Our help is in the name of the Lord. Praise be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen. Well, I want to go back to Genesis. And mostly because, well not mostly because, I think one of the reasons I like to do things this way is because there are several ways of theologizing. And I think frequently enough our our approach to theology has been rather analytical and philosophical and so on, you know, speculative. But I think when you get back to the patristic period, theology and spirituality were not separate. They really went together very, very strongly. And I think that basically is what monastic theology is. And it comes out of our lexio, it comes out of reading scripture a lot.

[01:04]

and comes from reading the fathers of the church, the patristic tradition, the desert tradition, and so on. All of this reading of scripture had a very, very practical way of helping the follower of Christ, and particularly the monk, to live in a way that is kind of an understanding of God's way which helps us to understand how we are supposed to live. I think frequently enough we tend in our preaching to be rather moralistic, rather than theological, and yet the moral has to come out of the theology. It has to come from, and I think what we had this morning in the homily was very good that way. It really brought us to an understanding of what the intent of God is and how our own spirituality and morality are wedded and come out of that kind of an understanding.

[02:15]

So if I go back to Genesis again, it's because I think that there's a really fundamental foundational level of the understanding of God and of humanity and of all of creation that we need to know in order to know how we are supposed to live as human beings. Last night I talked about creation, about God whose word brought forth creation. God said, God said, God said. Eight times, God said. But that final time that God said in that first chapter of Genesis has to do with the creation of humanity. All of these other things that God has created have been there for another purpose. And that purpose is humanity. And yet, humanity is not separated from the rest of that creation. In fact, there is no humanity without the rest of that creation.

[03:18]

So it all comes together. It would say, you know, I mean, the initial thing that it has to say to us is that if we ignore the creation around us, if we ignore the environment around us, if we misuse the environment around us, if we squander the environment around us, if we If we're irresponsible about the environment around us, that is not respecting what God has done. That's not respecting the other, the remainder of humanity who is exactly as dependent on this earth for existence as we are. So there's, you know, right away we've got something given to us of the importance of all of creation working together to fulfill the purpose of creation. Now, go back to what the book of Genesis is saying in that first chapter, in verse 26.

[04:22]

God said, let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves, and let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that creep along the ground. God created man in the image of himself. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. One of the things that rather intrigues me is that it's something that really comes out of a Lutheran theologian by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm sure you've heard of him. Most of the time I think the works that we've heard from him are, you know, The Cost of Discipleship and books of that sort. But there's one little book that I hadn't heard about until about something over about 22 years ago actually.

[05:27]

23 years ago almost. I was going to be teaching a course called Christian Freedom in the University at St. John's and I was talking to a man who was at our Acumenical Center 1980 and 81 And his doctoral thesis was on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And I was talking to him one day and I told him about this course that I was preparing to teach the second semester. And I asked him, does Bonhoeffer have anything specifically that would be of interest in this whole question of Christian freedom? He says, oh, by all means. And he told me about a little work that is called Creation and Fall. It consists of 95 or 96 pages. It is absolutely packed. It is one of the most interesting pieces of writing that I've ever read. I've read this book at least seven times, because I taught the course for seven years, so I had to go through it myself, and I had to go through it with the students.

[06:34]

And for a book that small, it probably took us three weeks to get through it in class, because it was so rich. One of the things he says in there is that we've got to understand that if God is God, God doesn't need us. I mean, creation by God is not to fulfill a need that God has. He makes it a point of saying that we can call God the creator, but creation is not of the essence of God. If it were of the essence of God, then God would have to have created us, and therefore God would not have been free not to create us. But he says, creation is an absolutely free act of God. Now, in Genesis we're reading where God says, let us create man in our own image and likeness. So in the image and likeness of God, God created them.

[07:38]

Male and female, God created them. Or, what is the image and likeness of God in us? What, essentially, is the image and likeness of God in us? It goes back to this whole question of freedom. Freedom. Father said this morning in the homily, you know, that creation of itself fulfills its purpose, whether, you know, willy-nilly it's going to fulfill its purpose for why it was created. But humanity has to be free to fulfill its purpose. We can choose to fulfill the purpose God has in mind for us, or we can choose not to. Well, let's look at that. God didn't have to create us, but God did create us, and God creates us in God's own image and likeness, very fine.

