Text: Genesis 2:18-24
What do
Tarzan, Mowgli, and Peter Pan all have in common? They are fictional feral children; homo
sapiens feralus if you are
into Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons.
They were children who were either lost or abandoned or just run away
who lived in the wild where
they were adopted
and raised by wolves or apes or fairies. The authors who created these legendary wild
children held to the
Enlightenment ideal that
humans are basically good and if we could be raised apart from normal
human culture and upbringing we
would display a purer and less corrupted form of human nature. Thus these legendary wild children are
portrayed with a higher than normal intelligence and an inborn understanding of
human culture and the way civilization works.
They also exhibit
expert survival skills, superior strength, and high moral standards.
Not so in
reality. There are just over 100
documented cases of feral children in the last several hundred years, most of them being in the last fifty
or so years. Although many of these children were
abandoned because the parents realized they were mentally and/or emotionally
challenged, none of these children were able to re-enter human
society. They could not learn language
or acceptable social skills. Those who
lived with animals simply continued to behave like them. They simply could not understand or
appreciate human society
although some did fair better when in smaller family environments.
If there is one thing we can learn from these
so-called wild children is that human beings are not meant to be
alone, not meant to be
cut off from other humans. When it is
children who are in this state, they do not develop into fully functioning
persons and I say that realizing we need to be careful in where we draw the
line on what constitutes a human person.
For example, do people with late stage dementia ever cease to be persons
to the extent that we no longer have to treat them as persons? The answer to that is "of course
not".
The writer of Genesis 2-3 would agree with me
here. One thing
in Genesis 2 that comes as a surprise is that there is something not good in
the Garden in Eden when Adam is first put there. It's surprising because in Genesis 1 God
completed every act of creation with the observation that it was good. But here in chapter two God makes the
observation that it is not good for the man to be alone. So, God sets about creating companions for
Adam. Animal after animal the LORD God
brings before Adam to name but none are a suitable companion.
So then the LORD God takes a rib from Adam and makes a helper for him, a
companion equal to him. (Unless of
course, we count the number of times in the Old Testament that God is called a
helper to humans then women should be considered the superior who simply
condescends to help men. I could
probably agree with that.) Then, and I
bet you’ve never noticed this, when Adam sees the woman he blurts out what is
the first instance of poetry in the Bible.
(Hmm…I used to try to woo Dana with Robbie Burns’ poems.)
This just all goes to say that what makes us persons
is that we are relational beings. We
need relationships, indeed close and intimate relationships to thrive. We as persons are relational
beings. What makes the me in me is the
sum total of nearly every relationship I have ever had, good and bad, plus my
own unique wiring. This definition of
person comes as a bit of a contradiction to our the Western idea of what a
person is. A 5th Century
philosopher named Boethius said a person is a “suppositum naturae rationalis” (Yes, the word
suppositum should disturb us.) - an individual substance of a rational
nature. That definition of person is
what drives our culture to be individualistic to the point of a near innate
narcissism. It is also why we have such
a very difficult time thinking of God as three persons in one being. So, let’s go there.
When in
Genesis 1 it says that we are created in the image of God it does not mean that
I am an image of God or that you each are an image of God, but that we all
together are the image of God. We are
relational beings whom when we get together we form a larger relational being,
a corporate being. That is why this
church is different from that church and that family is different from that
family. Thus, it is in the midst of
relational beings relating to one another that we find the image of God. Persons-in-relationship is the image of
God. In Genesis 1 the Trinity said “Let
us make man in our image, after our likeness…So God created man in
his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created
them.” The fact of our relational nature
is manifest in that God made humanity to consist of two utterly different beings,
man and woman, who must find someway to get together in love in order to bring
about and nurture further human life that thrives.
This
now leads us to talk about family, probably a good thing to do since it is
Thanksgiving weekend and many of us will be either blessed by our familial bond
or tormented by its dysfunction. Granted
people like to say that there are many different ways to be family. Yes, ok, I truly do get that but let us not
dismiss that there is something fundamentally and fully human about the family
unit of a man and woman coming together in the covenant of marriage to bring
forth children. At the risk of sounding
like the Vatican
here, the nuclear family bears the image of God like no other human community
can. Genesis 2 reflects this in
portraying that the “marital bond is so intimate that the two "become one
flesh"—naked, open to one another, vulnerable, trusting, passionate,
loving, and ‘not ashamed’ (2:24-25).” One commentator wrote, “This union of two
lonely human beings yearning for community and finding it in one another is the
great climax of the second creation story.”
Indeed, in Genesis 1 when God finished and looked at everything and
pronounced it “very good”, the crown jewel of it all was human beings in the
image of God, human beings carrying out the blessed mandate of multiplying and
having rule over the creation.
The
person of a father and the person of a mother coming together in faithful,
self-giving, loving relationship to bring forth and nurture the person of a child
is the image of God resembling the relational communion of the persons of the
Father and the Son in the person of the Holy Spirit. Our biological families gathered around the
sanctum of a table and a shared meal reflects the image of God in a way that no
other union of people can. And please, I
do not want to lessen those bonds among friends who have become family to each
because the bonds of biological family are absent or have become nothing short
of sub-human. I do not want to lesson
the meaning and necessity of those bonds.
I am not shy to say that adopted family, friends who by choice have
become family in place of biological family, probably more than any other
relational bond reflects the image of God in his saving grace. Indeed, adopted family, friends whom God has
brought together and who by choice regard each other as family in the name of
Jesus is what the church is as the Body of Christ, the renewed image of God in
Creation, the New Humanity rising forth from God’s redeeming of the broken,
fallen, distorted humanity of Adam.
So,
winding down, I’ve given you quite the theology lesson here on the family being
the image of God and I’ve avoided going preachy on things that we do either to
foster and make more clear the image of God in our families or the things we do
or don’t do that mar God’s image among us.
But, this I will say. To be human
is to be in relationship with other persons from which God’s image arises. Things which destroy our family bonds be it
our biological or adoptive family don’t just put asunder a network of
relationship, they destroy us at the core of our very being as persons so that
we no longer know who we are. When the
union of love that brought us forth and nurtured us suddenly is no more, we
lose the sense of who we are and that we are truly loved. Ask any child who has had to split themselves
between a home with her mother and a home with her father as the result of
divorce. She suddenly experiences a
duplicity and insecurity deep within herself, in her person that I dare say
never heals except by the healing hand of the Trinity to bring that wild child
into his self as his own beloved child and into a community of healing that
exists in Jesus’ name.
So,
it’s Thanksgiving. Leave here and go to
your respective families and gather around your tables for your Thanksgiving
exercise of gluttony and abdominal misery.
While there in the midst of those people please take a moment and ponder
this mystery of the image of God in which you live and move and have your being
and please not take it for granted.
There’s a beauty there which like light, can only be beheld. Amen.
