Christopher Thomas
Sermon for First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday, Year A – 6/7/20
Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a
Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20
So God created humankind in God’s image,
In the image of God God created them;
male and female, God created them.
– Genesis 1:27
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that piece of holy writ across the course of my 54 years, probably many, and never paid much attention to it.
Until…
It was Fall of 2009, my second full semester of seminary at Brite Divinity School, and I was determined to tackle and knock out all my foundational “required” courses so I could move on to the fun stuff, the electives, and so I enrolled in “Introduction to Hebrew Bible,” the study of the Old Testament. Doesn’t sound very exciting; let’s get this out of the way.
On that very first day of class, a short-of-stature, white-haired and white-skinned grandmotherly type woman walked into the room and from that time forth changed the way I saw and interacted with the word (small “w”), and the Word (capital “W”), Logos. I knew nothing of the force that lay behind this mighty woman of faith.
She simply said, “Here’s where the story begins. Genesis 1:27. Remember this, if you remember nothing else.”
She went on to say that day that God created humanity in God’s image, Imago Dei, therefore, each and every one of us, and by extension, every other person who had gone before, is with, or will come after us, bears a piece, a God-piece within, and if we have any intention of knowing the fullness of God, we might better spend some time collecting all these God-pieces to put together a beautiful mosaic that might in fact begin to touch the face of God.
That was all on Day 1!
Dr. Toni Craven. I had no idea what a lexicon of the Biblical literature and commentary world I had stumbled into, that day so long ago. I just thought it was my grandmother who was going to tell me some bible stories from the Old Testament! Somehow, I knew in that moment, that because of the gift that this person of faith had given me, in that moment (and many succeeding moments), that the way I view God, and faith, and humanity, and how I would do ministry would be forever changed.
My passion for social justice ministry is directly rooted in Genesis 1:27.
Little did I know that Dr. Craven had her own history of social justice work. She has the distinction of being the first woman on faculty at Brite Divinity School, previously an all-male, “Good-Old-Boy” institution until she arrived in 1980. So she’s done her share of pushing against systems of social injustice. And that’s only the beginning.
So, I had to have more. Whatever Dr. Craven was offering, I had to have it. The next class was an exegesis of the Book of Amos. Now, Amos was the prophet that Martin Luther King so closely associated his ministry. His oft-quoted, “Justice will roll down like waters,” is, of course, from Amos. And so, Dr. Craven loaded up her band of about 25 or so privileged seminarians (because that’s who goes to seminary, for the most part, is the privileged, because it’s so expensive to go to seminary!), and headed to Montgomery, and Selma, and Birmingham, to walk in the path of Dr. King, and to hear the stories from first-hand witnesses, to breathe their air, and to make our own pilgrimage across the Edmund Pettus bridge.
And we listened. This band of privilege listened. Deeply listened.
Not listening for the next thing we wanted to say, which is typically what privilege wants to do.
But listened. With our minds. And with our hearts. And with our souls. And with our spirits.
To the plights of others.
Why is all of this important on the Sunday that we recognize and consider (and yes, maybe even celebrate) the very human construct of the Doctrine of the Trinity, how we imagine (imago) God as Parent, Child, and Holy Spirit?
It’s important, because if we are in fact created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), then the way that God relates to God’s self is probably the road map for the way that we relate (or should be trying to relate) to each other, each of those other God-pieces around us. So yes, the Doctrine of the Trinity and Trinity Sunday are important.
Trinity’s gift is to the community. Trinity is all about relationship. How do we relate, how should we relate, one to another, in light of what we now know about God? The Trinity illustrates for us how God is in relationship with God’s self, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Trinity demonstrates for us perichoresis, this mutual interpenetration and indwelling of each of the three natures of the Trinity in their respective others. Each gets to be individual in the fullest sense of that word, and yet continues to be a complete representation of the whole.
God’s kenotic act of emptying out God’s self inspirates to life God’s Son, Jesus Christ. God and Jesus Christ breathe in, and then breathe out the Holy Spirit. It is a symbiotic dance that deserves, that mandates replication in our human form, this ability for each individual to be at once giver, and also receiver, rejoicing in the gift to do and to be both, for one without the other is simply incomplete. I cannot be me, without you. I cannot exist without you.
We live in an illusion that tells us that we are separate, that we are not connected. Oh, we think that we share space, but that, ultimately, my fate does not reside anywhere near yours. I am the master of my own destiny. Our American culture, the culture we live in, thrives on this radical, false notion of individuality.
If God would grant me just one wish, one thing that I think would really change the course of all humanity, it would be a switch that I could flip, a switch that would illuminate all the molecules that exist between you and me that we can’t see because they are so tiny. What I wouldn’t give for that, because, then, you could see that we really are connected. We really are interdependent, and intertwined with each other. That what happens to you is radically and relentlessly bound up in what happens to me, and vice versa. When you breathe out, every time you empty your lungs, someone else is breathing in. Another person is taking your essence into their bodies. It’s God’s holy ecosystem. We think we are separate; thanks to Trinity, we are NOT.
One-in-three, three-in-one. Separate, and yet whole. Each with its own distinct identity, each with its own God-piece, and also the mosaic of the whole.
So these deeply-listening students sat with their Sherpa and faith leaders and community activists from many different stripes and colors, and asked the question, “Can we not put all the injustice on the table at once, and claim justice, and liberation for all?” In other words, we asked, could the struggles of the LGBTQIA community be put together with the struggles of the womanist community, and the Latino/Latina community, and the African/American community, could all that be merged into one great melting pot of struggle, justice for all?
And the answer, much like the face of the Trinity, was equally as mysterious and confounding to us, because it was no. Each identity was and is separate and distinct, and beautiful and important, and yet each plays an important part of the identity of the whole. What happens to each one individually matters to the other, and to the whole, and moves the whole forward, and yet each has and must continue to have its own distinct, beautiful identity story.
There has been great debate raging since the beginning of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Don’t #BlueLivesMatter, or #PinkLivesMatter, or #LGBTQIALivesMatter, or whatever other color may represent a group that is out there on the beautiful spectrum of humanity? Some people feel these to be divisive, that the overarching theme should be only #AllLivesMatter. The Trinity has something to say to this!
It is true – ALL life is sacred. AND (not BUT, because I’m not negating that first statement), in this moment, we need to focus on this individual identity, which is a part of the greater whole. We need to focus on it, because we need to get the knee off of the neck of this group of our beloved, those of us who are created in the image of God, our black and brown sisters and brothers, just as from time to time, that knee has been on our neck. If we are LGBTQIA, or if we are womanist, or if we are Latino/Latina, or if we are whatever, we have some idea what that knee feels like.
And so, saying #BlackLivesMatter is something akin to saying #Jesus. It doesn’t mean we love God or the Holy Spirit any less. It means we love and value them more because we are honoring Jesus.
So God created humankind in God’s image,
In the image of God, God created them;
Male and female, God created them;
Black, and white, and brown, and yellow, and pink, and red, and green, and blue, God created them;
Jewish, and Muslim, and Hindu, and Buddhist, and Atheist, and Agnostic, and yes, even Christian, God created them;
Gay and lesbian, straight and bisexual, transgender and cisgender, queer and queer-questioning, allies and the like, God created them;
In the image of God, Imago Dei, God created every single one of them!
Amen!
