The Rev Dr Rebecca L. Kiser
All In God’s Image
6/7/2020 Trinity A
A pastor colleague in Myrtle Beach posted this
challenge on facebook this week - share the most recent beautiful nature
picture in your photos! I posted a picture of the beautiful yellow forsythia
from my apartment complex. Others posted
pictures of lilies, rainbows, orchids, backyards, gorgeous old trees - and
more. Part of the fun of spring for me
is watching all the different flowers and flowering plants come out - all the
varieties, all the colors, all the sizes.
And did you notice? All the trees
aren’t the same green! And some branches
go up and others hang down, and they are all sizes, and all with different
barks and leaves. When God made the
earth bring forth plants and such, it wasn’t just one kind of flower in one
color - imagine if the only flower created was a yellow marigold - anyone who
wanted flowers in their yard had only displays of yellow marigolds. Creation
wasn’t just one kind of tree, so that there was just one kind of tree
everywhere in the forests - all pine trees, for example.
And God didn’t stop with one kind of
fish, or one kind of mammal. In fact,
there wasn't just one dog variety or one dog color; there wasn’t just one cat
variety and one cat color. There wasn’t
just one breed of cows, and all the horses looked exactly the same!
When God created, God had way too
much fun with sizes and colors and breeds and necks and noses and beaks and
feet and wings and scents and all kinds of any variable!! When God made stars, God threw millions of
them out. When God made sea creatures,
God made zillions. Plants, too. And land
animals. And not just cute, cuddly
things, either - some of my friends online are into pictures of baby goats of
all things, and there was a baby platypus the other day, too. God also made icky bugs and stinky animals,
like the cartoon I sent out - maybe they aren’t so cute and cuddly, but, you
know, they are a part of nature and important to the environment we live
in. I like alphabet books, and here’s
one my sons bought me - the Icky Bug Alphabet book!
When God made planets, God made
plenty of them; the earth’s land is full
of diversity, too - hot, cold, water, ice, mountains, valleys, glaciers,
beaches - not to mention all the layers underneath!
Doesn’t it make sense that when God
made humans, God also made lots of variety?
This creation story we read today only mentions male and female made in
God’s image. Yes, women and girls as
well as men and boys. We’re all in God’s
image. But God didn’t stop with just a
couple flowers or a couple colors or a couple sizes in anything else - humans,
too come in all shapes and sizes and colors!
There is simply LOTS of science in how and why all these varieties
exist, for different climates, or different amounts of sun, or whatever
influenced different characteristics in our DNA - there is WAY too much for any
one person to comprehend all the fields of study of creation in depth. And people are still discovering even more,
as we’ve made instruments to see far distances as well as see microscopically.
God’s creation is magnificent and
marvelous, and considering all this can overwhelm our minds and emotions, and
we cry, Praise! We are overawed.
These last weeks have again brought
up to our consciousness that not all humans are appreciated like other humans,
or treated like other humans. It seems like most nations have a dominant race,
with their dominant culture; and things that they design naturally are designed
for people like themselves. And that
dominant group tends to think their culture is really the only real culture and
right culture - everyone should adjust and become like them, then things would
be fine. Except that its not in our
control what race or color we’re born into; nor is it in our control what
disabilities we may be born with, or what family we are born into, or what
gender we may be born with (although there’s some evidence that gender may be
more fluid than we’ve assumed). Yet it’s
a part of our faith that humanity is created by God and in the image of God, no
distinctions.
Sorting people into hierarchies, or
into an “us” and a “them,” seems to be almost an innate thing. We learn to sort and order things early in
our childhood - I remember all those worksheets coming home with my children on
“different and alike.” Somewhere along
the way, the group with the most alike people decided they were the normal
ones, & the best ones, & the other kinds were lesser . Maybe back in
our tribal origins, it was important to know what tribe we were in, and work
for that tribe, and know how our tribe does things, be scared of other tribes
and their ways. Our Hebrew Scriptures,
for example, talk a lot about the tribe of Israel - Israel’s descendents, as
the people of the promise, the people who worshipped the real God and
correctly; God made covenants with them, took them to be God’s own people, and
to not intermarry with those of other tribes. Racial purity is a thing in the
Hebrew Scriptures, yes. And Judaism
merges racial identity with religious identity and national identity in quite a
mix. I’d like to read a Rabbi talking
about that.
As I said last week,
Christ-followers are called to enlarge our tribe, draw the circle bigger of who
is like us. Who our family is is suddenly not a matter of shared DNA, or shared
color, or shared language, or shared nation…..our family is now a family of
believers, and even the whole family of those for whom Christ came, died, and
rose. Our larger unity is now the unity
of humanity, earthlings, people made in God’s image. We are now all one species, who live on one planet. In Christ there is no hierarchy - we are
sisters and brothers. The way we’ve
learned to love our nuclear family and extended families, the way we’ve learned
to care for family members, share with family members, help out family members
- this sense of family needs to expand to our family in Christ, in God.
I didn’t read the 1 Corinthians text
assigned for today, which is that text about how we are all members of the body
of Christ, like hands and feet and ears and toes etc are parts of our bodies. And it says, if one part hurts, the body
hurts. Well, that’s true! If a virus invades my lungs, it's not just my
lungs that are sick - I am sick. If I
break my leg, my whole body has to cope.
If my intestines are gurgling, it’s going to affect all of me sooner or
later. If my pituitary gland, which is
about the size of a pea, is malfunctioning, it affects all the hormones
and systems in my body. Our body parts are interconnected; just so
are we, members of Christ’s body, interconnected. Just so is the human species interconnected,
as well as interconnected with all nature and creation.
It hurts all of us that the black
people in our country, offspring of the slaves imported here by our white
ancestors, are carrying so much of the poverty, poor education, lack of
opportunity; and are victims of discrimination and suspicion while walking,
hiking, driving, shopping, whatever.
Realizing that Black lives Matter is an important step in broadening
that circle of family for us. It’s a
realization that for most of us, our circles have mainly included other folks
of some kind of whiteness. When we’ve
thought of “people like us,” color has been a factor; now the challenge is to
broaden who we think of as “like us,”
and listen as they tell us what their experience is of living in this
system we created for people like us - which hasn’t been the same experience
we’ve had. Our country has taken many
important steps in attempting to overcome racism; not everyone in our country
has liked it, although many of us have.
There are still more steps to take, in both our government and in our
hearts.
When we celebrate communion, like we
do today, we are celebrating the promises of God and the work of Christ for all
people, all humans. Gathered around us
at this table are people of many colors, many nations, many languages, and many
cultures. We are gathered to give thanks
to God for the blessings of creation, the blessings of how God has sought
humans throughout history, and how God sent Christ to help bring us all back to
a good relationship with our maker - and to each other. I’ve chosen a couple hymns from the religious traditions of our
black sisters and brothers for this service, as we support the work of
enlarging our circles of who is like us, who is family. AMEN.
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