"Made in God's Image"

First Presbyterian Church
Peter S. Buehler
May 18, 2008
Genesis 1:1-2:4a

So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them…

It's during that in-between hour -- not night but not quite morning, when the sky is just beginning to lighten -- that the hummingbirds in the trees around our house take their cue and begin vocalizing. As if on a conductor's downbeat, all of them together start chirping, and loudly! Actually it's more of a cross between chirping, singing, and pushing a piece of chalk across a chalkboard: a very loud high-pitched grating sound that is impossible to ignore.

Hummingbirds don't just hum, I have learned -- they screech. For their size they are little decibel machines. And I'm pretty sure the hummingbirds are responsible for waking up the crows, because once the crows are up it's impossible to keep sleeping. If at 5:15 or 5:30 the hummingbirds are perched outside our window saying GoodMorningGoodMorningGoodMorningGoodMorningGoodMorning, the crows are right behind them shouting WakeUp! GetUp! WakeUp!GetUp!WakeUp! Who needs an alarm clock when you have Mother Nature with a bullhorn right outside your bedroom?

It's as though creation is insisting on being noticed, on being heard first thing in the morning -- the smallest birds and the largest birds joining forces to remind the two-legged world: You don't run the world, you know. We're here too. You're not the only ones God called "good." You can have your houses, and buildings, and roads; you can have those metal boxes you drive around in -- but we've got the treetops, and we own the sky!

The early morning choir of birds cavorting in the trees, this is the music of life Genesis 1 has us wake up to. This is the exuberance it captures. Life itself is exuberant -- even in the skies, even in the seas the Creator is known as One who fills the world with abundant life.

What God does is wonderful, beautiful. God commands like a fine artist paints, Planet Earth is his canvas: "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky." So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

The creating continues, for this God is known for blessings: so God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

Exuberant life! God creates it, God fills the world with it! Creation is beautiful, purposeful, orderly, hospitable; everything works together, the sun rises and sets, the world lives and rests, one day at a time. Maybe the birds of the early morning just want to remind us of how amazing our earthly home is. With them and all living things we return the blessing, singing, All creatures of our God and King, Lift up your voice and with us sing, Alleluia! Alleluia!

Genesis chapter 1 is an Alleluia! The Bible begins with a hymn of praise. It's not a report, it's not a memo -- "To all staff: As of today the following verses shall hereby constitute the official version of how God made heaven and earth. Questioning, wondering, and creative thinking will not be tolerated. Poets, hymn-writers, and pesky scientists will kindly keep their investigations to themselves. Yours truly, Management."

Like a child told that coloring a picture means staying inside the lines -- no going outside the lines! This is not about expressing yourself, or enjoying yourself, this is about getting it right!

I wonder sometimes if the church lost a generation of believers because we didn't let them enjoy their faith, the God of their faith. I wonder if those who see this magnificent hymn to the Creator in Genesis chapter 1 as a history report, all fact and no wonder, have taken the life out of it instead of seeing the life in it.

Personally, I'd like to blame the fundamentalists, those who say The Bible says it, I believe it, and that's all there is to it! I'd prefer to say I have nothing in common with them, that I've never once staked out a position and used the scriptures to prove my point. But I have. There's a fundamentalist in us too. Maybe we all want to feel that we understand what the Bible is saying, that its meaning is clear to us, yet when we insist on knowing the meaning of scripture over listening for God's Word in scripture, God's always-new life-giving Word, in effect we are closing the book and putting it on a high shelf, out of reach.

Yet the Bible itself wants to be down where we can get at it. What a difference it makes to hear Genesis 1 as the beginning of the church's open book, even a call to worship, a sunrise painted across the sky, an invitation to celebrate the glory of God -- to praise God for the world we see outside our doors, to sing Alleluia to God, making it our personal Chapter 1 for each new day, our sense of exuberance as we live as partners in creation, resting in the thought of rocks and trees, of skies and seas, God's hand the wonders wrought.

Though there are times we find ourselves wondering if God's creation is an hospitable place after all. The headlines these past weeks have been filled with tragedy: a cyclone in Myanmar leaving a hundred thousand people dead, while the government left behind seems hardly to care. How can this be? A huge earthquake in China causing untold suffering and death; aerial photos show utter devastation; news photos show grieving parents bearing on their shoulders the body of an only child. Only weeks ago the front pages showed what was left as ferocious tornados flattened entire communities in our own country; now our southeastern states are bracing for the hurricane season.

