Who do you think you are? - Sermon
Genesis 1:26-28; John 3:1-21
Have you ever been asked a question and as you think about the answer discover the question is not really the real question?
A friend asked me why do I need forgiveness?
He not was asking about needing forgiveness for something he had done. The forgiveness he was talking about was what the Church speaks of when talking about the sin of humanity, the sin of Adam and Eve and the fall.
I agree, logically there seems no sense in this; why should I or anyone be held accountable for someone else’s badness, poor decisions and selfishness.
In our culture forgiveness always needs blame for it to be necessitated.
So when I looked at this question I seemed to go round in circles. On the face of it, it seems that as humans we have inherited the sin of Adam and Eve and are therefore equally guilty. Here I found a conundrum. Forgiving someone means they did something wrong. And as I wasn’t there at the fall I didn’t do it; so why do I need forgiveness?
How can I be blamed for what another has done? How can I be blamed for a previous generation’s actions? I may or may not have done the same thing; but the reality remains I did not do this thing; in fact it was done before my existence.
Also if I inherited the sin then it’s not my fault, after all you don’t say someone is wrong for inheriting hair, eye or skin colour, body shape or artistic ability!
I realised that this idea boils down to thinking we need forgiveness because we are human. This again made no sense to me – God made me human so why would I need forgiveness for that!
Then a light came on.
God made me and every human being in His image, to be like him in character, in personality, in motivation.
But do we fully see this in ourselves? Do we see it in others? Do we live from this reality. I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t. Too often we live from our pettiness, from our judging criticalness; from our woundedness.
Just because we are ignorant of who we are does not change the reality of who we really are
But sometimes we see who God made us to be, then we are free to be loving, gracious, kind, good to others, caring and responsible towards creation. Sometimes we see God’s image in others. Then we are drawn to them, we find ourselves loving them, caring about them, being respectful and honouring towards them.
Then another light bulb went on, God knows who he made me to be, he knows who he made you to be.
Julian of Norwich saw in one of the revelations God gave her that;
“God judges us by our true inner nature, which is always kept whole in him; safe and sound. And this judgement comes from his rightfulness, whereas we judge by the outward changeable nature… In His judgement I saw Him assign no whit of blame to us.”
This is amazing good news, we are made in God’s image and he keeps that true nature safe and sound. He made us completely human, that is a person with the characteristics of God in our very DNA.
As we are created in God’s image our true nature is like God’s nature; good kind, loving, gracious and merciful; this nature is also creative and desirous of unity and community. It is also a nature which honours and cares for all creation.
The problem we have is that we have forgotten this; we no longer know who we are.
We do not recognise ourselves or others as being made in God’s image. This false reality has estranged us from God and causes division with others.
I love the writings of Richard Rohr; he has a way of bringing us back to the essence of God, the truth of who we are and the reality of life and in this journey he reveals the mistakenness of our contemporary beliefs. He says in the “Naked Now”;
“You can, therefore, be ignorant of your birthright. You can neglect the gift and thus not enjoy its wonderful fruits. That seems to be the case with many people, and is what we mean by “sinners”.”
We have become accustomed to sin meaning some heinous act of violence or immorality. We too often have determined that sinners are those who don’t believe what we believe or act like we think they should! This brings up not only guilt but defensiveness, division and resentment.
Yet when I look at sin in scripture, it says that sin is falling short or missing the mark; that is more akin to acting in ways contrary to my true nature, believing myself to be different to who I really am, one who is made in the image of God.
Do you see the implication of what is said here? Sin is not our bad behaviour; it is not knowing who you are. We neglect the gift of our life!
Because we don’t know who we are, or who others are, that is wonderful humans created in God’s image; we behave badly, we do awful things to ourselves and to others. We destroy creation.
Because of our sin, that is our not knowing who we truly are, we are blind to the true realities to the point where we think that our darkness and misconceptions are true and so we struggle to keep control, to make our lives comfortable, to push down our deep anguish and desires.
How are we to rediscover who we are, to live in the reality of the life that God created us to have?
God knew we couldn’t do this on our own. He knew that we lost the truth of who we were made to be early on -Adam & Eve forgot who they were, forgot they were made in God’s image & so they thought they needed something outside of God and who he made them to make them better.
Throughout history, throughout the Bible we see God doing things to remind us; but we had become blind. So He sent Jesus. Jesus, the full example of what it means to be fully and completely human made in God’s image. He sent Jesus so we would know how much we are loved by God. He sent Jesus to show us who we are. He sent Jesus to show us what life is meant to look like.
We just read that Jesus came so “anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.”
For me this changes everything!
As I look at the character of God I see no desire from him to blame us. He knows who and what we are and has a deep desire for loving close relationship with us humans who are made in his image.
I love the story of the prodigal son, the son goes off to do his thing but the father never gives up hope of the son returning. The father never forgets who the son really is. He never gives up hope of the son coming back to the life he was born into. When at last the son comes home he comes expecting the worst, he’s ready to beg & to accept being a slave! Instead his dad throws a party and dresses him up for it in Armani and gold! That’s my Papa! That’s your heavenly Dad!
Forgiveness then from God’s perspective is not about blame, it is about healing relationship.
Jesus’ call to forgiveness is a call to a healed relationship with God, ourself and each other. It’s a call change what we thought we knew about ourselves, for we did not really know who we are;
Perhaps we should find a different word rather than forgiveness if we have an automatic response to the word that indicates blame.
Certainly in Greek the words used which we translate as forgiveness mean:
to set free, to release, to become fully free.
Jesus’ call is also a call to change your mind/beliefs/emotions about God and his kingdom, for we did not really know who God is and what his kingdom is about.
What is clear is that God loves us and wants relationship with us more than anything else.
He sent Jesus his Son to tell us, to show us and to live it.
Jesus was very clear; he said he did not come to condemn but to bring abundant life – a life reconciled with God and reconciled to who we really are. Reconciliation implies there was estrangement but now there is a restored and healed relationship.
This is the good news; God loves us and wants us to have deep intimate relationship with him and each other; his desire is for unity.
God is not some harsh judge wanting to meet out punishment for our crime of being failed humans, cruelly wanting to see us begging for forgiveness. No!
God is the one who created us each in his loving caring unified image, who created us not to be clones but rather a fantastic picture of all the different and unique qualities that he possesses, so each of us is unique and different from the other but possessing the fundamental goodness of God, each of us as we are reconciled to God though his love & graciousness begins to show facets of his beautiful character. His desire is deep intimate relationship with each of us individually, corporately and in the wholeness of all creation.
So let us come to the table, willing to see his love for us; willing to meet Jesus who came to draw us back to the Father, willing to let His body and blood and the transforming work of Holy Spirit return us to knowing and being all we are created to be, fully human yet made in the image of God.
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