Let us make no mistake. Humanity is the best! We human beings are created in the image of God. The word "image" is listed three times in verses 26 and 27 of Genesis 1. Imagine that! We are "Chips off the ol’ block." That is we are god—like here on Earth. Isn’t that great!
But wait, there’s more. In verse 31, when we humans are created, God looks at his creation and sees that, "It is very good!" Now, God has repeatedly seen that his creation is good, but only after the sixth day of creation, only after human beings are created, does God see that creation is very good." It is only after we are created that the "very" gets added to the "good." Creation is good and, once we humans are added, it is very good! Ah, yes, all is right with our world—we know our place—as the capstone of this good earth!
But that’s precisely the problem isn’t it? How many of you feel like you are in the perfect place here on earth? How many of you feel like you even know your place on the earth? How many of you feel like the very good capstone of God’s very good creation?
Obviously, I can’t tell exactly how you feel at the moment about your place here on earth, but I can tell you that in my years of ministry people regularly come to me because they are uncertain of their place. A lot of this uncertainty centers on how common, ordinary, and broken we feel. To find our good and godly place on earth is hard in the midst of the cold reality of the earth.
Here are just some snippets from true stories of those struggling to find their place:
- A woman comes to her pastor and says that she feels ugly and unlovable and thinks her husband will soon leave her and her children with no place to go.
- A man comes to a therapist and says that everything was going along fine until he lost his job, and now he doesn’t know his place in life.
- A young man who has just "got dumped" by his girlfriend (she left him), finds out that he also isn’t getting the job he had hoped for.
- A couple retires to a comfortable condo. They have good medical care, are financially secure, have loving and caring children and grandchildren, and a good church home; yet somehow they feel empty—they can’t find their place in life anymore.
- A farmer who is in prime of his life, comes down with MS, and suddenly can’t farm, can’t provide for his wife and kids. What’s his place?
You see the problem. Male and female created in the image of God— we are the very capstone of creation. We are told to rule the earth. We are given dominion over the earth. We are blessed and told to fill the earth, to increase in number. God puts us in a place of authority and gives our first parents a garden in which to live. We humans are exalted—the very best of God’s creation—and when we are at our best we are indeed glorious to behold. We are very good! Yet, so often we don’t feel like we are in a good place.
And so we come to the other part of our text, a part of the text that probably can create some uncomfortable feelings of lowliness in us. I like to call this part of the text, the dirty truth. Why? Because much of Genesis 2 is about the dirt, the ground, and the dust of the earth. We are told that Adam, the first human being, is created from the dust of the ground. As if this isn’t humbling enough, verse 19 of chapter two tells us that this is the exact same way that God created the animals. We, along with all the animals, are made out of dirt. We are no better than mere animals. The cold, hard, lowly reality of our creation is that we are quite literally earthy beings, made of dirt.
I want you to also notice from the text that the very first word God speaks to humans is an earthly word. That is, he tells us to take care of this earth. God’s first words to us are not words of heavenly glory and splendor and extra—terrestrial greatness, but common words of service to this earth.
Finally, regarding our lowly, earthy state, it is important to understand that the name of our first ancestor, Adam, is the same as the Hebrew word for ground or dirt. The name Adam in Hebrew means the ground. Quite literally, the first human being is named after the stuff of this earth: common, everyday dirt. As we might say it today, his name is mud!
How can we be such lofty creatures, created in the image of God, and such lowly creatures, created out of the earth, at the same time? There is a tension here, isn’t there? It is the tension between thinking that we can do everything and anything because of our high status and the reality that so often we live our lives in the dirt of the earth. It’s the tension between finding ourselves in a grand place on God’s grand earth, and finding ourselves in a rather common place on a dusty earth.
Recently, I had to bury a friend. He was the husband of a long time co—worker in the church. He was too young, in his fifties, with a son in college and a daughter still living at home, not even yet in high school. At his grave side——after all the formalities, stories, scripture and prayers had concluded——many of his family and friends picked up chunks of the hard clay dirt that lay in a pile to the side of the grave. Then they dropped the clay earth down the hole onto the top of his coffin. I will never forget the thudding hollow sound of that dirt hitting that box. Dirt and dust and a dead body. Even as I heard myself saying, "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust we commit this body to the ground from whence it came," I found myself thinking how wrong it seemed. How wrong it seemed that a human being should be nothing but dirt of the earth. But so we seem to be.
