Doug McMasters: I'd invite you to take your Bible and go with me to First Timothy chapter five.
Doug McMasters: First Timothy chapter five.
Doug McMasters: I would like for you to come with me to Rome.
Doug McMasters: Not Rome 2026, but Rome during Paul's day.
Doug McMasters: And walk with me down some of the streets on an ordinary morning in the city.
Doug McMasters: And there you'll see a father, a Roman citizen, perhaps a man of standing in the community, walking down the streets with a child in his arms.
Doug McMasters: And maybe it was a daughter and already had enough daughters.
Doug McMasters: Maybe it was a son born with some physical defect.
Doug McMasters: Maybe it was a child he couldn't afford or simply didn't want.
Doug McMasters: In Rome, it didn't really matter what the reason was.
Doug McMasters: He'd walk either to the edge of the city, to the refuge heap, or perhaps to the base of the Columna Lactaria, the column of milk, the place where by Roman custom unwanted infants could legally be left.
Doug McMasters: He would set the child down, he would turn around, and he would walk away.
Doug McMasters: It wasn't even shameful.
Doug McMasters: In Roman society at that time, it was legal and it was common.
Doug McMasters: It's even philosophically defended by some of the great minds of the day.
Doug McMasters: Aristotle recommended the exposure of defective children, as he called them.
Doug McMasters: Seneca spoke of it with this calm detachment, no more than a man discussing the management of his household.
Doug McMasters: Roman law gave the Paterfamilius, the father of the household, absolute authority over whether the newborn child lived or died.
Doug McMasters: It was called the Pateria Potestis, the power of the father.
Doug McMasters: And that power extended even over the threshold of life itself.
Doug McMasters: Infants were left exposed on dunghills, on hillsides, at the gates of temples.
Doug McMasters: Some died within hours from cold or hunger or exposure.
Doug McMasters: Some were gathered up, some out of compassion, but others not out of compassion.
Doug McMasters: Some were gathered up for profit.
Doug McMasters: Traders would collect them, some were raised as slaves, others were raised for hard labor, and some, particularly the girls, were raised for prostitution.
Doug McMasters: The Empire had a category for these children.
Doug McMasters: They were the unwanted, the inconvenient, the surplus.
Doug McMasters: And because the Roman world had no theology of the image of God, it had no category for putting inherent worth on any human being.
Doug McMasters: Their worth was determined entirely by utility, by the decision of one who had the power over them, whether anyone wanted them.
Doug McMasters: By way of contrast, let's go to a different part of Rome, to a church.
Doug McMasters: One like the one Paul talks about to Timothy in Ephesus.
Doug McMasters: And let's look at chapter 5 and what Paul says there.
Doug McMasters: He's writing to Timothy about instructions about how a church should care for widows.
Doug McMasters: And he describes what widows the church should be supporting.
Doug McMasters: And he mentions that they should be women whose entire lives have been shaped by faithful service.
Doug McMasters: In verse 9, no widow is to be enrolled on the list for support unless she's at least 60 years old, has been the wife of one husband, is well known for good works, that is, if she has brought up children, shown hospitality, washed the saints' feet, helped the afflicted, and devoted herself to every good work.
Doug McMasters: I want you to notice that phrase, brought up children.
Doug McMasters: It means to nurture, to raise, to care for children.
Doug McMasters: But there's something it doesn't specify here.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't say her children.
Doug McMasters: Do you notice that?
Doug McMasters: It simply says that she brought up children.
Doug McMasters: Now, certainly it speaks about a mother who would be nurturing, who would be caring, who would be responsible with her family.
Doug McMasters: But could it not also speak, and commentaries and theologians have talked about this, of a woman who's taken the unwanted ones and brought those unwanted ones into their own household.
Doug McMasters: In fact, Charles Ellicott, in his commentary on 1 Timothy, says that this phrase may include the little orphan ones entrusted to her care.
Doug McMasters: Now set that up against the world that they're in at the time.
Doug McMasters: A world where the children are regularly discarded, where there's literally a place in Rome where those children can be left, where girls are collected and sold, where boys are turned into slaves.
Doug McMasters: And what if Paul here is commending those women who have done what would be unthinkable in Roman standards?
Doug McMasters: Who have gone to the refuge heaps or to the foot of the column and picked up a discarded child, who have taken into their own homes the children the empire is labeled as worthless, who've looked at what Rome called refuge and saw the image of God.
