Trinity
Trinity Sunday is the only day of the Church year dedicated to a doctrine, and it’s not a very easy doctrine to understand. One God, three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Or, as some people put it, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. The Trinity is a mystery. And I suspect that, for me at least, the Trinity will always be a mystery.
The doctrine is hard to get your head around. The ancient writers of the Athanasian Creed tried. (You can find it on page 864 of the prayer book if you want to make your head spin.) “We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal.”
That’s just a sampling.
Doctrine has its place, but in my experience we can actually learn more about God by learning about ourselves — about the world the Father created, about the humanity the Son became part of, about the Spirit who still moves in the world today.
So maybe it’s fitting that today’s Scripture readings take us to the beginning, to Creation. “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. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.”
Notice the adjective. “Good.” Not “useful.” Not “productive.” God saw that the light was “good.” “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”
Wind, and water, and light. God is a God who moves. A God who speaks. A God who creates. A God who brings into being a Creation that is good.
That goodness echoes through the story of Creation. God separates the waters, and gathers the seas. God brings forth living things, birds, and fish, sea monsters, and cattle. And shapes the universe, moon and stars. And all of it God names “good.”
The fish aren’t good because they feed us. The light isn’t good because we can work by it. All of Creation is good first. Useful second.
The same is true of us, created in God’s image. And “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.”
Created in God’s image. That’s another key.
It’s the question the psalmist circles around as he looks up to the night sky. “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?”
Compared to the moon, we’re small. Compared to the stars, we barely register, and our lives are so very brief. What are we that God should be mindful of us?
We might not know why we matter to God, but we know that we do. And that’s yet another hint to the mystery of the Trinity. That the same Word that said “let there be light” is the Word who became flesh and lived among us. The God who spoke the world into being is the same God who said yes to a human life. Yes to hunger and weariness and tears and pain. Yes also to love, and friendship, and joy.
Yes to all that it is to be human. But also yes to rest.
Let’s go back to Genesis for a moment. Because the story of Creation doesn’t end with work, or hardship, or productivity. It ends with rest, with sabbath. God “rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.”
Notice the order of things. Human beings are created on the sixth day. And we’re commanded to rest on the seventh. Before tending a single garden, we’re given a day of holy rest. It turns out that sabbath was never a reward we needed to earn.
Our modern world teaches us that we’re only as valuable as the things we accomplish, the money we earn, the tasks we complete. But the God of the Trinity doesn’t work that way at all. A God who creates. A God who becomes fully human. A God who rests. That’s a God who loves us whether we’re useful or not. A God who looks at us and at the world and says, “indeed, it is very good.”
God does give us work to do. That’s true. The Father appoints us as stewards of Creation. Jesus sends us out to baptize, to teach, to make disciples of all nations. And the Holy Spirit guides us in that work. But God’s love comes first — before we do any work at all, before we prove anything. God’s love isn’t a thing we have to earn. Even in those seasons of our lives when we can’t accomplish anything at all, God looks at us and says: very good.