[08:41]

That's free, it's a free act of God. Does that have something to say about us being made in the image and likeness of God? I think it does. But at the same time, when we say that God freely created us, it also means that God is free from us. You know, if God is God in any kind of an image that we can have of that God, then God is not, if God didn't need to create us, then God doesn't need us, now even. So God is free from us. Now, let's put it in some other terms. For instance, you know, it's relatively cold outside. I mean, it's not like it's been 20 below zero or 30 or 40 below zero, which I understand it's gotten temperatures like that.

[09:43]

It certainly has in Minnesota at times. When it's that cold, I'm not terribly free to go outdoors and go skinny dipping in Lake Sagatagan. First of all, you have to cut a hole through the ice, and secondly, I don't think you'd get very far even skinny dipping to get the ice cut open. You'd freeze to death before anything else. So I suppose in a sense I'm free to do that, but I mean it's kind of suicidal. Well, I'm going to have to dress for going outdoors. I'm going to have to dress warmly to go outdoors, and especially if you've got a 50 mile an hour wind, you know, it's going to put the wind chill quite low. But I do have the freedom, I suppose, to choose the kind of a coat I'm going to wear, or what kind of hat I'm going to put over my ears, or whatever it might be. I've got certain freedoms there. But I also have some that's not too free.

[10:45]

I've got to, if I want to survive, I have to eat, I have to drink, I have to dress warmly enough for the climate. So there's a certain limitation in what my freedom is, but within the limitation of what my freedom is, I am free. But I'm not free from needing some things if I'm going to survive. I'm not free from having food. I must have food. God is free from it. God is free from any necessity. I might find myself wanting things. And because I want them, I might feel in myself that I'm not free from things. God is free from things. But there's another question in here. Like, for instance, you know, you read or you watch television detective stories and all that sort of a thing.

[11:50]

And they'll say, every man has his price. What is your price? I can offer you $10,000 to knock off somebody. Well, I mean, $10,000, forget it. Well, how about $100 million? Well, I mean, then I'll start thinking about it. But, you know, I can be bribed, maybe. Maybe I can't. But maybe I can be bribed to, you know, something that can be so interesting to me for my own good, as opposed to somebody else's own good, that I might do something for the sake of getting something that's very, very advantageous to me. Well, God can't be bribed, so God is free from us, huh? I mean, do you think that I've made all of the cattle of the world? Do you think that you can feed me? Do you think that you can build me a house? I own all of the cedars of Lebanon. Do you think you can build a house for me? God is free from that kind of thing.

[12:53]

So, what does it mean when it says that God has dominion over all the earth? over all of creation. It means that God has dominion. Nothing in creation can have dominion over God. We allow things sometimes to have dominion over us. So God is free in order to create us, and God is free from us in the sense that nobody can come along and say, hey, God, I'll give you such and such if you'll send so-and-so to hell. This is the freedom of God. Now, go back to this question, what is it in God that in us is the image and likeness of God? What does it mean to be the image and likeness of God? It has something to do with that freedom. Freedom for and freedom from.

[13:56]

We are free to love. We are free for the other person. God is free for us. That's creation. That's everything God does. And the image and likeness of God in us is freedom for the other. And freedom and love are equivalent in this sense. Free for the other. And God is free from us in that God can find absolutely no advantage in destroying us. There's no advantage for God in destroying us at the behest of anybody else. So God is free from us. That has something to do with us. Freedom from anything that would prevent us from loving one another. You know, I think there's something in us that says, our own experience says, God, darn, you know, I'm anything but free from those kinds of things because I get awfully angry at people, I get awfully resentful, I get awfully, you know, any kind of thing that stands in the way, I get awfully greedy, I get awfully this, awfully that, that in some way or another prevents me from

[15:18]

loving the other person, because I am preferring something else to the good of that other person. God is saying, let us make man in our own image and likeness, so in the image and likeness of God, God created them. Male and female, God created them. That's a very important thing, them. God created them. The image and likeness of God is in them. And without the other, it's almost impossible to see the image and likeness of God in anyone. That's the important part of this now. God created them. Male and female, God created them in his own image and likeness, we're told. Now, what does it mean? I'm way, way, way oversimplifying Bonhoeffer in all of this, okay? But ultimately what he is saying is that Adam and Eve, this male and this female, in their unity are the image and likeness of God.

