The Beautiful Community: The Life of Royalty
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
26 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.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 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.”
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
In his recent book Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt, Arthur Brooks writes about an encounter on September 26, 2017 between Hawk Newsome, president of Black Lives Matter New York, and a white man named Tommy Hodges. This encounter took place at the National Mall in Washington, DC just a few weeks after the violence and tragedy in Charlottesville, VA. Hawk Newsome had actually been in Charlottesville and was still recovering from a wound. He had been hit in the face with a rock.
For his part Tommy Hodges was in DC as the organizer of a pro-Trump rally. Hawk Newsome and the team of people with him were bracing for another confrontation. The pro-Trump folks and the Black Lives Matter folks were hurling insults at each other. Then something unexpected happened. Tommy Hodges invited Hawk Newsome up on the stage to address the pro-Trump rally.
Hodges said, “We’re going to give you two minutes of our platform to put your message out. Whether they disagree or agree with your message is irrelevant. It’s the fact that you have the right to have the message.”
Hawk Newsome, who is a Christian, said a prayer and addressed the crowd. I’m not going to run through the whole account. You can search for it online and watch it yourself. I’ll just tell you about an encounter after Hawk spoke. A man named Kenny Johnson, who’s a leader in a group called Bikers for Trump, approached him. Johnson said about Hawk, “I feel what he said came from his heart when he got on the stage. I probably agree with 90 percent of what he said. I listened to him with much love, respect, and honor, and I got that back.”
My point is not to say that this is an example of how to eradicate deep disagreements. Here’s my point. If I asked you to tell me who you are, what would you say? I am sure I’d get a number of different answers. I’d hear things like, “I’m a Christian.” “I’m an African American man.” “I’m a Korean woman.” “I’m father, mother, sister, brother, son, daughter, friend, professor...”
Would it come to your mind to answer by saying, “I’m a king!” “I’m queen!” “I am royalty?” You might consider that to be a bit arrogant, but it’s not. It’s actually the truth.
What is the first thing that the Bible says about humanity?
26 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.”
In her book God’s Many Splendored Image, author Nonna Verna Harrison righty says, “the word dominion speaks of royalty which is a facet of the divine image in every human person. Royalty involves (1) dignity and splendor, and (2) a legitimate sovereignty rooted in one’s very being.”
I want you to do me a favor this morning. This is participation time. Turn to the person next to you, and on my count, I want you to say these words, “Good morning your majesty.” Feels weird, doesn’t it? It’s not just that it feels strange saying it out loud. It’s like the case that it feels strange thinking it because that is not our internal default disposition when we are considering other human beings.
Sin has us all jacked up. As a result of the pervasive nature of sin the gruesome aspects of the human predicament are often more prominent to our eyes than the glorious aspects. But the Bible doesn’t begin with the fall, death and depravity. It begins with a more true reality about human beings than our sinful condition. That truth is we are made in the image and after the likeness of God. Which means every human being from the womb to the tomb is saturated through and through with royal dignity regardless of age, ability, accomplishments, or anything else that differentiates us one from another.
To quote Nonna Verna Harrison again, “Because everyone is made in the image of God, and because this image defines what it means to be human, people are fundamentally equal, regardless of the differences in wealth, education, and social status. The church preached this countercultural message in the ancient world and still preaches it now.”
The church’s message in the ancient world was the fundamental equality and royal dignity of every human being. Who were the first recipients of Genesis? The people of Israel received it from the mouth Moses. What was their condition when they received the word of God? They had just been liberated from slavery in Egypt. They had just experienced the pervasive reality of inequality and injustice and oppression among humanity. In the ANE world the only people who were understood to be the image of god or the gods on earth was the king. And you were accorded dignity and rights based on your affiliation to the king. Were you his people? Then you had rights.
This is precisely why the Israelites were enslaved. They weren’t Egyptian. That’s why Pharaoh says to his people in Exodus 1, “We have to deal shrewdly with the people of Israel. There are too many of them in our land.” The Lord frees them from slavery and the first thing he communicates to them about humanity is that every person is image.
