Genesis 1:26-31
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God, our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, Christ, amen. This Lenten season, we have been talking about the core values that our congregation decided on for our strategic plan, which we are using a program called serving in God's mission. These core values are divided into two groups. There's the active core values and the aspirational core values. We have three active core values, which are values that we see in action in in our church. The first one was Christ centered worship, when we gather together to receive the gifts of Word and Sacrament, and God delivers his grace to us to confirm us in the faith and sustain us in our Christian walk. The second is Christian growth, or catechesis, the various ways that we hear God's word and learn it to better understand it, so that we can know God's will in our lives. The third active core value, and final one, is sanctity of life. That's the one we'll be talking about today. Our aspirational core values. The first one is human care, the second one is outreach, and the third one is evangelism.
We'll get to talk about each of those when we get to our our services the next few times so but today we're talking about the sanctity of life, and the program we're using defines it this way. It says we recognize the inherent value of human life, from conception to natural death. We support efforts to preserve and protect the lives of all human beings, including the pre born, disabled, aged and infirmed, because they are all created in the image of God.
This idea of the sanctity of life being a value derives from two different ideas in Scripture. The first one is the created order. This is what I read from from Genesis, where it talks about creating male and female and in the image of God. Is that every human being is created in the image of God and given the task of caring for God's creation. Each and every one of us has this image that God has given all of human beings. So we are all created in this image, which means we are therefore valuable. We have value each and every one of us simply because God has created us that way.
The image of God means that there is no human being that has no value every person, no matter who they are, no matter what they've done, no matter how great or terrible is created in the image of God, and that is why we support all forms of preserving human life. Now, when most people think about this, when we say sanctity of life, we use the word abortion, and that's pretty much what everybody talks about, but you'll notice that the description talked about all forms of life, and so sanctity of human life is not simply about one political topic or one particular idea or supporting maternity homes. The sanctity of life covers every single human being, each has value. Each is valuable in the eyes of God and for us. And it's interesting to me, the number of ways that we try to determine a human being's value in society that are different from the ways that God does. We have come up with many different moral systems to rate the value of a human life, to decide whether it should continue or not.
One of those is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a value that says human beings are valuable for what they contribute to the world. And while you say that, I mean we all should have some sort of contribution for the good of others, the utilitarian value doesn't do a good job of measuring actual value, because they rate some things up here and some things down here. And when you follow a. Utilitarian world view. Things are only valuable for their usefulness. You get eugenics, and that is what our country has done using that utilitarian world view. It is also the kind of world view that we get when we look at other human beings as if they are tools for our own personal happiness, whether it is children or work or the people you serve in your jobs, spouses, we are not valuing them as a human being if we only rate them on their usefulness to us, they are not a means, but an end.
Another way that people rate human life is by judging the quality of that life. We take what we would prefer and we put it on them, and we say that life may continue or not. Is a good life or not, depending on how I might feel if I were in their shoes, which allows all sorts of people to make all sorts of justifications to do all sorts of terrible things to other people because we don't think that they are valuable.
Another way is a life is only valuable if it contributes to my happiness. And that is the way that we talk about children these days. Children are a thing that you do if it will fulfill your life purpose, if it makes you flower like a blossom in a meadow. And if we do that, it again turns children not into an end, but a means. They become a tool for our own personal fulfillment, rather than a human being created in the image of God for us to serve.
This Genesis passage is behind much of the rights and freedoms that we actually experience as Americans. If you've read any of John Locke, you know that much of his treatise on government is a systematic theology of creation, focusing on Genesis, chapter one and two, and the idea that we are all created valuable in the image of God, means that we are each the same, no one above another in value or means.
The second thing that makes us think see life as valuable is not just creation, but also redemption, the redemption that we have in Jesus, Christ proves that every single human life is valuable. Why? Because Jesus died for every single human life. Jesus died to take away the sins of the whole world, whether they believe in him or not, whether they will enter into eternal life or not, whether we whatever the person he died for, that person and the redemption that Christ is going to bring to the entire universe is a piece of our respect for every single human life, which is great, because that includes you, right?
That includes Jesus dying for you so that your life can be saved. So because we, who are in Christ, are all one, whether we are young or old, sick or healthy, dying or happy, the resurrection of Jesus, Christ and His redemption for the world means that we cannot discard any person, whether they are a frozen embryo or having a terminal illness. You Yes. So while we often talk about abortion as the the primary implication of this, there are a couple of other places where this implication becomes important.
And one of those, I think, is is children in our society, because the United States, our culture generally, has created a society where children are mostly not welcome. Think about the last time you got on a plane and you saw a child on the plane. How did you feel?
You get nervous. You. You go, oh no, they're going to be running all over the place. What are children doing here? Can you believe that mom brought their kid on the plane? That is not a culture of life. Is it? If we have a society where children are not welcome, you are not creating a culture of life. You are creating a culture where moms and dads are not allowed to go anywhere, where the price of children is too high, that's one of the things that I love.
When the empty table of 2911, when they are here is because we get a chance to experience a life filled worship service. It's a little noisy. It's often got a little blonde kid running around, but that's what a community filled with life looks like, because we don't discard the children, just because they're loud or noisy or distracting, they are members of the Body of Christ, one with us in Him and created in the image of God.
We don't shove them off into a corner and tell them, wait until you're older to be one of us. You and if we want as as a church and as a people to have a culture of life, we need to have a culture that welcomes children into every aspect of community. Otherwise, we will we will not have any and a church without children is a dying church.
This culture of life is also one of the reasons that our churches are opposed to things like racism. Actually, it's not racism. I think that Christians should be opposed to but the idea of race itself, because if you look at the story of Adam and Eve, which race Do you think they were? I mean, if you want to use these fun American racial categories, we can. We've got only a few, and they don't make any sense. I mean, we've got black, white, Hispanic and Asian. How crazy is Asian as a category? It covers Japanese Indians, Arabs, Chinese Russians, Mongolians, everybody from Asia. And I bet if you ask person from India, you're exactly the same as person from Japan, both people would be angry at you. Even the categories, if you accept the idea of race, doesn't make sense. But Adam and Eve were not a box on a form. They were just humans. Our concept of race was created by the slavers who brought black slaves to America.
There are no black people in the Bible because it didn't exist, and as long as we play by those rules, we will have their outcomes. I think the Bible, in its created order, says that race is a concept that should not exist, but even more in the redeemed order, it explicitly tells us that there are no distinctions Galatians chapter three, no Jew or Greek slave or free, male or female. We are all one in Christ.
The implications of the sanctity of life scatter throughout the entirety of our lives as Christians, not just when life begins, but as we help to raise new life at the end of life, in our interactions with others and everywhere between because we know that we are all created in the image of God, and that Jesus loved every individual so much that He died for them. Every person has value. That's what it means, sanctity of life in Jesus name, Amen.
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