The Image of God
By Charles Rush
Genesis 1: 25-31
September 26, 1999
e spiritual insight that we are created in the image of God, or
as we learned from Jesus that we are all children of God, is
tremendously important. It has so deeply shaped Western Civilization
in our self-concept- in politics, in art and culture, in religion, in
psychology- that we take it to be common sense. That was not always
the case. Indeed, it is not today which is one of the principal
reasons we have such a difficult time getting a universal recognition
of the need for human rights.
A few months ago, archeologists made a fascinating discovery in
Australia. It probably escaped your notice. Out in the middle of the
desert, on the face of a cliff wall, they found a pattern etched in
stone. The best estimate is the work is about 75,000 years old. When
you consider the fact that civilization is only about 10,000 years old,
this is an important find. Just to imagine our ancestors 75,000 years
ago, etching this intricate monument.
More interesting still was the design. It was a series of grooves
cut into the stone, in the shape of a large square. I believe some of
them also were cut into concentric circles. It formed an elaborate
design that looked quite a bit like a complicated maze. It was like an
elaborate doodle that you would make on your paper during a very boring
Chemistry class. You remember Chemistry class. Listen to lecture,
glaze over, peer over at Katie Cochrane (Oh what a beauty), doodle on
paper, listen to lecture, glaze over... I only made a Cee in Chemistry
but I had some very fine doodles to show for it and some lovely
memories of young Katie Cochrane.
This discovery was actually stunning. Why? In the period of early
civilization, from 6000 bce to 4000 bce, we quite a few archeological
remains. It was very common to see a concentric sworl that was used as
part of a religious ceremony. We can fairly well guess what it
symbolized from a number of different sources. It was a symbol of the
ever-changing, yet predictable rotation of the universe.
Ancient people, of course, were fundamentally oriented by the
rhythms of the world- day and night. The cycle of the moon and its
correlate menstrual cycle. The changing of the seasons. Most
especially, since they spent so much time looking into the night sky,
the regular rotation of the heavens.
Since the heavens were assumed to be the realm of the gods, the
presumption was that they contained portents for our world. Rare
astral phenomena were the subject of a great deal of speculation. Even
in the bible, when the prophets want to use a metaphor of impending
doom, they will say, "when the moon turns blood red". They are
speaking of a lunar eclipse which were generally thought to be a bad
omen in the ancient world. Lunar eclipses are relatively rare.
Ancient people thought that through this natural occurrences, the gods
were trying to communicate something to them.
There is a spiritual teaching that goes part and parcel with the
observation of the regular rotation of the heavens. It was the notion
of "fate". These sworls were not only symbols of the heavens, they
were also symbols of our spiritual lives. The idea is that things have
been laid out in a destiny by the gods, which may be inscrutable, but
is there nevertheless. We may not be able to understand why we have
been given the lot that we have been given but the spiritual object of
living is to fulfill the destiny that we have been assigned.
The Greeks called it our Moira. It is the shape of our finished
fate, our appointed end, the task that the gods have allotted us. In
one of her wonderful novels, Mary Renault describes how this played out
in real life.
She tells the story of a tribe in Greece. In their ancient past,
when they were hunter/gatherer's, they lived through a series of
droughts that threatened their very existence. On the brink of
starvation, the King of the tribe had a spiritual moment, and decided
to cut loose the lead stallion from the herd of horses that the tribe
used. The tribe followed the stallion who smelled the air for food and
water. The stallion guided them to water and they were saved.
Before he was loosed, he was dedicated to Poseidon, the god of
water. So after the tribe found their way to a fresh supply of water,
and the horse had fulfilled the task that the gods had allotted him,
the stallion was sacrificed in a religious ceremony, and thanks was
given to the gods for the good fortune of the tribe.
This was not only done for animals, it was also applicable to
humans. Certain leaders were called out from the people and dedicated
and after their leadership had been fulfilled, they too were sacrificed
to the gods. They accepted their Moira.
It is a deep running religious idea. At root, it under girds the
only living ancient religion, Hinduism. Hinduism teaches that we are
reincarnated to a specific caste as a consequence of our actions in a
former life. The spiritual object of this life is to accept the
station to which we were born, to fulfill the social and religious
obligations that attend our caste, for in fulfilling them, we will be
reincarnated to a higher caste in a future life.
Though problematic, it is understandable. I remember talking to a
mother who had been in a horrible car accident that had killed one of
her children. The scene of that accident unfolding before her replayed
in her mind for years afterward. As it replayed, she began to
speculate on it. How is it that the cars all managed to be in just the
right alignment so that a car in the far lane would swerve into the
right side of our car? Why did we go back home to pick up those
directions, since we knew where we were going and didn't really need
them, because if we hadn't we wouldn't have been at that place at that
time? Especially in a great metropolis like New York, you can
extrapolate out the infinite variety of things that had to converge all
to make your destiny inexorable.
And destiny is not all negative, though most of it is. I know a
guy who literally bumped into a lovely young woman at the Metropolitan
Museum and was struck with her immediately. As he was picking up the
things and they were talking, his heart was going -boom, boom, boom.'
