Masterpiece: Made (Very) Good in the Image of God ~ Genesis 1:25-28

 

In the early 1990s a factory worker in Indiana purchased a painting at a thrift store for a mere $30. The painting was of a Magnolia flower and bought to cover a hole in his wall. Several years later the person was playing an art-themed board game called Masterpiece – a Parker Brothers game from the 1970s in which players compete to bid on potentially valuable paintings, negotiate to trade these works of art, including forgeries, build a portfolio, amass money, and win the game. Anyway, while playing the game the factory worker noticed a similar painting on one of the game cards and recognized its resemblance to the piece hanging on his wall. This sparked his curiosity, leading to research and the realization that he possessed an authentic work by American artist Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904). This “lost” painting later sold for an astonishing $1.25 million. Friends, I’ll cut to the chase, I’m talking about you. That true story is my parable about you. You are the factory worker. You are Magnolias on Gold Velvet. Heck, you might even be the hole in the wall. And hopefully Genesis 1 will be that Masterpiece game card that helps you recognize that your worth is far greater than 30 bucks. You are a masterpiece.

Today’s sermon can be summarized in a sentence that I want us to say together: “A good God made us (very) good for all things.” Let’s say it again. And we’re going to break this up into three parts: 1) A good God made us . . . 2) . . .(very) good . . . 3)  . . . for all things.

1.    A good God made us . . .

God is good / all the time. All the time / God is good. And that means that goodness made us in its image.

This is not the story that I was told. I was told a story of “total depravity” – that we are utterly and irrevocably sinful at our core. But sin is not our origin story and does not undo the image – doesn’t make us worthless or something other than a masterpiece. To undo the image would make us not human. We’re going to talk about the story of sin – next week – and discover that we must rethink much of the story that we were given because it falsely wishes to say that sin is more powerful than the good God who made us. And friends, nothing is more powerful than a good God.

Your worth was determined long before you said or did anything of worth. The story of Genesis 1 means that God’s goodness precedes you before you were born. In other words, your worth, your value, God’s blessing are all intimately connected to the One who made you – being always precedes doing, love always precedes worthiness, goodness always exists before brokenness.

The ancient theologian Augustine once wondered: “Why is it we have no problem gasping at a sunset, standing silent, awestruck at a cascade of mountains, or the infinite stretch of the ocean and yet feel awkward, embarrassed, maybe even disgusted, when we consider ourselves as God’s beautiful creation?”

The inherent goodness of creation, including the inherent goodness of human nature, springs from creation’s origin in the goodness of the Word of God, Jesus, Paul tells us in Colossians, who speaks all things into being, who sustains all things in movement and life by the Spirit (Col. 1:15-17).

So the human story doesn’t begin or end in sin or even with Adam, it begins and ends in the God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and who only speaks into existence the good, who makes us in the image of his goodness, and who comes as our image, dies and rises again, to redeem us because his goodness will never abandon his good creation.

My mother and grandmother hand-sewed this stoll for me. It is my most prized possession. It’s not entirely symmetrical, doesn’t always sit just right, but I love it. No amount of money could ever be offered for me to sell it. It’s beautiful because it connects to a genesis, a beginning, a relationship, an origin with two women whose love and prayers made me and shaped me. Friends, “A good God made us . . .”. So say it with me: “I am good / All the time. All the time /  I am good.”

2.     . . . (very) good . . .”

Our story begins with a good God who made us good – first – before we do or say anything because of whose we are. But God doesn’t intend for goodness to simply remain about us but to be “very good” by being “for” creation and sharing with all things. We are, in other words, called to be like this good God by being good to all that God has created. We are told in the NIV translation that our goodness is to “rule over” the other creatures and to “subdue the earth [land]”. This doesn’t mean abusive power. It means that we are granted the weighty honor and responsibility of representing God’s own activity in the world, of standing up for God’s interests. It is to be a God-informed and Godly imagined-activity NOT a self-interested one. Our rule, in other words, is exercised on behalf of God and must look like Jesus who took the very nature of a servant.

The Genesis truth of this position is best expressed in a verse that falls outside of Genesis 1 and comes from Genesis 2. In that part, the ‘adam, “humankind,” is created to “work the earth and keep it.” That word “keep” in Hebrew is shamar and directly connects with the activity of God. It’s what God does. In Numbers 6, we are given the famous blessing: “The Lord bless you and keep you.” That’s what God does for us and what we, in turn, are to do for all the earth. Does God “rule” over us with exploitation, greed, malice, and bullying? Of course not. Our relationship to the planet should be no different. The only way we will ever experience “very good” is when we are redeemed to act like Jesus, become love, keep others and all of creation, and be “for” all things.

3.    “ . . . for all things.”

So you are good – before you do anything – because God is good and God made you. And God made you good to be good, to become like Jesus, and that requires a “for.” The phrase “very good” refers to the end of the sixth-day. So far, in Genesis the repeated refrain was: “And God saw that it was good.”  Now at the end of the sixth day, we’re told: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (1:31a). That superlative “very good” doesn’t just mean “human beings” but is meant to encompass a web of mutually caring relationships. So “very good,” isn’t a claim about our being, though we are beautifully and exquisitely made by God, but refers to the action of care for all of creation. All of creation in harmony is what God wants for us all of our relationships- male and female, humans and plants, plants and animals, oceans and land. All of creation connecting generously, caringly, with itself is what God intends for a very good life. “Very good” is an ecosystem of love and care where we know we are loved and out of that redeemed awareness – give it freely away for all things that are made by God.