[16:33]

Because they are free to love one another and free from anything that would destroy their relationship with one another. They're free from that in the original plan of God. But they don't stand alone, they're in the image and likeness of God, which puts them immediately in relationship with God. And what they do among themselves is always going to be in relationship to God. Go beyond, you know, this first couple of chapters of Genesis to find out what that really means. You know, once Adam and Eve break the relationship with God through eating the fruit, the forbidden fruit, whatever it was, their relationship falls apart. You know, all of the things that we read about in there, then, you know, you can read it yourself. the happy relationship between these two people, because they're separated from God, is no longer what it was.

[17:41]

And then you read about Cain and Abel, and the relationship between brothers becomes murderous. What I think, or what Bonhoeffer is saying, what I think is true, is that the image and likeness of God in humanity is humanity united. When it says that, you know, male and female God created them, and they together are the image and likeness of God, is representative of all of humanity, because Adam and Eve represent the totality of humanity that existed at that time. They are humanity and this humanity united is the image and likeness of God. Not me alone, not you alone, us together. That's the image and likeness of God. Now the problem that comes up in all of this is that what Adam and Eve want to do at that point then

[18:46]

is perhaps not to be satisfied with being simply made in the image and likeness of God, but rather wanting to be just like God. Now there's a difference between being the image and likeness of God and being just like God. To be just like God means to be unlimited. Because God is unlimited. But we are not. We're limited. You know, is it good to have limitations? Yes, it is. It's very good to have limitations. If you are an astronaut and you are up in space someplace, you will bless God for the capsule that you're in or for the oxygen that you have or for the space suit that you're wearing, whatever it might be. You will bless God for that because if you get outside of that, you will disappear. So, the limitation expands the limit of what we're capable of.

[19:56]

Limitation is good, providing we're talking about the essential limitation. We've expanded our limitations so very much in the last 50 years, it's absolutely amazing. But the limitation of our being means we cannot be without being limited. We need to be defined, to have boundaries in order to exist. Otherwise we do not exist. The limit that we have, Adam and Eve say by eating the forbidden fruit, But you want to be just like God, unlimited. But God says, if you cross that limitation you will die. You will surely die. But then they come along and they say, we want to be just like, you know, the serpent says to them, oh God doesn't want you to eat the fruit of that, that forbidden fruit of that tree because you will become just like God.

[21:07]

That's exactly what they want. They want to be just like God. So God says to him, go ahead. Go ahead. When I was growing up in Minneapolis, we had streetcars. And these streetcars would go down on two tracks down the street. And they had a trolley line up above. And you had a trolley pole going up to the electric wire. And from that trolley wire pole, you had a rope that came down onto the back of the streetcar. And it was on a kind of a pulley sort of a thing, so that if the wire was a little bit higher at times, it would pull out some more rope so that the trolley would stay on the wire. And that's what kept the streetcar moving. But every once in a while some young kid would come running out, you know, from between parked cars, grab the rope on the trolley one, pull it off, you know, and the thing would go flying off the air someplace or other.

[22:14]

The motorman. He'd be up there. Well, the streetcar would go for a few feet more before it would come to a dead stop. And then he had to go out, he had to open up the door, he had to go back, he had to take that wire and he had to put it back up and get it on the trolley so that the streetcar could come alive again. That's the limitation of a streetcar, huh? Well, it's sort of like, it'll go down. Let's say you have the streetcars going downhill someplace. It'll go down a block or a couple blocks even, just through its momentum. But it's lost its source of life, and so it's going to die. And this is basically what the Web Genesis is saying about us. If we separate ourselves from God, thinking that we can be just like God, we're going to lose life. We lose the very source of who we are, of what our life means. Now, keep all this in mind when we come to Christ, because this is what Christ restores, and even does better than that.

