Preached by Winton Boyd on Sunday, July 18, 2010
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In the catalog of religions and creation stories, the story from which our Genesis text comes stands apart because humanity is created not only in love, but also in the image of the creator. We are not the result of fighting Gods, we are not the spoils of a victor God. Nor, according to this very first story of our relationship and connection with God, are we slaves to a higher being. In God’s own image, the image of the Holy One, were we created, male and female.
Amidst of all of the religious writings of the world, the text that comes from Galatians represents the early church at its best – calling for a complete overhaul of how people of different ethnicity and religion and gender related to each other. That church wasn’t perfect, but it stood out then, and now, as a small group of faithful people who were willing to work hard to live out this ideal of equality. Interestingly, we not only have declarations like this in the early church writings, we also have letters where leaders are taken to task for not living into this promise.
In the catalog of prophets and people of God, what set Jesus apart more than his words, even more than his healings, is how he ate at table; who he invited to share a meal. As you may remember, he understood that in his time there was no place that reinforced classism, elitism, and chauvinism more than how people ate at meals. Repeatedly he broke longstanding cultural and religious taboos by suggesting that people of different classes and races and genders eat together. He knew once people ate a meal together across all kinds of dividing lines – they would be changed forever.
For Jesus, naming that all were one in God’s eyes and God’s kingdom on earth wasn’t just a pronounced goal, it was a lived reality.
Today’s affirmation, in our summer series looking at the Phoenix Affirmations, is that we celebrate the Christian faith by engaging people authentically, as Jesus did, treating all as creations made in God’s very image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental ability, nationality, or economic class.
To be honest, however important this concept of engaging all as made in the image of God is, there is nothing earth shattering about this affirmation statement. It is not new, it is not ground breaking, and in a church like ours, it is not really even controversial. As a stated ideal – except for the sexual orientation and in a few places gender – it is actually a statement most churches would endorse.
By itself, however, it is only a stated ideal. While our stated ideal may be broader than some – if it is not a lived practice anyway – we aren’t really much different than anyone else. While we give thanks for a tradition that DOES value this ideal, what we’re really want is to do more than just say these words. By stating this affirmation, we celebrate a tradition that pushes us, cajoles us, challenges us, and encourages us – to actually live out this idea. We celebrate a tradition that takes quite seriously a value found in the old and new Testaments and in the early church itself, but that is often lost or forgotten in the history of the church.
A while back The Onion, the satirical newspaper, ran a story ran a story titled, Finding a Religion that doesn’t Disrupt your current Lifestyle. Even this highly secular, highly comedic paper recognized that a religion that asks nothing of us isn’t much of a religion. A religion that doesn’t call us to anything beyond what we are is more window dressing than a transforming experience with the Holy One. So, while we value our progressive faith for its openness, we must also ask if it is a faith that challenges and pulls us out of our comfort zone. I think the Christian faith does this in a number of ways.
About a year ago, you may remember that a Libyan man convicted of orchestrating the bombing of a plane over Lockerbie Scotland was released from prison. The decision was made by a Scottish high court, and was quite controversial here and in the whole of Great Britain. I was curious about the decision and decided to write a friend I had made on sabbatical from Scotland. What can you tell me about that decision, I asked of this hard working, justice oriented Church of Scotland pastor working in the inner city of Glasgow? I didn’t know it at the time, but Ian was one of a handful of church leaders advising and advocating for the prisoners release. He was very involved in the issue and shared two basic perspectives with me.
First, he pointed out that the Scottish judicial system has a provision built in for the release of prisoners on the grounds of compassion. The person isn’t paroled, they are released. Because this man has advanced prostate cancer, many in Scotland thought the humanitarian and compassionate thing to do was to let him return home. While many in the US considered it a travesty, in my friend’s mind, it was an appropriate legal action rooted in an important Christian value – that of mercy. The other thing he said was in his country many had questions about the veracity of the original conviction anyway. From their perspective the US’s political need to have a conviction resulted in questionable charges and tactics.
While one can have many perspectives on whether or not to release that prisoner – I was moved by his deep sense of compassion and his authentic engagement with the enemy. I found it wonderful to be in a worldwide church that challenged and questioned easy assumptions and culturally shaped expectations and opinions.
