This week we install the religious art prize exhibition.   We have asked people to extend ways of interpreting the image of God in our midst, acknowledging the diversity of ways we experience and understand God expressed in the world.  We want to honour the open ways in which we are inspired.  Indeed, in the face of the struggles around us, we are wondering how we might ‘Image’ a God present, offering life and hope.  And we received many entries from NSW, Qld and SA, as well as locally.

And we asked the question from a particular frame… that is, from Genesis 1, we learn that God decided to make humanity in God’s own image… male and female God created them.  There is considerable scholarly debate around what it means to be formed in God’s image… And  on the other hand, almost every other reference to ‘image’ in the Bible is that it is a threatening thing.  There is issue with images, or idols, which seek to set in concrete the things of God.  To constrain or limit or distort ways of thinking about God.  Images are ‘graven’ as in they carved, or fixed in stone.  They are ‘fixed’, where as there is a sense of humans becoming ‘living images’ of God.  Humanity is not a static representation, but a dynamic expression unfolding image of God.     So any painting, sculpture or artwork, ultimately seeks to explore that in some way – rather than concretize God.  The illusion that God can be imaged, or even contained by an image, is replaced by an experience whereby God is revealed in the dynamic of the conversation, I would say, the conversation of the Trinity – Creator, Son and Spirit.  God as creator, revealed in the life of Jesus and in an ongoing way expressed in the creative activity of the Spirit of God present to us.   And ultimately, that we, people are made in the image of God – not just Christians or men or blacks or white – but all people are made in the image of God.