Doug McMasters: Why did they do that?
Doug McMasters: Well, that question is a question that's raised in the middle of the sort of study that we've been having these past several weeks and months.
Doug McMasters: What makes human life valuable?
Doug McMasters: It's an important question.
Doug McMasters: We're in our series called Imago Day, The Image of God.
Doug McMasters: And we've been working through this, what it means for God to stamp his image on created individuals.
Doug McMasters: What a staggering truth it is, and what a staggering responsibility it calls us all to.
Doug McMasters: And today we come to one of the most urgent, the most contested, and most, I think, pastorally tender applications to the image of God, one that touches us from womb to deathbed, from the nursery to the nursing home.
Doug McMasters: I'd like for us to talk about the dignity of human life.
Doug McMasters: And let's begin by going back to Genesis chapter 1 and have a look at what it says there.
Doug McMasters: And the first point that I want to make this evening is that the image of God establishes absolute non-negotiable dignity for every human person.
Doug McMasters: Let's look at Genesis chapter 1 and verses 26 and 27.
Doug McMasters: God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
Doug McMasters: They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.
Doug McMasters: So God created man in his own image.
Doug McMasters: We begin with the deliberation, this divine conversation of the Godhead, act talking and deliberating before acting in the creation of humanity.
Doug McMasters: And then it says, so God created man in his own image.
Doug McMasters: And then again it's said a third time.
Doug McMasters: Now, when scripture repeats itself like this, particularly repeats it so emphatically and so close to one another, we need to underline that.
Doug McMasters: Because scripture is repeating this so that we might lean forward and pay attention to what's being said.
Doug McMasters: This is God's holy insistence, making absolutely certain that we don't miss this vital point.
Doug McMasters: Every human being, without qualification, without exception, and without some developmental asterisk next to them, is made in the image of God and is therefore a person of dignity.
Doug McMasters: So let's talk about the significance of this for a moment, and then we'll substantiate it with a couple passages.
Doug McMasters: The primary point that I want to bring out this evening is that the image of God is not primarily about what we can do.
Doug McMasters: It's not utilitarian.
Doug McMasters: Theologians have debated about the essential essence of the image of God.
Doug McMasters: And they've talked about rationality, they've talked about righteousness, they've talked about relationships, and they've talked about our representative rule as aspects of the image of God.
Doug McMasters: And those discussions are rich and full, and I think every one of those has something to say about us.
Doug McMasters: But at its most fundamental level here, the image of God is what we would say ontological.
Doug McMasters: It's about who you are, not what you do.
Doug McMasters: It's about your being, not your function.
Doug McMasters: It is the mark that God has placed on humanity at the very moment of creation.
Doug McMasters: A mark that doesn't come and go based upon circumstances.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't fluctuate with the seasons of life.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't strengthen when we are at our most productive.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't weaken when we're at our most dependent.
Doug McMasters: God has placed it there.
Doug McMasters: And it belongs to every human person because every human person bears the image of God on them.
Doug McMasters: Now the Roman world operated in a completely different frame.
Doug McMasters: Worth in the Roman world was based upon your function and your usefulness.
Doug McMasters: If you could work, if you could produce, if you could contribute, if you could compete, then you had worth.
Doug McMasters: If you couldn't, if you were too young or too old, or too sick, or too weak, or too defective, then your worth was in question.
Doug McMasters: And a father could stand over a newborn and make that determination.
Doug McMasters: The state could stand over the elderly and the infirm and make that determination.
Doug McMasters: Utility was the measure, and power was the arbitrator.
Doug McMasters: But look at the text.
Doug McMasters: God doesn't say let us make man in our image once he's reached a sufficient level of development.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't say let us make man in our image, providing he can contribute meaningfully to society.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't say, let's make man in our image at least the capable ones, the functioning ones, the wanted ones.
Doug McMasters: He simply says, we're making humanity in our image.
Doug McMasters: The image is there the moment God acts.
Doug McMasters: It's presence because God has put it there, not because we've earned it or developed it or been granted it because of some human conferring it on us because of the power they hold over us.
Doug McMasters: It's not a status that we acquire, it's not a milestone that we reach, it's not a recognition extended to us by culture or voted on by the powerful or even ratified by the legislature.
Doug McMasters: It's not contingent upon our viability, our wantedness, or our capacities.
