Bridgewater,
Massachusetts, September 23,
2001
Genesis
1:20-31 In God's image and
likeness
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 him, male and female he
created them. And 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."
And
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. And to every beast of the
earth, and to every bird of the
air, and to everything that has
the breath of life, I have given
every green plant for food."
And it was so.
And
God saw everything that he had
made, and indeed, it was very
good. And there was evening, and
there was morning, the sixth day.
Matthew 5:1-12 The Blessings
When
Jesus saw the crowds, he went up
to the mountain, and after he sat
down, his disciples came to him.
Then he began to speak, and taught
them, saying:
Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed
are those who mourn, for they will
be comforted.
Blessed
are the meek, for they will
inherit the earth.
Blessed
are those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness, for they will
be filled.
Blessed
are the merciful, for they will
receive mercy.
Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they
will see God.
Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they will
be called children of God.
Blessed
are those who are persecuted for
righteousness' sake, for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed
are you when people revile you and
persecute you and utter all kinds
of evil against you falsely on my
account. Rejoice and be glad! For
your reward is great in heaven.
For in the same way they
persecuted the prophets who were
before you.
Arcana Coelestia #49 God is the
only truly human being
To
people in the earliest spiritual
era, with whom the Lord spoke face
to face, he appeared as a human
being. Because of this, they used
the word "human" for no
one but him, or for his qualities.
They did not even call themselves
human, except for the aspects of
themselves that they knew he had
given them, such as all the
goodness that comes from love and
all the truth that comes from
faith. They described these things
as human because they are the
Lord's.
Then
God said, "Let us make
humankind in our image, according
to our likeness. (Genesis 1:20)
Today
the Sunday School children are
starting their regular course of
lessons, based on the Bible
Study Notes by Anita S. Dole.
Mrs. Dole (who was my grandmother)
arranged the Bible readings so
that each year the classes would
start with Genesis and cover high
points of the whole Bible story,
ending the church year with the
book of Revelation. Though the
lessons covered the whole Bible
story each year, there were four
different "series" of
lessons, so that each year for
four years the children would get
different stories. By the time
they came back around to the same
series again, they would be in an
older class, and would study the
stories at a deeper level.
This
year I have once again decided to
follow the children's lesson
series, so that the adults who
stay in church for the service
will be learning from the same
Bible readings that the children
are learning about in their Sunday
School classes. I like the idea of
parents and their children being
able to talk about the Bible
story, each from something they
have gained here at the church.
This
year, we are using Series 3 of the
"Dole Notes," and our
opening story on Creation focuses
on the fifth and sixth days.
By
the time the fifth day of Creation
rolls around, God has already
created:
The
heavens and the earth, and the
light, separating the light
from the darkness (the first
day).
The
dome of the sky that separates
the water of the clouds above
the dome from the waters on
the earth below the dome (the
second day).
The
seas and the dry land, and the
plants and trees on the dry
land (the third day).
The
sun, moon, and stars, marking
out day and night, summer and
winter. (the fourth day).
Then
come the two days covered in
today's Sunday School lesson. On
the fifth day, the dome of the sky
that was created on the second day
is populated with birds, and the
waters under the dome are
populated with fish and other sea
creatures. And on the sixth day,
the land that was gathered
together on the third day is
populated with animals of every
kind, and finally with humankind.
Now,
the seven days of Creation is a
very nice story-especially to tell
to children. They love to hear
about God creating new things each
day, until finally everything is
ready, and God creates people to
live in that beautiful, new world.
For the little ones, it doesn't
matter whether it really happened
that way or not. The message they
get is that God made everything,
and that it is all "very
good."
For
adults, though, the story presents
some problems. It seems that
instead of being about six
thousand years old, as the Bible's
chronology would have it, the
earth is actually several billion
years old. A great deal of ink has
been spilled in debates between
Evangelical Christians and
scientists over whether the
Creation story in the first
chapter of Genesis is
"true." Many secular
scientists have come to the
conclusion that the Bible is
simply wrong, and is therefore
outdated and not of much use.
Meanwhile, many Evangelical
Christians go through great
intellectual contortions in an
attempt to demonstrate that the
world was, in fact, created in
seven days, and not over billions
of years as science says it was.
Of
course, those Evangelicals are
simply trying to defend what they
see as the truth of God's Word.
