing a spouse, or when our 1

2 children leave home - either on the bus for the very first time, or when they finally move out. Or, what if I lose my job who am I without my work? Finally with these questions, where do we look for answers? Do we look for something out there to give those answers, such as our work, the world, the internet? Or, do we simply look inside and go deeper? Maybe it is a combination of both. And, who does God say that I am? How does God view me? In our changing world, is there anything about me that stays constant? Those are some of the questions we want to touch on today. We are in the third week of our series of messages in which we are talking about our struggles with perfectionism -- which a lot of us have to some degree. The first week we talked about the idea of being perfect. When Jesus talks about it, this is not about reaching some ideal, static state in this life so that we can be perfect enough to be loved by God and others. We said that no one is perfect except Jesus. And that it is all about a process, not perfection. That process is a life-long journey in which we learn to love God, others, and even ourselves. Last week we talked about our tendency to compare ourselves to others -- especially those who appear to be perfect (or at least nearly perfect) as a way to try to feel good enough about ourselves. We also said that comparisons did not work and that God loves us unconditionally no matter what. Today is really the first part of two messages that try to answer the question, who are we, by looking at who God says that we are. Let me say that we need both this message and the one next week to get a balanced view of who God says that we are. If you just focus on one part of the message, your understanding will be incomplete, so try to be here, or at least listen to both online, if you can. The first part of the answer to who are we from God s perspective is this: we are made in the image of God. And the second part of the answer is this: we are sinners saved by grace. From a Christian viewpoint, both of those are true and we need to hold to both them in a complementary tension in order to have a balanced understanding of who we are. Now, if we were to go online and ask the question, who am I? -- We will find statements such as this: You are perfect just the way you are. Or, I am complete. I am whole. I am full. I am perfect just the way I am. Now I understand the benefit in having life affirmations that remind us of positive things about who we are. I have created some of my own from time to time. Saturday Night Live s Stuart Smalley, played by Al Franken, was in a whole series of comedy skits filled with over-the-top self-affirmations reflecting his need to build up his fragile selfesteem. But if we get to the point of saying that we are perfect, (depending on how we define perfect ) my sense is that deep down inside we all know we are not really perfect. Those who live or work with us certainly know that, and sometimes they tell us. But, even when we look around at the best, famous individuals we admire -- their biographers remind us how they are not perfect. So, what does it mean to be created in the image of God? Some outside of our Christian tradition might say that it means we are all God or that God is in everything, therefore we are 2

3 all divine. This is not a new thought, though there are many folks today selling lots of books saying something like this. However, this perspective has been around for a very long time. The church has called it things like pantheism the idea that God is in everything, so everything and everyone is God. A few years ago I served a church in which a Pentecostal Indian Congregation was nesting in our church buildings. Alex Thomas was their pastor. Being from India, he taught me the traditional Indian greeting of Namaste. It means something like, The divine in me honors or bows to the divine in you. Now Alex was a Christian pastor, so I wondered what he meant by that greeting. We talked about it and I think for Alex this was not only a cultural tradition, but a way in which he recognized that we are all made in the image of God -- rather than we are all God which is something he would never say. However, when it comes to what it means to be made in the image of God, we have some other answers. Over the years, some have suggested that it means we are rational beings and can use our minds to make decisions. Or, maybe it means that we are spiritual beings with a soul. Some have said it means that we have the capacity to make moral decisions based on what is right or wrong. Still others believe that it has to do with power, as in the power to act and "have dominion over the earth." All of these could be ways we think about what it means to be made in the image of God. But, I think there are better answers. So, where do we find out how God views us? Well, we start at the very beginning of the Bible with the creation story of Adam and Eve found in Genesis. As we read earlier, it says that when God got around to making Adam and Eve, God said, Let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness... So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis, 1:26a, 27, NRSV) Genesis teaches us something about being created male and female as reflecting the image of God. Now as Christians, we don t believe this has to do with God s gender as if God could be reduced to simply being all male or all female. We believe that God goes beyond or transcends gender. And yet Genesis tells us that both male and female reflect the image of God not just one or the other. Together they reflect the image of God. I think this has to do with the idea that to fully reflect God s image in the world, we need others who are different from us to help us reflect the image of God. It is about relationships. Theologian Shirley Guthrie has really helped me out with all of this when he says that if we want to look for the best understanding of the image of God, we do not focus mainly on Adam and Eve in Genesis because they are not perfect. They quickly choose to do things that separated them from God s love, while their sin and brokenness affect creation and everything that comes after them. Guthrie says that if we want to look at the best example of the image of God, we look to Jesus. That is why we read the passage earlier from one of Paul s letters that talks about Jesus in this way: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers all things have been created through him and for him. (Colossians 1:15-16, NRSV) Jesus is our best image of what God is like. 3