Three weeks go by. Then he sees her leaving a restaurant in the West
Village and they have another short but clicking conversation. Then he
sees her again out jogging and finally he asks her for a date. He
calls me on the phone, bubbling, and says "Chuck, this is God... I run
into her 3 times... not once but three times... what are the chances
of that happening... Isn't 3 big in the bible-Father, Son and Holy
Ghost? This is large. This is good." I'm thinking, Jimmy, this sounds
more like lust/enfatuation/budding romance. They dated and when they
got married, when he took his vows, he was certain that God had sent
this wonderful woman from the foundations of the universe. Sometimes
it all comes together, it all just clicks, and you are overwhelmed with
sheer gratitude for life. The stars just lined up.
Our passage this morning give puts some brakes on this line of
logic. It gives some shape, focus, qualification. In the first place,
if you are looking for the divine spark, look not into the heavens for
primary communication. Look rather into the face of your children,
your neighbors, the person sitting next to you right now.
More than that, in the midst of the very powerful forces of nature,
the very powerful social forces that define the horizon and limit of
our existence, we also have the divine capacity of choice and
self-direction. We are not completely defined by our contexts. We
have a moral imagination. We have resident spiritual capacities. We
can change the situation.
More even than that, each and every one of us is important. Take
yourself seriously. Believe in yourself. God believes in you. I have
no way of knowing this but I suspect that most of us suffer from a
corrosive low self-esteem from time to time, even very successful
people.
I heard from a young lady, a freshman at Amherst College. The
Provost at Amherst is quoting all these statistics about the average
SAT's (12,000) for the entering class, the GPA (6.2), how few students
are admitted, how many are athletic, how many were class presidents
(121%). She is sitting there thinking "what
AM I
doing in this place".
The first two years at college, I had a recurrent dream that all
4500 students were gathered in a large auditorium and the Dean is
talking to us with his cap and gown, when an assistant hands him a
note. He stops what he is doing and says, "Apparently there has
been a mistake. Charles Rush, you don't belong here."
And two agents from the Secret Service come down the aisle and usher me
out in front of all my peers. You ever have a dream like that?
The Jewish/Christian message is this "You are sacred." You have the
image of God in you. Shape your world spiritually and morally. Pass
it on.
One of the most moving sermons I ever heard was in the dustbowl in
Louisville, Kentucky. The dustbowl is a series of basketball courts in
the middle of the Ghetto. By the way, Sports Illustrated has rated it
in the past as the best place in the country for a pick-up basketball
game. Jesse Jackson was there giving a sermon to a great group of
black teenagers. Over and over, he kept coming back to his theme "You
are somebody." He is right about that.
There is a Baptist Mission in Thailand called "New Life". It was
started by a woman, an American missionary, who was teaching in
Bangkok. She was having a hard time focusing on her work because of
the sex trade that was all around her. She found it particularly
galling because the prostitutes were getting younger and younger, the
thought being that young prostitutes were less likely to have AIDS.
Upon investigation, she found out that the pimps that ran these
houses of prostitution would travel to the remote villages throughout
Southeast Asia and buy these young girls, usually from impoverished
peasants. Girls were particularly vulnerable because they were
considered an economic liability to their families (Their parents had
to raise a dowry to get them married, whereas boys took care of their
parents in their old age). Furthermore, girls were taught from the
time that they were born that they were inferior, that they had to
accommodate themselves to this patriarchal world, that their own needs
were not nearly as important as fulfilling their duties, particularly
their duties to men. This was their fate. It is their moira.
Many forces conspired against them. In a city, hundreds of miles
from anyone they know, without any economic resources, watched very
closely, children that wouldn't know how to run away even if the
opportunity presented itself, what could they do? Nothing. They just
had to accept their fate and do the best with it.
This missionary was talking to one of the pimps. She asked how
much it would cost to buy one of these young prostitutes? $50 was the
answer. The woman went home and prayed about it.
She came back to him the next day with $50. Missionaries don't have
much money, of course. But this woman just couldn't handle the fact
that one of these children, a sacred life with the divine spark, could
sell for $50.
She wrote to other people and got some more money. She bought a
dozen of these girls and brought them all to her home. She worked with
them to begin to heal some really horrific experiences that they had
lived through.
Being a missionary, she shared the Bible with them, the story of
Jesus, his teaching that God loves us, each and every one. This
spiritual insight was so important to them, it not only changed their
lives, it gave them a foundation to rebuild from. "If God loves me...
then I can; if God loves me, then I should stand up for myself; if God
loves me, then I am worthy of respect; if God loves me, I can overcome
shame; if God loves me, then I can..."
This missionary figured out that any real healing was going to have
to have an economic basis to it. These girls faced big cultural
challenges. If they were to return to their villages, it is not likely
that anyone would ever marry them. In many cases, their families would
not even take them in. They had to be economically self-reliant in
order to be spiritually whole. Most of the girls wanted to eventually
return to their homes. So she needed to teach them an economic
self-reliance that would actually work in their context. She taught
them sewing.
Each day, they spent some time in regular education, in bible
study, learning how to sew and market their crafts. She also taught
them to sing. Protestants love to sing. They formed a choir and in
the evenings they would sing.
A few years ago, a group of them came to the U.S. I got to hear
them sing. It was very beautiful. They were radiant. It is so
spiritually uplifting to see faces full of self-esteem, self-respect,
self-worth, all singing together.
The sex slave trade in Thailand has not come to an end. But for
those girls, life has opened up in a whole new way of growth. You get
the feeling, that maybe we actually can alter fate, maybe we can really
redirect the river of destiny.
So tomorrow morning when you wake up and look into the mirror I
want you to remember that quite in spite of your weakness and your
virtues, God lives in you. God loves you. You are going to make a
difference. Amen.
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