A Sermon preached on Trinity Sunday June 7, 2020 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Genesis 1:1-2:4a, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20
Today is Trinity Sunday but you would be forgiven for thinking that it is in fact Creation Sunday after having heard our first, long Old Testament reading from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. So why are we been given this reading today? Because it, like the other two much shorter readings, makes some reference to the unity-in-diversity of God, that we call the Trinity.
Now the reference to the persons of the Trinity in Genesis is a little oblique, especially as the word ruach is translated here as wind rather than Spirit. A better translation for my purposes would be: “while the spirit of God swept over the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2) We also did not hear the word Son, but we did hear that God’s Word creates: God said, “Let there be light.” (1:3) And in the prologue to John’s Gospel, which recalls Genesis 1, we learn that this creating word, Logos is the one we call the Son: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. … And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son” (John 1:1-3, 14)
When I asked the Wednesday Bible study group why they thought we had this reading today, one answer was because it is about Creation and that is God’s greatest act – one in which all persons of the Godhead were involved, also according to the Creed we will recite together right after this sermon:
- “God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,”
- the Son of God “By whom all things were made,” and
- the Holy Spirit the “giver of life.”
That teaches us one important aspect of the Christian concept of a Trinitarian God – the three persons of the Trinity do not have separate job descriptions! Just as all of God is involved in creation, so all of God, not just the Son, participates in our redemption or salvation and all of God, not just the Spirit shares in our sanctification. The concept of the Trinity is the idea of God in relationship, “a perfect relationship of love. God's life is understood to be dynamic, loving, and available to be shared in relationship with humanity for salvation.”[1]
Another important takeaway from the Creation story is that we were created in God’s image, and as such were also created, like God, to be in dynamic, loving relationships: with God, with one another, and with all of creation.
The first Creation story describes an idyllic world. There is no evil, all is good. There is no killing, not even for food: “I have given you every plant yielding seed …, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food,” (Gen. 1:29) God says. It’s not until after the flood, in the new covenant with Noah, that God gives “every moving thing that lives [as] food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.” (Genesis 9:3) So when we read here, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion …. over every living thing that moves upon the earth,” those terms are misleading and need to be read in that context. The call to bring the earth under control and to rule over, or to be put in charge of, all living things is a call to care and nurture that world just as God would, in love, and not a call to exploit and kill. This is the creation that God calls not only good, but very good. But it did not stay that way.
The stories that follow this one in the Book of Genesis, the first temptation and expulsion from Eden, Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, the “earth [that] was corrupt in God’s sight, and … filled with violence” just before the Flood are all attempts to explain how and where things went wrong. As such, they are all about how we forgot that we are made in God’s image, and not the other way round. They are about the victory of self and selfishness, about individuals and societies only looking out for number one, about us ignoring the image of God in one another, to this very day. About us falling short. But God does not leave us there, God does not abandon us. The Bible is the story of God’s repeated saving acts.
Again, and again God intervenes, sending God’s Spirit to speak through the prophets, warning us and pointing us back to God’s way of love. And then finally God sent God’s Son, the Word that had created us, to re-create us in that act of redemption and salvation on the Cross, and God’s Spirit to guide us and help us continue to grow into the likeness of God and to be that permanent divine presence that Jesus promises at the very end of Matthew’s Gospel: “remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)
Our other two readings this morning are a little more explicit about the redeeming and sanctifying role of the Trinity: Calling upon the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, Paul invites the Corinthians to restore their relationship with one another and with God. It is when they are of one mind, living in peace and love, that God, who is love and peace and relationship, will be with them and can help them grow more and more into God’s image.
And in Jesus’ final appearance in Matthew’s Gospel, back on the top of the mountain where he had been transfigured, and his divine nature revealed, he sends them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit to bring the message and means of salvation to the whole world, teaching them to obey everything that he has commanded. In Matthew’s Gospel a very large part of that teaching is what we call the Sermon on the Mount, full of Jesus’ instructions on how to live a godly life, about how we practice our faith – in loving not only our friends and our neighbors, but even our enemies. That sermon also reminds us who God blesses: Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness - and demonstrate for righteousness for themselves and others. Those who are merciful – and not those who kneel on a man’s neck until he is unconscious. Those who are peacemakers – and not those whose answer is the threat of violence and armed force and the abuse of power. Those who are persecuted and discriminated against because of who they are, their color for example – and not those who just get asked pertinent questions by the press.
The Trinity is more than just a doctrine and more than an attempt to explain what cannot ever be fully explained, God. The Trinity is also a call to imitate the perfect relationship of love that is God’s internal life. St. Augustine of Hippo used the analogy of the Lover, Beloved, and Love to describe the Trinity for a good reason. And as our Presiding Bishop wrote last week, “love is action as well as attitude. It seeks the good, the well-being, and the welfare of others as well as one’s self. That way of real love is the only way there is.”[2] It is the way of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.
Amen.