[23:21]

So the limitation, you know, they decide they want to be just like God, you want to be just like me, you're going to be independent, fine, you want to be independent, see how far you get, you don't get very far, you die. But in the process of dying, you know, we fall apart, we separate, we separate from one another, all sorts of things come in. If I've been tempted to be just like God rather than in the image and likeness of God, then I am going to start treading on your rights. I'm going to start taking things to myself because I want them. After all, I'm just like God. I mean, everything belongs to me. You know, all of the oil in Iraq belongs to me. You know, these are mine. These are mine. I mean, they're good for me, whether they're good for you or not. So, here we have this real picture of what does it mean to be made in the image and likeness of God.

[24:27]

The tragedy of Adam and Eve was that they simply weren't satisfied. And as a result, death comes into the world. And I think when we look at that, when we see that, we become aware, we say, you know, what kind of sense does it make for our first parents to have broken relationship with God and we have to pay for it? Well, take a look at your own families. Take a look at your own relatives and friends. Take a look at the people you know, people who perhaps came out of some really very very good families and yet maybe somebody in the family goes off and just, you know, doesn't make a very good relationship with God as time goes on. And you see it going down generation, next generation, and the next generation of people who have no knowledge of God, who have no concept of religion, who have no concept that God is to be worshipped.

[25:31]

We see the consequences. We do affect each other from generation to generation. How many in here know Chinese? One long load, that's all. Typical doctor. You know, why don't you know Chinese? Simply because that was not your language. You haven't lived in that environment. You have not been a people who have learned that, you know. I go to China. I've been there a few times and, you know, I'm totally boggled. when it comes to the language. But then, you know, I remember when I was studying in Rome, I walked into Standa, the big super store. And you go in there and here I'm struggling learning Italian.

[26:36]

And at Christmas time, I go into Standa and here is the escalator coming up. And here is a grandmother with a little boy. And the grandmother looks over at the little boy and she says something about the Christmas decorations. And the little boy says, qué bella. How beautiful. And I look at this little kid and I say, how come you understood what she said? And you're only two years old. And here I am of ancient days and I can't understand. Well, you know, this is the way that things work. we do hand on from generation to generation our values, our beliefs, and so on. You take a look at what is faith, look at the Exodus account in Scripture. Every year that is supposed to be repeated. The Passover celebration is to be repeated. That's marvelous. It has to be repeated.

[27:38]

When the kid comes along, you know, and says to his father during the celebration of the Passover, Father, why do we do these things? The father is not supposed to look at the kid and say, shut up, kid. You're supposed to be seen and not heard. Go over in the corner. We'll talk about it some other time. We've got important things to do now. Part of the ritual is telling the story, handing it on, giving this faith, if you will. Look at Psalm 78. We will not withhold from our children the things that we have learned and known, the titles of God, the mysteries of God, the wonderful works of God that God has done for us. These we will hand on to the next generation so that they too can worship and praise God. You know, how important is that handing on? Or say Paul in Romans talking about the salvation that's available to all of humanity. But how will they know about it if they're not told? How will they be told if nobody is sent to teach, to send this message out?

[28:47]

So he says, faith comes from hearing, hearing the Word of God. So this is the handing on. So when you look at what happened to Adam and Eve and their breaking apart, why should it surprise us? that we have need as humanity to learn once again what it means to be in relationship with God, what it means to be in the image and likeness of God. That's who we are, we are the image and likeness of God. But I think we need to understand what that means. And again, this is one of the things that brings us to understanding What it is we do in monastic community? We are an example in some way or another, we are an image and likeness of God for each other. We're the image and likeness of God for the people who come here to Mass on Sunday, the people that you relate to who come on retreat.

