Genesis 1.1-2.4a; Psalm 8; Matthew 28.16-20
Trinity Sunday is today’s celebration on the church calendar, the day when Christians throughout the world consider the life and being of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The word ‘Trinity’ comes from doctrine not scripture. Yet the early Christians had to come to terms with the reality of God in Jesus and through the Holy Spirit. There is only one God; that is a fundamental biblical belief. In Deuteronomy, Moses says, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Only how then, in that one God, does Jesus the Son relate to God the Father? What does it mean to say that the Spirit is Lord, the word ‘Lord’ used throughout the Scriptures to speak of the one God? How do we think through the oneness of God when Jesus, at his baptism, emerges from the waters, the Spirit descends on him as a dove, and the voice of the Father says from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved; I delight in him.” To speak of God as Triune—one-in-three and three-in-one—doesn’t offer easy answers but does give a way to explore the reality and truth of God.
Thomas Aquinas was once asked, “What does God do all day?” Aquinas was one of the greatest minds in the Christian Church. He died 750 years ago, yet to this day it’s hard to find a theologian whose influence equals his. Someone once estimated that it would take the average reader 61 hours and 24 minutes to read just one of Aquinas’ works, one volume in his five-volume compilation of theological knowledge, the Summa Theologica. It takes a lot longer than that to come to terms with what’s in his works; people are still grappling with Aquinas’s brilliant and complex mind. But when this great theologian was asked, “What does God do all day?” Aquinas’ answer was simple and to the point. “What does God do all day? God enjoys himself.” That’s it. “God enjoys himself.” An infinite and eternal God has infinite and eternal delight.
And this delight is a shared delight. God’s delight is so great that it flows out into creation and to us. You know the expression, ‘I can hardly contain myself.’ ‘I can hardly contain myself’ describes the rush of joy, excitement, or anticipation that breaks through the walls of typical Midwestern reserve and surges out to others. Biblically, it’s what the 23rd Psalm means when it says, “my cup overflows.” The psalm considers the guidance, care, and provision of God and is overwhelmed with joy; even when suffering, evil, and darkness prevail, the psalm finds comfort and hope in God’s presence. And this stirs up delight that can’t be contained. “My cup overflows.”
As for God own being? An infinite and eternal God has infinite and eternal delight. It’s no great stretch of the theological imagination to hear the Triune God saying, ‘I can hardly contain myself.’ When we are baptized “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” Divine Delight draws us up into God’s own life. The night before he died, Jesus told the disciples, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be filled to overflowing.” God’s eternal delight and joy is a shared delight and joy.
In today’s first reading, we hear how this Divine Delight pervades and permeates creation. In Genesis, in the beginning, God says, “Let there be lights in the sky;” and you get the sun, moon, stars, and the Northern Lights. The Divine response? ‘Delightful.’ Then God says, “Let there be birds in the air;” and you get migrating geese every spring here in the church yard, finches, cardinals, eagles, and more. ‘Delightful.’ Finally, God says, “Let us create humankind in our image.” The response? ‘Delightful, I can hardly contain myself.’ (Does that sound different than today’s reading? Call it the Dean’s Revised Translation. But it’s not far from the sense of Genesis.) Divine Delight is the life of the Triune God, a shared delight.
And as the first Christians stepped back from the events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and of the Spirit’s work among them after Pentecost, they started to see old biblical stories with new eyes. They caught hints and glimpses of God as three-in-one and one-in-three from the very first pages of the Bible. In Genesis, God speaks the Word and the Spirit broods over creation. The Son of God, the Gospel of John says, is that very Word. “In the beginning was the Word…The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” As for the Spirit? The Spirit that broods over the face of the deep in Genesis, brooding like a nesting bird waiting for life, is the same Spirit brooding over us at our new birth in baptism. “Born of the Spirit,” Jesus says of our life in God.
Astonishment at creation, and the Divine Delight that cannot be contained and spills out to us, is the theme of today’s psalm, Psalm 8. The psalm is delighted by the work of God in creation: “When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have set in their courses.” Yet the psalm is equally astonished that, in the vast expanse of the universe, God’s attention is turned toward us. ‘Who are we that you should even care for us?’
Only does God care? The majesty of God is one thing. We experience it in mountains and lakes, learn about it in books on astronomy or cell biology, ponder it in the beauty of math and the golden ratio as a building block for creation and the arts. This is God’s beauty and majesty. But does God care? That’s another question entirely, and not always easily answered.
That is Job’s question in the Old Testament. Job, at one point in his suffering, sounds like he’s quoting Psalm 8. “What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you turn your thoughts to them?” Except Job, in his suffering, takes the trust of today’s psalm and makes a parody of it, turns it upside-down. Job isn’t so sure God’s thoughts toward human beings are a good thing; just the opposite: You “test us every hour of the day.” Suffering, pain, fear, and sickness add our voice to Job’s—whether the suffering is ours or that of someone we love—and with Job, we wonder if God cares.
Today’s psalm, with cosmic wonder as a backdrop, marvels at the unique dignity God gives to human beings. “You have made us little lower than the angels and crowned us with glory and honor.” Psalm 8 gives thanks for God who gives each of us profound value and worth. “You have…crowned us with glory and honor.”
You can pray this psalm as you marvel at God’s graciousness to you, or the birth of a baby, or at any human accomplishment that advances the well-being of all people together. “You have…crowned us with glory and honor.” We bear the Divine Image. And that gives us infinite and eternal worth that will not be diminished. This God-given dignity critiques every way of looking at people that undermines their basic human value or reduces their worth to economic terms—what you produce, consume, or contribute. “You have…crowned us with glory and honor.”
At the same time, Psalm 8 reminds us that we ourselves are not divine. “You have made us little lower than the angels.” We are lower than angels, less than God. We are fragile and finite. There are limits to our understanding; we won’t solve all mysteries; from the wonder of the Triune God to the mysteries of suffering; we can’t control all aspects of our lives. Job himself discovers this when he is met head-on by God in the wonder of creation. But within our limits, we who are fragile and finite are given us extraordinary dignity and honor in God. “God is mindful of us,” says the psalm as it marvels at both the majesty of God and the care of God. Or Julian of Norwich puts it, “We are enclosed in the Father, enclosed in the Son, enclosed in the Holy Spirit.” Enclosed, protected, and secure in the life of the Triune God—this is God’s delight.
On Trinity Sunday we consider the joy and delight of the Triune God, the uncontainable joy that surges from the heavens and extends to us: the Father who loves and gives; the Son who, in his life and death, makes our joy complete; the Spirit poured out for the life of the world, making you “partakers of the divine nature.” You are partakers of the divine nature, the New Testament says, as you are transformed by the Holy Spirit to live in the holiness, joy, and grace of Jesus the Son, all to the glory of God the Father.
This is the God in whom you live and move and have your being, the God in whose love and strength you are enclosed, the reality and truth of God for you to explore every day in a delight that cannot be contained.
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