Sunday, September 14th, 2025: "The Image of God: Human"
The First United Presbyterian Church
“The Image of God: Human”
Rev. Amy Morgan
September 14, 2025
Genesis 1:26-27
Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
So God created humans in God’s image,
in the image of God they created them;
male and female they created them.
John 1:14, 18
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth…No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
So, as part of this series on Biblical images of God, we need to give some special attention to God as human. First, because we have in the very first chapter of the Bible the creation of humanity in the image of God so we need to deal with what that means. And second, because, as John’s gospel so eloquently describes, God was incarnated, enfleshed, in human form in Jesus of Nazareth so we need to deal with what that means.
But we also need to explore the diversity of human images of God in the Bible because we seem to have completely lost the ability to recognize and respect the divine image in our fellow human beings. And that has real-life implications. What we have experienced this week as a nation and in our state is the tragedy that results from dehumanizing one another, from fomenting resentment and anger to the point of seeing each other as less than images of the Living God, less than human, less than worthy of living. It is clear from this week’s events that this degradation of our society stems from every side of the political spectrum, and our efforts to point fingers and say someone else started it or has done it more or made it worse misses the point. Because if we can’t own whatever part of this is ours to own, we certainly can’t ask, encourage or empower others to do so.
As I said last week, our images of God shape our relationship with God and with everyone and everything else. So let’s start with an image that has shaped almost every American for the last 85 years. This is Warner Sallman’s famous 1940 painting, The Head of Christ. Sallman was a devout Christian and classically-trained painter from Chicago. His parents were immigrants from Finland and Sweden. His Head of Christ portrays Jesus as someone who might have stepped off the boat with his parents.
More than half a billion copies of this painting have been sold, making it one of the most prevalent images of Jesus in the world.
But in 2002, a new image of Jesus emerged. Scientists used forensic anthropology and new technologies to construct what they argued was a more historically accurate portrait of Jesus. In this rendering, Jesus is depicted with dark skin and dark eyes and dark, frizzy hair. It is starkly different from the Sallman Jesus so many American Christians were familiar with.
And for some folks, it was completely unacceptable. It wasn’t just because this new image of Jesus contradicted our comfortable, American-looking Jesus. It was also because Jesus looked far too much like people who had flown airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon only a year before this image was released. This Jesus didn’t look like our friend. He looked an awful lot like our enemies.
This is why human images of God matter so much. They can influence how we view ourselves and other humans in profound ways. If we can look at God in human form and see someone like ourselves, we are comforted and reminded that we are made in God’s image. But if we look at God in human form and have to see someone who hates us, we are disturbed and challenged to see how they can be made in the image of God.
But this is the disturbing challenge set before us by our sacred scriptures. And it is the blessing and opportunity set before us by our sacred scriptures. And it starts right from the very beginning.
In the beginning, God creates light and darkness, land and sea, plants and animals. And finally, God creates human beings in God’s own image. God says to the Triune Godhead, Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness. Something that doesn’t show up in English translations of this line but is really weird in Hebrew is this : this phrase uses both feminine and masculine constructs for God. “In our image” is a masculine construct, and “according to our likeness” is a feminine construct. And notice that both of them are plural. And then God creates both women and men in God’s image.
So from the very first chapter of the Bible, we learn that God is plural, God’s plurality encompasses both male and female, and both women and men fully reflect the image and likeness of God. So when female or plural pronouns are used for God instead of exclusively male pronouns, it isn’t necessarily a liberal, “woke” attempt to be politically correct. It’s actually more accurately scriptural.
Feminist theologians have interpreted this in support of egalitarian power structures in church and society. Queer theologians see this as affirmation that those who don’t fit into a binary gender structure are also made in the image of a God who encompasses multiple genders.
And for folks who were taught that God is male, and especially for those who were nurtured in a complementarian theology, where women are subjugated to men, and those who were taught that there are only two genders because God only made humans in two genders – and I would imagine that most of us here were taught at least some version of some of those things – this image of God, and these interpretations of scripture, are disconcerting, maybe even threatening.
But I would encourage us to wrestle with these images and ideas. Folks have been hurt by the church, turned away from a loving God, broken in their spirit because they have been told that the Bible, our sacred scriptures, condemn them, deny their existence, or state that they are divinely ordained to submission. But if we read these texts carefully, there is at least the possibility that those images of God that have been so damaging are not really the full picture of God.
As a matter of fact, once we move along from the first chapter of Genesis, we begin to encounter some even more surprising human images of God. For example, “El Shaddai,” one of the Hebrew names of God in the Old Testament, is most often translated into English as “God Almighty.” But its linguistic roots suggest that it meant “breasted God.” Most of us probably have not imagined God with breasts, but in the 14th century, Julian of Norwich described the sacrament of Communion with the image of Jesus breastfeeding humanity and had a vision of the wound in Jesus’s side as leading to his “blessed breast.” The prophets often use a Hebrew term that, when referring to God, is translated as “heart.” But it more accurately means “womb,” as in Jeremiah 31:20, when God remembers Israel and says, “My womb trembles for him; I will truly show motherly-compassion on him.”