July 4, 1776, the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence begins with these words,
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Can I tell you something? The fundamental equality of human beings is not self-evident! Apart from a vision of humanity rooted in the biblical ethic, the opposite is self-evident. These words open the founding document of the United States of America. And, at the same time, there is a lived, on the ground reality in the country that communicates the exact opposite of those words. It’s not self-evident on a collective level or an individual level. Every single day you and I have to fight against, have to push back against our tendencies and temptations to deny the royal dignity of other people. You don’t believe me? Open up and scroll through your Twitter feed. Even if you most of the people you follow and who follow you share your world view, somebody is going to retweet somebody who has said something you find utterly intolerable. What is your first inclination?
Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:21ff), that human anger can be akin to murder; that human anger can be dangerous and destructive.
9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. 10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.
Why does Jesus have to correct our understanding?
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
He has to correct us because our default when it comes to people with whom we have deep disagreements and animosity, and even contempt, is not to engage from a disposition of love for royal image bearers. We want to engage from a disposition of love with those whom we think are worthy of that love. We do not live like the royal dignity of every human being, like the fundamental equality of people is self-evident.
Jesus’ words, “love your enemies,” isn’t a new concept in the New Testament. Listen
4 “If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. 5 If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him.
In this section of Exodus the Lord, through Moses, is explaining to his people what it looks like to live out the implications of the ten commandments, especially commandments 5-10, our duties towards our neighbors. Did you notice the emphasis on loving enemies? “If you meet your enemy’s ox or donkey...” “If you see the donkey of one who hates you...” On the one hand, if the other person is someone you can’t stand, your enemy. On the other hand, if it’s someone who can’t stand you, someone who hates you. In either case you help meet their needs. That’s what my people do, the Lord is saying.
Think of someone you can’t stand. I know it’s hard, but try. If they encounter some hardship, you’ll at least be tempted to think. “You’re getting what you deserve.” But God doesn’t call his people to engage in karma. He calls them to engage in compassion!
See, here’s the deal. You and I don’t own any ox or donkeys, but there is a nowness to the opportunity to actively reject the disposition of contempt towards those we find utterly intolerable and to express the kind of love that demonstrates a commitment to promote the royal dignity of fellow image bearers.
Here’s why this is important. The theme of these messages I’m delivering today and tomorrow is, The Beautiful Community. By that I mean unity in diversity, love across lines of difference in Jesus’s name. And we were designed for this. We were designed by God as a royal humanity, not just royalty as individuals. I had you greet one another as royalty on purpose. It’s not enough for me to think of myself as royalty, or even to acknowledge that others are royalty. I have to begin imagining all of humanity together as the royal image.
Who is this God that we image? He is in himself unity in diversity, diversity in unity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The God we image is beautiful community. Theologian Herman Bavinck put it well when he said,
The Trinity reveals God to us as the fullness of being, the true life, eternal beauty...In God, too, there is unity in diversity, diversity in unity. Indeed, this order and this harmony is present in him absolutely…[He] is the most perfect kind of community, a community of the same beings; [He] is the most perfect diversity, a diversity of divine persons.
As another theologian, John Frame says,
There is no conflict in the Trinity. The three persons are perfectly agreed on what they should do and how their plan should be executed. They support one another, assist one another, and promote one another’s purposes. This intra-Trinitarian “deference,” this “disposability” of each to the others, may be called “mutual glorification.”
As his image, that’s what we were made to reflect. And we will never get to the pursuit of beautiful community until we can envision our royal dignity and live it out in practice. Let me leave you with this question as I close. Who are the people who are tempted to despise, dismiss, or dishonor internally or externally? Those are the precise people the Lord wants you to begin thinking of as royal image bearers. It doesn’t mean that the deep disagreements will go away. It doesn’t mean that you ought to excuse or ignore injustice and unrighteousness. It means that you have to come to a place of willing and desiring their good to the glory of God.