First Presbyterian Church  
  106 North Bench Street, Galena, IL  61036   Phone:  (815) 777-0229 (voice & fax)

Over the Bent World Broods
by Jim McCrea

Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Psalm 8; Matthew 28:16-20

This past week, I spent several hours at the Historical Museum scanning old photos of our church into my computer for later use in creating a video about the history of our congregation. The Museum's director, Daryl Watson, had kindly assembled a number of pictures for me, so all I had to do was show up with the proper equipment and put in the time it takes to scan those pictures.

One group of pictures stood out to me because they were what was called "stereographic" pictures in the 1850's when these photos were produced. That is, each scene was presented through a pair of photographs, designed to be seen through a special viewer that would enable the person looking at the pictures to see something of a three-dimensional image.

If I understand the process correctly, this early technology worked to the degree that it did because the viewer forced the eyes to see the same scene from very slightly different perspectives. The brain then interpreted those differences in such a way that the scene seemed to stand out from the flat page the photos were printed on.

At least that's the theory. It doesn't really work for those of us who have one dominant eye, since our brains tend to ignore information coming from the weaker eye rather than combining it with the images from the dominant eye. Therefore, things like this almost never work for me. Although sometime last year, Delight and Amber and I went to see a 3D movie at the IMAX theater in Davenport and, for the first time in my life, I actually saw the three-dimensional effect.

As I was preparing for this Trinity Sunday sermon this week, it occurred to me that the whole concept of the Trinity is very much like those stereographic pictures or that IMAX theater production. The theology of the Trinity was an attempt by the ancient church to create a three-dimensional image of God.

The word "Trinity" never appears in the Bible and, for that very reason, some people reject the concept out-of-hand, even though the concept of the Trinity very much does come from the Bible. We read two of those selections today - one of which is a bit less obvious than the other. In the creation story, a Spirit goes out from God and hovers over the waters of chaos while God creates the universe by simply speaking it into being. Centuries later, the gospel of John revisits that image and explains that the creative word that was spoken by God was, in fact, Jesus Christ.

More clearly Trinitarian is our gospel lesson from the end of Matthew. There Jesus commands us, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit [....]"

In that passage, Jesus names all three aspects of God, showing that the doctrine of the Trinity isn't some wild idea created by early Christians who were bad at math. Instead, it was an attempt to make human sense of the disciples' direct experience of God, a God who is far greater than our limited human ability to understand.

So they struggled to put into words an experience that was decidedly beyond the ability of language to express. And for that very reason, they turned to what is essentially the world of metaphor and poetry in the attempt to expand their concept of God from the flat, two-dimensional world of prose to a more fully-rounded portrait of the Deity.

For example, Alastair Barrett describes the Trinity in these terms: "Despite any suggestions you may have heard, or pictures you may have seen to the contrary, the Trinity is rather more than 'three blokes sitting around having a cup of tea together.' The Trinity is the dynamic movement of God outwards, creating, entering into, and filling the universe; and the dynamic movement which gathers all things in the universe back into the heart of God.

"[...] Sending and drawing; coming and returning - this is the Trinity in motion; this is the God we not only worship but are caught up in. It's heady stuff, but - because Jesus the human being is right in the middle of it - it's about earth and dust and flesh and blood and the messiness of our relationships and our world here and now."

The world of metaphor is one that I'm very comfortable in - as a writer and former poet. But not everyone is equally comfortable with it and so they sometimes insist on taking metaphorical language literally, forcing it to try to become what it's not.

For example, I once read about some people who were trying to find the archeological remains of the inn to which the Good Samaritan took the robbery victim, totally missing the point that the Good Samaritan story was just that - a fictional story that Jesus told to make a theological point.

Similarly, we can paint ourselves into theological corners when we push the concept of the Trinity too far, raising logical questions it wasn't intended to answer - questions that grow out of the limited ability of finite humans and human languages to describe an infinite God.

Mozart was once asked what he was trying to say with his music and he answered, "If I could explain it in words, I wouldn't have to use music." In the same way poetic and metaphorical language speaks to us in ways and in places that straight-forward prose can't.

