Psalm 8; Romans 5.1-5
Trinity Sunday is today’s celebration on the church calendar. Most Sundays celebrate the work of God and what God has done for us in creation and covenant; what God has done in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and what God does through the gift of the Holy Spirit to keep us alive in Christ. On this Sunday each year, the church considers the very being and inner life of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The word ‘Trinity’ comes from doctrine not the pages of the Bible. Yet Christians have had to come to terms with the presence of God in Jesus and through the Holy Spirit. There is only one God. That is a fundamental, biblical belief. So then in that one God, how does Jesus the Son relate to the Father? And what does it mean for us to say that the Spirit is Lord—Lord being the very word used in the Scriptures for the one God?
The Trinity is a theological mystery in the best sense of the word: not a puzzle to be solved or explained but a truth to explore while never running out of fresh discovery and meaning. A saint of the early church, Gregory of Nazianzen, saying exploring the Trinity is like “crossing the ocean in a raft.” How do you manage that? A challenge, to be sure. But it doesn’t mean people haven’t tried. Today we are invited to join that exploration and lift our hearts and minds to contemplate, as far as we are able, the inner life and being of God as three-in-one and one-in-three and to see and trust how we have been drawn up into the life of God.
For we have been. We baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the Creed we confess our faith in “one God, the Father, the Almighty,” and “one Lord, Jesus, the only Son of God,” and the “Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.” And at the end of every worship service, we are sent into the world having been blessed by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity, then, is not a mere theological abstraction but the God to whom we belong, the God in whom we dwell, the God in whom we live and move and have our being.
The majesty of God as the foundation of life and the wonder of God as the source of life is the theme of today’s psalm, Psalm 8. Awe-struck by the majesty of God in creation, the psalm is equally astonished by God’s care for us. ‘When I consider the heavens, the work of your hand, who are we that you should care for us or keep us in mind?’
The sweep and scope of Psalm 8 takes in the entire cosmos, the glory of the heavens, life teeming in the air, on earth, and under the sea. And as the psalm considers creation’s splendor, it trusts that each person is more than a mere speck in a cold cosmos. Humanity is the pinnacle of creation, made a little lower than heavenly beings, crowned with glory and honor. A pope by the name of Leo—I not XIV, from the 400s and the first with that name—said, “Christian, remember your dignity, and that you share in God’s own nature.” Awe-struck by the majesty of God in creation, Psalm 8 is equally astonished by God’s care for us and the dignity each of us has in God.
In today’s second reading, St Paul echoes this theme of God’s majesty and God’s care, together with the dignity we share in God, when he says, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. In him, we have access to the grace in which we stand.”
Paul’s language about ‘access’ is also about God’s majesty. It comes from the Temple in the Old Testament. In the Temple, access to the presence of God functioned like a series of nesting dolls, wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another. The outside court was the ‘Court of the Gentiles,’ next was the ‘Women’s Court, then the ‘Court of Israel’ for men. Priests could venture beyond that into the ‘Priest’s Court.’ And nested within the Priest’s Court was the most sacred space of all: the Holy of Holies. This innermost area was the spiritual axis of the world, the intersecting point between heaven and earth; the place where the glory and presence of God dwelt. Yet only one person had access to this inner sanctum: the High Priest and on just one day of the year, the Day of Atonement. Access to God’s majesty and presence was a privilege.
But now, says Paul, we who have been put in a right relationship with God have full access to grace through Jesus and are welcomed in God’s presence. And to assure us of God’s favor and goodness towards us, Paul says that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.” The life of the Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—is as close as life itself. Jesus the Son opens access to the Father’s grace and the Spirit pours God’s love and assurance into our hearts.
This is the God in whom we live and move and have our being, the God in whose presence all people are given dignity because all people share in the divine life. Of all people the psalm says, ‘You have crowned and adorned us with glory and honor.’ Here is your dignity, too, because in the scriptures, glory and honor are two attributes usually assigned to God and God alone. The Old Testament book of Chronicles praises God’s majesty and says, “Greatness, power, glory, victory, and honor belong to you, because everything in heaven and on earth belongs to you! The kingdom belongs to you, Lord!” In the New Testament, Revelation echoes this praise. “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” Glory and honor belong to God. Yet in the Triune God we receive access to share in those very things, all people drawn into the life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “Christian, remember your dignity.”
As Psalm 8 contemplates God’s majesty and affirms human dignity, it also gives us a small window onto the larger biblical landscape of what the scriptures mean by saying that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. In Genesis God says, “Let us make humankind in our image according to our likeness; and let them have dominion.” Please note that the biblical sense of ‘dominion’ is not meant to be understood in an arrogant or tyrannical sense—whether in how we live within God’s creation or any misguided attempts to dominate others and diminish their God-given honor and glory.
Michael Sadgrove, writing about the shape and direction of human life described by Psalm 8 says, “The glory and the honor that belongs to human beings includes a responsibility that we carry toward the rest of creation…God as Creator has placed the world in the care of human beings who are in charge as God’s own representatives.” In other words, we don’t seize the work of God for our purposes but humbly carry out a role that has been assigned to look after creation and administer it. “Dominion has often been used as an excuse to exploit and abuse…It means the exact opposite: practicing reverence for all of life, honoring and cherishing the fragile ecology of the planet we share with all living things.”
‘When I consider the heavens, the work of your hand, who are we that you should be thoughtful toward us or care for us.’ In response to the honor and glory all people are given in God, the dignity we all share as bearers of the divine image, God calls us to reflect God’s care for the world and embody that care for others.
On Trinity Sunday, we consider the very being and life of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and we see how we are drawn into the life of God and are entrusted with a share in God’s work. The Trinity is not merely a doctrine about God that may or may not have anything to do with our lives; it is the truth of God for us to explore and delight in. Julian of Norwich says, “We are enclosed in the Father, enclosed in the Son, enclosed in the Holy Spirit.” And in God we have dignity. The Father who loves and gives; the life, death, and resurrection of the Son; the Spirit now poured out for the life of the world: this is the God in whom we live and move and have our being. This is a life to be thankful for every time we make the sign of the cross.
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