A Sample Sermon on Biotechnology

Texts: Genesis 1:26-31; Luke 1:26-38

THE BIG IDEA:

S: The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life

C: Our creation in the image of God and Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection are the basis for our human dignity.

INTRODUCTION
Maggie made her decision years ago. She would never marry. Maggie had come to faith in Christ as a child and had walked with him for nearly thirty years. She had walked with the fact of her juvenile diabetes and all the attending complications even longer. She knew she lived with the threat of blindness, amputation, kidney failure, heart attack, and stroke.

Knowing that her diabetes was genetic and her children could inherit the disease, Maggie decided on a celibate life—no marriage, no babies. Her genetic flaw would die when she did.

Yet today, though biotechnology is still in its infancy, we hear that problems like Maggie’s are solvable along with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, spinal injuries, heart disease, cancer, and other ailments. All are curable, they say, through the use of human embryonic stem cells. These are undifferentiated cells from embryos that will one day become bone and brain, liver and ligament. If we can take human embryos—fertilized in a lab or cloned there—harvest the stem cells, and while killing the embryo, heal the living, should we?

TRANSITION
Christians have for years been concerned about the question of abortion on demand. And in January this year we marked the thirtieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion on demand in the United States. We have yet to solve that problem; why jump to questions about embryonic stem cells? Because the moral questions surrounding abortion, embryonic stem cell research, cloning, and euthanasia, along with the rest of the biotech agenda, center on the same question: What does it mean to be a human? Does the life of an embryo or fetus—or sickly octogenarian—have the same sanctity and dignity and deserve the same protection as a healthy thirty year old?

Just being against abortion isn’t enough. In the light of all of these additional questions, we must assert the sanctity and dignity of human life at every stage, be thoroughly pro-life and pro-humanity. And all human life has sanctity and dignity, because image is everything.

1. Image (Genesis 1:26-31)

(Read Gn 1:26-27.) The obvious small group question for this text is, "What does it mean that we are made in God’s image?" The typical answers to that question include reason, speech, creativity, love and other emotions, and possibly dominion: God rules over the earth and so do we.

Good answers, but when we step to the edges of life, we run into problems. What about the embryo? The embryo can’t reason, speak, create, love, or have dominion. Well, you say, the embryo has the potential to do all those things. But what about a defective embryo who doesn’t have the potential? The kind of embryo that routinely gets aborted? And what about my uncle who has run out of potential? He’s sick, blind, and no longer able even to think. Is he in the image of God? The obvious answers to the question of what is the image of God are inadequate.

Richard Pratt, professor of Old Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, points out that in the ancient world, when a king conquered new territory, he would immediately hire artisans and they would create statues of the king—images. Those statues or images would be set up all over the newly conquered districts. He’d put them where the conquered people could see them because the image was a message: "Don’t ever forget who rules here."

The Soviets did the same thing. I visited the Soviet Union in 1971, and we got sick of seeing huge statues and vast outdoor paintings of Marx and Lenin. They were everywhere. Why? "Don’t ever forget who rules here." And when the Soviet empire crumbled, the first thing the people did was tear down the statues, the images that reminded them of their subjugation.

(Read Gn 1:27-28.) God, the great King, created human beings in his image and said, "Fill my world with my image." Human beings—simply by being human—make a statement. When I look at you or you look at me, we should think to ourselves, "Don’t ever forget who rules here. There’s His image and there’s His image and there’s His image." Your life, independent of your talents, skills, potentials, and abilities, announces to the world—to animals, people, angels, and demons—"God is King." And your life announced that when you were an embryo, a fetus, an infant. And your life will continue to announce the Kingship of God, even as my uncle’s does, when you’re infirm and at the very end of your earthly journey.

And because humans bear God’s image and announce his Kingship, human life is sacred and has enormous dignity. Why is murder such a heinous crime? We find out in God’s covenant with Noah. (Read Gn 9:5-6.) Murder is more than a crime against the victim. It’s rebellion against God. It takes God’s image, that which announces, "Don’t ever forget who rules here," and destroys it. When we murder the image of God at any stage of human development from conception to the deathbed, we shake a defiant fist and reject of God’s rightful reign. Killing the image of God is a supreme act of rebellion against God.

