God Is With Us

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Sermon for Trinity Sunday1 15 June 2014

Emmanuel Church, Greenwood Parish (The Rev.) Christopher Garcia

God Is With Us Today represents something of a cusp. We are turning from first half of liturgical year to second. For the past 29 Sundays, our liturgical readings have focused on the cycle of Jesus’ advent, birth, epiphany, earthly ministry, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension. Now we turn to the 23 Sundays after Pentecost this year. In the great conversation, having heard the Jesus story, now it’s our turn. What is our story in response to the Jesus story? How now shall we live? How do we do the work that God has given us to do, loving and serving God as faithful witnesses of Christ? For the next six months we explore those themes in the long green season – the numbered Sundays after Pentecost, ordinary time. Today is the hinge. On this first Sunday after the Pentecost, we pivot our attention from the Jesus story to our response to that story. This first Sunday after the Feast of Pentecost is known as Trinity Sunday. Although first observed as a universal feast of the western church in the early 14th century, some places have observed it since 5th century. That makes sense, since the nature of God: How does Jesus relate to the God of the Old Testament? How does God the Father relate to God the Son? Who is this God the Holy Spirit? Are we really worshipping three Gods? These questions consumed and divided the church for the first several centuries of our history, and were resolved only gradually by a series of ecumenical councils, an attempt to reach an orthodox consensus and to unify Christendom. One of the results is what we refer to as the Nicene Creed. We say it almost every Sunday – we’ll say it in a few minutes – when we proclaim the faith of the church. What we’re saying when we say the creed is, “This is what it means to be a Christian.” This is our statement of belief, our statement of faith.

Year A, RCL: The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday. Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20. “Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” 1

2 We hear a much earlier statement of faith, a statement of belief, in the first reading we heard this morning, from Genesis: “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” In those 48 words, even though they have been around for millennia, before Jesus, we can find the beginning of the doctrine of the trinity. In the beginning, God was. God was there before anything else happened. God existed before time itself. In the beginning, a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. The word that our translation puts as “a wind from God” can also be put as the breath of God or the Spirit of God. There is this life force that comes forth from God; that is God, moving over the chaos, creating. In the beginning, a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” Notice what an amazing claim that is: God speaks, and something happens. God speaks, and creation occurs. When you get home, go back over the Genesis passage we just heard. You will find at least fifteen references to God speaking, or God saying, or God naming – all of which caused something to happen. John’s Gospel starts with another creation story: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” 2 John makes clear and explicit, what the writer of Genesis could only understand in part, implicitly. The eternal Word, the Logos, God the Son, was with God since the beginning, since before even time began. So already, in the first three verses of Genesis 1, we have the three persons of the one, indivisible God: the Creative nature of God, God the Father; and the eternal Word, the Logos, God the Son, acting with the Father in creation; and God’s Holy Spirit, moving forth, brooding, hovering, restless, creating. God active in the world, you might say. Although it took several church councils over several centuries to work out the details, you can see the roots here, in the very first verses of the very first book of the Bible. Let me jump back to John’s Gospel for a moment. John’s Gospel then goes on to make an amazing, audacious claim: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt

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John 1:1-3.

3 among us.”3 The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The eternal Logos, the creative Word that existed since before time began, true God from true God, became flesh and dwelt among us. Or as the creed puts it, “For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” What an amazing act of love. When we say the creed together, I follow an ancient tradition of the church and bow at these words. “For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” The tradition arose to bow at these words as an act of humility, acknowledging the greatness of what God has done for us. The eternal Word, God the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit, was made man. God with us: that is who we are. Emmanuel Church – the name of our parish – comes from the Hebrew word that literally means, God is with us. Emmanuel – God is with us. The God who existed since before time itself, the God who hovered over the chaos of creation, the eternal Word, became flesh and dwelt among us, as Jesus. Just as the eternal became temporal, and the invisible became visible in Jesus, in God with us, so too, we live to make God visible and accessible. God’s spirit, moving in us, flows out in the ministries of this place, as we go out to love and serve God as faithful witness of Christ, as we become God with Us to the world around us. In the work of the Bread Fund. In Disciples Kitchen. In our Warm Coat Drive. In the work of our other mission partners. And in the week ahead, in our Vacation Bible School, as God’s love becomes tangible, palpable, to more than fifty children who will gather here tomorrow morning, and every day this week. These are only a few examples of how do we do the work that God has given us to do, loving and serving God as faithful witnesses of Christ. In the months ahead, in the season after Pentecost, we continue this conversation. We explore our response to God with us. What is your part of the story? What do you have to say? Amen.

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John 1:14.