"According to our likeness"-Sermon for Trinity Sunday, Genesis 1:1-2:4a
There is a story that was told to me by a priest friend of mine way back in my youth minister days. It is about a woman named Rose. Rose was a successful residential real-estate agent working in Southern California. She had sold lots of beautiful homes, made lots of money, drove a fancy car…from the outside looking in Rose had it all…financial security, a promising career, a social life, a nice roof over her head and plenty of food on the table. My friend told me that one day Rose checked herself in a local motel and very sadly…I mean all the ways down to the toes sad…took her own life. And she left a note…that, in part, read this, “I am so tired of clapping with one hand.” I am so tired of clapping with one hand. I think one could argue that Rose died of loneliness. Whatever it might have looked like from the outside…on the inside…which is where it always matters most…Rose’s note suggests that she felt isolated and entirely alone.
Now, I don’t want to leave that story just sitting out there…I will return to it. But first I want to remind us that today in the life of the Church we celebrate Trinity Sunday…and for all we can say about the doctrine of the Trinity…all the ways we can try to metaphorically attempt to describe what it means…what it looks like…that God is 3 in 1…that God is indivisible…one substance…but still 3 persons…Father, Son and Holy Spirit…these musing often feel so esoteric and inaccessible. And this is, indeed, heady stuff (perhaps Tony, our Theologian-in-Residence, should be preaching today!). The Holy Trinity is not always easy to wrap our minds around…sort of easier to just give a nod to…maybe even accept as orthodox church teaching that we intuitively know has importance…but maybe a rabbit hole not worth diving to deeply into. But here’s the thing…I believe that the Doctrine of the Trinity may just be exactly where we as Christian people living in such times…times of great uncertainty, fear, illness, death, violence and painful division…need to lean in…more now than ever before.
So I would like to share with you what for me has been the most meaningful description of the Holy Trinity, and it is from St. Augustine who describes the Trinity this way…God is the Lover…and Jesus is God’s beloved, the object of God’s love…and the Spirit is the love that flows between the two…the love that connects them…binds them together…so intimately…so completely…so wondrously…such that we can rightly say they are indeed indivisible…of one substance…one God who is Mother and Father of us all. In a sense, I think we can even describe the Trinity really with only one word…though I will say it 3 times…love…love…love.
Thus, for me, the Godhead, the Holy Trinity…a love so strong and eternal that 3 persons can only be distinguished as one…is the icon…not an icon…one among many…but the icon, the image, the living and eternal vision for what human community…what we and all people are created by God to be. As the creation narrative we heard this morning reminds us, humans, Adam, Eve and all who follow after, even you, even me, are created in God’s own likeness and image. We are then, at our very best, to reflect back into the creation of which we are an interdependent part something that looks like God…a likeness and image of the Holy Trinity. Thus, we are, when we look most like God, a lover…and all of our sisters and brothers…whatever their skin color, whoever they love, whatever they believe…are our beloved…the object of our love…and the alive and active Spirit who dwells in our very presence…she is the love that connects us…that binds us together…so intimately…so completely…so wondrously…such that the creation to which we witness…can rightly say we are indivisible…of one biological and spiritual substance…living an interwoven and mutually interdependent life….a life that, like the Holy Trinity, can really only be described with one word…though I will say it 3 times…love…love…love.
But then there is the reality…the facts on the ground. For, we live in a world in which we collectively often poorly reflect God’s image in which we are created. And, I note that’s an understatement. And, I note, further, that’s not an excuse to maintain the status quo. So, returning to Rose’s story I will say that she is far from the only person who is tired to the point of death of clapping with one hand. Our African American sisters and brothers are tired to the point of death of experiencing the sort of existential isolation that is the result of intractable institutional racism and the violence it always begets. Our impoverished sisters and brothers are tired to the point of death of experiencing the sort of existential isolation that is the result of being failed, not by our teachers, but by a profoundly underfunded and inequitable educational framework across the country. Our sisters and brothers who are suffering the worst outcomes once contracting COVID-19, black, brown and Native American, are tired to the point of death by the sort of existential isolation that comes from a wholly inadequate health care system in a country with the best health care professionals in the world. Our sisters and brothers suffering hopelessness, boredom, and deep sadness are tired to the point of death with a sort of existential isolation created by a spiritual vacuum, that is not only secularizations fault, but a church who has lost touch with Jesus…the suffering servant, the prince of peace, the divine surgeon, the light of the world. There are so many of our sisters and brothers whose hands remain outstretched…despite being battered, beaten and chained…just waiting for us to take them into our own.
But, I believe good news remain. The light of hope has not been put out. For the sort of isolation that is the fruit of a death-dealing world is not who we were made to be, and it is not, nor will it be, the end of the story. Love has already claimed victory over the cross. So, it is time, it is always time, to lean into…and more so…be and become like the One in whose image we were created from before time and forever. It is time to remember who we really are, whose we really are, and what we are supposed to really look like. And so, I hold the Holy Trinity up before us this morning as the icon…a divine revelation…beginning with myself. That I might remember who I really am, to whom I really belong, and what might life should look like…that I might, sometimes in baby steps and sometimes with grand leaps, more and more become the lover God created me to be…to see more clearly my own beloved in each and every face, especially those that don’t look like my own…and prayerfully call upon the Holy Spirit for the sort of courage that only love can produce…to meet the outstretched hand of the sister and brother who needs me most…to be love…love…love. Amen.