The First Exchange (III)

Many a preacher has come to the end of the sermon only to realize that the sermon did not work.  What was supposed to be said was still unspoken so the preacher does the only thing left to do.  The conclusion leaves one more opportunity to get it done and so on and on the sermon goes as the preacher tries to make the conclusion do what the whole sermon could not do.  Such preaching makes for a long winded preacher and a worn out congregation.    

With this knowledge learned from personal experience firmly in place, I find myself once again venturing out to try once more.  There is a verse still out there on the open page which seems to have something to say which has not yet been made clear.  The Word still hanging out there is, "they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being..."  What has been lost in the exchange is the awareness that we are created with the image of the Creator upon us.  After the creation of the human  creature the Word does not speak of the creature being flawed, but good.  (Genesis 1:31)  Actually the Word says "very good."     

Human nature has taken a bum rap in the church.  It is not the part of us which causes us to sin.  Our will, or lack of it, should be getting the credit, or the blame.  After all, Jesus was as the theologians tell us, fully human and fully divine.  The fully human part of us has become clouded and all but overcome by the darkness of our choosing to sin, but it is never eradicated.  The old timers who reminded us that there is some good in the worst of us must have glimpsed something hard for too many of us to see.