Beginnings and Endings

A Sermon preached at Kramer Chapel
Dr. William C. Weinrich


When in the beginning God spoke, He said, "Let there be light," and there was light. The Word brings light, and to hear the word is to be enlightened.

Word, light, faith -- that is how it was in the beginning, for that is how God does what he does when he wills to be God for another. But who then is this "other" for whom God wills to be God? Well, listen to the voice of the prophet: "When in the beginning God spoke, He said, 'Let us make man in our image and likeness.'"

But how then did God make man and endow him with the divine image? Well, here we enter into the workshop of the divine Potter/[Pater]. God, bending low, stretched out his two hands and took dust from the earth. Dust from dust, Adam from Adam [Adam from atom?], and, as it were, holding the dust into His two hands, God breathed out His breath. He blew his spirit -- not so much at the dust, or even on the dust, but into the dust. In and through that breathing, the dust became man, a living being.

Well, think of that, O Man! From the beginning, at the beginning, God lifted up man high, exalting him above all creatures. What an exaltation that was! From dust, man had become the temple of God's own breath. By the humble bending low of the Divine Majesty, out of love and mercy, the dust had become the very partaker of God's own Spirit. Dust, now called by the personal name of Adam, was the image of God's own eternity, destined to live life with God as his own birthright, endowed with those virtues by which God himself lives and exists: charity, humility, longsuffering, patience, faithfulness, truthfulness, and goodness.

And God gave to Adam an intellect and a mind. Why? So that Adam might think the thoughts of God and, thinking such thoughts, might know the goodness of God and the goodwill of his maker

And God gave to Adam a will. Why? So that Adam might will the will of God, and will rightly, and might delight in the will of God and desire to walk in his ways.

And God gave to Adam a body. Why? So that Adam, rightly thinking and rightly willing, might in fact live according to God's will and reveal himself to be the image of God through works of love and humble service to his neighbor. Through the body, that "robe of glory," as the fathers like to call it, Adam could speak, and he could do what he thought and what he willed -- with hands able to work the good, with ears able to hear the sounds of blessing, with eyes able to see righteousness, and with a tongue able to speak peace, with feet able to walk in the statutes of the living God. Adam could thereby be the image of God, not merely in thought and will but in reality and truth. The robe of glory was, as it were, the lamp of God's own light, set in the world for others to see and to hear.

And so in the beginning, God placed man into the world as his own image to be a light, a beacon, recalling and reflecting the light of the Creator. And as it were, God gave to man a single and primal commandment: "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." What a mystery man was! And here is the mystery: Man himself was that commandment. Were man to be in truth man, the light would shine and the Father would be known.

Consider, then, O Man, what exaltation had been given to the mere dust. What had dust become? It had become the image of the Divine Love, the light shining as the sun of Righteousness. Dust was now the patience of humility -- that is, dust had become man. Dust had become the image of the immortal God.

Well, that was at the beginning when God, bending low, lifted dust up and set it on high as his own image. It was as though God had said, "Hear, my man! When you speak, it is as though it is I that will be speaking. And when I do good things, it will be you who act. When I love, it will be through you that I do so." And Adam, at the beginning, said, "Yes!" And then Adam added, "I am the servant of the Lord, for he has made me thus. And I will delight in his will and walk in His ways to the glory of His holy name." That is how it was in the beginning, when God made man and exalted him to be as God among man and beast.

But that beginning was not yet the end, for into this beginning there slithered an alien thought, a strange and contrary will, tempting man towards unholy deeds. Now how the tempter came to be, I do not know, for he too was a creature of God. But the holy writers tell us that the tempter had fallen away from God's presence out of pride and out of envy -- out of pride, because he was not the equal of God, and out of envy, because he was jealous of man's status.

And so the tempter contrived a new calculus, one might say a false creation: "Let us exalt man, and so bring him down." And so into the thought of man there came a strange and tragic thought: "I could become not merely like God but my own god." And so into the will of man there came a strange and tragic will: "I might by my own will make my own commandments, and determine what is good for me and walk in my ways."

And into the heart of man there came a strange disobedience. Strange, I say, for in such thoughts and such a will and such a heart, man turned against himself. Man became the corrupter of his own nature. Man chose to be against himself in the strange and tragic deception that he was the Lord of his own life.

And so as it were, man made himself to be his own tower of Babel, reaching up into the heavens so as to grab as his own possession the things of God. But according to the terrible physics of sin, the higher man reached, the lower and more degraded he became.

Infused with the pride of the tempter, man's own thoughts became prideful, and the result was envy, lust, rapaciousness, arrogance, and unseemly bloatedness from one's own self-importance. Infused now with the waywardness of the tempter, man's will also became wayward and unstable. The result was unfaithfulness, idleness, weakness towards the good, and a constant tendence toward the cowardly and the apostasy.

Man's body, too, that robe of glory, now the instrument of sin and death, became besmirched with the filth of a fallen mind and the desires of a wayward heart. Oh, what those eyes, now cast down, did not desire to look at! And what those ears, closed now to the voice of God, did not want to hear! And that tongue, now silent to the hymns of praise, what it did not dare to speak! And oh, what did those hands not desire to touch, to what places of ill repute did those feet not hasten to go? Can we name such things?

Out of a certain shame, let us let the wise Solomon speak of it: "Of the envy of the devil, death entered into the world." The apostle, too, describes this chosen madness of man: "Although man claimed to be wise, he became a fool, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images. Man exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served created things." The Christian writer also has pondered this strange state of affairs: "When man exalted himself and became abased."

