Trinity Sunday (1^st after Pentecost) – May 18, 2008

Genesis 1:1 – 2:4a (in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis and the earthquake in Sichuan, China)

St. Giles Church, Northbrook IL – The Rev. Cynthia J. Hallas

Almost every religious or cultural tradition has its particular story of creation –how the world as we know it came to exits; the role that God (or the gods) had in that creation and the role that humanity plays in the world and in the created order.  Many of these stories also seek to explain how evil or chaos or sin was introduced into the world, and             what the consequences are.  The Judeo-Christian tradition, of course, is no exception – we even have two creation stories.  The one we heard this morning is arguably the more popular, perhaps the more interesting, certainly the more positive and more easily expressed artistically, as the mural in the hallway of our education building will attest.

This creation story – the first of two – is methodical, ordered, well-reasoned.  It’s organized, and proceeds in a linear fashion.  God creates order not so much out of chaos as out of nothing.  That wind, the breath or Spirit of God, the voice of God, sweep and speak creation into being.  As light faded into darkness at the end of each new day, God saw that creation was good.  And when all was completed, at the end of the sixth day, God saw that it was very good.  On that sixth day God had done something extraordinary – God had created human beings, male and female, in the divine image and had given that humanity charge over this wonderful new creation: “have dominion over it,” God said; “fill the earth and subdue it.”  A beautiful and perfect world, divinely inspired and created, a purpose for everything and everyone, all things existed according to a natural order.

Lately, though, that natural order has seemed anything but orderly.  It appears that creation has betrayed us.  Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, the earthquake in the Sichuan province of China, the twisters in the Midwest all coming over the last two weeks have left the world reeling and relief organizations working to move quickly and efficiently in spite of governmental roadblocks and bureaucratic red tape.  They have left the rest of us struggling to get our minds around the totality of the loss of life –possibly up to 150,000 people in all three disasters – as well as the damage to both the ‘artificial’ creation (infrastructure: roads, schools, hospitals, utility systems, homes), and the damage to the human psyche (terror, grief, anger, compassion fatigue, survivor guilt).  Perhaps, like me, you have trouble finding language to articulate how horrible all this is.  It has only been a few years since the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in southeast Asia and earthquakes in central American – places not yet healed from that series of devastating natural disasters.  It’s mind-numbing.

Of course, it isn’t just the natural order itself that’s out of whack these days.  Look at what we human beings have done, to the earth and to ourselves.  We don’t cause so-called ‘natural disasters’, but our behavior can certainly exacerbate them.  The reason the little town of Picher, Oklahoma might not survive as a community following those twisters last week is due as much to damage by environmental pollutants and to economic downturn over the years as it is to any sudden act of nature.  I’m told one of the reasons Cyclone Nargis was so devastating is because so many mangrove trees, whose intertwining root systems form a kind of barrier to strong ocean currents, have been cut down to make room for shrimp farms so that people in Western nations can have more fresh seafood in our restaurants and markets.  And of course the junta in Myanmar seems to be more concerned over its own political survival and domination than it is over the survival and welfare of its people – we’ve known that for years.  The destruction and loss of life wrought by the earthquake in China, especially the death of so many children, is all the more poignant when one considers the “one child only” policy of the Chinese government. 

Disasters like these often bring into the spotlight the destructive mischief cause by human greed, but there is the ongoing non-cataclysmic but still catastrophic violence we do to God’s creation and to one another.  We who inhabit western nations continue to use and abuse the earth’s natural resources in a manner completely out of proportion to the world’s population.  Nations around the world have all too often allowed dialogue to collapse and substituted war instead. 

For so long we have cared for nothing so much as for the superiority of our various political systems and for the well-being of our financial systems; for the health of our corporate and political fiscal bottom lines: is this what God meant by the divine command to “have dominion” and to “fill the earth and subdue it”?  There are no doubt some Christians who would say yes, but I don’t think so. And in the process of all that concern and attention focused on one kind of economy we’ve ignored a far more important and far-reaching and longer-lasting economy – the oikonomeia, the household of all people, the intention of God for all of us to live peaceably alongside one another.  Between natural disasters and human failure, the world can seem a tragic and hopeless place.   

So where does that leave people of faith, people like you and me?  Are there words of hope and healing that we can not only speak but actually live out?  I believe there are.  The first is this: God loves us.  The God who created the earth and all that is in it is not an absent deity.  God did not make us and then desert us.  Nor does God sit on the sidelines and simply observe our struggles.  God is present with the creation, then as now.  And I believe that when tragedy of any sort strikes anything that God has made, God mourns and God weeps and God grieves just like we do because God loves us.  And I believe that even when we continue to mess ourselves over, disobeying God’s commands and thwarting God’s intentions, God may be angry and frustrated but God still loves us.

The second word of hope is this: God loves us - so much so that the divine being, in whose image we were created and whose image we have so often mocked, became human like us, sharing our messy existence so that we could be saved in it, and allowing us to know God far more intimately than we ever could have otherwise.  And when Jesus, the divinely perfect and perfectly divine human being left his time on earth, he gave his disciples his own God-given authority and bid them share his Good News with the world so that all could know God as they had known God; and not only that, he gave them his promise that he would be with them until the end of time – ‘to the end of the age’.

Here’s the third word of hope (What do you think I’m gonna say next?)  God loves us!  (Is this all beginning to sound a little bit Trinitarian?  ): God’s Spirit still moves and inspires on this earth and within God’s people.  The Holy Spirit is powerful and intimate, life-giving and world-changing.  And she is as active in the world now as she was at the dawn of creation or in the Pentecost event or at any time in between or since. 

God loves us.  This is not pie-in-the-sky, Pollyanna-ish naivete.  It’s not wishful thinking or a something we’ve dreamed up.  This is gospel truth.  God loves us.  God created us in love, redeemed us in love, continues to guide and direct us in love.  In the face of the terrors and the powers of this world; in the face of those who, to paraphrase Psalm 42, ask, “Where’s your God now?” Christians are called to proclaim, “God is with us and” (say it with me) God loves us.  That’s what we need to remember, and that’s what we need to share.  More important than all the sophisticated theology we’ve created to try to help ourselves understand God; more important than our brilliant liturgical planning and execution; even more than any creedal statements formulated 1700 years ago in an effort to explain that love – the simple truth behind it all remains: God loves us.  And if someone asks you to explain what this Trinity Sunday is all about, those three words will suffice.  They have done so since the dawn of creation, and they will until the end of the age.  Amen.