Twenty-ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Octoechos Tone 4. Our Venerable Father Patapius.
Colossians 1:12-18. Luke 17:12-19.
Read Colossians 1:12-18
When everyone is trying to sell or convince us of something, the ability to determine authenticity is essential. There are a lot of imitation products that don’t provide the quality or performance of authentic brands; there are a lot of ideologies that leave out important things, only to be revealed to be detrimental to life through their eventual negative effects.
It is a startling thing for a first century A.D. Jew to write that someone is “the image of the invisible God”. How could that possibly be authentic? The Ten Commandments forbid it. The nation of Israel was created in a milieu in which idolatrous images depicting characteristics of mythological gods were set up to declare which gods were to be worshipped and obeyed in each geographical location. Genesis 1:26f takes up this language to reveal God’s purpose in creating humanity: “Let us make man (humanity) in our image” – everywhere a human being is is where God is to be worshipped and obeyed. Any other image misrepresents God and devalues humanity.
But humanity didn’t fulfill its purpose as “image”. We remain the image of God, but a cracked, broken, marred representation of both God and obedience to Him. We are all prone to defining ourselves as central in this world. But only one has been revealed as being the authentic embodiment of the image of God, “the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent.”
Jesus resisted temptation and sin and kept his image intact. He “endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” (Hebrews 12:3-4) It is in being connected with Christ that our imaging of God is restored to authenticity.