In the likeness of God

"So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them." (NRSV)

Worships begins on this Trinity Sunday celebration of the Eucharist with the first account of creation from Genesis. In this account humankind was created in one act. Not man out of the clay of the earth, nor woman from the man's rib, but from the breath of God; the same breath that made lights appear in the heavens and all manner of things on the earth.

But this isn't the version we think of when we think of God's creation of humankind. For that we borrow from the creation story which is in the second chapter of Genesis; the version we all learned in Sunday School as children. In that childhood version the two account are meshed together - so we have the creation of all things from Gen. 1 and the creation of humankind from Gen. 2. But we aren't in Sunday School anymore. And in the grownup version we pull apart the two accounts of our coming into being and take each on its own terms; one at a time.

Today we have before us the first account: created from the breath of God, man and woman created on completely equal grounds - not one before the other - one not subservient to the other - but as partners, created for the purpose of caring for the earth and all that is in it and on it, and for all manner of creatures who share it with us.

It is this account that begins the entire book we now know as the Bible. Genesis, as a whole, is foundational for Jews, Christians and Muslims. Its characters play central roles in all three of the holy texts of these major world religions: The Torah, The Bible and the Koran. We differ dramatically on many things theological, but that Almighty God created the earth and the heavens all that is in them, we share as foundational to everything that comes next. And a lot of what comes next divides us radically, forming a seemingly fathomless chaism between "us" and "them", effectively sustaining the positions of "we" in a defensive posture to "the other." But it hasn't always been this way: ".... God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them." (NRSV) In one breath, in a single moment in time, male and female, together we were created. And are wise to acknowledge that Genesis 1 isn't a scientific or historical accounting - its a theological account - it's how we, the people of God, base our understanding of how we relate to God and perhaps even more importantly, how God relates to us. We are God's created beings to whom all of creation was given for the sustaining of all life now and to come. It is the starting place for how proceed to speak of God and for how we reference one another. In this accounting of human creation, God created two beings in a single act - the importance being on the pair; the interdependence of one on the other - as intentional, not accidental. And if Genesis 1 is taken as prologue to the rest of the Genesis if not the entire biblical text - then the theme of human interdependence is of profound importance. All the relationships that follow in Genesis, even the ones that reveal deep and painful tears in the fabric of family - brother against brother, in particular, the need one has for the other is undeniable. Perhaps there is no place on earth that needs to be reminded of this than in the Middle East. In that part of the world, not even Israel, who claims the land as given to them by God for all time, is untouched by the world at their borders. In a very real way, Israel and the Palestinians need one another for their mutual survival; revealed so clearly, ironically in the hostility that exists between them. There is a poem by the Israeli poet Shin Shalom, written in 1952, in which Isaac speaks to his brother Ishmael, with who he is estranged, whose respective tribes, the Israelites and Palestinians, remain at violent odds to this day. The following excerpt from the poem points to a future that includes them both.

"Ismael my brother, How long shall we fight each other? My brother from times bygone, My brother, Hagar's son, My brother, the wandering one. One angel was sent to us both, One angel to watch over our growth - There in the wilderness, death threatening through thirst, I a sacrifice on the altar, Sarah's first. Ishmael, my brother, hear my plea: It was the angel who tied thee to me. Time is running out, put hatred to sleep. Shoulder to shoulder, let's water our sheep."

These thoughts on our common creation and how we were intended to co-exist begs the question, What does it mean to be human, to be made in the likeness of God, to be then icons of God?" Were we to begin all our days, all our thoughts, all our conversations, and all of our arguments on this statement of faith, how differently might be the outcomes of our interactions with one anther. Recently, I have been haunted by the following vision from Elias Chacour, a Greek Catholic Palestinian priest from Galilee in 2001:

"The true icon is your neighbor, the human being who has been crated int he image and with the likeness of God. How beautiful it is when our eyes are transfigured and we see that our neighbour is the icon of God, and you, and you, and I - we are all the icons of God. How serious it is when we hate th image of God, whoever that may be, whether a Jew or a Palestinian. How serious it is when we cannot go and say, 'I am sorry about he icon of God who was hurt by my behaviour.' We all need to be transfigured so we can recognized the glory of God in one another."