Column by Mary Lee Talbot
“There can be a difference between what we say we want and what we really want. I want a motorcycle, but is that what I really want?” said the Rev. Robert Henderson at the 9:15 a.m. Tuesday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. His sermon title was “Imago Dei,” and the scripture reading was Genesis 1: 26–28.
Not long ago, Henderson said, his family received a piece of mail addressed to ministers’ wives. It was a one-time event called “A Spa and Spiritual Retreat,” with all kinds of therapy packages to choose from. The whole thing was tied up in a pretty Christian bow and the speaker for the event had as her topic: “The secret to being content.”
“My family doesn’t need all that ‘whooey’ to feel love, but sometimes what we say we want and what we really want is different,” he added.
In the first chapter of Genesis, God did not start creation from scratch, ex nihilo, but from a formless void. Bill Brown, biblical theologian, called it a “benign primordial soup.” Henderson noted that when people compare their origin stories, those stories talk about where humans came from and what is the origin of life.
“There is a deeper hunger,” Henderson said. “We want to know: Do we matter? Are we loved? Does that dash on the tombstone have meaning?”
Genesis was written as a statement of faith, he said, addressed to a people and a time when the world did not turn out as they expected. The nation of Israel was at a point of crisis and they wanted to know if God still cared, was God still good, did the people of Israel still matter to God and would God sustain them?
“The spiritual leaders reassured the people that God had created the world and blessed it. That God created humanity in God’s image is repeated twice in these verses. It was repeated to make a point,” Henderson said.
Henderson said there were four distinctive points in these three verses. God speaks only to the human creature. Second, humans alone are free to respond; they alone have autonomy. Third, humans were created in God’s own image. “Israelis, Gazans, Ukrainians and Iranians have value,” Henderson said.
“Fourth, only humans are given power and responsibility; we are divine agents to whom much is given and from whom much is expected,” he said. “God has a high view of humans and our spiritual and physical potential.”
Cornel West, former professor at Princeton University, noted that the most pressing social problems are not caused by oppression or exploitation, but by nihilism: the loss of hope in the loss of meaning and the diminishment of love. The most pressing problem in the world is one of soul, and the answer is in the resilient affirmation of personal value.
Henderson first encountered that need for hope in college when the college invited the Rev. Jesse Jackson to speak. Later, Henderson went to West Greenville High School in North Carolina for an event with Jackson.
Jackson began with his standard litany, “I am,” and the crowd responded, “I am somebody.” “I am,” and “I am somebody and I don’t need guns.” “I am,” and ‘I am somebody who doesn’t need drugs.” Henderson said this call and response went on for 30 minutes.
Henderson said, “I had never experienced this in school or church. In our decently and in order life in the Presbyterian Church, we never knew we needed this kind of affirmation of worth. Life has a way of sanding us down and we move from nihilism to an informed embrace of God given grace.”
He continued, “This affirmation comes from Genesis, chapter 1, because all humans are created in the image of God. What we want does not come from achievement, status or money. What we desire was spoken at creation. Our worth is not erased; it is a gift from God on the personal and social level.”
He told the congregation that this belief is not erased by imperialistic claims to land, racism, war or the belief that human beings are expendable. “There is a very real alternative: Every Israeli, Palestinian, every Somali, every Caucasian, every Venezuelan, every African American, every Native American, every human being, is given dignity, and honor, and glory and responsibility.”
Henderson concluded his sermon, “God created humans in the image of God, male and female, all of us. I hope we find a way to live like it.”
Sally Goss, a retired teacher and math tutor, presided. Tom Goss, who sees Chautauqua as a place with 19th century architecture and 21st century ideas, read the scripture. The prelude was “Anthem” by Paul Halley, played by Sonya Subbayya Sutton on the piano and Owen Reyda, organ scholar, on the Massey Memorial Organ. The Motet Choir performed “As Newborn Stars Were Stirred to Song,” words and music by David Hurd. The choir was under the direction of Sutton and accompanied by Reyda on the Massey Organ. The postlude was “Sonata, Op. 65, No.1, Allegro assai vivace,” by Felix Mendelssohn, played by Sutton on the Massey Organ. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching is provided by the Geraldine M. and Frank E. McElree, Jr. Chaplaincy and the Harold F. Reed, Sr., Chaplaincy.
