Trinity Sunday
June 4, 2023
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
INTRODUCTION
Trinity Sunday always presents a particular challenge for the preacher, because almost anything one tries to say toward explaining the Trinity comes out as a heresy. God is, after all, a mystery, and a mystery, by definition, defies explanation!
And so instead of listening to today’s readings in search of some explanation about what the Trinity is or how it works, I encourage you as you listen simply to enter into that mystery. Genesis gives us a creation story, rhythmic and imaginative, as God brings order and beauty out of chaos. Don’t hear this as a step-by-step literal account, but as the poem that it is, which paints a picture from the perspective of our ever-creating, imagining, and loving God. The Psalm also offers another kind of poetry that celebrates God’ creativity.
1st Corinthians shows where we get the greeting we share each Sunday, which mentions all three persons of the Trinity.
In our Gospel reading, we find ourselves at the tail end of Matthew’s Gospel. As Jesus gets ready to leave this world after the resurrection, he gives the disciples a task, to bring his message of life to “all nations.” A tough task, made possible only by this, Jesus’ last words in Matthew’s Gospel: “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” At the beginning of Matthew, you remember, we learned that Jesus would be called “Emmanuel,” meaning “God with us,” and here his last words are the same. We may never understand God, but we can trust that this mysteriously loving being will never leave our side.
Enter into the mystery, my friends, and hear God’s love for you. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I’m going to start this sermon a bit differently than usual, if you will just humor me for a moment. Today we’re going to start by entering our first reading, not with thinking, like a scientist, but with imagining, breathing, experiencing – enter it like an artist.
If it is comfortable for you, I invite you to close your eyes, or perhaps just focus on something on the back of the pew in front of you to block out the things going on around you, and take some deep breaths. Now I’m going to read again the start of our Genesis reading, and I want you to (keep breathing deeply, and) really picture it. Imagine what it looks like, feels like…
“In the beginning… when God created the heavens and the earth… the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep… while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters….” How does it feel to look into the face of the deep?... How does that sweeping wind from God look and feel?...
“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” What does that light look like? Is it a flicker? Or an explosion? Does it have a shape? Is it warm? …Is it good?
…
When you’re ready, open your eyes.
In the beginning. Three simple words that we might be tempted just to skip on by, but truly, they are remarkable. No one was there to see what this moment in time looked and felt like, but it is interesting to imagine it, because while we cannot know what the beginning of the universe was like, we certainly know about beginnings. Think of the beginnings you have faced in your life. What words come to mind? [Exciting? Scary?] Perhaps they felt a bit like a formless void, full of more questions than answers?
Now think of this: in the beginning, the beginning of all beginnings, what God the Almighty chose to do was… to create. God took that formless void, that space of unknowing and darkness, and turned that chaos into order, into something beautiful and patterned, something that makes sense and produces life. In the beginning…. God created.
June is a season of “in the beginnings,” isn’t it. Our mailboxes and social media get filled up with graduation announcements, pictures of preschoolers in tiny caps and gowns, and news of new jobs. People prepare to head off to their summer places, their camping adventures, their travels. June is a time of great transition, where big things end, and new big things begin.
I heard this time referred to this week as a time of “soon-to-be.” Soon-to-be graduate, soon-to-be empty-nester… but also for some, soon-to-be retired, or soon-to-be married, or soon-to-be parent, or even, soon-to-be something you don’t even know about yet! It is an exciting time, but like any time of change, any beginning, it is a time that can feel a bit unsettling, as we anticipate a future we cannot yet fully picture, for which we don’t yet know the rhythms, in which we may not yet know what will ground us going forward.
I love that at the start of this season of so many beginnings, the lectionary gives us this beautiful poem from Genesis, with its rhythmic and repetitive language. I hope that you felt that rhythm, the way we read it today, with the congregation saying the refrain, “And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.” It’s rhythmic and English and also Hebrew, and that’s by design – as God looks upon the chaos, and brings order out of it, we can hold onto that rhythmic, repetitive refrain, the refrain of creation.
We can hold it, and also trust that God creates within our endings that lead to beginnings as well. One of the hardest things about the soon-to-be is that it can be difficult to find our new rhythm, our new beat, to be able to walk without stumbling, to feel grounded and secure when everything around us is new. For the times when we feel like that, this passage is a gift, for all those endings, death, uncertain steps and darkness are replaced by another refrain: let there be, let there be, let there be.
Such possibility in those words! Let there be… When we are groping around in the dark, let there be light. When we cannot find our footing, let there be solid ground on which to step forward. When our thoughts are scattered every which way, let there be order, thoughts gathered together to make sense. When we hunger for justice, or thirst for righteousness, let there be nourishment for the journey. When the pit of loneliness feels so deep, let there be a companion, a helpmate. And let it all be good.
And it is so. And indeed, everything God brought and brings into being in the beginning, in all our beginnings, in all our soon-to-bes, is very good. Our creative God is always bringing order out of chaos, goodness out of formless darkness, life out of lifelessness. God did it at creation. Jesus did it in the tomb. The Holy Spirit did it on Pentecost. And God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit does it now for us, today, in all our soon-to-bes, and will continue to be with us always, bringing about life, to the end of the age.
Let us pray… Great and merciful God, Source and Ground of all goodness and life, as you created in the beginning of time, create in us today. Draw us into your creative dance. In all that we do, let there be life. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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