Transcript
What about Us?
First Baptist Richmond, September 20, 2026
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 1:26-31
So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
I like to think of the first chapter of Genesis as a kind of “Call to Worship” for the entire Bible. I can picture some old priest stepping out onto the portico of the temple in Jerusalem and reading the first few lines—“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”—while the people of God are standing in the courtyard, looking up, listening, waiting for their part. They know that when the priest says, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light,” they are supposed to say, “And God saw that the light was good!” On it goes: the sky was good, the earth was good, the sun, moon and stars were good; the fish and fowl were good, the cattle and creeping things were good. But on the sixth day of creation, after God had made humankind in his own image, the priest says, “And God saw everything that he had made,” and the people say, “And behold, it was very good.”
This is how it was in the beginning: God made everything that is, and everything God made was good. And then, almost immediately, everything began to fall apart. But today, when we are talking about humankind, I don’t want you to miss the point that God created humans in his image. The author of Genesis doesn’t want you to miss it either. He repeats it for emphasis: “In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Only then did God look around at everything he had made and pronounce it “very good.”
On our church website there is a statement, approved by the deacons, that reads: “We affirm the Biblical truth that all people are created in God’s image, and therefore seek to welcome every person in the Spirit of Christ.” That is a core theological conviction. It means that we refuse to despise or dismiss anyone. Instead we look for the image of God in every person until we find it, and when we do we honor it. It’s a spiritual discipline, and, like prayer and Bible study, it takes practice.
I was at Costco recently, waiting for a repair on my hearing aids, and because I was thinking about this sermon I decided to practice. I sat there watching the people who came into the store and with each one I said, “There’s one of God’s favorites.” And here’s the thing about Costco: every kind of person comes in there. If you’d been with me you might have wondered, “Jim, are you sure? Even that one?” Yes, even that one. Try it some time. Think of Costco as a kind of monastery where you practice spiritual disciplines, where you see every person as one of God’s favorites. I’m telling you: it works for me like a magic trick. It changes that person right before my eyes.
I practice a similar kind of spiritual discipline at community missions. This is the church’s shower ministry, down on the lower level. And honestly, some of the people who come for that ministry look like they could use a shower. But every one of them is a human being, which means that every one of them bears God’s image. I like to look for it, and see if I can find it. Sometimes a kind word or a hug will draw it out. You see a face light up with a smile, or you see a twinkle in someone’s eye, and think, “There it is!” But when I go to community missions it’s my job to do the devotional and a few weeks ago I started with this:
I said, “Today I want to remind you of one of Jesus’ most important sayings. I know you’ve heard it before. Jesus said, ‘Judge your neighbor.’ That’s right, ‘Judge your neighbor. Look around at other people and see if you can find what’s wrong with them
and that will help you feel better about yourself.’” I kept talking like that for nearly a minute before someone behind me said, “Um, excuse me, but it’s LOVE your neighbor!” And I feigned surprise. I said, “Oh, that’s right! It’s LOVE your neighbor, not JUDGE your neighbor!” And then I said, “But that makes me wonder: if Jesus said, ‘Love your neighbor,’ why do we spend so much time doing that other thing?”
Here’s what the experts say:
First, judging simplifies the world. Human beings are complicated. If I actually get to know someone, I may discover a mixture of generosity and selfishness, courage and fear, wisdom and foolishness—the same mixture I find in myself. But judgment lets me put someone in a box: good person, bad person; liberal, conservative; believer, unbeliever; respectable, irresponsible. Once I’ve labeled you, I don’t have to do the harder work of knowing you.
Second, judging makes us feel better about ourselves. This may be the big one. Comparison is an easy route to self-esteem. I don’t have to become more generous if I can find somebody stingier than I am. I don’t have to become more righteous if I can identify somebody more sinful. Jesus seems to understand this perfectly in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people,” the Pharisee says (Luke 18:11). There’s the payoff. I establish my goodness by identifying your badness.
Third, judgment gives us a sense of control. If something terrible happens to somebody, there’s a perverse comfort in finding a reason they deserved it. Well, he shouldn’t have done that. She made some bad choices. They brought it on themselves. Because if they deserved what happened, then perhaps I can keep it from happening to me. The alternative—admitting that terrible things sometimes happen to people who don’t deserve them—is much more frightening.
Fourth, judgment protects us from compassion. We might not want to admit it, but it’s true. Because once I see the image of God in you, I have to do something about it. If you’re simply “a homeless person,” I can walk past you. If you’re a human being made in the image of God—someone with a name and a mother and a story and fears and hopes—walking past gets harder. Judgment creates distance; compassion closes it.
And fifth, judgment is simply faster than curiosity. I can judge you in three seconds. To understand you might take three years. And yet, that doesn’t let us off the hook. Even before someone at community missions found the courage to speak up and disagree with the preacher, everyone in that room knew that Jesus didn’t say, “Judge your neighbor.” He said, “Love your neighbor.” It’s one of the clear commands of Christ we’ve been talking about, one of those things every good disciple is supposed to do. But it’s hard. How do we do it? We look for the image of God in every person.
