The Very Image

I.        Vow of Affirmation

“We devote our daily life to God, and to serving our neighbors as images of God”

    
       2.  I will seek the image of God in each and every person;  
               I will treat them as fully worthy of the good I desire for myself.

It’s the cashier at your grocery store, the neighbor whose name you don’t know but you wave to every morning, the sleazebag womanizer on that “reality” show, your favorite song leader at church, your most opinionated and least favorite coworker, your implied national enemy, it’s the gaggle of high schoolers each with eyes and thumbs locked to their phones,  it’s your mother.  The image of God. It is in all of them, it’s in you fractured and trampled in the mud though it may be. 

By Through Painted Eyes via Flickr

“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…

So God created humankind 
     in God’s image,
     in the image of God 
          he created them;
     male and female 
          God created them.”

Today we are called to look upon and treat differently those whom we encounter: I will seek the image of God in each and every person; I will treat them as fully worthy of the good I desire for myself. Realizing the image of God in others is not simply a rosy-eyed, naive view of human good, nor is it prideful presumption of human-centered progress. In seeking the image of God in each and every person we can be more brutally honest about human unlikeness to God than even strict total-depravity Calvinists and yet also be more positive about inherent value in each individual and group than the most optimistic secular humanists. 

In 19th century Russia, the death penalty was rarely practiced (though convicts were sent to Siberian hard labor camps!). A Russian Orthodox saint from that era, John of Krondstadt, gave part of the reasoning for this merciful benevolence shown to those convicted of murder and other severe crimes: "Never confuse the person, formed in the image of God, with the evil that is in him, because evil is but a chance misfortune, illness, a devilish reverie. But the very essence of the person is the image of God, and this remains in him despite every disfigurement." 

In our contemporary world this realization that the image of God is imprinted somehow on every person (imago dei if you do Latin) leads many to accept Jesus' call to love even enemies whose God-image is badly damaged or hidden. Following the Boston Marathon bombing a Methodist, Martha Mullen arranged for the burial of bomber suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev near her home city, Richmond Virginia. She did this after Tsarnaev's proposed burial near Boston was met with furious protests and Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey all refused to offer him the dignity of a grave site. Listening on the news Mullen responded the only way she could think of--advocating for Tsarnaev's burial near where she lived. "Jesus tells us to love our enemies, not hate them after they're dead," Mullen said.  

The belief that Jesus came to restore and cleanse that-of-God in all persons enables you and me to love even the worst people around us, in the hope that they will be transformed more fully into the likeness of the One whose image they already bear.

For Reflection and Action:

• Who have you seen already today (or yesterday)? If you didn’t notice it then, what traces of God’s image were in each one of those people? What hid God’s image in them from your view?
• Hear again Genesis 1:26a, 27 quoted above. Decide how you will honor the image of God in the next persons you encounter. Name what you see to some of those people today.
• Take seriously Matthew 25:31-46. Go find and serve God in one of the least of these.

Prayer Focus:

God, in whose image we have been crafted;

whose image I and we still bear,

 Open my eyes to see your very image in the stranger;

in the hungry and thirsty, naked, sick, and imprisoned ones.

Open my eyes to see and serve the very You in them. May it be so.