One (A Sermon for Trinity Sunday)

(Scriptures:  Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a, Psalm 8, 

                      2 Corinthians 13:11-13,  Matthew 28:16-20)

 

 

 

       

Today is Trinity Sunday, when our church calendar reminds us of God as Trinity….Father, Son, Holy Spirit.  Last week was Pentecost, when we remembered the coming of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter and Advocate promised by God who formed the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth into the church, the Holy Spirit who transformed Peter from a guy who couldn’t open his mouth without putting his foot into it all the way up to his kneecap, into a guy who preached a sermon that brought some 3000 people to faith in Jesus Christ.

 

Our reading from Genesis brings us back to God the Father, God the Parent, the creator of all things.   This passage is actually one of two versions of the creation account in Genesis – the other begins with Genesis 2:4…this is the version with the woman being formed from Adam’s rib and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  But that’s not the one we’re reading today, though I’ll be referring to it from time to time.

 

Certainly, in fundamentalist circles, the creation accounts are controversial, as they would seem to conflict with scientific knowledge about the age of the earth and such.  However, to read Genesis 1 as a science book is, I think, to miss the point of what it’s telling us.  Genesis chapter 1 has a literary, almost poetic quality to it.  It begins with a description of darkness and a formless void – the Hebrew for this is tohu wabohu...the sense of the Hebrew phrase is sort of like our phrase higgledy piggledy or helter skelter or topsy turvy.  And then in the midst of this darkness and higgledy piggledy and helter skelter and topsy turvy, God speaks the creation into being.  Each step of creation begins with the words “And God said…” and then the aspect of creation is described, and then the step of creation ends with the words, “And God saw that it was good.  And there was evening and there was morning, the first day” or second or third and so forth.  At the end of creation, we’re told, “And God saw that it was very good.  And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” 

 

Why was this story included in Hebrew Scripture, and eventually in our Bible?  When we talk about our beginnings, it’s generally in order to remind ourselves who we are.  For example, in America we have the stories of our country’s founding, and well over 200 years later, those stories still resonate with us.  Our church, Emanuel Church, has its history – we remember that we started out with $9 in the bank; we particularly remember Emanuel Boehringer, one of our early pastors, who started what eventually became Bethany Children’s Home in order to care for children orphaned by the Civil War.  And those stories live on, and remind us who we are.  Ancient civilizations also had stories of their beginnings.  The Babylonian creation story, Enuma Elish, speaks of the cosmos beginning with combat between various gods, of which Marduk eventually emerged victorious.  After conquering the other gods, so the Babylonian story goes, Marduk created the earth out of the corpse of one of the gods he conquered.   And so, for the Babylonians, creation was violent from its earliest beginnings, and violence is to be expected as a part of life.   By contrast, in Greek creation mythology, creation was the result, not of gods fighting, but of gods mating.  And people living with the Greek creation myths would see the world and themselves very differently from, for example, the Babylonians.

 

The Genesis account is so different.  There are no battles between gods to be won or lost, nor gods and goddesses wooing and winning one another…just our God, our one God, beginning with darkness and higgledy-piggledy, helter skelter and topsy turvy and methodically, peacefully shaping creation, bringing order out of chaos, and proclaiming each aspect of creation to be “good.”  And then the story goes on to tell us that humans were created in God’s image and given dominion over all the animals, told to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, and given every green plant for food.  What does this account tell us about the world and about ourselves?  Several things – that we did not just arrive by happenstance, but are here purposefully….and that, at least in the beginning, humans and everything else were considered by God to be “good…..very good.”

 

This account also tells us place of human beings in the order of things – definitely not God, but created in God’s image, which is said about nothing else in all creation – and that we’ve been given dominion over all the earth, to fill the earth and subdue it.  It is this last piece, I think, that has gotten us into trouble.  In our sinfulness humans have interpreted Genesis 1:28 as a license to beat creation into submission, to exploit and destroy what God called “very good” for our own short-term benefit.  And of course, it goes without saying that humans beat into submission and exploit not only the creation, but one another.  But this isn’t what God intended.  God didn’t intend for humans to pillage creation, but to be good stewards of creation.  This comes out more clearly in the other version of the creation story in Genesis 2, in which God puts man in the garden to till it and keep it – basically, to tend God’s garden.  Instead, too often, in the words of the song, we’ve paved paradise and put up a parking lot. 

 

All that’s the bad news..and there’s a lot of it.  As resilient has the creation is, it appears this resilience has limits that we’re bumping up against.   The good news of the Gospel is that, as much as we mess up, God doesn’t abandon us.  On this Trinity Sunday, the good news is that the God who created all things is the God who, through the saving work of Jesus Christ, redeemed us, and through the work of the Holy Spirit sustains us.  Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer – these three are the work of our Triune God.  And the God who creates, redeems, and sustains us is the God who cares not only about us, but about the environment, about the world we live in.

 

Trinitarian theology speaks of God as creator, redeemer, and sustainer – but it does more.  It speaks of God, not only as functioning in three roles, but as existing in three persons – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – in the words of our first hymn, “God in three persons, blessed trinity”.   These three persons within the one God are said to exist in a constant dance of self-giving love, each to the others – a dance of self-giving love to which Jesus invites us.   

 

And it’s a dance of self-giving love to which we are to invite others.  In our brief Gospel lesson today, Jesus tells his followers to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that Jesus taught.  All are invited into the self-giving life that Jesus modeled.

 

So on this Trinity Sunday, and particularly in reference to our reading from Genesis, I’d invite us to remember – to remember who God is – a self-giving God who creates, redeems, and sustains us and all creation – and who we are, humans created from the dust, and yet somehow created in God’s image.  And not just us, but everyone we meet, the people we love and the people we can’t stand to be in the same room with, are all created in God’s image, all called to lives of self-giving love to one another, all called to give loving care to God’s creation, to tend God’s garden.  May God open our eyes to ways in which we can live all of this out more faithfully here in Bridesburg, the particular garden spot where God has planted us.  Amen.