Read Colossians 1:15-20.
There is a famous painting by French surrealist René Magritte, which foregrounds a pipe, and captions below “this is not a pipe.”
The point is that you cannot place tobacco inside the canvas, light it on fire, and smoke it — at least not like you would an actual pipe; it is just an image. Magritte’s idea — “this is just an image” — is entirely foreign to ancient Hebrew thinking. So, the image of God in which all humans are created (Gen 1:27), for instance, would have been understood by its authors as an extension of the actual presence of God. Being made “in God’s image” is not about how we look, but about how God is present in creation through human life.*
The Christ hymn at the beginning of Colossians is an exercise in subversive superlatives. Thrones and powers, rulers and authorities may approximate divinity among their created peers, but peers among mortals they remain (v. 10).
Even at its most benevolent, Caesar’s vast earthly power may only attain the status of servant to the superlative benevolence of Christ (v. 16).
So too, regardless of what the authors of Genesis intended, the way humans actually bear the image of God in the world might be captioned as Magritte’s painting: ’this is not God.’ But Christ, the superlative human, is a different kind of image of God — an ancient kind, which knows no distinction between The Being and its Representative. When we see him, we see The Divine in all Her Glory.
Pray
Christ, fill us with your Spirit that we may trace the lines of your life with the path of our own, until the image of God is visible to all creation. Amen.
Rev. Will Norman
Executive Campus Minister, The Table @ UGA
* This idea is presented more fully in this sermon by Dr. Brennan Breed, preached at The Table @ UGA on October 1, 2024.
Words for Waiting 