The Work of God's Fingers

Genesis 2: 4– 25

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

 In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground;  but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground—  then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.  And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.  Out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches.  The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;  and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there.  The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush.  The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.  And the LORD God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”  So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.  The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.  So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.  And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.  Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

this one shall be called Woman,

for out of Man this one was taken.”

Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.  And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.  

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 honor.

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!

Mark 3: 1-6

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand.  They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him.  And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.”  Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent.  He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.  The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.  

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Isn’t Psalm 8 beautiful?  That Psalm we just read responsively?

When I consider the work of your fingers – the moon and stars and heavens – the big, big picture of your universe –

Who are we in your sight?

What is humanity that you are mindful of us?

Why is it that you care for us – mere mortals on this round speck of earth, out in the midst of all your heavens?

Yet –

You have made humanity just a little lower than God, than angels, than divine beings.

You have crowned humanity with glory and honor. Those are divine crowns, crowns that we would normally reserve for you.

Is this what you mean when you say we are created in your image, in the image of God? That we have crowns of glory and honor?

But that’s not all. We also have dominion – both rights and responsibilities, as a sovereign would - over all the works of your hands. Participating with you, we tend the soil, we care for the animals and the birds and the fish and the crawly things. You have expectations for us that come along with those crowns of glory and honor.

We share and participate in God’s ongoing work of creation – and also in the stewardship of the earth and of humanity.

It’s a shared responsibility: it is NOT everyone for themselves – it is NOT a life built on figuring out how to make it alone.

It’s a three – way participation – God, humanity, and creation. And God’s fingerprints are all over all of humanity, and all of creation.

In Genesis 1 we heard that humans are made in the image of God.

In Genesis 2, which we heard this morning, God basically sits down on the ground, gathers up some dirt or clay, and shapes us out of it.  We are created out of dust into the image of God.

I can almost imagine God there, like an artist doing a self-portrait, creating a likeness, but not the real thing; siting there with a mirror, looking up from time to time to gaze into it and to capture the nuances and minute details of the image of God, in order to translate them just right into this lump of clay.

Have you ever tried to make something look like it does it’s supposed to look, using Play-Doh or modeling clay? I don’t know about you, but I find it incredibly hard to make clay turn into something recognizable, other than maybe a badly shaped bowl, or maybe a snake….

Take a moment and close your eyes, and try to imagine this scene – God shaping dust or dirt or clay into a man in the image of God. What does this man, and later this woman, look like in your minds’ eye?

Can you see skin color, or hair color, or size, or shape, or the nose, or ears, or smile?

When I try to do this, in my imagination, it tends to look like someone with similarities to me – or maybe a 20-something version of me!

Created in the image of God. The work of God’s fingers. Not just our looks, but our character. Our hearts. Created in the image of God’s heart. Our minds in the image of God’s mind.

This means that when we look at one another, we see the image of God reflected in one another. Take a look now at the person sitting next to you, in front of you, behind you. All in the image of God. God creates us with attention to minute details. And we are all different. There is no one “perfect” image of God – we all are. All our diversities, all those things we might see as flaws in ourselves – they’re not flaws. They are part of who we are as children of God, made in the image of God.

Some of you had the same privilege I had, of getting to know Ruth Eraybar during the short time that she was part of our community, after moving here from Elkhart, Indiana, and before returning to the loving arms of her creator God. Ruth had meningioma, a disease that creates benign brain tumors. When we first met her, when she first came to worship with us, her face had already been reshaped as a result of the tumors and the treatments she had endured. She looked nothing like she had just two years before. Starting from my first visit with her, she had some challenging spiritual questions. At one point early on, she took off her glasses, and put her face right up close to mine, and said, “Is this the image of God?”

The answer for Ruth is yes. The answer is yes for all of us who feel too inadequate or too flawed or too unworthy of behaving like the human beings that God created us to be, those mortals that God breathed God-life into, breathed the Holy Spirit into.

Because God takes on our suffering as well.  God takes on our suffering and our sin in the person of Jesus Christ, in the life and death and resurrection of Christ. God redeems our suffering and our sin, once and for all time. There is no part of our lives that God does not participate in, does not walk with us through, does not offer the healing that comes from faith, hope, and love, through the work of the Holy Spirit, as it’s  shown in the love and care of others. There is no situation where someone in the community cannot reach out, to be the image of God for someone else in need.

God suffers when we suffer.

God grieves when we grieve.

God longs for us to turn back to God, to live our lives as if we understood that we are God’s children, we all are God’s children, part of God’s family. All of us.

The refugee crisis happening in the European Union is the worst the world has seen since World War II. It’s been going on for months, but this past week the world was shocked into mutual horror and grief by one photograph of one small child on the shore, by the story of his family, by the seeming hopelessness of it all.

While governments are taking and remaking official stands which limit the number and type of refugees they are willing to take in, people all over the world are recognizing this as a humanitarian crisis, and are assembling to offer help in a myriad of ways – collecting and providing food, water, diapers and formula, funding travel costs to sponsor families to relocate to Iceland and Canada, including taking them into their homes, as well as donating to organizations that are directly helping, including Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, among many others. Many who have stepped forward to help have quoted the Word of God as their basis, remembering and proclaiming how God’s people were refugees and exiles, forced over and over from their homes to escape oppression and terrorism. The Passover meal that Jesus shared with his disciples on the night before his arrest, was a meal specifically to remember God’s providence in rescuing and saving the people of Israel. And as we participate with Christ in that meal today, we also remember not only the times of oppression, but also a time of life-saving redemption in Him.

When Jesus put the question to the people in the synagogue – is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill? He was challenging their humanity, putting it right up against the law. And their response – was silence.

Mark’s gospel says “he looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart”. He has the man stretch out his withered hand, and it is restored right then and there.

Jesus shows us what matters. Jesus knows their hearts, knows that they will use this action against him, this action they are taking on the Sabbath will ultimately lead to them killing him; that they will do whatever it takes to try to eliminate him. He is not deterred. He restores the man to wholeness, Sabbath or no Sabbath.

The Lord God has made us just a little lower than God, than the angels. God has given us all the rights and responsibilities of being God’s children, participants in the stewardship of humanity and of creation. Christ has come and saved us already from death, and has told us not to be afraid of what could happen in our lives – but to follow him, to feed his sheep, to trust in him and him alone.

When we look at the faces of those in need, which is all of us, really – do we see the image of God? Or do we default to judgment based on what we think is right? When Jesus looks at our hearts, will he see hardness, or hearts that are breaking open with love and sorrow for the plight of our brothers and sisters? Will he see conditional love, only for those who we determine are “like us”, “part of our tribe”? Or will he see us responding in self-giving love, behaving like human beings, in ways small or large, without letting fear or distrust have the upper hand, the final word?

Let us pray.

Holy Spirit, Spirit of the Living God, soften our hearts. Give us the grace and courage to be your people, to recognize your image in the faces of others, down the street or on the other side of the world. Give us the generosity and kindness to reach out our hands and let them be your hands, to allow others to experience your touch of healing through our words, through our actions, through our self-giving love. Let us welcome others to this table, and let us go out from this table nourished and ready to serve you.

We ask this and we do this, all in the name of Jesus Christ who gave everything for us and for our salvation.

Amen.