[29:54]

This is what it means to be the image and likeness of God. But the image and likeness of God in us is to love one another. And we're going to find that over and over again in what Jesus has to say. What is the greatest of all the commandments? Love God with your whole heart, soul, mind, body, everything that you are. And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. The two go together. Here is that image and likeness of God being made manifest in our love for one another and that there is nothing in the world that can make us stop loving one another. You know? So, you insulted me royally, you put me down, you stole my Mercedes-Benz, you've done all sorts of things like that and I'm supposed to love you? Yeah. Yeah. Is it worth giving up love for the sake of somebody got the last piece of dessert that I wanted?

[30:57]

You know? These are the sorts of things. Frederick Beckner, you perhaps have read some of his, or Buchner, depends how you want to pronounce it, I guess, and I'm sure he has only one way of pronouncing it. But he wrote one book called Godric. And Godric was a very interesting book. In fact, when I read Godric, I decided that I could never read anything by Beckner again because it was so perfect. It was so wonderful a book. And one of the things that I found out when I was reading it was that I was reading it out loud. I mean, I don't ordinarily read out loud. I don't even move my lips when I'm reading. But I started reading and I was reading this thing out loud until all of a sudden I decided, you know, this stuff is poetry.

[32:02]

It isn't written on the page like poetry, but it's poetry. It just flows so beautifully. Godric is the story of a man by the name of Godric, whose life was written by Reginald. Godric died about 1170. But Bechner wanted to tell the story as it really was, not the way it gets kind of soupied up in some of these ancient ways of hagiography. But he gets to a point in his life where all of the kind of shady stuff that had gone on earlier had been pretty well purified in his life. And he, I think, recognizes himself as one who carries in himself the image and likeness of God, and what God has blessed him with is meant for other people, to be a sign for other people, kind of a sacrament for other people of who they are and what they can do.

[33:17]

So there's this passage concerning pilgrims who come to visit the hermit. At this point he's a hermit out in the woods someplace. He says this, to touch me, and to feel my touch they come, to take at my hands whatever of Christ or comfort such hands have. Of their own my hands have nothing more than any man's, unless now at this tottering, lame-wit age of mine, when most of what I ever had is more than mostly spent. But it's as if my hands are gloves, and in them other hands than mine. And those are the ones that folk appear with rudes of straw to seek. It's holiness they hunger for. And if by some mad grace it's mine to give, if I have a holy hand inside my hand to touch them with, I'll touch them day and night. Sweet Christ, what other use are idle hermits for?

[34:22]

That's a powerful passage for me. But it says something about what has God done in us? What does God do in us? What does God say in us? How is God's presence in us, in our relationship to other people? That's a revelation not of who we are in our particular goodness, but of God's love. Any comments? Anything you want to say? Just think about the famous original sin, or the originating sin. The insistence on obedience is really screwed up, because disobedience was the act by which a malice was manifested, but the malice was precisely this, to be God, or to want total control as we would say today, and we have a certain moment, we want total control.

[35:29]

And then people running around, we just had to put them in a seat, which was the standard, it still is the way. If you do what you're told, there's no problem, you're doing God's will, absolutely, and nothing to do with God's will. of the sometimes that we are, you know, going over. But, I mean, it's just throwing the whole thing off in that kind of wrong, passive, kind of trapping God in some way. He's got to, I can come with my obedient, longer list, all these things that I've done, he's got to let me in, because I was obedient. But, you know, so is him, and all the rest is... But it really is our desire for total control over ourselves, over other people, over situations. But we do need to take some control. The opposite is just as bad. Take no control is not my responsibility. But really, I mean, say in our own terms these days, there's a lot of talk about control.

[36:32]

But basically it's that It's that desire to, that I'm impervious to any kind of danger, hurt, pain, or anything else, because I'm... And God has already told them they were built from a course of two stories or centuries apart, apparently. But anyway, God already told them they were like God. I'm just stuck with a lot of it. Could I distract you a minute? You were finishing and I just came in. I thought it was at 4.30. It must have been 4.00. I apologize since I probably came in late and missed. I'm very sorry that I must have been a long time late. I thought it was 4.30. I shall be early tonight. It's beautiful.

