Trinity Sunday (A)
In all the years that I have been ordained, I have struggled with preaching on
Trinity Sunday. The natural urge is to try to explain the doctrine of the Trinity, but
the usual result of that is a boring lecture. So I have tried to use metaphors to
describe what the Trinity tells us about God. Also boring and superficial as well.
And the fact is that the concept of the Trinity is something that most people really
don’t think a lot about anyway.
The fact is that there is no way to explain the Trinity, and to try is to answer a
question that very few people are even asking. To experience God is the only
way to get even a hint of it, and that experience is usually beyond words. So I
have come to a conclusion, which is to skip preaching on it altogether. If you are
disappointed with that and really do want to explore the doctrine of the Trinity,
please give me a call. I would love to sit down and discuss it with you. But I think I
will do something else from the pulpit this morning.
And we have wonderful things to explore in the Old Testament lesson and the
Psalm. This story of Creation is one of the most beautiful pieces of poetry in all of
Scripture. It may very well have been done as part of a worship service – a kind
of litany. Imagine it with trumpets and drums as the reader says, “And God saw
that it was good.” Imagine bells and cymbals as the light is divided from the day
and the land from the ocean. And imagine flutes and piccolos and clarinets and
harps all rushing around as the reader talks about the swarms of living things all
swarming around. It really is written that way. And I think there is a reason for
that. Creation is not just fact, but art.
Take fractals, for example. Fractals are patterns that repeat endlessly, from larger
to smaller. Broccoli is my favorite example of a fractal. If you take a big broccoli
stalk, you will see that it is one large stalk that branches out. If you break off one
of those branches, you will see the same pattern in the piece you break off. Now
break off one of the branches of that smaller stalk, and again, you get the same
pattern. Fractals occur in snowflakes and crystals, in blood vessels and DNA. If you
are a mathematician, you can describe the formulas that make up fractals. But
you don’t need to be to see the absolute beauty and symmetry of them. And if
you have ever seen computer generated fractals, they are just stunning. It seems
obvious that there is an artistic hand at work here.
And if you haven’t watched Neil deGrasse Tyson’s show, “Cosmos,” you have
missed a breathtaking view of the ongoing creation that is our universe. He
explores everything from the smallest levels of atoms to the edges of the universe
we know. Tyson is avowedly non-religious, but his awe and excitement as he tells
the stories of the universe is clear. It is impossible to delve deeply into creation
without feeling that awe.
And it is good for us to experience that awe. It helps us remember that we
are not the universe, that there is a larger reality that we cannot even begin
to comprehend, that our planet is a tiny speck of all that is. And it helps to
remember that the universe does not revolve around us. We tend to dismiss what
we don’t understand, but an honest look at our place in the universe helps us
remember that what we don’t understand is most of it!
The psalmist understood this:
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, *
the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,
What is man that you should be mindful of him? *
the son of man that you should seek him out?
And yet, what do we see in both Genesis and the Psalm? God has given human
beings a unique place in this infinite creation. We are given stewardship over this
creation, we are made “little lower than the angels.” It is our job to use all of this
abundance for the service of God, we are responsible for this work of art that is given to us.
Sadly, what we have done too often is to exploit, waste and squander the beauty
that we are given. To meet our immediate desires, to feed our greed, we destroy
and ruin the work of God’s fingers. And our greed and waste are now having
consequences that have already changed the earth permanently. Climate change
is now irreversible. In the next several hundred years, human beings will have to
deal with the consequence of the choices we have made in the last few hundred.
So what are we to do with all this? Perhaps what is needed is a new perspective
on what it means to be human. We need, on the one hand, to remember how
small we are in the infinite scheme of things, to realize that we know very little,
can control very little, and are not nearly as important as we would like to think
we are. On the other hand, we also need to remember that God has created us
with unique abilities (at least, unique to this world – there may be other creatures
like us on distant planets!). We are able to make choices that no other creature
can make and we can do things that no other creature can do. But with those
abilities comes great responsibility, and so that’s the other shift we need to make
in our perspective. The choices that each of us makes – sometimes tiny choices –
have an effect on the whole creation. We are inextricably interwoven with all of
life on earth. We cannot continue to act as if our behavior did not matter.
Creation is about balance – light and dark, water and earth, sun and stars.
It is also about our balance – knowing that we are not God and that we are
responsible for what God has given us. And when we have that balance, we can
sing with the psalmist, whose words I have changed slightly so that know that we
are all included in them:
O LORD our Governor, *
how exalted is your Name in all the world!
Out of the mouths of infants and children *
your majesty is praised above the heavens.
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, *
the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,
What is humankind that you should be mindful of us? *
the children of earth that you should seek us out?
You have made us but little lower than the angels; *
you adorn us with glory and honor;
You give us mastery over the works of your hands; *
you put all things under our feet:
O LORD our Governor, *
how exalted is your Name in all the world!
AMEN
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