Doug McMasters: It's there because God has made us in his image.
Doug McMasters: Now, there's a lot of ramifications for that.
Doug McMasters: I'd like to look at two passages of scripture that talk about how the significance of this is borne out in common society and within the context of the church.
Doug McMasters: So turn with me to chapter 9 of Genesis and verse 6.
Doug McMasters: Here we are on the other side of the flood, and God is calling Noah and his family to begin to replenish the earth.
Doug McMasters: And he makes a statement here in verse 6.
Doug McMasters: Whoever sheds human blood by humans, his blood will be shed, for God made humans in his image.
Doug McMasters: Now notice carefully what God is saying here, that he's grounding protection of vulnerable human life in the image of God.
Doug McMasters: He's not saying that human life should be protected because they're the right age or they're the right strength or they're able to socially contribute or that they have some capacities of thinking, or whether they're wanted or valued by the people around them.
Doug McMasters: It doesn't say we should protect human life because the courts have recognized them, or that the culture is assigned worth to them.
Doug McMasters: He's saying that vulnerable humans should be protected because they were made in the image of God, were post-fall, post-flood, in the in the society given at that time.
Doug McMasters: The protection of human life flows directly and exclusively from the fact that God has made us to bear his image.
Doug McMasters: Now notice the placement of this.
Doug McMasters: This is Genesis chapter 9.
Doug McMasters: This is not God speaking to the nation of Israel within the covenant structures of the people.
Doug McMasters: He is speaking to all humanity here, that every one of us that flow out of the post-fall, post-flood human race are here to maintain the dignity of human life and the protection of the vulnerable and end the just justice against those who would deface the image of God by committing murder.
Doug McMasters: What is the principle that's here?
Doug McMasters: The principle is to take an innocent human life is to strike at the image of God itself.
Doug McMasters: It is an assault against God Himself.
Doug McMasters: It's not simply a crime against an individual in the taking of their life.
Doug McMasters: It's an act of violence against God, in whose image all of us have been made.
Doug McMasters: That's why it's so serious.
Doug McMasters: That's why it's so significant.
Doug McMasters: Now turn with me to James chapter three.
Doug McMasters: And in James chapter three, where he's telling us to control our speech, in verse nine, he confronts this contradiction of a tongue that blesses God and then turns and curses the people around them.
Doug McMasters: And he says in verse nine, with it, that is our tongue, we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in God's likeness.
Doug McMasters: Now notice what James is saying here.
Doug McMasters: He isn't saying that cursing some other person is simply unkind or socially unacceptable or emotionally hurtful.
Doug McMasters: What he is saying is that this is cosmically contradictory.
Doug McMasters: That we cannot stand before God and worship him in one breath and then strip the dignity of a person with our speech in another breath.
Doug McMasters: We can't do that without the contradiction screaming in echoes through the heavens.
Doug McMasters: We cannot sing the praises of the Creator on Sunday and then dismiss the worth of one of God's image bearers on Monday.
Doug McMasters: The two positions cannot be held simultaneously without one of them giving away.
Doug McMasters: You either are not worshiping God or you're not worshiping God in the care of his image and the others.
Doug McMasters: Now, this same logic applies in every other way that humans can strip the dignity of other people.
Doug McMasters: In our day, we find ourselves filled with language that is stripping away the dignity of humanity.
Doug McMasters: We talk about clumps of cells, we talk about non-persons, we talk about vegetative state, we talk about no quality of life.
Doug McMasters: We talk about not really a person yet.
Doug McMasters: We ask the questions, what kind of life would that really be anyway?
Doug McMasters: Those words reveal a worldview.
Doug McMasters: Those words reveal a worldview that speaks in any way they think they can about a human being other than the realization that we are made in the image of God.
Doug McMasters: And without knowing it, we've adopted the worldview of that Roman father who's walked into the streets of Rome with an unwanted child and laid it down at the column of milk and turned around and walked away.
Doug McMasters: Yes, we dress it up with scientific speech, but the worldview is no different than what they were doing in Rome in Paul's day.
Doug McMasters: That father decided, just like human beings are deciding today, that a person's worth is only because of the circumstances or the condition that they're in, or whether or not they're convenient to us.
Doug McMasters: But the scriptures tell us that the image is absolute, that God made all of us in his image, post-flood, lasting even to the New Testament period.