That’s easy with little kids and newborn babies. It’s not hard for us to believe the image of God is in there. It’s harder with some of the people I meet at community missions. I stand by the door on Monday mornings and watch people come in and every once in a while I see someone and wonder, “Oh, honey… What happened to you?” That’s a different question from “What’s wrong with you?” It acknowledges that the image of God can get so twisted, so distorted, that it is almost unrecognizable. I think there are three primary ways that happens:
1. The circumstances of life shape us. Some people grow up surrounded by love, safety, beauty, encouragement, education, enough food, trustworthy adults—the kinds of things that make it relatively easy for a human being to flourish. Others grow up in poverty, chaos, addiction, violence, racism, war, neglect, instability, or simply the grinding experience of never having enough. None of those circumstances necessarily determines what someone will become. But they
matter. A child who learns early that the world is dangerous may become an adult who is suspicious, defensive, angry, or always ready to fight. What looks like ugliness from the outside may have started as a survival strategy.
2. The choices we make shape us. C. S. Lewis once wrote: “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you … into something a little different from what it was before.” He believed that over a lifetime, our choices are slowly turning that inner self into either “a heavenly creature or a hellish creature.” He might say that choices don’t merely produce consequences; over time they produce character. Every time I choose generosity, forgiveness, courage, truthfulness, I become a little more capable of choosing those things again. And the reverse is also true. Resentment practiced long enough can become bitterness. Dishonesty can become habitual. Cruelty can become easier. A person can gradually become someone they never consciously decided to become, one small decision at a time.
3. And then there are the choices other people make for us—or against us. This may be the most heartbreaking category, because especially when we’re young, we don’t get to choose very much. We don’t choose our parents. We don’t choose whether someone loves us or neglects us, encourages us or humiliates us, protects us or abuses us. We don’t choose the race, class, body, family, nation, or historical moment into which we are born. And sometimes other people’s sinful choices leave marks on us that remain for decades. So, when we look for the image of God in a person, we need to do it with understanding and compassion, realizing that that image may have been twisted into an almost unrecognizable shape.
That doesn’t excuse bad behavior. If you act up in community missions we will ask you to leave. But we’re going to begin with the conviction that you bear the image of God.
As I’ve said, it’s a spiritual discipline, and spiritual disciplines take practice. Last week, at our ONE Sunday celebration, there was a woman who was looking for me, who wanted to talk to me about some idea she was having to help the homeless. I didn’t feel like I had time for that. I was trying to get around and see everybody who was there for our dinner on the grounds. But there she was, sitting at a table by herself, so I sat down, thinking I would give her five minutes. But as she talked I listened, and then I began to do more than that: I began to look for the image of God in her. And suddenly I thought of that book, The Shack, where God the Father is portrayed as an African-American woman named “Papa.”
That was a radical act of imagination on the author’s part—to conceive of God not as an old, white man sitting on a throne but as a strong Black woman, opening the door of the Shack with a smile and greeting her guest with a bone-breaking hug. On ONE Sunday, As I listened to this woman talk about her passion for helping the homeless, and as I thought about that book, it wasn’t hard for me to imagine that I was sitting in the presence of God. It was a hot day, but I almost got chills thinking about it, and instead of thinking that I was giving her five minutes of my time, I became grateful for the time she was giving me.
I’ve sometimes wished we could gather in the fellowship hall and I could flash words up on the screen followed by pictures. For instance, I might start with the word doctor, and you might imagine a man in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck, and then I would show a picture of a young Indian woman doing brain surgery, and you would say, “Oh, right. Sometimes doctors look like that.” I’d go through all the stereotypes—nurse, teacher, accountant, pastor—but eventually I’d flash the words “Child of God” on the screen, and then show a picture of a Native American cowboy, a Black ballerina, a Jewish math teacher, a Mexican pop star, a neurodivergent rocket
scientist, an opera singer—in a wheelchair, a gay football player, a Muslim basketball coach, a transgender CEO, a homeless peace advocate, until you got the idea that people are people, no matter how they look, no matter where they’re from, no matter what they do, no matter how they identify—people are people, but they are not just people—they are people made in the image of God. Learning to see them that way is a spiritual discipline.
It takes practice.
In 2014, the same year my dad died, we had a Somerville family reunion. My mom was there, along with me and my five brothers and our wives, and our 24 children, some of whom were married and some of whom had their own children. It was a pretty big crowd. Mom was suffering from dementia in those days and at one point she asked my daughter, Ellie, “Am I related to all these people?” “Yes!” Ellie said. “Isn’t that amazing?” Mom thought about that for a minute and then pointed and said, “Even that one?”
My parents had taught my brothers and me to love our neighbors, and in those days I think we interpreted that to mean that you love people who look like you, and talk like you, and think like you, and when it comes to marriage you do the opposite—that is, you marry someone of the opposite sex. But our children were better Christians than we were. They understood that love is love, and that you shouldn’t put limits on it. One of them married a Black man (gasp). One of them married a Chinese man (gasp). One of them married an Australian (gasp). And although we haven’t had a same-sex wedding in our family yet it’s probably just a matter of time. I might even be asked to perform the ceremony, and I’m OK with that.
Something happens when you start loving people instead of judging them. You begin to see the image of God in them. I wish you could see the picture of my mother squeezing her bi-racial great-grandbaby at that family reunion, kissing those chubby
cheeks, and realizing that her granddaughter was right—you don’t have to put limits on love. And if you are listening to this sermon right now and feeling some judgmental spirit rising up inside of you, something that says, “Well, but…” or “The Bible says…” I need you to remember that Jesus didn’t say, “Judge your neighbor.” He said, “Love your neighbor.”
And leave the judging up to him.
–Jim Somerville, 2026