Image is everything. Human life has sanctity and dignity because are made in the image of God and because God himself took on that image and bears it still.

2. Incarnation (Luke 1:26-38)

(Read Lk 1:30-38.) . . . And something happened. What precisely happened on a cellular or genetic level? I haven’t a clue. But I know this: God became a zygote, a one-celled human being. And God grew into a blastocyst, an embryo, a fetus, and an infant in a stable in Bethlehem.

Our office Christmas party was a tour of Christmas art at the National Gallery. One of the features of the depictions of the Christ child is that Jesus is almost always pictured naked. You can see everything. Why? Because the artists wanted to communicate good theology. Make no mistake, the paintings say, Jesus, fully God, was fully human—a real baby with a real human boy’s body.

And Jesus grew to adulthood, taught and healed, and was crucified for our sin. His real human body hung limp and lifeless from the cross. Joseph of Aramathea buried that real dead human body, and on Easter that same real human body rose to life. When Jesus ascended into Heaven, he didn’t leave that real human body behind. He took it with Him and He sits at the right hand of the Father bearing the scars of crucifixion in human flesh. And in that human body, he will come again.

Human life is sanctified and dignified not only by being made in the image of God, but because God himself bears that image.

3. Implications

Where does that leave us?

Well, it certainly leads us to look at abortion. The old argument about "it’s nothing but a mass of cells" has crumbled. Crisis pregnancy centers have found that nothing saves unborn babies faster or more effectively than ultrasound machines. The pictures on the screen show women what they already knew: It’s a child, a human child, and his or her life has sanctity and dignity.

What about Maggie with her diabetes and the promise of embryonic stem cells? Well, the best way to find a cure for any disease is to perform experiments on human subjects, some of which will be lethal. But civilized people don’t do that. Cures at the price of human life—at the price of destroying the image of God even at the embryonic stage—are a Faustian bargain. We may heal bodies, but in the process we’ll sell our souls.

(Note to diabetics and other sufferers: The very ethical research into adult stem cell therapies holds enormous hope for cures.)

And you don’t kill the image of God when he or she is old and sick and . . . well . . . in your way. Euthanasia is a massive assault on the sanctity and dignity of human life and is a grave danger to us all.

Mark Earley, the new president of Prison Fellowship, is fond of reminding us that what gave Mother Teresa the authority to shake her bony finger in the president of the United States’ face and scold him over abortion was that she cared for the poorest of the poor. She saw in everyone the image of God and the face of Jesus, God incarnate. Christians need that kind of moral authority, and it will only come because we are thoroughly pro-life.

And that flows into our bedrooms and kitchens, our offices and classrooms, our church and the checkout line at Giant. In the final analysis, we’re not dealing with that cold spouse or bratty kid or boring mom. We don’t work with "that pathetic incompetent" or go to school with "that big jerk." We aren’t in church with "that annoying woman" and the cashier isn’t "some klutz."

Instead we’re surrounded instead by living reminders that God is King. His image is everywhere we look, and every face announces, "Don’t ever forget who rules here."

C. S. Lewis put it so well in his sermon The Weight of Glory:

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. . . . Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. (C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Essays, HarperSanFrancisco: 1976, page 46)

Look at your neighbor: in the pew, in the womb, in the biotech lab, on his or her deathbed. Image is everything. Live accordingly.

CONCLUSION
As I said earlier, being against abortion isn’t enough. That won’t end abortion. It’s insufficient as we wrestle with the difficult and complex questions of biotechnology. And it can’t change the culture, which is at least confused about and increasingly hostile to the sanctity and dignity of human life.

As Christians, we need to repent of thinking we live in a world full of ordinary human beings and by faith become thoroughly pro-life and pro-humanity. Everyone, at every stage of life, is the image of God, points us to His sovereign rule in this world, and deserves our respect, love, and protection.

This is the hope for our families, for the victims of abortion—fetal, male, and female—for the sick, for the old, for the church, and for a culture that needs to be reminded of its great and loving King.