Do you feel the tension here? How do we find our place in a world in which we are created in the image of God, the capstone of creation, with power, authority and dominion over the Earth; and yet, in the end we are nothing more than the earth itself?
Well, I know that one approach is pure escapism. That is, sometimes we simply try to escape our earthly reality. In fact, one of the earliest Christian heresies that began to take root already in the first century was the escapist teaching that Jesus wasn’t really an earthling. He just seemed to be human. The notion that God could become a mere man, the stuff of the earth, was just too much for some to believe. So they rejected the idea that Christ was of this world at all. Many of us today can’t even accept the idea that we are merely human. We want to be supermen or superwomen—indestructible and everlasting.
In my ministry I have noticed that fewer and fewer people want to go to the graveside to see and experience the reality of burial. Almost no one wants to throw dirt on a casket. We just want someone else to take care of all that while we try to celebrate life and ignore the harsh reality of our eventual return to dust. We want to escape.
Frequently today escapism rears its head when religion is reduced to mere ethereal spirituality, completely separated from the day to day reality of life. When this thinking takes root in our lives we go to church and Bible study just waiting for the day when we can escape to heaven. Or, perhaps we try to be super human beings, who are above the stuff of this earth.
Many of you are probably familiar with the fictional character of Superman. Part of the reason he is so popular is because he doesn’t need to be bogged down by mere mortality and the stuff of this earth. He is not only stronger than a locomotive and faster than a speeding bullet, but he can also leap tall buildings in a single bound. In short, he can do all the stuff I can’t do. So, I am tempted to escape to my comic book heroes like Superman. I hope and pretend that I can escape the dusty reality of life on the dirt of this earth. Sooner or later however, the reality of this material earth impinges on my day dream. Escapism never really works.
On the opposite extreme, some of us do not want to escape at all. We do just the opposite. We focus on just the material stuff of this earth. When this materialist view takes over, we say things like, "You only go around once, so make the most of it." This materialistic view also creeps into our religious life. Pastors and church leaders preach and teach and write books with titles like, "Your Best Life Now." There are many who will tell you that God wants you to be healthy, wealthy and, if not wise, at least happy. So we treat the material stuff of earth as if this is all there is to life. We chase after health and wealth; believe bumper sticker slogans like, "He who dies with the most toys wins"; and, religiously follow the careers of beautiful people, successful people, people who seem to have it all.
But if the material world was really so good and wonderful, all the rich would be happy, all the well—fed would be healthy, and all the faithful Christians would be materially blessed. But this is manifestly not the case. Even rich, well—fed Christians are sometimes unhappy, unhealthy, and although perhaps full of material blessings, sometimes they are spiritually empty.
Realistically, upon thoughtful reflection, I think most of us can quickly conclude that neither escapism (which is pure denial of the material), nor materialism (which is pure denial of the spiritual) will be very fulfilling in the end.
So what do we do with this tension between our earthly, dusty creation and our heavenly, image—bearing creation? If neither escapism nor materialism is the answer (and it isn’t), where do we find our place? Is our earthiness really a gift? Why can’t we just be ethereal image—bearers flying in the lofty heights? Why must we be creatures of dirt? What do we do with the tension?
Well, look at the beginning of Genesis again with me. As we look at the text we notice something very surprising. In the text there is no tension. In the text lofty image—bearers walk hand in hand with the lowly dirt of earthiness with no problem at all. There is no tension, no brokenness, no problem. The simple truth is that we are both created in the flesh, of the dirt, of this earth; and we are created in God’s own image. It is by putting the two together, in proper context that we find true image—bearing humanity.
Perhaps it is this lack of proper context that explains our struggles with finding our place on this earth. What I mean is, we want to be grand, image—bearers, lofty creatures and yet the cold dust of earth seems to keep pulling us down. And so we get frustrated. We want the grandeur without the context of our earthly reality. But we forget that our true place only comes with the cold hard reality of the earth.
