Creekside Church Sermon of May 30, 1999 "Just Human?" Genesis 1:26-28 Psalms 8	Rev. David Bibbee
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Jim lived in a little house 150 yards from the signal tower. It would be a very lonely, difficult job, and Jack wanted to help, at least until Jim could make the necessary adjustments. At first, Jack was mainly company. He swept the floors, pumped well water, tended the garden and took care of whatever Jim could not. There was a single seat trolley from the house to the signal tower. Jack pushed Jim on that trolley several times each day and watched him operate the sequence of levers. In time it became so familiar Jack walked to the tower and operated the signals himself.

Soon, in addition to housekeeping and gardening, Jack took over the duties of the railroad...though not an employee. The job had much to remember. If a point had to be adjusted further up the line, Jack had to listen for the train, flag it down and give a special key to make the adjustments. Every day Jack worked the levers to set the signals and worked the tower controls that opened and closed the siding switches.

In time, Jack was doing everything, but he never complained. His friend had gone through such an awful ordeal. It was the least he could do, for a while, anyway. But weeks became months and months became years. For nearly 10 years Jack kept house, pumped water, tended the garden, and operated the heavy equipment in the signal tower. But Jack contracted tuberculosis and died.

In all those years, Jack, who never worked on the railroad and never had seen a signal tower, never made a mistake. He never threw switches incorrectly, never sided a car in error. There never was an accident or near miss. Jack is buried in Cape Colony, South Africa, not far from the outpost where he worked all those years, all because he loved his friend. But there is something about Jack you ought to know. This friend who cleaned house, pumped water, tended the garden, and manned the switch tower, wasn't a man. Jack was a baboon.

It wouldn't be right to say Jack was "just" a baboon, would it? He was a very remarkable, resourceful primate. To tie the word "just" to anything lessens its importance and uniqueness. Golf is not just a game. A walleye is not just a fish. Pavarotti is not just a singer. Look up the word "just" in Webster's, and you will find words like "barely, only, simply, a small margin". This is why I cringe a little bit when people pepper their prayers with "just". "I just want to thank you, Jesus." "We just want to praise your name." But if you are "just" thanking him and praising him, why bother?

But all this is nothing compared to applying "just" to people. People do particularly distressing, even disgusting, and we say, "Well, what do you expect? We're just human." You will find agreement with this assessment among those who have a cynical perspective on humanity. You won't, however, find it in the scriptures. In Genesis, you don't hear God say after filling the seas with countless living creatures and the skies with birds, "Oh... it's just lots of fins and feathers." When God created cattle, reptiles and wild animals, God didn't say, "Oh...it's just a big zoo." No...with each new creation God congratulated Himself for doing such a fine job. "Would you look at that! This is really good!" God saved the best for last.

"God created man in His own image." To be sure we don't miss it, Genesis says it again. "In the image of God He created him; male and female, He created them." God blessed them and put them in charge of the garden; gave them responsibility for all that God had made, and at sundown on the sixth day, God surveyed all He had done, gave a satisfied sigh and said, "This is really good."

Of course, this hasn't stopped us from disrupting balance of the ecological order. I know we are consuming prime farmland to build strip malls, and that McDonald's consumes 600 acres of forest each day for hamburger wrappers. I know that newborns are tossed into dumpsters and teenagers have become mass murderers. I know we are capable of rendering earth uninhabitable. I know human beings are capable of evil doings. I'm not naïve. I know how tempting it is to pronounce humanity a lost cause. But I return to Genesis so I can listen to God say, "I'm a good God, and I've made a good world and I created humans good and have given them charge to do good." You won't find the "just" in Genesis 1.

Oliver Hardy often told Stanley Laurel, "This is another fine mess you've gotten us into." It's easy to say the same of ourselves. It's easy to assess the mess we've made and become cynical. On the other hand, looking beyond this planet and pondering the unfathomable reaches of the universe and then looking at our little lives in comparison, it's easy to be overwhelmed by our insignificance.

"When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars you have established, what are human beings that you should be mindful of them?" the psalmist asked, feeling puny in comparison to God's vast cosmos. "Yet you have made them a little less than God, crowned with glory and honor. You've given them dominion over the works of your hands." You don't see the word "just" applied to humans here either!