Doug McMasters: And this brings us to our second point that I'd like for us to look at today is that the image belongs to every stage of human life.
Doug McMasters: We're going to step into a moment that can be painful for some and difficult for all of us.
Doug McMasters: But it has to be talked about.
Doug McMasters: Because we live in a culture that wants to talk about human dignity as though it's developmental.
Doug McMasters: That a person's worth is something that they grow into or can grow out of.
Doug McMasters: And some human beings, because of their age or their stage of development, or because of their dependence or their cognitive capacities, don't fully qualify for the dignity and protection that we give to others.
Doug McMasters: It's not a new argument.
Doug McMasters: It's the same argument Rome was making.
Doug McMasters: But underneath it all, the logic is as ancient as Rome.
Doug McMasters: But scripture won't let us stand alongside of our culture today.
Doug McMasters: In Psalm 139, in verse 13 to 16, David says this, and I want you to capture not only the poetry, but the theology of it, because it's magnificent in both ways.
Doug McMasters: Listen to what he says.
Doug McMasters: For it was you who created my inward parts.
Doug McMasters: You knit me together in my mother's womb.
Doug McMasters: I will praise you because I've been remarkably and wondrously made.
Doug McMasters: Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well.
Doug McMasters: My bones were not hidden from you when I was made in secret, when I was formed in the depths of the earth.
Doug McMasters: Your eyes saw me when I was formless.
Doug McMasters: All my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began.
Doug McMasters: Look at what God is doing here in the womb.
Doug McMasters: He's acting like a craftsman.
Doug McMasters: He's knitting, he's forming, he's seeing, he's even writing the history of this person before they were even born.
Doug McMasters: The creator who has shaped all of the stars and set the boundaries of the seas is personally present and active in the formation of every human life.
Doug McMasters: God's eyes are on that child before those eyes can even see.
Doug McMasters: And his book holds the child's days even before there can be a confirmed heartbeat.
Doug McMasters: Before there's a name, before there's a face, before the world has decided whether or not the child is worthy of dignity or not, God has already looked, he's already known, he's already written.
Doug McMasters: This unborn child is not potential life waiting to become something real.
Doug McMasters: This is life already, an image-bearing creator-attended life.
Doug McMasters: Listen to what Jeremiah says in chapter 1 and verse 5.
Doug McMasters: I chose you before I formed you in the womb.
Doug McMasters: I set you apart before you were born.
Doug McMasters: There, the personhood of Jeremiah precedes even his conception.
Doug McMasters: The identity of Jeremiah was not constructed after his delivery.
Doug McMasters: It was established in the eternal counsels of God before there was any life in the womb itself.
Doug McMasters: Listen to Luke chapter 1.
Doug McMasters: In Luke 1, 41 to 44, there's this extraordinary moment where Mary, who's carrying the infant Jesus, perhaps only days or weeks after the conception, travels to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is six months pregnant with John.
Doug McMasters: And these two women greet each other, and the spirit-filled recognition of the unborn Christ is made by the unborn John.
Doug McMasters: The two children in the womb.
Doug McMasters: The Holy Spirit moves, and one child leaps for joy at the presence of the other.
Doug McMasters: And Luke does not call them products of conception.
Doug McMasters: He calls them babies, brefos, infants, children.
Doug McMasters: It's the exact same word that he uses to describe baby Jesus in the next chapter in the manger, already a person.
Doug McMasters: You see, the language of scripture doesn't draw a line between a child in the womb and a child in the manger.
Doug McMasters: It's the same word, the same description.
Doug McMasters: And so here we are, we see scripture tells us that we can't stand with the philosophies of Rome or the ideologies of our day that dismiss the dignity of human life.
Doug McMasters: But it also extends to the elderly and to the dying.
Doug McMasters: Our culture is increasingly placing pressure on families and on the elderly.
Doug McMasters: And it's no less pressing than the same pressure that we put on the unborn.
Doug McMasters: Death with dignity is being used.
Doug McMasters: Quality of life is cast about.
Doug McMasters: And it's suggested that because of suffering, or because of some disability, or because of some cognitive decline, or some terminal illness, or simply the lack of will to thrive, that some lives are not worth protecting.
Doug McMasters: When an elderly person with advancing dementia is spoken of in a way that subtly questions whether that person is really still there, or whether the burden of caring for a severely disabled family member reframes the question of their worth.
