Lent 4B: Your Image of God Heals You

 

Your Image of God Heals You

One comment we heard from Richard Rohr at Noonday Prayer & More has stuck with me for a couple of months now – in fact it is written on a sticky-note and posted on the window in front of me Monday through Friday: Your Image of God Creates You. Think about that for a moment. Genesis tells us that male and female, we are “made in the image of God.” That is, what makes us who we are is how we imagine God to be. Today’s lessons suggest to me a corollary to Rohr’s observation: Your image of God Heals You. 

 

Undoubtedly the story in Numbers 21:4-9 at first strikes us as odd. The people who have been redeemed from being debt-slaves in Egypt complain about the food given during their 40 years sojourn: they are tired of daily portions of manna and quails. In response to their grumbling, the Lord “sent poisonous snakes among the people.” The people then recognize they have sinned against God and Moses. They ask Moses to pray for them. God’s solution: place a bronze serpent on top of a pole so that anyone who gets snake-bit can look up at the serpent on the pole and live.

 

As odd as this all seems, over time ancient civilizations came up with the Rod of Asclepius, a single serpent wrapped around a staff, and Caduceus, a short staff entwined by two serpents, sometimes surmounted by wings. To this day we look at these symbols and understand what they represent – healing and the medical arts.

 

In John 3:14-21, summing up a conversation with Nicodemus, “a leader of the people,” Jesus says, “Just as Moses lifted-up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” That is, to stop and look up at Jesus is similar to looking up at the bronze serpent. It is a sign of God’s forgiveness and, we are told, God’s love “for the world” – the whole and everything and everyone therein. To be healed, we need only stop, look up and live.  

 

One commentator asks, “Why? Why does God persist in saving humankind, when humankind itself persists in rebellion and sin? The answer comes in the familiar language of John 3:16: God acts again and again for the benefit of human beings because God loves the world in spite of itself. Even as the world resists and opposes God’s Son, God persists in loving the world.” [Texts for Preaching, CD-Rom edition, Walter Brueggemann, et.al; Year B p.220-21] Our image of God loving and saving us from ourselves can in turn make us people who love and save others.

 

The biblical word for this saving love is the Hebrew word hesed. Ellen Davis, in her translation of the book of Ruth, describes God’s hesed as “good faith” or “faith-act.” Usually translated as mercy, compassion, love, grace, and faithfulness, none of these completely summarize the quality of hesed. For hesed is not merely an emotion or feeling. It involves action on behalf of someone who is in need – a faith-act. Hesed as love implies doing something merciful and compassionate and useful for someone in need. Hesed, found some 250 times in the Old Testament, expresses the essential essence of God’s character. Which is why the God of the Old and New testaments persists in saving us, forgiving us, and loving us no matter what.

 

“From a biblical perspective,” writes Ellen Davis, “the moral ecology of the world functions properly when God and humanity are engaged in the perpetual exchange of hesed, good-faith and the acts that follow.” Created in God’s image, hesed is meant to be the most basic characteristic of humanity as well. We are to exercise hesed toward God and one another. [Ellen Davis, Who Are You, My Daughter, p xiii-xiv] The essence of the good news of Christ is to accept that we are, like Jesus, God’s Beloved. This is the essence of being created in God’s image. To exchange hesed with God and with others who are in need is what it means to live our lives “for the sake of the gospel.” We who are forgiven and loved no matter what.

 

What might it mean today to stop, look up and live? This weekend we mark the one-year anniversary of our first public acknowledgment that we are in the midst of a nation and world-wide Pandemic. For a variety of health and practical reasons, when the pandemic began, I had some N-95 surgical masks and nitrile gloves. About that time, I went to get some items I would need in time of a lockdown at CVS. Before going in I put on a mask and some gloves. As I turned and looked up from what I was doing, I saw an Asian woman approach me from across the way holding her hands out with a pleading look in her eyes. With no words I could see she was asking if I might give her a pair of gloves. I nodded, reached back into the car and handed her a pair. We looked into one another’s eyes. We bowed to one another and went about our shopping at CVS. No words were spoken. An act of hesed, a faith-act had just occurred. Simply because I stopped and looked up, we both experienced an act of faith and a sense of being healed from the fear of the coronavirus that had already begun to take hold of us.

 

These odd stories of ours can help us see what it means to be human. Our image of God creates us. Our image of God heals us. Throughout the Old Testament God is described repeatedly words like these: “… you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” [Jonah 4:2] We are a busy people, even in the midst of a Pandemic. Sometimes we just need to stop what we are doing and look up. When we do, we just might experience God’s hesed, God’s steadfast love. We might feel a real sense of being saved, or of being healed of whatever it is that makes life feel in any way broken or fearful. Sometimes to stop and look up from whatever else we are doing opens us to receive a healing and saving gesture from another person – another person, who like us, is also created in the image of God. Of the God who persists in forgiving, loving and healing humankind. Just because God forgives us our rebellious nature and loves us anyway, no matter what. When this is our image of God, we reflect that image in all that we say and do for others. As the prophet Joel calls to us, “…rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.” [Joel 2:13] This is Good News for all people! Amen. It is so. It is truth.