Imagine if Christian liturgies and hymns over the last 2,000 years had referred with some regularity to our “Breasted God” and to “God’s womb” instead of “God Almighty” and God’s heart? How different would we feel about gender and power and the image of God in each of us? Tempting as it is, I will likely not start weaving “Breasted God” into our liturgies, but I did want to say it one more time to keep you all squirming.
But gender is not the only part of our image of God that gets stretched if we really dig into all the human images of God in the Bible. We’re likely very familiar with God as warrior, king, and Lord. We might even have embraced the image of God as a shepherd, but more in the protective sense than in association with the lowliness of that profession. God as powerful, authoritative, and protective are familiar images for most of us.
But what about God as a lover instead of a fighter? I always knew when a kid in my youth group was doing a “read through the Bible in a year” challenge. Because when they hit Song of Solomon, they were at my door asking why on earth this text was included in the Bible, and what in the world did it mean. We can’t say for sure how it made the canonical cut, but the idea seems to be that this sensual text describes God’s passionate pursuit of humanity. It is pretty racy, if you haven’t read it. Trying to picture God as this romantic lover is a stretch for a lot of folks, but it’s in there. In the Gospels, Jesus also refers to himself as a bridegroom, and Paul takes up this romantic imagery for Jesus, too.
God is clearly a creator in the first chapter of the Bible, but more specifically, Paul describes God as a potter who molds us. Jesus is also referred to often as rabbi, or teacher, and there is both father and mother imagery for God throughout the scriptures. Jesus and Paul use images of someone tending a vineyard to describe God. These images describe a God who doesn’t simply create and sit back and watch what happens. God continues to develop, guide, and nurture what God created.
And then there’s the really radical imagery in the 25th chapter of Matthew’s gospel where Jesus identifies with people who are poor, hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, and in prison. The sheep and goats in the parable, both those who help people in need and those who don’t, are shocked by this idea that caring for vulnerable people equates to caring for God incarnate. This is a complete departure from the idea of God as mighty and invincible. And then Jesus suffers and dies, further complicating our ideas about God’s power.
The last two images of God as human that need our special attention today are God as healer and host.
Jesus said, “those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” There is clearly a sickness in our society today that requires deep healing. Jesus healed people in body, mind, and spirit. We are not Jesus, but together, we are the Body of Christ. We are a community of healing.
One of the ways Jesus healed was through hosting. Sitting down and eating meals with his friends and fans and with people who hated him and wanted him dead. He served bread and wine and washed the feet of the one who would betray him to death. This is what God in human form looks like. The host, welcoming everyone, friends and enemies, loved ones and strangers, sinners and saints. This is the God in whose image we are all created.
And this is the God our world needs right now, maybe more than ever. The world needs us to live into the divine image; it needs more healers and hosts like Jesus. The world needs humans who recognize that every single human – every single one – is created in the divine image. The world needs folks who can cherish the beauty and dignity of every person – no matter what they look like, no matter how they live, no matter what they believe or say or do. Theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza wrote that “The call to discipleship is a call to a community of equals, and a new community of God's people where all are ‘in the image of God,’ not just some.”
All are made in the image of God. So friends, if we’re having trouble this week seeing the image of God in certain people because of how they look or live, because of what they say or do, even if we judge their words and actions to be pure evil, if we cannot recognize them as human beings made in God’s image, then there is no hope.
But I am filled with hope today. Because people who recognize and respect the divine image in each human being are everywhere.
They are right here in this church building every week. Folks who gather in our basement to sit in a circle and share songs, folks who get together to dance and move, folks to meet up to create things. These groups are made up of people from all over the ideological spectrum, from all different walks of life, and they recognize and celebrate each other’s human expressions of music, dance, and creativity. They recognize the beauty and value of the divine image in each person.
Scores of people – most of them youth and young adults - were on their knees all day yesterday creating amazing works of art on 5th street to support women escaping domestic violence. People walked the labyrinth at All Saints’ Episcopal Church on Thursday night to pray for peace. Over 100 people attended a panel discussion last Sunday to better understand how to support refugees in our community. And the Loveland area CROP walk quadrupled our fundraising goal because we had already exceeded our original target. All these people showed up in different ways to recognize the beauty and value of the divine image in each person.
And this is what we do, friends, when we gather together as the Body of Christ. We gather to recognize the beauty and value of the divine image in each person. We gather to be equipped and empowered to be healers and hosts. We gather so that we can go out and help others see the glory of God in themselves and others. We gather as human beings made in God’s image so we can follow Jesus, God in human form.
To God the lover, God the healer, God the host be all glory forever and ever. Amen.
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