But it is all needless. The
fallacy is in thinking that the
Bible can be considered
"true" only if it is literally
true. Vast parts of human
literature-poetry, novels,
fantasy, science fiction, and so
on-were never intended by their
authors to be taken as literally
true, and yet they often contain
powerful truths about the human
condition. We go to movies not
only to be entertained, but to
gain insights into human
relationships and human
realities-even when we know that
the characters we see on the
screen are fictional.
In
a similar fashion, much of the
Bible's truth resides, not in the
literal accuracy of all its
stories, but in the deeper truths
those stories contain about the
human condition-especially the
human spiritual condition.
We don't call a great novel like War
and Peace "false"
because it describes conversations
and events that never took place.
Rather, we enjoy it as a novel,
and gain great insight from it.
Similarly, God has spoken to us in
the Bible through many different
kinds of "literature,"
much of which was never meant to
be taken literally, either by its
original human authors or by God,
who is its divine Author.
This
is especially true of the first
eleven chapters of the Bible,
where we find such great, mythical
stories as the Seven Days of
Creation, the Garden of Eden, Noah
and the Ark, and the Tower of
Babel. These are stories about the
human condition-and about how we
humans came to be the mixture of
good and evil that we are today.
Today,
as we look at the Creation story
in Genesis Chapter 1, I would like
to focus especially on God's final
creation on the sixth day:
humankind. I use that word
"humankind"
intentionally, since the Hebrew
word "adam" does
not refer so much to an individual
human being-a "man"-as
it does to the human race: to
humanity. Because of the story of
Adam and Eve in Genesis 2, the
creation of humankind in Genesis 1
is often interpreted as the
creation of a single man and his
wife. But if the story is read on
its own, a more natural
interpretation would be that God
created humankind-the human
family.
As
we read through the Creation
story, everything God creates is
good, and everything is related to
all the other parts of creation.
Yet when the story comes to the
creation of humankind, we find
something unique in all of the
Creation story. God says,
"Let us make humankind in
our image, according to our
likeness." Of course,
everything in the created universe
is some way a reflection of God,
their creator. But human beings
are said to be specifically
created in God's image. This is
not said about the sun, moon, and
stars created on the fourth day,
or about the fish and the birds
created on the fifth day, or even
about the great variety of land
animals created on the sixth day.
It is only said about humans-the
final creation of the sixth day,
made just before God proclaimed
that all creation was "very
good," and then rested from
his work on the seventh day.
What
does it mean to be created in
God's image, and in God's
likeness? A popular conception of
God is as an ancient, powerful man
with a long beard, sitting on a
throne in heaven judging the
world. God, in this view, is seen
as a man. From this idea of God,
we could say that human beings are
created in God's image because
like God, we have hands and feet,
legs and arms, bodies and heads,
eyes and ears. God is the great
Human Being in the sky, and we are
all little, tiny human beings,
created to look like God, and
populating the earth that God has
created.
Though
we may chuckle a bit at the idea
of God as a bearded old man
sitting on a throne in heaven, it
is not so far off the track. No, I
don't think God literally sits on
a throne in heaven. For one thing,
it would get incredibly boring to
sit on that same old throne
millennium after millennium! And
yet, as we read earlier from
Emanuel Swedenborg's Arcana
Coelestia (Secrets from Heaven),
"To people in the earliest
spiritual era, with whom the Lord
spoke face to face, he appeared as
a human being." So for those
early people who, like Adam and
Eve in the Garden of Eden, spoke
to God face to face, "walking
with him in the garden," God
had a face, a body, arms, legs,
and so on. And of course, as
Christians, we can picture God in
the very human form of Jesus
Christ, our Lord.
Yet
there is also a deeper way that
God is human than merely having a
human-shaped body. After all, we
humans are not the only creatures
that have arms and legs, heads and
bodies, eyes and ears. Though we
do have some distinctive
characteristics, such as standing
erect instead of on all fours, to
a physiologist the similarities
between us and the lower animals
are far greater than the
differences. Is it merely
opposable thumbs, walking on our
hind legs, and having a larger
brain proportional to our body
mass that makes us human?
No.
There is more. To continue with
the quote from Arcana Coelestia,
"Because God appeared to the
earliest people as a human being,
they used the word 'human' for no
one but him, or for his
qualities." I put
emphasis on that last phrase
because it introduces a new and
deeper idea of what it means to be
human. God is not human from
having a body, but from having
human qualities. And we are
human only to the extent that we
have those same qualities of
character from God.