I recently learned that a Norwegian explorer by the name of Amundsen, is credited with the first successful navigation of the famed Northwest Passage back in the 1800’s. Amundsen succeeded where other explorers before him had failed preciously because he embraced the context of the earth through which he would need to travel. The only way to navigate the Northwest Passage was to travel through the bitter cold earth of the arctic region. Amundsen and his expedition let go of all the fancy stuff of European civilization—the fine machinery, clothing and food—and embraced the earthly context of the arctic region. They used dog sleds for ease of travel, animal skins to keep warm, and ate the food of the region. They learned to exist and thrive as taught by the natives of the region. When they embraced the earthly reality of the cold arctic context, they succeeded in their goal.
So we too must embrace the context of our earthly creation.. Our earthiness is a gift—a gift that we can embrace by bearing the image of God as we work on this earth and care for it. We embrace the gift of earthiness in the context of divine image—bearing when we love and fill the earth with human goodness. We do so by recognizing that we are dependent on God.
Without a doubt the best model of this earthiness lived in the proper divine context is Jesus Christ himself. Jesus was incarnate in the flesh. He was of the substance of this earth. He was familiar with dirt, with pain, with tears, with death, and with burial. Yet he was fully God! He lived his life as a man. He did not try to escape or deny his humanity. He ate and he drank—he lived, like us, as a part of this earthly creation.
But he also knew that there was more than just this earth. He lived his earthly life consistently in the context of God’s heavenly reality. In fact, he was fully divine even as he was fully human. As he walked this earth he constantly pointed us toward His heavenly Father. And, when it was time, he sacrificed his earthly life so that we all could live in forgiveness and wholeness with our God. It is this wholeness with our God through Jesus Christ that gives us our place on this earth.
Our goal must be to embrace the gift of earthiness in the context of our saving God through Jesus Christ. We need to find our place as God’s servants working on this earth for his glory. It is not our job, our spouse, our health, our wealth, or any other measure of human status that give us our place in life. In fact, if we look for our place in these things, we will always be empty.
Now, let me be honest, to lose a spouse or a job, to be uncertain about our future plans, or to feel adrift with no guiding purpose is always difficult. I am not trying to dismiss or belittle the pain we feel when we are trying to find our place, but can’t. Yet, in the midst of our pain Genesis One and Two remind us that ultimately our place is with our eternal God here on this earth. Yes, graciously God often provides jobs and families; hobbies and careers; beauty and joy, but ultimately these things do not define our place. Our place is defined by God as his image—bearers serving God here on earth.
Let me take you back to the graveside of my friend. Remember I told you that the thudding of the dirt hitting his coffin seemed all wrong to me. I said, "How wrong it seemed that a human being should be nothing but dirt of the earth. But so we seem to be." Well, my friend knew better. As he was dying his older brother made a comment to him about how we are all just mortal beings, all destined to die and to return to the ground. But my friend knew better. He knew that his brother was only half right. And so he quickly declared, "Yes, but never forget that we are eternal."
So as I spoke the last public words over the body of my friend before his body was lowered into the ground, I said, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we commit this body to the ground from whence it came." But then I also added, "But we know that this body does not belong to the ground. Instead, he belongs body and soul, in life and now in death, to his faithful Savior Jesus Christ!"
So too today, I hope that you will not forget that you are eternal.
God has given you the great gift of earthiness to be lived in the context of his divinity. You are both fully of this earth and in Jesus Christ, fully of God. Amen.
Let us pray together.
Prayer
Dear Heavenly Father,
I pray that you will remind us that we are of this earth, but also that in Jesus Christ we are of you. Help us to live here on this earth giving glory to you. Soaring to the heights through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior even while we are at work here on earth. We pray this in Jesus name, amen
Paul DeVries
Rev. Paul DeVries, most commonly referred to as “Pastor Paul”, is the Sr. Pastor of Brookside Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is married to Diane (nee Vanden Akker) and the father of four children. He graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1989 and served for 12 years as the pastor of Unity Christian Reformed Church in Prospect Park, New Jersey. As a pastor his first love and greatest joy comes in the honor of bringing God’‘s Word to his congregation on a weekly basis through his preaching. He enjoys reading, camping with his family, watching his children’‘s sporting events, and working on home improvement projects - inside and outside his home.
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