And I think this represents one of the most important qualities of our faith – the willingness to ask honest and open questions about how we are living. Are we living into this affirmation? If not, why not? Do we have an internal hierarchy of people – in our life, in our community, in our world? Do we live in any way that challenges the social and religious discrimination and exclusion around us? Are we active in embracing all people, or passive? These questions themselves are a form of confession.
How might we take small steps in the direction of fully embracing all people? How can we support each other? Where are our biases? How realistic are our expectations of others? How do the issues of class, education, race, and gender play a role in the way we move in the world? What would it really feel like to welcome those who are different from us more fully? Honestly asking these questions and honestly looking for ways to live into this affirmation suggest we take our faith seriously, that it IS more than window dressing.
The honest and open questions we ask ourselves we also ask as a congregation. How welcoming is our welcome to those not like us? Is our welcome engaging? Heartfelt? If we are a mostly white, mostly educated, mostly middle class group of people – how does our faith push us beyond those confines – here in church or in the rest of our daily lives? How willing are we to compromise on some of that which we hold dear – theology, music, ways of befriending – in order to welcome someone else? … Of course these aren’t easy questions, and of course they aren’t meant to be shaming – but in the progressive church we celebrate that these questions are asked. The Christian faith – as it is lived in our personal lives and it is lived corporately in this congregation – pushes those questions because the ideals we proclaim are worth pushing for.
Secondly, and related, as people of the Christian way, we admit and seek to uncover our own blind spots. We gather in community, we read the ancient texts, we look for inspiring words, and music and mentors because we want to open ourselves to the realities of our lives and the ways we live short of what we want and what the God of the Bible sets forth as that ideal. In humility and community, we acknowledge that we need others, we need other influences, the experience of others to move us from where we are to where we want to be.
In a recent radio interview(Speaking of Faith), Mennonite peacemaker John Paul Lederach, Professor of International Peacebuilding at Notre Dame, and a man of faith who has spent 30 years working on local, national and international conflicts around the world, said the single most important way to bring conflicted factions together is to bring two or more improbable sets of people together. More than ideas or more than agreements, the willingness of former enemies to see in one another possibility, and in so doing to see the shortsightedness of their own hardened position, brings about conflict transformation.
In its best form, the church challenges us to look for other voices, value other experiences, walk in other people’s shoes. At its best, the church – rooted in relationships – helps us see our blind spots about how we live, what we value and where we are afraid. Without acknowledging our blind spots, we’ll never live into this affirmation.
Over the years, it has become more and more clear to me that the most effective way to help us all with blind spots is to create an atmosphere of trust, safety, grace and honesty. There are plenty of preachers or Christians who are all too willing to point out others’ blind spots. While the true church of Jesus Christ may involve honest confrontation, it is always done in the spirit of humility, in the arena of affirming our corporate desire to walk in the ways of God known and to be made known to us. We seldom point out each other’s blind spots – rather we create an environment – through worship and prayer, study, service trips and mission trips and small groups – where each of us can gently and yet assuredly uncover our OWN blind spots.
But finally, and most importantly, we live within a faith that celebrates the ideal of a welcome to all people, and that welcome comes to US in the notion of grace. Jesus set the bar high with his own life – but he knew changing our way in the world, living counter to the cultural norms, or living into that which we say we affirm wasn’t easy. Jesus pointed us to the grace of God because he understood, and experienced himself, that without grace, without the constant reaffirmation that in the end we are all created in the likeness and image of God, none of us would reach the ideals we set for ourselves.
As we affirm this important value of the Christian faith, as we affirm that we want to engage people authentically, treating all as creations made in God’s very image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental ability, nationality, or economic class; might we open ourselves in this moment, this day, this week, to the nudging, challenging, prodding Spirit of God…
Today’s Affirmation from the Phoenix Affirmations
We celebrate our faith by “engaging people authentically, as Jesus did, treating all as creations made in God’s very image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental ability, nationality, or economic class.”
Today’s texts:
Genesis 1:26-27
Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image, after our likeness…So God created humanity in God’s own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Galatians 3
26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
