Genesis 1:1 - 2:4 (Common English Bible)
Matthew 28: 16-20 (Common English Bible)
The creation story in Genesis was not written as a scientific discovery of creation, but rather as a poetic story handed down through oral tradition and changed since its early days in the Sumerian story of Gilgamesh, several thousand years before the Jewish scribes put their version into print. And the Genesis creation story is rooted in faith instead of biological facts. The writer or writers of Genesis chapter one and two did not debate or defend the divine activity of God, but simply assumed there was a God who created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis chapter one uses the word “Elohim” for God, while Genesis chapter two refers to God as “Yahweh” or “Lord.” This points to two different writers of the Genesis creation story. The inclusion of duo writers suggests the intent of the story was not to offer what happened historically. Instead the two creation stories reflect different versions on how the world came to be.
The term Elohim means plurality or group. Let “us” make humanity in our image, as it says in Genesis 1:26. Who is the “us”in that sentence? Now if you ever watch “Ancient Astronauts” especially with the host with the crazy hair, Giorgio I believe is the name, he would say, if he hasn’t said already, “well that was God in a UFO with a bunch of ETs programming the hominid species into homo-sapiens (humans). Giorgio, sorry about your luck, but that’s a bit too far out, even for me.
Maybe a more “orthodox” answer would be God surrounded by a council of angels planning the creation of humankind. Many Christians, Muslims and Jewish people believe that. But the third option might be the best, although more difficult to comprehend in our limited human minds. What if the “us” in Genesis 1:26 is the Holy Trinity?
To be created in the image of the Trinity means to be created in the image of love, companionship and justice. All great achievements done by humans have been inspired by the Holy Trinity. It’s impossible to list them all, but just think of the Brown vs. Board of Education, which ended segregation in public schools, the Civil Rights Movement and the creation of life saving medicine like the Polio vaccine. And the saint behind that creation, Dr. Jonas Salk, wanted no pay for his work as he said, it should be a free gift to everyone. We need more Dr. Salks today.
In Genesis chapter one, the Hebrew word “adam” meaning humankind or humanity is about humans’ close connection to the land, and that term is “adamah.” The word “adam” has no connection to gender. The word “adam” is to adamah as earth is to earthling.
When we talk about the creation of the universe, a number of years ago the New York Times ran a headline in its science section, “Before the Big Bang, there was, what? The article interviewed cosmologists and others who study the universe and maybe even different universes. The cosmologists generated an abundance of theories about how the universe came to be, what keeps it going and its ultimate fate. Some cosmologists theorize the Big Bang was a kind of quantum leap from a formless era of imaginary time, or from nothing at all. Such speculation comes very close to the Genesis story, when God made the universe out of nothing at all.
Trinity Sunday is the perfect occasion for everyone to think deeply about the mystery of the Ultimate Reality we call “God.” In today’s reading from the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his followers to baptize all people in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit - Creator, Redeemer & Sustainer (the Trinity). And making disciples (students) does not mean coercing anyone into a “correct” belief or religion. Jesus never intended to create a new religion. The early church was about community and not a building with a sign on it. Being a disciple means engaging in God’s creative work and embracing the Trinity is very much a part of that. BTW, the word “Trinity” as part of Christian doctrine, was not used until about 200 years after the time of Jesus on earth.
On this special Sunday, let us pray for God to expand our imagination and amaze us with wonder and urge us to contemplate who and what God was before the Big Bang. But God is not a creature or a being, among other beings. God was No Thing. But what God is, was truly known by the Incarnation of the Christ into the living body of Jesus of Nazareth.
So before the Big Bang when God was No Thing, what was No Thing doing? Our faith tells us before the universe was created, God is being the Redeemer and Sustainer, all entities in unison. God is not an individualist. God the Trinity is active, always outgoing and receiving.
If we take the Genesis creation story as metaphor, as it was intended and the human species was created by a relationship called “us” in Genesis 1:26, maybe it’s time to emphasize the Original Blessing instead of Original Sin. Whether you call it the Trinity or something else, we must have been created to be in a relationship with God and people. This is an important message to share in the era we live in, with loneliness, racism and other forms of division. The idea of the Trinity is that God is more than just up there. God is down here and everywhere!
The Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit will always be a difficult subject to understand. But we know by our faith in the triune God we worship, God is the force how the universe came to be, the energy that keeps it going and the future toward which it moves. The priest, scientist and theologian Teihard de Chardin (1881-1955), wrote of the “Christophere” when the universe billions of years from now will begin to shrink until it’s just a small dot, just like it was before the Big Bang. That according to Father Chardin, will be the Omega Point, when all becomes all united with God.
Let us reach everywhere to God in our prayers to open our imagination and meditate for wisdom about the mystery of God the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. The same mystery that brought Moses to his knees when he encountered the great I AM on Mt. Horeb.
AMEN