That's why I tell so many stories in my sermons - to make theological points that are more likely to speak to your hearts and remain in your minds. It's the same reason Jesus told so many parables rather than just handing us a photo album of God and a blueprint to heaven. To test that theory, listen with your hearts as I read this brief, poetic account of the creation by Nathan Nettleton:

"When the Holy Spirit brooded over the formless watery chaos and in yearning love brought forth a newborn earth from the depths, the already-communing God was delighted. 'How good is that!' said God to one another, for now the circle of God's loving and relating could be expanded. And God went on creating. All that dwells on earth was pulled from those primeval waters of chaos and nothingness, and Holy Spirit was breathed into them that they might live, and each time God was delighted and all heaven rejoiced. We human beings emerged from the watery nothingness when God said, 'Let us create a species in our own image, according to our own likeness. One and yet more than one, and finding wholeness only in communion with one another, just as we do.' And God created humankind, and God was absolutely delighted!"

Certainly Nettleton's account fits in well with the biblical tradition because the Creation stories of Genesis - and there are, in fact, two different Creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis that have contrasting specifics on the order in which the universe was created - was in itself a poetic account written in the 6th century BC while the people of Israel were living in exile in Babylon.

The point of either story is not to provide an eyewitness, historical account, but to affirm without question that all that exists came into being through God and that God pronounced everything to be very good.

Modern scientists tell us that the universe consists of some one trillion galaxies and is approximately 18 billion years old. They say that the physical microscopic elements that make up our bodies were created in a supernova explosion that took place billions of years ago. So, in the words of Joni Mitchell, it is literally true that "we are star dust."

Scientists go so far as to say that during the very first few seconds after that explosion, the conditions had to be absolutely perfect for life to begin. The temperature of the fireball had to be within one degree of what it is, and the debris from the explosion had to be scattered at exactly the right speed and force for our world to come into beginning as it is.

If any of those conditions were missing or even off to a small degree, then the conditions necessary for life would never have existed. And yet those conditions were met to such a degree that life exists in seemingly endless varieties.

As a result, more and more scientists are being led to the conclusion that there must have been a guiding force behind creation for life to begin at all. The order and beauty of creation once led Einstein to comment that the "one who cannot stand rapt in awe is as good as dead." German Poet Rainer Maria Rilke made the same point in somewhat different terms when he wrote, "Truly it is glorious, our being here." But the authors of the Bible had figured that out long ago.

Of course, that sentiment was expressed by the psalmist in our Psalm lesson today, but it also lurks behind the language of the Creation account in Genesis as well. Our English translation says that before the Creation, "a wind from God swept over the face of the waters." What you don't know is that the Hebrew word that was translated as "swept over" literally means "to brood." That's not in the sense of Hamlet endlessly obsessing over what he should or shouldn't do to correct an injustice, but in the sense of a hen, giving of herself and her time to sit on her eggs, keeping them warm until life begins to stir in them.

Writing about that word, Barry Robinson says, "It is a powerful image when you stop to think about it; and what it was intended to mean is that there is no chaos, no darkness in which you or anybody else finds themselves out of which God cannot still bring forth life.

"That was the question with which our ancestors in the faith struggled: could God bring forth life out of their seemingly dark and hopeless situation? Could life still begin again for them? Was new life stirring in the midst of the death-ridden waters of their times? Was it safe to trust? Was it safe to hope? Was it safe to go on living their lives as bravely and as graciously as they could, believing that the light would one day begin to shine?"

The answer, of course, is implied by the image of the self-giving mother hen. The Holy Spirit is continually renewing the face of the earth and bringing forth new life out of the chaos of this world.

And that's really the essence of the concept of the Trinity - that God is love, and that God expresses that love in constantly new and creative ways. Those ways are shown both by God's actions in relationship with humanity and well as in the inter-relationships of three members of the Trinity.

The early church had a word to describe that inter-relationship - a word that literally means a complete interaction and interdependence - a sharing of life that respects distinctions but which seeps through all barriers. Less literally, you could translate that word as a "dance of love."

And because we were created in God's image, we were created to take part in the inter-relationships - the divine love - of the Trinity, of the God who IS relationship. Trinity Sunday exists not to explain some dry doctrine to us, but to remind us of the magnificent nature of our God, so that we may offer ourselves to the Triune God, lost in wonder, love and praise. Amen.


 

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