Doug McMasters: This is no more than Roman philosophy marketed for our modern day.
Doug McMasters: The biblical vision is life has dignity all the way to the last breath.
Doug McMasters: Life is upheld by compassionate care and a faithful presence.
Doug McMasters: Life is protected from this utilitarian calculus that measures worth in terms of its productivity.
Doug McMasters: It's about being faithful to show dignity all the way to the very end.
Doug McMasters: That elderly saint who's in a memory care unit, who can't even remember her children's names, still bears the image of God.
Doug McMasters: That man in the hospital bed who can't speak, can't move, can't respond, still bears the image of God.
Doug McMasters: The diagnosis doesn't erase the image of God.
Doug McMasters: The prognosis doesn't erase the image of God.
Doug McMasters: The image is there because God put it there.
Doug McMasters: Listen to what Job says in Job 14, 5.
Doug McMasters: Since a person's days are determined, and the number of his months depends on you, God, and since you have set the limits, he cannot pass.
Doug McMasters: Our generation and the Roman generation has confused responsibility of human life with ownership of human life.
Doug McMasters: And the scriptures here are telling us that the ownership belongs to God.
Doug McMasters: God alone is the author of life.
Doug McMasters: He numbers our days, which means he has the authority to grant it and to end it.
Doug McMasters: The authority of life belongs to him alone.
Doug McMasters: And I want to say this with great care, because a lot of us have been in those places that are very, very difficult, under conditions that none of us should face without love and counsel and the grace of God.
Doug McMasters: I want to say there's a distinction, a moral and a theologically significant distinction, mind you, between allowing the natural processes of dying to unfold without technological interference and the intentional taking of life.
Doug McMasters: I've had to be there with my own brother.
Doug McMasters: And after, because of his diabetes, he had had a significant um cardiac arrest, and that there was nothing left of his brain other than the ability to continue to breathe.
Doug McMasters: Should we continue to maintain that life by keeping him on a support system, or should we withdraw it?
Doug McMasters: That is a hard, hard, hard place to be.
Doug McMasters: But there is a difference between allowing the natural process of dying to unfold without technological interference and the active taking of life.
Doug McMasters: There's a difference between withdrawing treatments that only prolong or prolong the life in the withholding of death, not the preserving of life and the active ending of life itself.
Doug McMasters: We're not called to fight death with every technological advance that we can, but we're also called to never intentionally take life, also.
Doug McMasters: And so compassion means that we alleviate suffering, we provide comfort, we remain present, we refuse to abandon, we honor the image and the person who is diminished, and we trust that God alone determines what time he's written in his book to bring that person home.
Doug McMasters: The world says useful, but God says valuable.
Doug McMasters: The world talks about productive, but God says human life is precious.
Doug McMasters: The world says quality of life, but God says sanctity of life.
Doug McMasters: The world says the image, our worth, our dignity can be suspended.
Doug McMasters: God says image was never ours to suspend in the first place.
Doug McMasters: But let me speak before we get into our last point.
Doug McMasters: Perhaps you're here this evening and you made a decision years ago, in a moment of fear, in a moment of isolation, when no one offered you another way.
Doug McMasters: When the only voices you heard were the ones that told you you have an option and you need to do it quickly.
Doug McMasters: And you've carried the weight of that decision ever since.
Doug McMasters: You've borne it in silence, you've borne it in shame, you've borne it in private grief.
Doug McMasters: And maybe you've sat at the bedside of someone you loved and made a decision that you're still second-guessing.
Doug McMasters: You made that decision in grief, in exhaustion, in impossible circumstances, without clarity or counsel that you needed, but no one was there to give you.
Doug McMasters: The gospel is precisely and unapologetically for everyone who doesn't get it right.
Doug McMasters: Christ came for the broken as well as the breaking, for ones who have made devastating choices and have been living in the light of those ever since.
Doug McMasters: God's grace seen in the cross is more than sufficient to forgive and to carry you through whatever you're carrying today.
Doug McMasters: There's grace, real grace, at the cross.
Doug McMasters: Let me move, last of all, to what God calls the church to do.
Doug McMasters: Christianity has always been at its best when it's refused to let doctrinal truth remain theoretical, when it's moved the truth from the head to the heart and into the hands.
Doug McMasters: Because theology that stays in the pews is nothing no better than an exhibit at a museum, to be honest with you.
