Trinity Sunday
June 15, 2014
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
A couple
weeks ago I was in downtown Rochester with a friend, and we wandered into a
deli
for dinner. We ordered sandwiches, and there was a sheet to fill out that
had all the different items we could have on the sandwich. One of the offerings
was something called “boss sauce.” Does anyone know what that is? Well, we two
people who are relatively new to Rochester didn’t, so we asked, “What is boss
sauce?” The guy looked at us askance and said, “You’re not from around here,
are you?” Well, I guess that much was clear!
 |
| Boss Sauce is a sweet and spicy sauce that is made in Rochester by American Specialty Manufacturing, Inc. (RocWiki) |
Where you’re
from can play a big role in how you relate to the world. That’s why it is one
of the first questions people ask when they meet someone for the first time.
What’s your name, what do you do, are you from Rochester? And sure, all those
things do play a role in who you are: I am and always will be, to some extent,
a Northern California girl, raised in a small, gold rush town in the foothills
in a pastor’s family. The fact that I am a pastor also says a lot about who I
am, as people’s careers of choice often do.
But what if
we thought bigger when we consider who we are and where we’re from? Today texts,
especially the one from Genesis, urge us to think about where we are from in a
different way. This creation account from Genesis 1 is so rich and beautiful,
but I think often skimmed over because we think we know it so well. Or because
it brings up baggage, or because the scientist in you readily dismisses it. Or
any number of other reasons. But here is my challenge for you today: read this
account not as a factual history, but as poetry, or a hymn, or a doxology,
which praises God, and the many aspects of God that are worthy of praise. Read
it as prose with a truth that is deeper than the words, a reflection on who God
is, and who we are because we come from that God.
That’s the
other challenge for today. Instead of thinking, “I’m from Rochester,” or, “I’m
from Webster,” or, “I’m from America,” let’s focus on a larger truth: that we
are from God. Today on the church calendar is also Holy Trinity Sunday, a day
when we reflect on the mysterious and wonderful nature of God, and by
extension, who we are as people of that God. So let’s do it – let’s think
together about some of what we know about God, and so what it means for us to
say, as Genesis makes clear, “We come from God.”
We
come from a God who sees and reflects. Each time God creates something,
you’ll notice, God stops to consider the creation, and sees it, and decides
each time that it is good. Despite the ordered nature of this account of
creation, in fact God is not utilitarian about it. Rather, God relishes in what
is made, whether it is a sweeping blue sky, or a child’s laughter, or trees
producing fruit and seed, or the way the sunshine sparkles through the leaves
of those trees. God is an artist who is a keen observer, perceptive, and
patient. We come from a God who observes, attends, perceives, and takes delight
in what God has created. Do we take the time to observe and delight in what is
around us?
We
come from a God who made things good. Before there was evil and sin,
there was goodness and blessing. Just look how often God looks upon creation
and deems it “good” or even, “very good.” It’s a very world-affirming account
of creation! And yet, all that goodness and blessing – it is so easy to forget
in midst of all the greed, violence, back-biting, and devastation we see all
around us. But what would happen if we viewed the world as if it really
functioned according to its “very good” default settings? What if we viewed
people through this lens, even when they said hurtful things? What if we always
strived to see the goodness in people and things, rather than get stuck on
everything that is wrong? “God saw everything he had made,” after all, “and it
was very good.” Could we live into our goodly heritage?
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| Creation by Igor Paley |
We
come from a God who makes new things. It is easy to see this in the
creation account, in which God makes new things every day. But what about now?
Does God still create new things? Do we still believe God is an innovator, a
creator? Looking around, it is hard not to see destruction – rain forests
disappearing, landfills increasing, solar caps melting, fires, floods… The
world that God made is breaking down, and when we think of creators and
innovators, we think of people like Steve Jobs and other human innovators. But is
it true that humans are the innovators nowadays, not God? We come from a God
who makes new things – so do we still believe in a vibrant and active God, or
one who has become stagnant?
I believe God does still make new
things – each day creation is changing, and so are you, and so am I. As
Frederick Buechner writes, “Using the same old materials of earth, air, fire,
and water, every twenty-four hours God creates something new out of them. If
you think you’re seeing the same show all over again seven times a week, you’re
crazy. Every morning you wake up to something that in all eternity never was
before and never will be again. And the you that wakes up was never the same
before and will never be the same again either.” We come from a God who makes
new things, which makes us, too, an ever-changing and every-growing part of
creation.
We
come from the likeness of God. These words in Genesis 1 always take my
breath away – that we might in any way be in the likeness of God! It is at once
grace-filled and frightening to imagine. How does that affect my life, the way
I interact with others, the way others see me, to think that in all that I say
and do, there is some sort of imprint of God? Debie Thomas says it well:
“Whether I acknowledge it or not, I reflect something of God’s joy, God’s
intentions, God’s love, and God’s beauty just by the virtue of existing on the
earth. I am [God’s], and so [God] is mine.” Let it be so!
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| Rest Work (after Millet) by Vincent Van Gogh |
We come from a God who rests. This is a hard one to hear for
first-world work-a-holics. Who has time to rest? There is too much to do, work
to be done, a house to be cleaned, dinner to be made, the kids need a ride to
lacrosse practice and piano lessons, even church has so many demands! We are
busy people. This can even turn into a point of pride, can’t it? To be busy is
to be important and involved. To be busy is to embrace life and live it to its
fullest! But to look at this account of creation, to see that even God took a
day of rest… what makes us think we don’t need one? More than that, notice that
while all of creation is repeatedly called good, this 7th day, the
Sabbath day, is the only day that is called holy.
Sacred. We come from a God who calls rest holy, and we would do well to take
that seriously!
Finally, at
least for today: We come from a God who delights in community. We see this in the
creation story, with God’s making not just one human, but both man and woman,
to be partners and till the earth together. But we also see this in God’s very
nature. As I mentioned, today we celebrate Holy Trinity Sunday, and reflect on
the mysterious triune nature of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
God’s very nature, you see, is a communion of three persons, dancing together
and igniting the world. How appropriate, then, that God’s church would also be
a community – a community who, like that first man and woman, are brought
together to work together, to till and care for the earth, who
become the image
of God, reflecting that image to the world. God delights in such community, and
that makes us, too, a people who become better when we’re a part of a
community.
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| Trinity by Andrei Rublev |
These
reflections merely scratch the surface of a God who is so beyond our
comprehension that no amount of talking or thinking about it will ever bring
understanding – and that is a good thing, because if God could be comprehended
by our human minds, then God wouldn’t be much of a God! But there are things
that we can understand about God: the inclination to see and reflect; the
insistence that creation is, at its heart, good; the innovator and creator of
continual newness; the embrace of humanity as made in a godly image; the
insistence that rest is a holy thing; and the delight in community. These
lovely attributes are a part of us, as well. May we, even as we fall short of
understanding God, always remember where we come from, and strive to live into
that godly heritage.
Let us
pray…. Mysterious God, we desire to know
you, because who you are and what you do is indeed our heritage, and what makes
us who we are. Help us to know you, and to know what you want from us, your
people. In the name of the Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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