The image is “very good” when it’s recognized as a relationship. In Gen. 1:25-28, God is an “us” who makes “them,” humankind, and God says, in “our” image God made “them.” There is a critical plurality here. Without you, my image of God would be way too small and look too much like me. Without you, I might be tempted to believe that a single reading of scripture is adequate, or a single view of history complete. I might go on thinking my view is a normal one, that my skin is a neutral color, that I don’t need to see race, gender, class, or religion.

Listen – you will always be loved – always. But a “very good” life is about our keeping of all things, making a home in the garden with others, naming the animals, eating green things and taking responsibility for all living things that also have the living breath of God which means that the spirituality of “us” goes beyond humans to plants, animals, oceans and forests – all of it in mutual harmony – “very good” (Gen. 7:15, 22). Creation is symphony of harmony in which “a good God made us to be very good for all things.”

I’ve been trying to take you on a spiritual journey from being love to becoming love for all things. Perhaps I failed – too intellectual and buttoned up to wildly dance with abandonment and invite you, you beautiful masterpiece, to join in. So I’ll turn to the master beloved, Mary Oliver, and let her say it so much more beautifully what I have been trying to say. This is her poem, To Begin With, the Sweet Grass. I will only read stanzas 6 and 7

6.
Let me ask you this.
Do you also think that beauty exists for some fabulous reason?

And if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—your life—
what would do for you?

7.
What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.
Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago.
Since then I have gone out from my confinements, though with difficulty

I mean the ones that are thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the ush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment somehow or another).

And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world

 

Visibly with Jesus: Thinking about Baptism ~ Romans 6:1-14

 

There’s an old story about the baptism of King Aengus by St. Patrick in the middle of the fifth century. Sometime during the rite, St. Patrick leaned on his staff and unknowingly stabbed the king’s foot. After the baptism was over, St. Patrick looked down, saw the blood, and realized what he had done. He begged the king’s forgiveness and asked “Why did you suffer this pain in silence?” The king replied, “I thought it was part of the ritual.”

 

 Over the centuries there have been a lot of painful questions about the rite of Christian baptism. The Church has argued over what it accomplishes, to whom it should be given, and even how much water should be used. In the Covenant, we emphasize unity over uniformity and recognize that many authentic followers of Jesus are baptized by immersion, and other genuine disciples are sprinkled with water. Some lovely Christians are baptized as adults and other faithful saints as infants. So we accept both. But in all cases, the meaning of baptism is the same. It’s about participating in, and receiving, an ancient gospel pattern, beginning in Genesis, through the Exodus, a few Psalms, with prophets like Jonah, and ultimately culminating with Jesus, of God going before us through the chaotic waters of death, slavery, and sin, in order to liberate us and receive us on the other side into a new creation.

Augustine referred to the sacrament of baptism as a “visible word,” an outward sign of an invisible grace. It’s the recognition that spirituality always involves both inner and outward realities, opened to all the senses, as a gift from God. When parents hug and kiss their children, those visible realities express the invisible reality of love. We can’t actually see the love those things wish to express, but we can see their affects. You get that, right? It’s why love needs a wedding and rings are exchanged. It’s why birthdays have cake and gifts, and discontent will march in the streets rather than only quietly complain. Similarly, baptism is a physical expression of the miraculous and transforming reality of the gospel; it’s a grace-filled mini-drama that reveals that our salvation is found by being united with Jesus in his death, burial, and resurrection. It’s the outward sign that the love of God in Jesus Christ graciously precedes us into death, liberates us from sin, and welcomes us to new life.

Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, gets straight to the point: “don’t you know that all of us who were baptized with Christ Jesus, were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death . . .” (Rom 6:3-4a).

There it is: to be baptized is to die – but it is a certain kind of death: it is to die with Jesus. And it is a certain kind of funeral: it is to be buried with him. And if that’s true, it means that in baptism our deaths are now behind us. So we are released from our obsession with death, our fear of death, our denial of death, all of which speaks of our enslavement to death – from which baptism frees us. For not only is death now behind us, but life is now ahead of us. But again, a very specific kind of life: it is life with Christ, because of Christ, in order to live like Christ. For as Paul continues: “We were buried with him though baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from death through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

The French writer Henri Barbusse (1874-1935) tells of a conversation overheard in a trench full of wounded men during the First World War. One of the men, who knew he only had minutes to live says to another: “Listen, Dominic, you’ve led a very bad life. Everywhere you are wanted by the police. But there are no convictions against me. My name is clear. So here, take my wallet, take my papers, my identity, take my good name, my life and quickly, hand me your papers that I may carry all your crimes away with me in death.” Friends, that’s what the gospel does and what baptism visibly expresses: through uniting with Jesus in his death, your sin is buried with him and you are given access to a new life. 

 

We are all going to die. One day William is going to die too. But today we proclaim a gospel fact, William’s death is now behind him and the life of Christ – a new life of love, joy, and peace – is his future, and indeed is there now for the taking – or rather the receiving – through his union with Jesus. And like William, even if you’re an adult with a theology degree, you can’t earn this union, don’t deserve it, and, heck, won’t fully understand it. And as he gets older, he will wrestle with a choice that was made for him when his parents gave him to these waters and into the arms of Jesus. And if you haven’t surrender your death and life to Jesus, I want to invite you to do that – receive new life and express that reality through baptism. And if you have accepted the gospel but haven’t been baptized, that one-of-kind, scary, amazing, and mysterious miracle needs a physical expression, an outward sign, a visible word: like love needs a hug and a kiss, birthdays need a cake and gifts, and marriage an exchange of rings. We need a tattoo of love, etched on to our bodies, that beautifully proclaims what this mysterious act of baptism dramatically illustrates: “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Friends, be baptized, visibly, fully, mysteriously, with Him into that. Amen.

Remember your baptism – that you are united with Jesus, have died and are now liberated from sin – remember that it is a gift and that you are “under grace.”