Doug McMasters: The Reformation was not merely a recovery of doctrinal propositions, it was a recovery of a living faith that transformed how people thought about work, how they thought about family, how they thought about the poor, and how they thought about the neighbor right in front of them.
Doug McMasters: Listen to Proverbs 31, verses 8 and 9, because the image of God demands a response from us.
Doug McMasters: Speak up for those who have no voice, for the justice of all who are dispossessed.
Doug McMasters: Speak up, judge righteously, and defend the cause of the oppressed and the needy.
Doug McMasters: What does God call us to do?
Doug McMasters: He calls us to act on those who cannot, to open our mouths for those who cannot open their mouths.
Doug McMasters: And who has no voice?
Doug McMasters: Well, the unborn child has no voice.
Doug McMasters: The elderly patient with advanced dementia has no voice.
Doug McMasters: The man on the ventilator has no voice.
Doug McMasters: And the woman sitting in the middle of a crisis pregnancy, who's being told by everyone around her to just get rid of it, may have a legal voice, but in a cultural sense, she's even being removed of whatever voice might be there that God calls her to.
Doug McMasters: And the people of God, understanding what the image of God means for all of us, are called to be the voice for those people.
Doug McMasters: To speak with clarity, to speak with warmth and pastoral love, to speak in a way of rescue and not condemnation.
Doug McMasters: We don't do this because it's a political party that joins with us.
Doug McMasters: We do it because it's what God calls us to do.
Doug McMasters: Because what we do is grounded in the image of God and the commands of God's wisdom to carry on, regardless of what power party is in power, or whether it's comfortable or uncomfortable in our society and culture today.
Doug McMasters: So let me take you back to Rome for just a second.
Doug McMasters: That father, that poor child, that column, that empire.
Doug McMasters: It's a picture of a world in which the image of God has been stamped on every single one of those people, and they've decided not to look at it.
Doug McMasters: They've mistaken authority over life for ownership of life.
Doug McMasters: But in that same city, in those small, scattered, marginal communities of people transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, there were women who had heard something different about human dignity.
Doug McMasters: There were women who had been told not by the culture of their day, but by God Himself, a God who became flesh and who himself became a vulnerable child, depended on those who cared for him, that every human bears the image that cannot be discarded and cannot be thrown away and cannot be overridden by the judgment of the powerful.
Doug McMasters: And those women went where Rome would not go.
Doug McMasters: Those women picked up what Rome had set down.
Doug McMasters: Those women had brought home what Rome had written off.
Doug McMasters: And Paul says, honor those women.
Doug McMasters: Honor them.
Doug McMasters: Because they've lived out the theology of the Imago Day.
Doug McMasters: They have done what they truly believe, that every single person, though unwanted by family or society, is a person made in the image of God.
Doug McMasters: But those widows weren't acting simply alone.
Doug McMasters: What they were doing was acting within a community that had embedded within it, even in a weekly way, an understanding of the image of God in every human person.
Doug McMasters: These individual acts of compassion that these women were to be honored for and to be cared for because of came out of a community that was shaped Sunday after Sunday after Sunday to see the world differently than the society around them.
Doug McMasters: In A.D.
Doug McMasters: 155, barely a century after Paul writes to Timothy, Justin Martyr writes in his first apology, addressed to the Roman Emperor.
Doug McMasters: And there he describes what Christians do.
Doug McMasters: And he talks about the reading of Scripture, he talks about the sermon, he talks about the prayers, he even talks about the Lord's Supper, but he doesn't stop there.
Doug McMasters: Listen to what he describes next: the offering.
Doug McMasters: What is collected is deposited with the president, who supports the orphans and widows, and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word, takes care of all who are in need.
Doug McMasters: Think about that.
Doug McMasters: Listen first of all to the list: orphans, widows, sick, prisoners, strangers, anybody in need.
Doug McMasters: This was not a members-only program.
Doug McMasters: This was the understanding of the image of God wrapped up in the weekly worship of the Christian community.
Doug McMasters: Every Sunday, as regular as the reading of Scripture and the sermon, and the prayers and the breaking of bread was an offering to be given for the benevolent care of anybody in need.
Doug McMasters: It was the care of the vulnerable.
Doug McMasters: And it wasn't an add-on to the worship, it was a part of the worship.
Doug McMasters: To gather on Sunday was to participate in the rescue of the needy.
