Sunday, November 20, 2005

Sermon "In the Image of God"

Scripture: Psalm 100

 

Reverend Larry M. Gerber 

 

From frosted bathroom windows to olive trees and fish sticks, the image of Jesus seems to be popping up everywhere. Are we missing signs of how God is truly present in human life?

Jesus in a fish stick. His mother on a grilled cheese sandwich. Christ with his angels on the cross in the shower.

Is this fiction from the mind of a food critic?

A new mass marketing scheme?

Neither.

Increasingly, Jesus, Mary and even the angels in heaven have chosen to forego traditional theophanies, or conventional methods of communication, and have instead revealed themselves in wood splinters, and culinary mistakes.

In November of 2004, Fred Whan, an Ontario man in Kingston, after burning a fish stick at dinner, found, with the help of his son, the face of Jesus on his fish stick. A year later he took it out of the freezer and put it up for auction on eBay.

Earlier that year, Diana Duyser of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, declared she had found an image of the Virgin Mary on her decade-old burnt grilled cheese sandwich. She, too, auctioned it off, selling it to GoldenPalace.com for $28,000. In her eBay ad, she wrote: “I would like all people to know that I do believe that this is the Virgin Mary Mother of God. That is my solemn belief, but you are free to believe that she is whomever you like.”

Elsewhere, halfway around the world, Remona Peterson of Lavender Hill, South Africa, saw the silhouette of Christ on the cross surrounded by his angels in her frosted bathroom window.

One more: In January of 1982, I was appointed as Sr. Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Las Vegas, NV. Within days of my arrival, a parishioner took me to a large olive tree along the approach to the Sanctuary. He pointed out the head of Jesus imaged in the trunk. I was told that whatever else I did as their pastor, I was not to allow that tree to be taken down. That year, a man fell under that tree, as he walked through the fallen olives, and many others nearly fell. The next year, we were under construction. The tree was in the way of construction. No one person or committee dared to vote the tree out. It went down. My decision! Other than a few gasps over “losing the face of Jesus”, especially from an olive tree, and a few parishioners who questioned my authority, the church survived quite well, and is to this day, 23 years later, with no olive tree.

Has God abandoned his usual means of revelation and finally come to us in what we all really understand ... food, wood, water spots, and olive trees? Or have our imaginations run away with us? 

No matter what you think about these “miraculous” images, these latter-day theophanies do point to a yearning in our culture to find Christ in everyday, ordinary things. Dan French explains, “We’re all looking for the same thing, some faith-worthy sign to give us at least a fleeting clue on how to live our best lives and be our best selves in a confused, nearly unnavigable world.”

We dream of touching what we know only by faith, and whether it be in an old sandwich, some burnt fish sticks, our own church altar, in the frosted glass of a shower stall, or in the base of an olive tree, these images let us glimpse with our own eyes the unseen Christ.

The problem here is that these cheesy images also pose a real danger to our faith. How in the world do you lift up a God worthy of praise and thanksgiving when you’ve just found him on a fish stick? Where are my faith and my praise for a transcendent God when that God is not much more than a commodity on eBay?

After all, a God we have to save from the garbage disposal or that emerged from our own culinary mistake does nothing worthy of praise. Not to disparage the faith of some of the faithful who genuinely marvel at the images they find in off places or objects. Not to say that their faith isn’t fervent.

But perhaps we can grow out or beyond this. Like, paw through a pile of 200 potatoes and you’re going to find one that looks like Richard Nixon. It happened, if you remember.

Psalm 100 urges us to prepare for the coming of the Lord by calling us back to worship, thanksgiving and praise. And, of course, there’s not even a hint that we should look for iconic representations of deity in potatoes, fish sticks or altars.

The first words in Hebrew name it a psalm of thanks. What follows this introduction are both the reasons and the words to thank and praise our God and King.

It tells us we should praise God for four reasons: because God made us, because God loves us, because we belong to God, and because God is all around us.

 Our thanksgiving comes because “It is he that made us ...”(v. 3). We did not make him, nor did we fashion him in our image. Rather, we were made in his image. Scripture tells us: “in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”(Genesis 1:27). We are his creation. He is not ours.

As his creation, we thank and praise God because our understanding is limited. We only know for certain that it was God’s hands that fashioned us together. Everything else is theory and mystery. We praise God because we are his creatures and his creation. He is not ours.

We are loved by God! We as people love many things that do not love us back. We love our cars and our homes. We love food or entertainment. None of these things can return our love.

We love a God who loved us first. Scripture tells us: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). God’s steadfast love and faithfulness last through all generations.

It is no accident that the psalmist ends the psalm, “For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.”

We give God thanks and praise for the sole reason that God loves us so much. God went into death itself to claim us as his own. God loved us before we even began to love him and for this he deserves our thanks and praise.

When the psalmist writes: “we are his ...”(v. 3) it is a statement of ownership. We belong to God in Christ, he does not belong to us. We do not and cannot own him, no matter what. Since we are his, it is fitting that we thank and praise him. As creations owned by a creator, we cry out in praise and thanksgiving for all he gives and does for us.

God is all around us! Finally, we give God thanks and praise because Jesus Christ’s face is found, not on the burn marks of a baked piece of fish, but in the marks of life in the faces around us. “We are his people” and as his people, we discover Christ’s presence in the faces of the people with whom we live and work, and those with whom we don’t live and work — the needy, the marginalized, the less fortunate, those in prison, those on welfare, those who live in rich houses or cardboard shacks, those who are different from us, those who live in freedom and those who live in the shadow of tyranny.

If we long to see Christ, we need only to look around us. Not in the fish stick, shower stall, or even an olive tree. Christ is with us in the faces of our neighbors. In the people who do what Christ does for us as they care, provide, love and keep us safe. And in the people we are called to be Christ to, doing the same for them.You will receive your stewardship letter this week: “Thank you for caring, thank you for sharing” Along with it is your pledge card for 2006. Your commitment to next years budget will determine the extent to which we do God’s work. We are estimating a 4% increase in the budget. If you are giving $20/week, a 4% increase would be $.80/week; $50/week giving would increase to $52/week and so on. What can you do, and what will you do to help our church continue its witness and ministry for Christ. As a caring and sharing congregation, would you repeat after me:

God deserves our thanks and praise.

God created us!God claimed us!

God paid the ultimate price for us!

And God surrounds us with people who reflect his face and presence!

So don’t be looking for God in the drumstick of a turkey, the hollow of an olive tree, or on a fish stick. Find God in the faces of those gathered around your table, wandering the streets of your neighborhood or conversing at the grocery, or on the tennis courts and golf courses, and in your travels.

Wherever you go, and what ever you do, give thanks!````````````````````````````````````````````

Sources:Cole, Bruce. “What a Friend We Have in Cheeze Whiz ... Loaves and Fish Sticks ..and the Mystical Nature of Food.” November 24, 2004. Found on brucecole.blogspot.com.

- - - . “Fisk-stick Jesus up for sale on eBay.” November 24, 2004. Found on brucecole.blogspot.com.

French, Dan. “Jesus Christ superstore.” The Examiner. March 30, 2005.

Schram, Ken. “Get your Dan Lewis grilled cheese miracle here.” November 24, 2004. Found on komotv.com.

 

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