What Are You Made Of?

Reverend Philip Stringer

Genesis 1:1-2:4

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Matthew 28:16-20

LET US PRAY: You, O Lord, are the author of life. Speak to our hearts and fill us with the breath of your Spirit, that we may live and move in your ways, all the days of our life. AMEN

This morning I had a piece of cheesecake from Camino Bakery in Winston-Salem. I often read something when eating breakfast and for lack of anything better to read today, I read the ingredient label on the cheesecake:

Sugar Chocolate Chips

Eggs Butter

Cocoa powder, etc.

If not completely healthy, at least these ingredients are natural and wholesome.

Reading the labels on many of the things in the pantry isn’t as easy. A bottle of salad dressing has things like:

Monosodium glutamate Phosphoric acid

Disodium guanylate Disodium inosinate

Potassium sorbet Sodium benzoate

Calcium disodium EDTA (whatever that is).

We’ve all read those labels that have ingredients we can’t pronounce — it’s easier to NOT read the label. Sometimes you just don’t want to know. “Eh. I may not know what it is, but it sure tastes good.”

Looking at our readings for today is sort of like reading the ingredients labels on you and me. They are texts that tell us about who we are — what we are made of.

If I were to ask you what you are made of, the first thing you might wonder is what kind of answer am I after? Do I want a physical description, then the answer is things like — muscle and bone — amino acids — neurons.

But maybe I’m asking a different kind of question. Maybe it’s a question of character and fortitude. Are you tough or timid? Are you like Mother Teresa or Genghis Khan? What are you made of?

Much like reading the ingredient labels on food packaging, there are likely some things in us that are good and wholesome and some things that are not — and probably a lot of things that we don’t understand.

The cheesecake label I read this morning actually had three different ingredient lists — one for the crust, one for the cheesecake and one for the frosting. Perhaps we are like that, too — there is the basic set of ingredients, and then there is the frosting.

Our scripture texts today go beneath the frosting, as it were; They go deeper than the qualities we often look at and get to the core of who we are — the basic ingredients, the foundational substance.

There are actually two creation accounts given in the beginning chapters of the book of Genesis. Between the two of them, the question of who we are is addressed in both its arenas. What are you made of? Genesis tells us we are made of the stuff of creation — “clay.” We are mortal. That is what you are made of. Ash Wednesday: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

But it also tells us that we are created in the image of God.

I believe that to say “we are created in the image of God” means that we are created after the nature of God — the character of God — and if that is the case, if we are to answer the question of what we are made of, we must look to the God in who’s image we are created.

So, let’s look at what Genesis teaches us about God, and as I lift up the attributes of God, I invite you to consider what this means for your own life and existence as one who is created in God’s image.

The Book of Genesis tells us that God creates. God gives life. And not just in chaotic form, but God gives life and establishes life in relationships. God brings together.

Particle to particle, atom to atom,

molecule to molecule,

species to species to environment.

And God orders the universe as well, putting everything in its proper place;

dry land and sea,

light and dark,

sky and earth.

When God creates humanity we see relationships lifted up again when God doesn’t consider the work as complete until there are two, established in relationship with each other and given a purpose (to have dominion — and dominion, as we have seen it modeled by God, is for constructive purpose. This is what God does: God creates; puts in order; gives life; establishes relationship. It is an on-going process and continues to be the work that God does.

Throughout the Bible we see that God is constructive, not destructive. God supports what is good, blessing it with God’s own presence.

Each day of creation ends with the blessing of God’s affirmation.

Each act of faith by Abraham,

each promise of faithfulness to covenant,

each confession of sin and act of repentance receives the blessing of God. For each of these is a coming together — and healing of the unity that God intends. When lives are brought together, when wounds are healed, the creative work of God continues and God says, “yes.”

What, then, does it mean in your life that you are created in the image of God? How are you being called to create and bless and heal the world around you?

The Bible tells us that God also says “no.” God says “no” to those things that divide and destroy. God curses — that is dooms — what is evil, cutting off his life-giving presence from it. Sin is the opposite of the nature of God. It separates people from God, from each other, and from creation. It breaks the relationships that God has established. It disrupts the order of the universe.

