You Are Created In God’s Image (MPLS)

Psalm 8

O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouths of babes and infants you have founded a bulwark because of your foes, to silence the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

A fundamental teaching of scripture is that we are created in the image of God. It’s often referred to by its Latin translation: Imago Dei. When John Noltner came to Minneapolis and Minnetonka to take people’s pictures and to gather up their hopes and dreams for Bethlehem, he was giving us a glimpse of Imago Dei. The term comes from Genesis 1: “Male and female God created them. And they were created in the image of God.”

It’s a generous, expansive description that has room for people of every body type and gender expression and skin color and age and ability. There’s room for freckles and birthmarks and wrinkles, too. And all of those things and more show up in John Noltner’s photography. If you haven’t yet seen the video, set aside an extra 10 minutes. It’s well worth your time. 

Plain and simple, friends, you bear the image of God and it is beautiful! That image is more than skin deep, of course. It permeates us from inside out. It shows up in the way we think and move and function. If you’re good at math or can play the trumpet like the angel Gabriel, that’s the image of God. If you have a quick wit or can easily express your feelings to others, that’s the image of God. And on the less-lofty side of things, if you have an unsteady gait or an occasional senior moment, that’s the image of God, too.

To be honest, most days this is difficult for us to believe. The message that we are created in God’s image runs counter to much of what we see and hear in our stylized, photoshopped world. It’s hard enough for confident, well-adjusted people to believe it. If you happen to have low self-esteem or chronic pain or a bodily abnormality, it can be nigh unto impossible. So let me say it again: You bear the image of God and it is beautiful!

The soaring pictures coming from the Webb Telescope can make us feel small, a little like looking up at a star-filled sky on a dark night, far away from the lights of the city. For Eric Smith, lead scientist on the Webb project, it’s just the opposite. “When I see these pictures,” he says, “they make me feel powerful.” 

Is that a good thing? Maybe. A lot of it depends on what we do about the feelings inside of us. For Eric Smith, I think, the pictures from the Webb Telescope restore his faith in humanity. He comments: “When we set out to do something, we find that we can do it.”

The theme of Psalm 8 is not so far away from Eric Smith’s thinking. But here’s the difference: the psalmist sees humanity as powerful because we are created in the image of God, “a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor.” And the critical point is this: “God has given us dominion over the works of God’s hands.” Amazing!

The word in Hebrew is mashal. It’s regularly translated as “dominion,” and is sometimes wrongly understood as “domination.” Mashal is most often used in the Hebrew Bible to describe the rule of a king over his people. Nancy deClaisse-Walford writes that God’s ideal for a monarch’s rule was not that of arbitrary or absolute power. In ancient society, it was the king’s primary responsibility “to provide a place where people could live in safety and peace, raise their animals and grow their crops, be treated with justice and equity, and be cared for if they were not able to care for themselves.” In other words, monarchs were to strive for kindness and well-being and plenty for all. 

According to the psalmist, those things may have been in the job description of the king per se, but they equally applied to the job description of every human being. Each of us bears the charge of striving for kindness and well-being and plenty for all. Each of us is to protect and preserve God’s creation—the plants and animals and people. That’s dominion. That’s the heart and soul of what it means to be created in the image of God.

And truth be told, often that’s where we run into a stumbling block. In our increasingly divisive world, we often don’t have the bandwidth for understanding and accepting the realities of those not in our tribe. Whether our division is the result of partisan media, the rhetoric spouted by our political leaders, or the information silos in which we find ourselves, on many days Bethlehem’s mission of sharing in the work of God’s vision for a healed world seems far beyond our reach.

Unfortunately, our divisive thinking can have dangerous consequences. In her book “Braving the Wilderness,” Brene Brown calls out our tendency to reduce people with whom we disagree as “dehumanizing.” Our brains like to keep things simple, Brown says, so we end up with categories such as: we are good and they are bad. Just walk through a neighborhood, look at the lawn signs, and see if you don’t start making generalizations about who is living in that house. And if you take it a step further, see if you don’t sometimes wonder how they could possibly reflect the image of God.

We saw an example of this over the July 4th weekend. There were disturbances at the Stone Arch Bridge and Boom Island. Minneapolis City Council member Michael Rainville singled out the disturbers not simply as youth, but as Somali American youth. With a tone of indignation, Rainville said he planned to sit down with Somali American leaders and tell them that “their children can no longer have that type of behavior.” 

Now, maybe this reaction feels innocuous enough, until you think about how often we readily give kids the benefit of the doubt—kids being kids. But what happens when we hold up a certain group of them as troublemakers? It’s bound to feel more personal. And speaking from my own experience, because I now have a Somali American daughter-in-law, I get concerned that any future grandchildren of mine might be looked upon as suspect because of that association.

Michael Rainville eventually apologized. I give him credit for that. It’s a reminder, though, that we need to be careful. Our words have power. There can be lasting, hurtful consequences in how we speak about others. 

Michael Gerson, columnist for the Washington Post, wrote an article about the responsibility Christians bear in relating to others. He said: “During every generation across two millennia, Christians have faced the question: do they oppose and confront the worst elements of the culture, or do they reflect and amplify them?” 

Gerson answered: “In our time—and in just about every time—the most dangerous human failure is the dehumanization of others. To justify our callousness and cruelty, we tend to diminish the value and dignity of their object. It is dehumanization that results in racism. It is dehumanization that leads to sexual abuse and exploitation. It is dehumanization that breaks the bonds between citizens and turns disagreement into hatred and violence.”

Gerson concluded: “People of faith are not the only source of humanizing morality in our society. But they are called to stand for the idea that every human being is created equally valuable in the image of God.” 

Please hear me: believing all people are created equally valuable and in the image of God is tremendously challenging. It does not mean nodding politely and moving on when there are wrongs to be righted. In the face of injustice, we are called to speak boldly. Indeed, that is a central element of mashal—of dominion—of the work of the king and those acting in the king’s stead. Until there is kindness and well-being and plenty for all, then any kindness for which we strive may ring hollow.

Friends, as we at Bethlehem share in the work of God’s vision for a healed world, hopefully our efforts help us more fully bear God’s image. Hopefully our efforts show the face of our Lord Jesus and the grace he so regularly practiced. We bear God’s image when we treat people as individuals, and not as labels; when we preserve their dignity instead of dehumanizing them; when we accept that their opinions and experiences are valid, even if they do not match our own; when we work to ascribe positive intent as much as possible because they, like us, may simply be trying to do the best they can.

Friends, you are created in the image of God. Celebrate that. And don’t forget that that image shows up in Jesus, too. His deep and expansive love shows us the way. And it reminds us that we bear Christ’s image to the world—and it is beautiful! Amen.