Advent Week 2
Advent Reflection Week 2: Lauren Matthew
Sunday 10 December 2023
Reflection Text: “So God created humans in (his) God’s image, in the image of God (he) God created them…”
Genesis 1:27a (NRSV Updated Edition)
*Change of pronouns are my addition
This extract from the opening text of Genesis chapter 1, forms part of the great poem of creation attributed to the priestly tradition, one of the four writing traditions (J, E, P, D) of the Pentateuch [1]that were redacted together by many different editors during the periods of exile and rebuilding. At the end of the creation poem, at crescendo of this literary movement, God creates human beings, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness…” (Gen 1:26a) The text goes further to say, “So God created humans in his (God’s) image, in the image of God he (God) created them, male and female” (Gen 1: 27). Through Sunday School and in my Christ following, church-attending faith life the most prominent interpretation of these few lines has always affirmed (hu)man as the perfection of creation, bearing within the (hu)man the very image of the creator God. The image within has been understood to be the true essence of (hu)man, the ‘imago dei’ [2]contained in this temporary body. This was the perfect state of (hu)man(ity), before being marred by the susceptibility and weakness of Eve and bodily desire. In these teachings of my formative years, although God creates (hu)man in “his” image, the body/spirit division was strongly emphasised. In addition, although male and female are created in God’s image, the male image was always centred as God was always perceived as male. In more recent scholarship on the Genesis text a more positive light has been given to idea that God in God’s Trinitarian nature holds, the full spectrum of male – female, non-conforming, non-binary, and queer.
As we reflect more deeply and deliberately on incarnation, on God-becoming-flesh, I would like to build on the work of these recent scholars and further stretch the boundaries and meaning of the word ‘us’, in “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness…” Could the boundaries of the ‘us’ be extended to also hold the whole act of creation itself? Could the creating God who in intimate relationship created all things, not also in this act of creation include all creation? Could the ‘us’ be the coming together of all the multifariousness of God’s creative heart and words, held inside Trinitarian love-energy that culminates in the creation ha’adam,[3] a complex reflection of God and God-in-creation coming together.
In this view of mine, the human is the extension of the vibrant creative relationship of God in creation and creation in God, as much as the human reflects the Trinitarian nature of God. This implies that Go-in-creation and creation-in-God is embodied, fleshed-out in the bone, muscle, sinew, blood, and breath of humanity and that to be human is to be embedded in the fullness of all creation. Thus, in the event of the incarnation, we see God fully entering this beautiful multiformity, through Jesus. It is deeply significant that when God chooses fleshiness, and that God does so from the margins, from the underside of history. The complexity and interconnected of human-God-creation, being, who we call Jesus, dawns on us in the story of the oppressed, in the vulnerability and defiance of those who are disposed and disenfranchised. It is from the body, from the lived experience of marginalised and oppressed, from the deep interconnectedness and embeddedness of the human and creation that is affirmed and reimagined in the incarnation. This advent season may we keep watch, for the God that becomes flesh in the margins.
Reference List:
- De La Torre, Miguel. 2011. Genesis: A Theological commentary on the Bible. Westminster John Knox Press: Kentucky
- Pinn, B. Anthony. 2010. Embodiment and the New Shape of Black Theological thought. New York University Press: New York
[1] The Jahwist (J), Elohimist (E), Priestly (P) and Deuteronomist (D) traditions are the sources for the first five books of the First Testament (Old Testament), the Pentateuch.
[2] The term ‘imago dei’ means image of God in Latin.
[3] Ha’adam is the Hebrew term for man, which can mean “creature of the earth”. Some scholars say that the term is not gendered. It has been translated into the name Adam, which traditionally is the name of the person in the creation story.