Each act of selfishness, every act that brings about suffering, every abuse of creation, every attempt to destroy receives the “no” of God. For each of these is a tearing apart and destruction of what God is creating. When lives are torn apart, when suffering is inflicted, evil is at work and God says, “no.” So, what does it mean for your life that you are created in the image of God? In what ways are you being called to stand against the forces that tear down and divide in the world around you?

And, of course, when seeking the attributes of God we look to Jesus. Martin Luther proclaimed, “I can know no other God than the one revealed to me in Jesus Christ.” In Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, in his teachings and in his works, we see all of the attributes of God expressed. Jesus gave life; he blessed relationships, saying “yes” to those things that brought people together, and “no” to those things that divided. He alleviated human suffering, he said “no” to dividing people as acceptable and unacceptable — clean and unclean — loved and unloved. He restored order to the world around him, insisting upon equity between people, and casting demons into the sea. By his own death and resurrection he embraced all of humanity. He unifies us and makes us one. He does the opposite of what sin does. He brings people together with God, each other and creation.

What does it mean, then — in YOUR life — that you are created in the image of the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ?

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday. When we speak of God as three in one, we are referring to the ongoing dynamic of giving and receiving and loving that is within God. The giving that takes place within the Trinity is what is truly Holy and worthy of worship. The perfection of and completeness of God’s love is what makes God, God.

In the same way, we are only fully what we are created to be, if we are giving. Fullness of life comes in the experience of giving. This is the expression of one in communion with the image of God. Those who give in love are living in the fashion of their maker. Or more simply put, when we love is when we are most like God.

The world and the sinfulness of our hearts makes it hard to remember these core ingredients of who we are. Like the artificial ingredients and colorings in food. Doritos may taste good, but I have never seen them listed as part of a healthy diet.

Margaret and the Oregon Trail game — traded away her last two bullets for food — and she died with a wagon full of candy.

We long to serve ourselves, to measure ourselves AGAINST our neighbor -- Even while we work to feed the hungry around us, what often goes unaddressed by us is the fact that we WANT poor people in the world — because poor people will work to provide us with the things that we want at a cheap price. And when people don’t have power, then we feel a little safer. That is one of those ingredients that makes it easier to just not read the label, because we don’t want to know.

Being made in the image of God is serious business, however. It means that we cannot be satisfied with such inequity, for we are made to love and to give; to reject not only the oppression WE suffer, but especially the oppression suffered by those who have no voice or strength.

In our gospel reading for today, the risen Jesus has directed them to a mountain in Galilee. In the Gospel of Matthew, whenever something happens on a mountain you know it is something important. Matthew is the one who presents us with the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus’ temptation takes place on a mountain.

The Transfiguration takes place on a mountain.

And in our reading for today, it is on a mountain that Jesus reveals the mission given to his followers — the passage known to us as, “The Great Commission:”

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

As Christians, our primary concern is to lead people to the fullness of life that is theirs in Christ Jesus. Through our baptism into Christ, we are drawn into the divine relationship of giving. Even as we fail to do this perfectly, God remains faithful, and through the power of grace and God’s Holy Spirit, we are made partners with God — co-creators with God.

Paul points to this ingredient in his Second Letter to the Church in Corinth.

The Corinthians were being torn apart by in-fighting, boasting and people comparing themselves to each other. Our second reading today is from his conclusion to that letter — and in it we can see him pointing to the attributes of God. His prayer is that the qualities — the ingredients that make God who God is — that these qualities will be known and treasured by the community — and that by experiencing these they will receive healing.

And so he says to them, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

One of the things I find most encouraging in this passage is that Paul separates the bad ingredients to expose the core ingredients below. In other words — Even though they are failing miserably, Paul still calls them “brothers and sisters.” He still sees the basic ingredients of God within them. They are held in relationship through God’s grace.

Did they listen to Paul’s words and take them to heart? We don’t have any written record that documents what happened to the church in Corinth. But they saved the letter, didn’t they?

The great commission of Christ, that you should go and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, isn’t just a calling for you to live as partners with God — it is part of the ingredient list of who you are; it is a calling for you to live as the people you are created to be.

AMEN