Icons of Flesh and Blood
Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent (Lent Sabbath Challenge Preaching Series)
March 5, 2023
Genesis 1: 1-31
John 3:1-17
Let us pray.
Gracious God, you have sanctified days of rest for all your people, and have called us to bear witness before the world to the graciousness and wisdom of the Sabbath: Be with us now as we lay aside our work; hallow our rest, our recreation and our leisure, and bring us to the new week refreshed and restored in body, mind and spirit. We ask this in the name of Jesus, in whom we find our true rest, and who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
This morning, we continue our preaching series on Sabbath as part of our parish Lent Sabbath Challenge. Last Sunday, we heard a wonderful introduction to Sabbath from Dr. Beatrice Lawrence, who teaches Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies in the Theology and Religious Studies department at Seattle University.
This week, we’re going to focus our exploration of Sabbath just a little bit, and look together at the very first origins of Sabbath in the Bible. And by very first, I mean going all the way back to the beginning, to the creation of the world, that story that we heard in our first reading this morning from the very first verses of the Bible in the book of Genesis. There, we heard about how the first week of creation unfolded, and about what happened on each day of creation, including the day when God created human beings.
There, on that day, day five, we learn something very important about ourselves as humans. One of the most important things we can know about ourselves. Maybe the most important thing. And that is, from the very beginning, we were created in the image and likeness of God.
Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.”
These are just a few words, yet there is probably no knowledge about ourselves that we can know that is more profound. We are made in God’s image. Just let that sink in for a moment. We have deep within us, in our very DNA, nothing less than the divine likeness. And one of our first and most important vocations as human beings is to bear this image in the world. To reflect God’s image in the world. To be like little religious icons, not ones made out of wood and gold, but flesh and blood.
Although we can never fully know God, or know exactly what God is like, we do get some clues in scripture, including in our Genesis reading this morning. There, the first thing we notice about the God in whose image we are made is that God is a God who creates. God is a God who is creative. Who makes something out of nothing! Who, day by day over the course of our story this morning, transforms the earth from a formless and dark void, into a fertile and living world, a world teaming with life and light, including human beings. God is creative. And as creatures made in God’s image, we too have it deep inside us to be creative. We are called to be creative. Not just those of us who happen to be artistic, but all of us, in one way or another. We are called, with our lives, to continue in the work of creation that was begun by God, and that will one day, in the fullness of time, be drawn back into God.
So that’s the first thing we notice about God in the creation story. That God is creative. The other thing we notice in the story is this: that after six days of creativity—six days of laboring to make the heavens and the earth, and all of the plants and animals that fill them, including humans—God rested.
“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.”
This was the very first Sabbath. God’s Sabbath. God’s choice to cease from working, and rest. Now I say “choice” because God, being God, could’ve kept on working, endlessly. But instead, God paused, and stepped away from God’s creative work, and rested, and in so doing, chose to experience the vulnerability of the creation, and its need for rest.
That is part of who God is: God is a God who creates and then rests. Which brings me back to our being created in the image of God. Because what that means, is that we are also made in the image of a God who rests. In other words, part of what it means to be a human being, at least from our perspective, as people of faith, is to rest. To cease from working. To step back from the creation. To remember as someone once put it, that we are human beings and not human doings. The ability to rest was and is part of God’s very being, and it’s part of our very being too. Rest is what God did, and it’s what we’re called to do too.
As people of faith, we rest, we practice Sabbath, not only because it’s good self-care for our own wellbeing, but also, because we are called to give the world a glimpse of the God who rests. To be keepers of the divine image. So that when others see us, they see not the competitiveness of the market or the frenzy of capitalism or the anxiety of the world reflected, but the God who rests.
This is why for us, as people of faith, refusing to cease our work, and to rest, is huge problem—a theological problem. Because when we can’t resist working and embrace our need for Sabbath, we not only harm ourselves, but even more damagingly, we mar the image of God. We misrepresent God, because we show the world a version of God that is… idolatrous and that isn’t true.
This is why, in the Hebrew Bible, the people of God were continually remembering that God had rested. This reminder was even included in the Ten Commandments in Exodus, in which the people were commanded to rest because that’s what God did on the seventh day. They couldn’t be allowed to forget this, and neither can we.
Now, on the surface, our Gospel story this morning from John’s Gospel may seem to have nothing to do with the creation story we just heard, or with Sabbath rest. But as I spent time with this story this week, I actually think there is a connection.
In the Gospel story, we encounter Nicodemus, who is a Pharisee and Jewish leader. He comes to Jesus by night, which presumably means he didn’t want to be seen with Jesus by light of day. He has a reputation to uphold, and he didn’t want others to know he had gone to see Jesus.
In some ways, I often think Nicodemus could be the patron saint of Christians in Seattle. We come here on Sunday mornings while most of our friends are hanging out at dog parks, or hiking or skiing, or having brunch with friends. Then we leave, and go about our week, perhaps keeping what we do here on Sunday quiet for the most part, lest anyone should find out about us—that we’ve been hanging out with Jesus and even call ourselves Christians! Let’s be honest, things get weird when people find out you believe in God, and weirder when they find out you’re a Christian, and even weirder when they find out you’re a priest. Just ask me about some of the awkward conversations I’ve had with other families on playdates with my son!
I digress. Back to Nicodemus… Nicodemus, someone who would have been well-versed in the Law and the scriptures, comes to Jesus, and is completely baffled by what Jesus says to him.
“Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above,” Jesus says.
What exactly is this Jesus talking about? Nicodemus wants to know. Is he talking about literally being born again after having grown old?
“Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” he presses Jesus.
What does it mean to be “born again” or “born from above,” he wants to know. “How can these things be?” he goes on to ask.
Jesus, for his part, is surprised that someone like Nicodemus, a teacher of Israel, someone who “knew” so much, can’t grasp what he is talking about, as if being born again were the most basic tenant of faith.
Maybe, if we’re honest, we can’t quite grasp what Jesus is talking about either. Maybe we have no idea what it means to be born again, or maybe we have particular associations with that phrase, and the kinds of Christians who talk about being “born again.” Or maybe we see ourselves as enlightened Episcopalians who have no need of being born again.
But what if being “born again” doesn’t mean subscribing to a particular Christian theology, or accepting Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, or seeing the world as good or bad, and people as either saved or damned? What if being born again doesn’t mean those things at all? What if what it really means is recognizing what is already true about God and about human beings, as if for the first time? What if it’s about embracing, as if for the first time, the reality that we are made in the image of a God who creates and who rests, and who asks us to do the same?
What if being born again is letting this reality sink in more deeply in our lives until it changes the way we are in the world? What if it’s about letting this reality shape the way we live? The way we spend our time? Our priorities? The ways we relate to our neighbor—the ways love each another? What if it’s is about letting this reality set us free from our imprisonment by work and doing and busyness? Free to simply be? Free to be people God has created us to be?
Let us pray.
God of all creation, we give you thanks for the gift of our Sabbath rest: Keep company with us as we take up our work again, and help us to know, that even in the midst of our busy lives, our hearts rest in you. We ask these things in the name of Jesus, who is himself our True Sabbath, and who abides with you and the Holy Spirit, in glory everlasting. Amen.
*image is "The Garden", by Ivanka Demchuk