Tell me...when was the last time you felt a little less than God? Often it's all we can do to believe we are made a little more than the baboons. How often do you awake and tell yourself, "I am created in the image of God."? It's easier to ask, "Who is like unto God?" Your answer, of course, is nothing and no one. But Psalm 8 tells what Genesis 1 does. We all, whether we feel it or not or believe it or not, are created in the image of God. Much of the time we pass over this statement without asking what it means.

Some would say it refers to our powers of reason, to think or to create. But we can't settle with just this because rational people do irrational things. It was rational, cultured and lettered people who fell under the spell of Hitler. Some say that being in the image of God means that we are moral creatures. But moral people have been known to do immoral things. Others say being made in the image of God means that God has entrusted us with the responsibility of caring for his wondrously beautiful and bountiful creation. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, God has appointed us junior partners. I'm the kind of person who likes to conceive a project and be involved in every step of the operation, but God doesn't work this way. God doesn't micromanage every single thing on earth. I could take a lesson here...even God delegates. But delegation entails expectation. The world hasn't been entrusted to us to do with as we please.

The Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann makes an illumining observation about our being made in God's image. You will remember that Israel had no idols. There could be no molten image of God. The only way God can be imagined is through the creatures made male and female. Out of all creation, humans most reflect God. God charged us to oversee creation and do so with great care. Out of all creation, humans are the only ones God asks to work with Him. Humans are the only ones who can enter a relationship with God. The only creatures to whom God speaks are humans. The only creatures to whom God listens are humans. Think of this the next time you look in the mirror.

As you enter Mishawaka going west on Jefferson Street, you will pass a sign on the right side, which says, "If you decided not to follow Jesus, Satan will be glad to have you back." The sign has pretty printing, but pretty pathetic theology. Does Genesis say we are created in the likeness of Satan? Have we been created a little less than the devil and crowned with evil and contempt? Or were we brought into the world capable of relating to God, working for God, and behaving as God intended? A verse from an old black spiritual has it right..."All God's people got a glory."

Now I hope you realize that this great honor God has bestowed upon us doesn't stop with us. It isn't just you who are created in God's image, or just those you like or those who agree with you. Being in God's image determines how you relate to others who are also original creations. The image is easier to see in some more than others, but there is something of God in every person. We need help to see Him, and not "just" humans in others and ourselves.

We most reflect the image of God when we are most like Jesus. Paul writes in Colossians, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation." Want to be in the likeness of God? Then strive to live like Jesus. Jesus saw in everyone something unique and worthwhile. They weren't "just" children, or "just" crippled, or "just" beggars, or "just" prostitutes. To him they were all the children of God and he died so that they and we might know it. To Jesus, they were humans on the way to becoming more human, just as God made them to be.

A kid once composed an anatomy essay that went like this: "Your head is kind of round and hard, and your brains are in it and your hair is on it. Your face is the front of your head where you eat and make faces. Your neck is what keeps your head out of your collar. It's hard to keep clean. Your shoulders are sort of shelves where you hook your suspenders on them. Your stomach is something that if you don't eat often enough, it hurts, and spinach doesn't help none.

"Your spine is a long bone in your back that is always behind you no matter how quick you turn around. Your arms you got to have to pitch with and so you can reach the butter. Your fingers stick out of your hands so you can throw a curve and add up arithmetic. Your legs is what you run on, and your toes are what always gets stubbed. And that's all there is of you, except what's inside, and I never saw it."

I would give that kid an "A" on that paper. It's great writing. But he left something very important out. That part which he did not see. That part which is on the inside. That part which is created in the image of God.

At Cambridge University in England, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein and Charles Williams had a little club. They called themselves the "Inklings." They were the Inklings because they were all on the similar journey. They had an inkling of something more. They had an inkling that there was a God who was calling them out of themselves to be His witness in the world, which they did in remarkable ways. C.S. Lewis by giving such wonderful works as "The Chronicles of Narnia," and Tolkein by giving us "The Lord of the Rings."

They were Inklings and that's what we all are. We are all part of that great club of people who recognize that we are more than we know. Because God has made us so. He's created us a little less than God. And crowned us with glory and honor.

Do you believe that? Tomorrow morning when you wake up and look in the mirror, despite the bags and the messed-up hair, tell yourself, and tell yourself everyday, that it is by God's grace and with the help of Jesus Christ that I am a child of God, made in His very image.

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