4 So, based on what the Bible says, Guthrie suggests that to be made in the image of God means a number of things: First, that we are meant to be fully ourselves in relationship with others who are different from us. I would add that I don t believe we can become complete completely alone. We need each other. Second, we are not self-made, but we are dependent on God our Creator. In the world of the selfie, it is good to remind ourselves that we are not self-made, but God-made. Third, we are created to be partners with God in this world. Guthrie quickly adds that we are not equal partners but we are junior partners like in a business. We are given great freedom and responsibility to create, order, and be good stewards of our world and the people in it but God alone is the senior partner. It all boils down to relationships in which we love God, others, and even ourselves, as God has loved us. The Bible tells us to love God with heart, mind, and soul every part of us. (Matthew 22:37-39) Now loving God, and even others, makes sense to us even though it can be really hard to do. But when it comes to loving ourselves, what does that mean? Isn t that being selfish? Isn t that the unhealthy side of our selfie culture? Isn t that what we mean by narcissism? Scott Peck has helped me understand this when he writes about self-image, self-esteem, and selflove. To illustrate this, he tells a story about what he said to a young man after Peck had driven a long way to meet with him: Your biggest problem is that you don t love yourself, that you don t value yourself. He continues: That same night I had to drive from Connecticut to New York in the midst of a terrible rainstorm. Sheets of rain were sweeping across the highway and the visibility was so poor that I couldn't even see the side of the road or the yellow line. I had to keep my attention absolutely glued on the road, even though I was very tired. If I d lost my concentration for even a second, I would have gone off the road. And the only way I was able to make that ninety-mile trip in the terrible storm was to keep saying to myself, over and over again, This little Volkswagen is carrying extremely valuable cargo. It is extremely important that this valuable cargo get to New York safely. And so it did. Self-love is not unhealthy narcissism that says, I am the center of everything. A healthy selfimage does not come simply from telling ourselves how great or perfect we are. It comes from first being grounded in the love of God who created you and me. That simple action says that we are of value and worth the love of God. Therefore, we need to take care of this valuable cargo God has put each one of us in charge of. And when we love ourselves in a healthy way, we can learn to love others. Conversely, when we do not love ourselves in a healthy way, it makes it very difficult to love others. This past June, we lost one of the outstanding saints of our time -- a woman named Elisabeth Elliot. You may or may not have heard of her. She first entered the news back in 1956 when her husband Jim and four other missionaries were killed by some Indians in Ecuador. The five missionaries were all former students at Wheaton College who felt called by God to bring the 4

5 good news of the gospel to one of the fiercest tribes in the world a tribe that had no contact with anyone outside of their tribe. After months of preparation, the five men went down and made friendly contact with three tribal members near the village. But just two days later, a group of warriors from the tribe burst out of the jungle, spearing and hacking the missionaries to death. Now the missionaries were armed, but when they were attacked, they only fired warning shots into the air. They had discussed this possibility beforehand and that if they should be attacked, they would not fire at their attackers because they believed these Indians needed to hear about the love of God -- even if it cost the missionaries their lives. The story might have just ended in tragedy, but less than two years later Elisabeth Elliot and another woman whose brother had been killed, left their homes to go back to Ecuador and live with these Indians who had killed their loved ones. Elisabeth even brought her toddler daughter Valerie along. She said that her husband's love for these people who killed him made her love for them even more intense. Later she would write about these Indians saying this: Human beings are made in the image of God... We have a common source, common needs, common hopes, a common end. Today that tribe numbers about 2,000. That number is up from the 250 when they first made contact and the primary way of settling disputes was by spearing one another to death. About a third of them have become Christians over that time. During her lifetime, Elliot has published more than 30 books. You can see this story in the movie The Tip of the Spear, which we watched at our Men s Retreat last year. These words exemplify her approach to life: There is nothing worth living for, unless it is worth dying for. (From The Wall Street Journal, The Intrepid Missionary Elisabeth Elliot by David Howard,) There is nothing worth living for unless it is worth dying for. God sent Jesus to show us that we were worth dying for. Jesus gave his life for you and for me for the whole world and everyone in it. So in return, God asks us to live for Jesus. Do that and we live out what it means for us to be made in the image of God. In strong name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 5