[37:37]

I mean, I came in on time today. It's beautiful that sometimes it seems to me that everyone has this which you're hitting at. that we have something to give of Christ. And most of us, at least I would think, I don't because I'm not holy. I mean, I can read about this hermit saying, well, that's beautiful. And everybody has something. Like you were telling me yesterday about the cantankerous old man, old monk. And sometimes in the past when I've had trouble with somebody, I think of what a beautiful thing they did. I focus on that, and then I just, and we all, and it's so beautiful. As long as you don't say to somebody who was cantankerous, I remember the one good thing you ever did. Seems to me that I have a condiment here.

[38:40]

in a situation right away started to act independently and separately, whereas they were one, and then, you know, they begin to blame one another. It was her fault, it was the servant's fault, somebody else. When you think of the word atonement, and I'm not sure of the root of it all, but Some people pronounce it at one letter, and they went their separate ways. Christ, if you think about that, He brings us back together. Realize that we are one, but we've been acting separately. That's what I think is the actual foundation to understand what, in fact, Christ did. I think we have to understand what the picture was, how it was degraded in some way, and how Christ brings it back together, and what it means now for us, in our relationship not only to believers, and not only to humanity, but to all of creation.

[40:02]

Somebody had some comments last night about creation of humanity. I don't know if that settled any questions for you or raised more. There were limited creatures, and the essentials were in our graveyard, Jewish bedding, blankets, or woodwork in the house. And, you know, humans, So it does become a very costly boundary in personal relationships that we needn't relate all of that according to our way, our choice, our goal, my cravings.

[41:21]

And, I don't know, I think the great mysteries of that. We keep seeking liberation from the flexible world, and I think that's the root. But the Christian life is about devoting myself to that. Faith and action, and prayer, and all that makes us so, all that we do. You know, I think that coming to terms with this idea of limitation also means coming to terms with the whole question of interdependence. Interdependence is our reality. It took two to get us in here, and usually it takes six to carry us out. And an awful lot of people in between who have supplied so many things that we could not simply have done without. The interdependence is there. And when you start looking at all the problems that exist in this world today, the wars and planned wars and all the rest of it, in some ways, some place along the line there's a denial of interdependence.

[42:40]

And when we deny interdependence, then we have destroyed something that has something to do with this at-one-ment, this atonement, this coming together, this unity that makes of us as humanity the image of likeness of God. We have to admit interdependence. The image and likeness of God in us is not unlimitedness. The image and likeness of God is that within the limit that we are, we're interdependent and are capable of loving one another freely, of giving our lives for the other, and not taking anything to our own advantage that harms somebody else. That's called power abuse. And that's what sin is. All sin is power abuse in some way. the practical things that are extremely difficult, you're dealing with another person, and what are they capable of receiving, responding, and the parents must have an abstract, humble deal of time.

[44:06]

Kids going through their ages of the terrible twos, and everything else, you know, five kids in a house and four terrific, and everybody nuts, of course, and he's the first to use that. He's the one that's taken all the the errors of the family that sort of present-day family therapy. The one that's actually the one that's carrying all the burdens of the family. It just reminds me of an obituary that was on our bulletin board the day I left. It was the sister, the youngest sister, of one of our monks who died probably back in the 60s. And in the obituary it says, she was preceded in death by her parents and 17 siblings. It was interesting that she never got married. She wasn't a religious either, but she never got married.

[45:11]

I think she looked at that and she said, that's enough. Well, these are other ways of presenting what Christianity is, also, I mean, as necessary as theology is, and the whole line, this narrative approach that brings in this dynamic and, you know, leaves most imagination and experience to identify with yourselves, you know, other than kind of memorizing. Not that, as I say, that's terribly important to put this It helps us get a handle on what life is about, in a way that the other really can't touch. It's speculative.

[46:07]

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