What
are the qualities that make God
truly human-and us from God? Our
reading from Swedenborg gives two
examples: the goodness that comes
from love and the truth that comes
from faith. Yes, these are human
qualities. Goodness that comes
from love: feeling love for other
people, and doing good and kind
things for them from love. Truth
that comes from faith: believing
in the reality of God, and gaining
a deeper, more spiritual, and
truer view of the universe and our
place in it.
Today
as we continue to grieve the inhuman
acts of death and destruction
visited upon our country by people
acting from the inhuman emotions
of hatred and a desire to destroy
others, I would like to get more
specific about what it means to be
truly human. Because the danger is
that in reacting to these terrible
deeds, we, too, will descend into
the same inhuman feelings,
motives, and actions an our
attackers displayed.
To
gain a fuller picture of what
makes us truly human, let's take a
brief tour through the things that
Jesus says will make us
"blessed," or happy.
Many of them are far from our
initial thoughts of what make us
human-and yet they touch the heart
of our humanity.
"Blessed
are the poor in spirit, for
theirs is the kingdom of
heaven." Isn't it when we
see the great need-the
spiritual poverty-of others
that we feel most drawn to
them? Most sympathetic? That
we wish to give them the
heaven of human companionship?
"Blessed
are those who mourn, for they
will be comforted."
Mourning is a truly human
characteristic. If we did not
mourn our losses-especially
the loss of people we
love-could we really be said
to love our fellow human
beings at all?
"Blessed
are the meek, for they will
inherit the earth." We
are not at our most human when
we are conquering and
subjugating others, but when,
in simple innocence and
humility, we share our tender
feelings and our simple, good
thoughts with others.
"Blessed
are those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness, for
they will be filled."
What creature besides humans
hungers and thirsts for
righteousness? It is the
search for what is good and
right that truly makes human
beings great.
"Blessed
are the merciful, for they
will receive mercy." The
world of nature is merciless
to the small, the weak, the
old, the infirm. It is the
excellence of human beings
that we can show mercy and
kindness to those who need
protection and support.
"Blessed
are the pure in heart, for
they will see God." Now
we are being challenged; for
who is truly pure in heart?
Yet in the very striving for
purity of heartfelt love, we
begin to see and know the true
nature of God, who is
infinitely pure love for all.
"Blessed
are the peacemakers, for they
will be called children of
God." And here is another
challenge-especially in these
times when war is in the air.
Instead of beating the drums
of war, can we reach for the
true humanity of striving for
understanding? For mercy? For
justice? For forgiveness? For
peace with our fellow human
beings? This would mark us as
truly human-as children of the
human God.
"Blessed
are those who are persecuted
for righteousness' sake, for
theirs is the kingdom of
heaven. Blessed are you
when people revile you and
persecute you and utter all
kinds of evil against you
falsely on my account. Rejoice
and be glad! For your reward
is great in heaven. For in the
same way they persecuted the
prophets who were before
you."
Here
we are challenged to the utmost.
When we are being attacked and
abused, can we see this, not as a
reason to respond in kind, seeking
revenge for what has been done to
us, but as an opportunity to show
God's glory in an even greater
way?
It
is easy to be good to others when
they are being good to us. Even
selfish and materialistic people
do that. Yes, even animals are
good to their animal companion.
What marks us as truly
human is
when we maintain our integrity,
our principles, our commitment to
justice and righteousness, to
kindness and compassion, even when
we are being attacked for those
very qualities in us.
If
we are able to do this, then even
in the midst of conflict and
struggle-no, especially in
the midst of conflict and
struggle-we can rejoice and be
very glad. For then we know that
our humanity is not merely skin
deep. Then we know that we are
truly being created in the image
and likeness of God, who
"causes his sun to rise on
the evil and the good, and sends
rain on the righteous and the
unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45).
When
we can love our enemies, bless
those who curse us, do good to
those who hate us, and pray for
those who persecute us (Matthew
5:44), then we have truly learned
what it is to be human. Then we
have truly been created in the
image and likeness of God. Amen.
To Topic
Index Page
|
|
Painting
is entitled "Dawning of a New Age"
© Jesse Barnes and is used with
permission.
Christ-Centered
Art Gallery
Music: Prism (The
Colors of Love)
© 2001 Bruce DeBoer
Used with permission
No Right Click and
Color Scroll Bar Scripts
Courtesy of:
Muted Patterned Background
Tutorial
Courtesy of Point of Focus
|