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Sermon for Trinity Sunday A

May 26, 2002

Our First Testament lesson this morning—the first Creation story from the Book of Genesis—is one of my favorite passages in the whole, entire Bible. And those who have been through the Scripture class that we were doing in Wednesday School for the last seven weeks may remember our discussions of just how much meaning and history and devotion is packed into this one passage. The story of Creation on the surface of it is wonderful enough; but all the truth contained just below the surface of the text makes it even more amazing. And on this Trinity Sunday, when we celebrate the central Christian doctrine and central saving mystery that God is Lover and Beloved and Love itself, on this Trinity Sunday it is especially revelatory for us to look at the Creation story and see the signs of the Trinity there.

To be fair, I should say at the outset that I do not believe that the Temple priests who first wrote down this story had the Trinity in mind. For them, as devout Jews of their time, it was clear that there was only one God and God was a perfect Singularity: every day they prayed, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” And today, contemporary Jews will read this passage and not see anything like a Trinity in it. But as Christians, as people who have come to know God as transcendent Creator, and God incarnate in Jesus, and God immanent in our own hearts as the Holy Spirit—as Christians we can read this Creation story and see in it the threefold work of the one loving God in all things.

This is God’s Trinitarian work in the Universe: Creation begins with God the Source, God the infinite and eternal Reality who stands over against the void and the formless and the darkness, God who transcends every thing and is limited by nothing. First is God the mystery of Being.

But even though the transcendent creator God stands over against the formless void, God is not separated from it: the text says “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” The word for “wind” here in Hebrew is ruach, and ruach can mean wind or breath or spirit. Other translations render this verse with those other meanings of ruach: “The Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.” Have you ever noticed what wind does when it moves over water?—it makes waves; and often, if the wind is moving fast enough, it makes patterns of waves, little riffles on the surface that ride on the tops of bigger waves in the open that may even break into whitecaps that roll in a regular rhythm across the deeps. The wind excites the water into relationships and relationships of relationships; the wind brings a togetherness of motion to the waves of the moving water. And that’s what the Spirit of God does in Creation: the Spirit sweeps through the stuff of the Universe and makes waves of relationships.

And then, the story says, God speaks. God says, “Let there be light.” God sends forth a Word, an utterance of God’s own self—God is light, the Scripture says, and if God says “Let there be light,” then God is speaking God’s own Name into Creation—God sends forth a Word and the Word makes a difference. The Word makes a difference between darkness and light, the Word makes a difference between the waters above the heavens and the waters below the heavens, the Word makes a difference between dry land and deep sea, the Word makes a difference between bare ground and living vegetation. At every stage of Creation, all through the six days of the story, God’s Word goes forth into the Universe and differentiates, so that each creature has its own character and each creature has its own identity and each creature has its own name, and each creature has its own unique being from the infinite Being of God. As Christians, we recognize that Word of God spoken into Creation as the same Word who came to be incarnate with us in Jesus; as John says at the beginning of his Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were created through the Word. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth.” The Word who spoke Light at the beginning speaks Life to us in Christ.

So the work of Creation here is threefold: the Source of Being gives forth creativity, and the Word speaks differences to make the many beings, and the Spirit moves in all to draw the beings into relationships, day and night together, sea and shore together, sun and moon and stars moving together, earth and plants and animals and people all growing together. The whole Universe is made out of differences and relationships, as Being and Word and Spirit bring forth everything in the image and likeness of their own threefold love.

And of course that Trinitarian work of Creation didn’t end on the seventh day: Being and Word and Spirit are still bringing forth the Universe as an expression of their threefold love. Everything we see and know around us is made of difference and relationship. The differences between subatomic particles come together in relationships to make atoms. The differences between atoms come together in relationships to make molecules. The differences between molecules come together in relationships to make crystals and proteins and lipids and nucleic acids and living tissues. The differences between tissues come together in relationships to make organs and physiological systems and bodies. The differences between personalities come together in relationships to make families and communities and communions. The differences between us come together in relationships to make a church, a limb of the Body of Christ, a Temple for the indwelling Holy Spirit. The threefold love of the Trinity is very much at work in us, giving us being, giving us differentiation, giving us togetherness, so that we are created and re-created as expressions of God's love—and in this creation too, God looks, and God sees that we are good.

And because we are created in the image of the Trinity in threefold love, therefore we are also called to love like the Trinity, to love in difference and relationship, to love in a way that creates new possibilities in the world as the Word and the Spirit are at work among us. In the name of the Trinity we are called to love the differences: to respect all the ways that we are not like each other, to honor the diversities and othernesses that at first can make us feel awkward and uncomfortable about each other and challenged to reach out to the stranger; in the name of the Trinity we are called to value the differences that make us each unique and unrepeatable and infinitely precious in the eyes of God. And we are also called in the name of the Trinity to create relationships, to share that love and respect and value with those who are not like us, with those who are not part of our inner circle, with those whom our secular society so often turns away and pushes to the margins, with those who will only know the love of God if we will show it to them. Difference and relationship still make our life today, as we are created anew in the always-creating love of the Triune God.

And that is what we celebrate on this Trinity Sunday. That re-creation in threefold love is the baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit that Jesus commissions his apostles to bring to all nations and that we share with Joel Michael today as he is baptized into the household of faith. That re-creation in threefold love is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, that Paul prays for his community in Corinth, and for all Christian communities. That is the love of difference and relationship that makes us alive and gives us a life to share with others. That is the mystery of the Trinity—and today, on Trinity Sunday, that is our thanks and praise and joy.

In the Name of the Triune God: the Holy One, the Holy Word, the Holy Spirit. Amen.