The Beautiful and Perfect Image of God

 

‘So, God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them …’ Genesis 1:27

Chanie Wenjack was an Anishinaabe First Nation child who was taken from his family in northern Ontario back in the mid-1960’s and placed in a residential school in Kenora. Like thousands of indigenous children across Canada and here in our own country, he couldn’t understand why he was there. Eventually he did what many of these kids did. He ran away intending to return to his family and community. In late October of 1966, this 12-year-old boy started off alone down the CN railroad tracks intending to walk the 370 miles to the Marten Falls Reserve.

He wasn’t properly clothed and carried no food or water. All he had with him was a jar with seven wooden matches in it. When the weather turned cold and sleet began to fall, he kept on walking until he collapsed and died alongside those lonely railroad tracks. The cause of death was attributed to exposure and hunger, but the real cause of this child’s death was the policy that separated him from his people.

For generations, children like Chanie Wenjack were viewed as having little value unless their identity could be removed from them. The church, especially, was complicit in this. The school this boy ran away from was a Christian institution intent on erasing these kids’ belief system and history. These are the very same schools that are in the news today; places where hundreds of unmarked graves of children are being uncovered. Here’s why it’s important that we acknowledge this history, and that we repent of the church’s role in it. These vulnerable kids were created in the beautiful and perfect image of The Creator just as each of our own children are.

We read in Mark’s gospel of two vulnerable people who come to Jesus for help. One is a religious leader whose child is dying. The other is a woman who’s been hemorrhaging for years. The leader of the synagogue is empowered to live a privileged and comfortable life. In contrast, the woman who comes to Jesus hoping to touch his clothing is an outcast. She’s not only ill, but she is also ritually unclean and therefore distanced from the day-to-day life of the community.

Those gathered around Jesus would have seen this woman through the very same lens we use to self-righteously judge families seeking asylum at our borders. It’s the lens we use when we have to wait that extra moment or two at the grocery store because the single parent in front of us is struggling to pay. It’s the lens we see the homeless, the addicted, and the incarcerated through. It’s the same lens the church once viewed children like Chanie Wenjack through.

There would have been no question among those gathered around Jesus that a religious leader’s daughter is far more deserving of love and care than a bleeding and unclean woman embarrassing herself and everyone else by touching him. And yet, in his eyes, all the characters in this story share equally in the vulnerability of life. God envisions each and every human being through the lens of unconditional love. It’s this broad lens that God invites us to imagine the world through as well.

Everyone has equal value in God’s eyes, and so we are all loved just as we are; the young and the old, the hopeful and the hopeless, the privileged and the marginalized, the refugee and the native born. In God’s kingdom there is always enough time, resources, compassion, empathy, grace, and love to go around so that no one is ever written off. The gospel narrative challenges us to see ourselves in the vulnerability of others so that we can place our faith where it belongs, which is in the radical love and inclusion of the risen Christ.

So, let’s go out and into the world this week and name those among us who are most vulnerable. Let’s confront the systems we create that diminish, abuse, or discount our neighbors. Let’s commit ourselves to remembering the names of discarded kids like Chanie Wenjack so that we can get on with the work of reconciliation.

Let’s remind ourselves that God steps into this world in the very places where it’s most vulnerable; both in the brokenness of others and in our own brokenness.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Tom Murray

Lutsen Evangelical Lutheran Church

Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Tom Murray of the Lutsen Lutheran Church and Baptism River Community Church of Finland.