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October 21, 2007 - 8 am
George Bennett - Student Associate Pastor
“Being
Human: Pixels in the Image of God."
Scripture: Mathew 5:43-48
43“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love
your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44But I say to you, Love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be children of your
Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and
sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46For if you love those
who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the
same? 47And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you
doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48Be perfect,
therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Prayer
God of peace and unity, we pray that this entire service – readings, music and
sermon be received today as you intend us to receive them & that our Lord
present in the Holy Spirit dwell in our hearts. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.
Introduction
Until I started taking pictures with a digital camera like this one, I had never
even heard of a pixel. It turns out that the way I understand human beings as
being created in the image of God can be demonstrated really well by combining
the terminology of the Bible with the technology of my camera. Moreover, Mathew
uses this passage of the Bible to give an overall summary of the scripture that
we call the beatitudes. You heard what he said, "48Be
perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." How do we get
meaning from an exhortation to be perfect? As president Bill Clinton would say,
it depends on what you mean by the word perfect.
Exegesis
I rely on the ministry of the apostle Paul to find a position on the image of
God, which turns out to be surprisingly inclusive. We can see in the following
words how Paul describes an individual human as only a fraction of God's image.
4For as in one body we have many members, and not all
the members have the same function, 5so we, who are many, are one body in
Christ, and individually we are members one of another. 6We have gifts that
differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith;
7ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; NRSV Rom 12:4-7
Greek medical practices had noticed that the body was a collection of parts that
had individual characteristics, but functioned as part of a whole. Paul saw this
technological understanding of the body as a great way to describe his concept
of God's image. This inclusive image portrays all humans as both necessary and
necessarily dependent upon each other.
Using today's technology, I see being human as being pixels in the image of God.
A digital camera is used to record a static image of something real. My own
camera stores these images in a block of information made up of pixels. Each
image has more than 7,000,000 pixels that represent individual information in
the overall image. Each pixel is important to the image in that it provides its
own brand of detail, like color and contrast; yet if every other pixel were
eliminated, the image (in degraded detail) would still exist. Also, if you were
to reorder the pixels into different locations, the image would continue to
exist, but in a strange configuration, like the cubist art of Picasso. You would
see a nose in the wrong place, or legs where arms should be. The pixels in a
digital image all enjoy equality. They are each fully pixel regardless of what
part of the image they form. What is more, if any one set of pixel
characteristics were to be accented in comparison to the others, the image would
be distorted. It would not be eliminated, but it would look really strange if
all of the red pixels were four times as bright as any other color.
It is important to know that nothing strange like what I have described happens
to a pixel in a digital photograph without an editor making a decision to
reorder the information in the picture. When we think of human beings as each
being one of these pixels, we need to realize that each one of us is an editor
ourselves. We change the image of God by exercising our own free-will. Just
think what would happen to digital images if each pixel had the opportunity to
act independently…. When the pixels are ordered in a way that expresses their
mutual dependence, the image is one that we can easily recognize. The image is
whole. The image is perfect.
Now we can shift from the pixel idea to a completely human situation. Based on
the cultural experience of living in America, we can acknowledge that people
must frequently choose to act as an isolated individual or as a member of a
community, which chooses to be deeply interrelated. Picture the post-partum
experience of birth. A family has just experienced the birth of their first
child, and the house is filled with the nuclear family unit, the grandparents,
distant relatives, and friends. As the weeks pass, the support system begins to
pull away. Eventually, even the grandparents leave and the infant’s parents are
alone with their child. Suddenly, one of the parents must go to work leaving a
single parent in charge of the infant. The child knows only a few states of
being; the state of sleep, the state of need, and the state of satisfaction. The
parent (often mother) realizes that they exist only to serve this infants
expectation. She now only sleeps when the child allows it. She must learn to
understand and even predict the needs of the child. She even relinquishes
self-care in terms of dressing, eating and relieving herself in the wake of the
child’s ongoing sense of need. At some point, a very real decision has to be
made in order for the previously independent parent to be at peace with her new
role.
This decision is just one example of a choice that must be constantly made by
each human being, and it is one that is modeled by Christ. This decision is an
exercise of free-will. The parent is deciding whether to devote her life to
voluntary interdependence or to seek her self-realization in isolated
independence. We can see that it is a real decision because child abandonment
occurs frequently in this world. The American culture is so sold on the notion
of independence as an ideal that I am surprised that we are not confronted with
a greater influx of abandoned children. Can you think of other choices that are
made in our society between personal independence and voluntary
interrelatedness?
