Last week we finished our message series that looked at some of the more common "Half-Truths" we encounter in society concerning faith. Today we begin a new message series, "Liars, Cheaters, Cowards & Other Bible Heroes."
Everyone loves a hero; whether in a novel or on the big screen. The heroes that we seem to love the most are those that are portrayed as flawed, those that are most human. In looking at heroes there is always the danger of putting them up on a pedestal. We maximize their accomplishments, their victories, and they successes, while glossing over and minimizing their flaws and failures. This is rather ironic because we tend to do just the opposite with ourselves: we maximize our mistakes and our faults, while minimizing our accomplishments and successes.
As we get to know some of the heroes of the Bible, we are not going to explain away their accomplishments, and we are not going to minimize the great things that God has done through them. But we are also going to acknowledge that the heroes of our faith are flawed, just like us.
Given that it is Father's Day, it is fitting that we are going to take a look at the story of a dad, in fact he is the first father of the first human family. Let's take a look at Adam.
Adam's story is familiar to most of us. It begins in the first chapter of the first book in the Bible, Genesis, chapter 1. God creates the heavens and the earth out of nothing. He make the light, the earth, the sea, the plants, and all the animals. At the pinnacle of creation, God creates Man. As it says in Genesis, God says, "'Let us make man in our image, according to likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.' God cread man in HIs own image. In the image of God He created him. Male and female, He created them. And God blessed them...."
There are three main points to take out of the story of God's creation of Adam. First, Adam is created with God's purity. There are no flaws; everything is perfect. There were no broken relationships, no disorder or conflict with the rest of creation.
Second, Adam was made in God's image. Human beings are suppose to reflect the image of God in all that they do. As God is perfect communion of three Divine Persons -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- united in perfect love, so Adam, the human community should be united in perfect love.
Lastly, in creating Adam, God gave him authority. Think about it; God, who exists before anything else, who has the power to create something out of nothing, hands over the keys -- so to speak -- to one of His creatures. He gives Adam authority over the rest of creation. Wow!
Of course Adam and Eve mess things up. Instead of trusting God and His plan, they try to grab knowledge of good and evil for themselves. As a result they, and us their children, lost God's purity and perfection, and conflict has entered in. While we are still created in God's image, that image is smudged. We doubt ourselves, and we doubt our worth and value. Instead of exercising authority in God's name, we seek to control situation and other people through manipulation so that we can get our own way.
God then does something mind-boogling. He allows Adam to become a father, the first father of the first family. Despite his failure in the Garden, and the consequential flaws that followed, God decides to use Adam as a hero, and the pattern of fatherhood for all of us. In His love and faithfulness, God shows us through Adam, that He will continue to use imperfect people.
God goes even further and makes a promise. In Genesis 3:15, God says to the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman. He shall strike at your head, and you shall strike at his heel." This is more than God just promising that there will now be a battle between good and evil that mankind will be caught up in. Rather it is a promise that God will send a male offspring who will conquer sin and death.
Of course this refers to Jesus, the New Adam, who redeems us from our sins. As St. Paul notes in one of his letters, the first Adam was created as the first living being, whereas Jesus, the New Adam, is a life giving being. Whereas the first Adam choose selfishness, Jesus, the New Adam, chooses righteousness. The first Adam would leave a legacy of death, but Jesus, the New Adam, leaves a legacy of life, new life.
Despite his imperfections and failures, Adam does do one very important, heroic thing -- he points us to Jesus our Savior and redeemer. And as we will see in the coming weeks, this is what all our Bible heroes will do, despite their faults, flaws, and failures. So stay tuned.