I love the
Genesis story we heard this morning. It’s
a long story, but a good one.
I love it for
the poetic way that God brings life and beauty out of chaos, out of the
“formless void.”
I love it,
because it gives meaning to the way we experience our world, telling us that we
share the resources of the earth with birds and “creeping things that creep
upon the earth” and everything that breathes; telling us most of all that all
of creation: light and dark, water and land, trees and snails and vultures and
zebras and dogs and stars and people, all of creation is good.
Very good.
And I love it
because the delightfully concrete details like the provision of “plants yielding
seed and trees bearing fruit with the
seed in it” as food for everything that breathes don’t obscure the sense of
mystery, of wonder and joy, at the miracle of creation.
It’s a story
that tells important truths but still knows it doesn’t have all the answers. And
it’s a story whose truths and meanings we humans are still trying to figure
out.
Just look at the
interest and conversation generated by the recent Fox series “Cosmos,” where my
personal hero, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, a brilliant physicist with a sense of
humor, takes viewers on beautifully designed tours of what we know of the
universe, from DNA to stars, from tectonic plates to atmosphere, and much
between and beyond, and shows us the questions that haven’t been answered.
Both the
ultra-contemporary “Cosmos” and the ancient creation stories of the Bible
remind us that the appeal of both science and theology is to ask and answer
questions like
“How did we get
here?”
“What is the
world like?”
and the
perennial mystery, “Why mosquitoes?”
(why, oh God,
why??)
Science and
theology take somewhat different approaches to how we answer those questions,
but there’s still a lot of overlap in the mystery and in the questions.
I’m particularly
glad we read that biblical mystery story today, because today is the day the
Church calls “Trinity Sunday.” It’s a
perfect day for mystery and wonder and questions, because today is the day we
celebrate what we know – and even more, what we don’t know – about who God is.
Technically, we
are celebrating the church’s long proclaimed truth that three “persons,”
Father, Son and Spirit; Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier; are all one God, a
mathematical and logical impossibility that reminds us how much mystery there
still is in our relationship with God.
We know God is one.
That’s actually
the radical truth that our Genesis creation story proclaimed when it was first
told – in a world where most people told creation stories about struggles
between multiple gods.
We know that God
is one.
And we also know
that Jesus was God, walking around on the earth in one human body and talking
to God in heaven, calling God, “Father,” – but still, Jesus was God.
So we know that
God is two. But still one.
And we’ve been
talking about the Spirit of God ever since the beginning; the Spirit who hovers
over creation, who fills us with the presence of God in daily inspiration, sent
to us and the world by the Creator, or by Jesus, or both…which makes three, if
you’re still counting.
But we still
know that God is One.
Makes perfect
sense, right?
Well, it’s not
supposed to make logical sense. But it’s
all truth.
Just like the
Elephant.
Do you know the
story of the Blind Men and the Elephant?
One famous
version of the story explains that six scholars, all blind, wanted to really
know what an elephant was like. So they
found an elephant to observe (very scientific of them!).
One touched the
trunk, and knew that an elephant was like a snake. Another embraced a leg, and
knew the elephant was like a tree. One fell against the elephant’s side, and
recognized a wall; another felt the ear and knew it was like a fan. The final two felt the tail – obviously like a
rope, and the tusk, sharp and solid, like a spear.
In some versions
of the story the scholars argue and disagree.
In other versions, they pool their knowledge, ending up with a bigger
picture. But the blind men never get to
“see” the whole elephant, a being greater than the sum of its parts.
It’s a perfect
metaphor for our own descriptions of God, and even of God’s creation and action
in the world.
We never get to
see all of God or God’s actions for
ourselves. We can only tell the truth of what we experience and what we already
know; and listen to what others experience.
We can talk
about the experiences we have of God as Creator when we marvel at the wonders
of nature, or of human beings; God as Redeemer when we celebrate our salvation;
God as Sanctifier when we feel the
presence of God within and among us. We can talk
about God as Father, Son and Spirit; and we do, in scripture and sermons and
conversations and song and prayer.
But we can’t
gain a complete picture of God, except by saying that all these ways we know
God are truths – but not the whole truth – of one undivided God.
Which brings us
back to mystery.
Mystery which
permeates the stories of creation that both scientists and theologians tell.
And sometimes
mystery itself is enough truth to go on with, when we don’t know it all; even
enough to help us live our lives, and grow in our relationship to God.
Mystery – of
creation, of the Trinity – means that our relationship with God requires a
life-long willingness to explore our hopes, our questions, our experience, and
even our doubts.
And it means
that we have to tell the truth of what we know before we know the whole truth. We
have to share our experience of the fan and the tree and the rope, our
experience of God the Creator, God the Savior, God the Counselor and Guide, so
that everyone can see more of the elephant, more of God, than any of us can
alone.
That’s the last
instruction Jesus left with his disciples, after all. We heard it in
today’s gospel story: after the resurrection, the disciples are gathered around
Jesus, hearts full of both worship and doubt. And that’s when Jesus says, “Go,
and make disciples among all peoples, teaching them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
The disciples
certainly didn’t know the whole truth, but they knew God the Son, so they knew
God the Father, and the Spirit. And
Jesus sent them out to tell what they knew.
That’s an
invitation – not just to the disciples so long ago, but to us today – to delight
in the mystery, to seek out many different experiences of God, and to share
them, so that we know God, even when we don’t know it all and never will. Because the
truth isn’t defined by answers, but by our experience of God from the moment of
creation, and our willingness to wonder, and to embrace the mystery.
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