Doug McMasters: And Justin Martyr is writing to the head of the very empire that had legalized the abandonment of children and the disposal of the weak.
Doug McMasters: And what Justin Martyr is saying here is saying, this is how we treat the people that you discard.
Doug McMasters: And the offering plate became a theological statement, as they gave in order to care for the needy.
Doug McMasters: And so what Rome called a refuge heap, the church called a mission field.
Doug McMasters: And what Rome called worthless, the church embraced as a neighbor.
Doug McMasters: This is what it looks like when the community takes the image of God seriously.
Doug McMasters: Not just in individual acts of compassion scattered across the congregation, but in a collective people that shape their weekly worship in a way that's visibly caring to all.
Doug McMasters: So what can we do in our day?
Doug McMasters: Well, there's several things I want to mention as we close.
Doug McMasters: First of all, we can support our local crisis pregnancy center.
Doug McMasters: Borough Pregnancy Counseling Center is doing exactly what these Roman widows were doing in 1 Timothy chapter 5.
Doug McMasters: Standing in the gap, offering another way, walking with women in the hardest moments of their life, and saying to them, You're not alone.
Doug McMasters: There's a pathway forward.
Doug McMasters: This child is worth saving, and we can help you.
Doug McMasters: Burrow needs our support.
Doug McMasters: They need our hands.
Doug McMasters: They need our prayer.
Doug McMasters: Secondly, we consider seriously whether or not we can participate in foster care or adoption or something like Long Island Youth Mentoring, where we come alongside people and we help them.
Doug McMasters: Yes, it's hard.
Doug McMasters: Yes, it's costly, but it's also a very tangible way to care for people who have inherent dignity because God made them in their image.
Doug McMasters: Third, we can visit a nursing home.
Doug McMasters: We can sit with a person who doesn't even remember their own name.
Doug McMasters: We can sit alongside them, and simply by being present in their presence, we can tell them that they have dignity and worth.
Doug McMasters: Something else that we can do, we can watch our language.
Doug McMasters: Remember, James?
Doug McMasters: Blessing God, cursing someone else made in the image of God.
Doug McMasters: We need to reject every dehumanizing vocabulary that our culture calls us to emulate.
Doug McMasters: And it creeps into the church without noticing.
Doug McMasters: We absorb it from the media, we consume it through our conversations, we're surrounded by it so much we begin to speak it without even considering what we're doing.
Doug McMasters: We put people into categories, and by putting people into categories, we lessen our grip on the fact that they're made in the image of God.
Doug McMasters: And so push back on it.
Doug McMasters: Push back on it in your own mind, push back on it in your conversations, push back on it even within the context of your own family.
Doug McMasters: Remember to show care for all people by the way we talk about one another.
Doug McMasters: And last of all, we can refuse to be silent.
Doug McMasters: In our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our families, in those conversations that we have on social media or around the dinner table or in the break room, to open our mouth for those that have no voice.
Doug McMasters: Not to speak with contempt against those who disagree with us, but to speak about the positive, compassionate care that we have for all people.
Doug McMasters: And by showing that, we will make a clear difference.
Doug McMasters: So from the womb to the final breath, every person at every stage and every condition bears the image of God.
Doug McMasters: And this is a reality that should have weight and consequence for every one of us in every place that we move and have our life.
Doug McMasters: God has made us in his image.
Doug McMasters: The image is there.
Doug McMasters: And one of the things that we said at the beginning of this series was that we're made by God, marked by God, and to manifest his glory.
Doug McMasters: And one of the ways that we can manifest his glory is by caring for those who bear his image.
Doug McMasters: Let's pray.
Doug McMasters: Father, we pray that we might be renewed in our mind by the influences of your word.
Doug McMasters: That the things that you declare and reveal to us will have such an in influencing effect upon us that we begin to live distinctly in this world and to show ourselves as those who belong to a different kingdom.
Doug McMasters: That we would live as those who in this life are sojourning through it as members of the kingdom of God, and that we might speak and act in a way that displays which kingdom we're in.
Doug McMasters: We pray, Father, that it would be done with love, but with clarity and with courage, and even at a cost.
Doug McMasters: And Father, we pray that in all of it you would be magnified as we show love to one another within the context of the body of Christ, and we show care and compassion and help to those even outside it.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Christ's name.
Doug McMasters: Amen.