Many examples of the life of Christ are fantastic for understanding Christ’s
constant commitment to voluntary interrelatedness. First, Jesus made the choice
to be incarnate. (God chose to exist in a human body that is fragile, vulnerable
and in need of constant care) Then Jesus chose to live in community with the
least of us. (We notice that throughout the life of Jesus, he places himself in
the care of the community for food, housing and all of his needs) Finally, Jesus
makes the choice in Gethsemane to give himself to the cross. What do we mean
when we say that Jesus is perfect? One of the ways that Jesus' perfection is
visible to me is in terms of his interrelated life. It is through the strength
of community and interrelatedness that I am able to find the redemption that I
see in the life and death of Christ.
Perfection is what we find Mathew clamoring for at the end of the beatitudes.
Remember? "48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly
Father is perfect."
The word that scholars are using as the source for Matthews term perfection is
Tamim, which is translated in several alternative ways. We can compare the quote
from Deuteronomy 18:13 where Tamim is translated in the following two ways.
Instead of , "You shall be perfect before the Lord your God," we have
13You must remain completely loyal to the Lord your
God.NRSV
13 You must be blameless before the LORD your God.NIV
Translators suggest that Tamim indicates wholeness, but all of these words fit
into the description of Jesus as a perfectly interrelated Human/pixel in the
image of God. Following this model, we can see that choosing to be interrelated
with our human community is a way of making the image of God recognizable. It is
a way of making the image of God visibly whole. It is a way of making the image
of God perfect.
Hermeneutic
Suddenly the dichotomies that Mathew uses in the first part of this verse are
not necessarily describing the good people and the bad people. Remember verse
45?
45so that you may be children of your Father in
heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends
rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
We human beings are both the righteous and the unrighteous. We are frequently
given the option between acting in ways that make us isolated and independent or
in ways that unite us in voluntary interrelatedness; and at least I am sure that
I don't make the choice that Jesus would make in every case.
When we take steps to be interrelated, we reap fantastic rewards. We have two
people from our congregation that have been hospitalized in the recent weeks;
Noel Argall and Shelby Watz. Shelby is recovering from a broken pelvis at the
Regent Care facility in south Reno. She explained that she has felt the comfort
of your prayers. To her it is as if Jesus is in the room with her when she is
all alone. She said that she can feel someone touching her shoulder and saying,
"It's okay Shelby, lean on me." The whole goal of being interrelated is having a
community that gives us strength when we have none of our own. Noel has finally
arrived back in Sparks after weeks of hard fought healing in San Francisco. Her
room was so filled with the flowers and cards from our community that she hardly
had a place to put her food tray. Even her son Patrick was blessed by visitors
bearing gifts of agape love. These are Noel's own words From the e-mail she sent
when she got home.
Dear friends,
After 15 long days as an inpatient at Cal Pacific Medical Center in
San Francisco, I am happy to say that I'm
finally home! Although the pain was horrific and unbearable at times, I
profoundly experienced God's grace during this 2 week period and left the
hospital with a sense of gratitude for the riches I have in my life
in family and friends(some new ones I just met),and for the knowledge that I
was being held in the palms of God's hands during this whole ordeal. Bless
you friends, and thank you all so very much for your friendship and many
prayers!
Love,
Noel"
However, Jesus is calling us further into the world of interrelatedness. He says
it is not just our friends and our sisters and brothers that we should make
sacrifices for, but also those that we see as enemies. Our community has an
opportunity to reach out beyond our own intimate church walls. Reno First U.M.C.
is the only reconciling church in the state of Nevada. While the judicial
council of the United Methodist Church is meeting in San Francisco, we have an
opportunity to join the prayerful witness of hundreds of United Methodists
people that are passionately advocating for the inclusive treatment of the LGBT
community. These are fellow Christians, and equally loved pixels in the image of
God that work and worship within the congregations all over America in a state
of quiet persecution…. If you are interested in participating in this act of
interrelatedness, see my after the service. I am organizing a group, and the
opportunity will be gone shortly.
How do we dare to envision the perfection that Mathew speaks of on an
international level? Can we see ourselves calling for an end to economic
imperialism? Can we see ourselves joining organizations that are committed to
bringing an end to war? I realize that this is where the message gets to be more
of a challenge. Now there is risk. Now we are being asked to give away our
security or our privileges. When it comes down to it, feeding the poor means
giving up food. Eliminating poverty means relinquishing unnecessary wealth.
As pixels in the image of God, our choices are the very thing that make God's
image recognizable. When we eliminate the distortion that takes place by our own
drives toward isolated independence, we make God's image whole. When we
volunteer to be interrelated by seeking justice throughout God's creation, the
image of God becomes perfect therefore, as our heavenly Father is perfect.
Amen.
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