Listen, then, to the sad account of the holy preacher who surveys the realities of prideful man. Having stretched out his hand to take hold of an apple, promising a false divinity, man himself was dissolved and sank into the earth, no longer dust to man but man to dust -- no longer the temple of God's spirit, but the empty vessel filled with the stench of sin. No longer the light of truth in the world, but the sad shade of a hollow life.

And man, the exalted sinner, bequeathed to his children the terrible inheritance of his own death: promiscuity, slavery, tyranny, hate, jealousy, destruction. And the destruction of man upon the earth became indeed strange and terrible, for man, thinking himself great, became the slave of sin, was led as a slave into the land of bondage and was drowned in the swamp of insatiable desires. Avarice, wantonness, murder, robbery, father against son, son against father, mother against her own children, sexual unions devoid of creative power, trading the natural powers of mutual love for the strange neutrality of sterility.

And so all man became upon the earth either manslayers, parasites, infanticites, or fratricites. And in all these things sin rejoiced, who as the coworker with death always rushes ahead into the souls of men and prepares there as food for death the bodies of the already dead. And what had been taken from the earth was to earth dissolved. What had been given from God had, by a terrible choice, been assigned to the realm of Hades. And man exalted himself, thinking the things of God to be for the taking, and, going up, had cast himself down into captivity, dragged off now as a prisoner under the shadow of death. And so in the dust lay desolate God's image.

Well, that was at the beginning, which as yet was not the end. That beginning is nonetheless, for you and me, our present. For we are all at that beginning, sharing with Adam the dust of his own sin.

But there is another beginning, which according to its own strangeness is also the end. And this end is a new beginning. Let us remember, then, O Sinners, what the Evangelist tells us: "God is love, and for us and for our salvation, He did love us by giving over his Son through the exaltation of the Son of Man upon the tree." What a marvel that is -- the cross as exaltation, and the exaltation of the Son of Man as the humble obedience of the cross.

How are we to understand that? How are we to will this to be our own way, and how are we to live this as the truth of our own new being?

Well, it was no insult to the heavenly Architect to dwell in the temple which he had built, nor did the dust of the dust soil the hands of the Potter [Pater] when he made man. And so it was not alien to our heavenly Father when, once again, as at that first beginning, He bent Himself low and revealed Himself anew to be humility when He formed man anew from the wondrous dust of the virgin's womb.

There was, of course, this difference: now the humility which is God had to bend himself even lower than at the first beginning, for man had so far sunk down that the Divine Charity had, so to speak, to reveal himself even more. Yet to repeat a point, as His hands were not soiled at that first Creation, so now He was not stained when He took sinful flesh from the virgin Mary and brought forth the Lamb of God, immaculate and without the stain of sin. The humility of the most High God was not defiled when His hands formed his Son into the image of sinful man so that, through that Man, made the sinner by a strange grace, He may redeem and sanctify those who are in truth sinners.

By His stripes we are healed, proclaims the prophet. In his abasement, we are exalted. How so? Well, let the Christian poet sing praises of this as he attempts, as best faith can, to capture the wondrous greatness of Divinity in its own proper lowliness. All these things did the merciful God do, stripping off glory and putting on a body. For He had devised a way to reclothe Adam in that glory which he had stripped off. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes corresponding to the leaves of shame with which Adam had clothed himself. He put on clothes in place of Adam's sin. He was baptized in place of Adam's sin. He was embalmed for Adam's death. He rose and raised Adam up in his own glory. Blessed is He who has descended, put on Adam, and ascended.

The bending low of God was not alien to His deity, as though He could bend low only by divesting Himself of His humility. Oh no, no! Love, humility, grace, and mercy are the properties of God most proclaimed by prophet and apostle. In bending low for sinful man, God was God for man! And, in bending low in such a manner that God the Son, according to the will of the Father, assumed to himself the ragged clothes of Adam, gave to those clothes a shining newness.

How shall we speak of this new newness? The Divine Son clothed Himself with man and gave to man to participate in His own nature. Bending low to that place to which man had exalted himself in abasement, Jesus (that is His name) gave to sinful man a portion of His own humility, and man made new in humility and love was exalted once again. Exalted, I say! Yes, but with this difference -- that now man was raised in Jesus to the very throne of God to share with God in His own rule.

Here is how the ancient poet spoke of it: The Most High God knew that Adam wanted to be a god, and so He sent His Son to put Adam on in order to grant to Adam his wish. Divinity flew down and descended in order to raise and draw up humanity. The Son has made beautiful the servant's deformity, and he has become a god just as he desired. Here are the words of a more modern hymn writer: "He has raised our human nature on the clouds of God's right hand; there we sit in heavenly places, there with him in glory stand. Jesus reigns adored by angels, man with God is on the throne; by our mighty Lord's ascension, we by faith behold our own."

Man, now clothed with the new robe of glory through the sanctification of the flesh, is now, maybe now, the image of our Heavenly Father! Does this new man will to reach beyond the gifts of God given to him? By no means! This new man prays from the heart, from the mind, and from his will, "Thy will be done as earth, that is by me, even as it is in heaven."

What then, O Saints, might we say in conclusion? What final prayer might we say that speaks in truth about the truth we have now been given to be? Perhaps this: "Your cords of love, my Savior, bind me to you forever. I am no longer mine. To you I gladly tender all that my life can render, and all I have to you resign."

Amen.