And it was disturbing as well to read that the habitat for the polar bear is melting, that this proud animal has now been placed on the endangered species list, with the prediction that by the year 2050, with global warming continuing at an alarming rate, two-thirds of the polar bear's habitat will disappear and many of these magnificent animals along with it.

How then do we read Genesis 1 today? How hospitable is our earthly home? How do we understand what it means to be made "in the image of God"?

We can become cynical. It happens all too easily. God created us in freedom, even freedom to turn away from the One who made us. Some believe that the extent of human tragedy and suffering in the world undermines the Bible's claims about God, that God is good, and kind, and powerful. When questions about Why bad things happen go unanswered, even believers are tempted to think that God is less involved with the world than he once was, or that God is not as careful or as caring a creator as the scriptures suggest.

People get discouraged and stop praying, people get discouraged and stop believing, people get discouraged and stop listening to the Spirit whispering courage. Like a near-sighted person choosing to go without his glasses, we stop trusting God and suddenly wonder why we can't see beyond our noses. Why we can't see what God saw, that each day's work is good.

There's a story told about Catholic author and publisher, Frank Sheed, at a Chicago "Speaker's Corner" event describing to the people gathered around him the extraordinary order and design that could be seen in the universe, only he was interrupted, repeatedly by the same person. His challenger made a point of numbering many of the world's ills, finally shouting "I could make a better universe than your God!" Sheed replied, "I won't ask you to make a universe. But would you make a rabbit -- (just to show us what you can do)?"

Maybe not. But being made in God's image, that verse in Genesis, does cause us to wonder. It doesn't mean we look like God! It doesn't mean that we are all-powerful over the rest of the world and can do as we like without consequence.
Is this verse about power and authority, or is it about humility and responsibility?
Here modern science, rather than threatening or arguing against the truth of scripture, has shown us its true meaning, especially the responsibility we have to be good stewards of creation.

Because having "dominion" over the earth, as Genesis puts it, is not having free rein over the earth, using it and abusing it. The image for the people of the Bible was of a shepherd having dominion over his sheep: caring for them, knowing them by name, putting their needs above his own, even laying down his life for them. Environmental science today urges us to think about our lifestyles, the resources we consume, the effect it has on the world, and how even small changes can produce major benefits. If ever science and scripture were preaching the same sermon, this is it.

But Jesus would also have us think about stewardship also in terms of our human environment, what it means to love our neighbor as our self. Jesus would have us think in these terms about being made in God's image, that more than anything it means striving to be like him, not dominating but serving, not controlling but loving, not grasping but giving, not fearing but trusting.

Exactly what does it mean today to be made in the image of God? I wonder if it doesn't mean approaching our lives, our environmental challenges, our time on this earth in a very different way. I wonder if it doesn't mean seeing ourselves as partners in God's creation, not people just wanting what we want but neighbors who are willing to keep our needs small and our lists short.

I wonder if it doesn't mean being as creative as we can be, looking around us, up to the sky, out to the sea, and valuing how beautiful our world is, then taking next steps and finding new ways to be gentle with the earth, sharing our God-given creativity in modifying our lifestyles, letting the Holy Spirit work in us in this way?

I wonder if when we read Genesis 1:27-28 -- So God created humankind in his image -- we might not put a post-it note next to those verses to remind us to turn to Mark 10:43-44 -- that it's Jesus who interprets for us what it means today to be made in God's image.

In that passage we see Jesus' disciples fussing, arguing among themselves about what they thought was most important: themselves! Their status! Who was in the inner circle, who mattered most to Jesus, who could sit beside him in his glory?

Today we might point out a person we believe is a Christian, but then another person we're sure is a really good Christian, so who sits near Jesus is still a popular topic. Mark's Gospel would suggest that Jesus tends to overhear conversations like this, that he sees them as teachable moments for disciples.
He points out that the Gentiles, those who don't know about God, like to put people in categories, maybe a pyramid -- the most powerful at the top, with everyone else stacked in layers of descending status.

But Jesus teaches that his disciples should see things differently, turning the pyramid upside down. Because God's way inverts humanity's ways. God rules with love. God gives freedom; God grants responsibility; God celebrates creativity; God bestows grace. Therefore, Jesus said to the followers he loved, whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.

We can imagine that when Jesus spoke those words it got very quiet. Maybe when it did, the disciples heard the birds singing.