In the Likeness of Christ

Sermon

Throughout his letters, the apostle Paul talks about the followers of Jesus taking on the image or the likeness of Christ, and by that he did not mean the physical features of Jesus, but the heart and soul of Jesus. That’s an idea we share a lot in the church, becoming more and more like Jesus. Again, that does not mean looking like him, but acting like him, and through the process of repentance and reconciliation, having our hearts be more like his heart.

Today we begin a preaching series on the letter to the Colossians. The author identifies himself as Paul, but most scholars believe it was a student of Paul who wrote the letter. There are confounding and troubling things in this letter, and then pieces like today’s lesson, which combines what was likely a hymn about Christ with a more earthly interpretation of what it means to be a follower of Christ.

In essence, the writer of the letter tells us about the cosmic Christ – the image of the invisible God, the one who was inherent in creation, the head of all creation and the head of the church. Now those are some dangerous words. Remember that the early church was forming in the shadows of the Roman Empire, which put forth that Caesar was divine, that Caesar was head of all things. To say that Jesus Christ and not Caesar was the head would be to confront the empire and its misuse of power and its abuse of human beings.

Then the writer of the letter reminds us of the sacrifice of Jesus and the call to reconciliation, and the call to hold on to the hope that Jesus brings us.

Do we still believe that Christ is head of the church and really of all things? And do we believe that if we imagine him looking not like most of us, but as a dark-skinned, dark-eyed, Middle Eastern Jewish man?

In December of 2002, Popular Mechanics magazine, using the techniques in forensic anthropology, published a digital image of what a first-century man living in ancient Palestine might have looked like. British medical artist Richard Neave used the remains of skulls from that time and place to recreate the look of a Galilean Semitic man. In other words, he created a possible likeness of Jesus.

I remember seeing that face, and my two simultaneous reactions:

“Of course, Jesus looked something like this.”

“Oh my gosh – I always pictured Jesus being white.”

Because in this particular image, Jesus has a round face, a rounded nose, brownish-hazel eyes, short curly brown hair, dark brown skin, and a beard. His skin is not pale, his eyes are not blue, and flaxen, silky hair does not cascade down his shoulders.

Now in terms of our faith, of course it doesn’t matter what Jesus looked like. But in terms of everything that’s going on in our nation and the world right now, it is vitally important to remember that Jesus did not look like the white Jesus of the Sistine chapel, the white Jesus of Warner Sallman, or the white Jesus of the 1950s lithographs.

For those of us with eyes to see, the visual matters. The image of the Burnside Bridge filled with prone bodies, lying for almost nine minutes in witness to George Floyd’s death, is powerful. The image of our beloved Ann Huntwork wearing her Westminster Pride T-shirt and being pushed in a wheelchair at the last Pride Parade she attended is powerful. The Sunday School image of Jesus carrying on his shoulders the one sheep who was lost but not forgotten is powerful.

So how we picture God and Jesus matters, because in subtle and subconscious ways, we give authority and power to those whom we think mirror the image of God.

Many of you know that I have a lot of our old Sunday School lithographs, which we got rid of when for many reasons they were no longer a helpful teaching tool. And because some of them dated back to the 1930s, it did feel like time to move them along. And honestly, there was subtle and not so subtle racism in some of them. Among my collection (which I now use to make my collages) are some pictures of stories from the Bible and some pictures of the Christian family.

In the pictures of the Christian family, there is always a white mom, a white dad, two to five white children, and a dog. My family looks something like that – a white mom, a white dad, a white child, and a dog. But we know that is not how the “average” or “normal” family looks, because there is no “average” or “normal” family.

Some families have one parent, some two. Sometimes those parents are different sexes, sometimes not. There is divorce, so there are stepparents and stepchildren and half-siblings. There are birth parents and adoptive parents. There are foster families. There are single people who are families unto themselves, and sometimes they have their families that they have created not by marriage or birth but by love. Some families are a couple with no children.

We know that. We know there is no normal way a family looks. None of us can claim to be the image of the American family. And none of us can claim to know the real image of God.

While Jesus of Nazareth looked like a first-century Jewish Mediterranean man, Christ looks like something else. In chapter two of Genesis it is written that God made male and female in God’s image. Does that mean the physical, visual image? Maybe. Does it mean in the image of love? I think so.

Friends, right now the world is watching to see if the Church and Christians really do believe in the power and image of love. They are watching. They are watching to see if we love our neighbors, if we want good things for them, like health and full stomachs and justice. They are watching to see if our love is simply an intellectual exercise or action. They are watching to see if we walk the walk as well as we talk the talk.

That means opportunities for us as individuals and opportunities for us as a community. Maybe each of us could try, for a week, reminding ourselves that every person we see pass by on the street or in the grocery store is made in the image of God. Every person. Maybe especially the ones that annoy us the most.

You might see a protester. Imagine that person is Jesus, not the Jesus who suffered the little children to come to him but the Jesus who overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple. You might see a nurse, gowned and gloved and masked, and you might see Jesus in that person, the Jesus who healed the woman with the hemorrhage and enabled the blind man to see. You might see the horrific

image of George Floyd with the police officer’s foot on his neck, and you might see Jesus dying on the cross, talking to his mother, the victim of unjust power. Every person made in the image of God, every person reflecting Jesus.

Right now, it’s a little trickier to do things as a community because we cannot be together physically, and we can’t show up en masse or work on a project together in person. I will tell you that the church is showing up, through the mission grant challenge, and has raised over $20,000 to help feed people of all colors. Food insecurity is a justice issue, and making sure people have food to eat is an act of love – just ask Jesus!

As a church we have had one gathering on Zoom to talk about the video message by the stated clerk of our denomination as he, a black man, talked about the role of the church in light of the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.

Over sixty people participated in that conversation, and our Racial Justice Work Group is planning more opportunities. But that is only the first step in what will be a long walk for us together.

We, as Westminster Presbyterian Church, have work to do to live out our understanding of who Jesus is and who he calls us to be. I know it’s a lot. I know it might sound really hard. Maybe some people simply cannot bear the image of Christ for you. So if all this sounds like too much, consider one other thing: do people see Christ in you, in your words and in your actions?