May 31, 2026 - Genesis 1:1-2:4 - Trinity Sunday

A couple of weeks ago Laurie and I were out working in the yard with a friend of ours. They were in the front while I was in the back trying to beat the bamboo into submission. I’m getting ready to haul some 9-10 ft stalks of bamboo when around the corner come two young men, dressed in crisp black uniforms. They were looking to see if anyone might be interested in worshiping with them and had been told I would be very interested in talking to them. I think they expected to have a conversation about what worshiping with them would be like. What they got instead was a crash course on how the early church developed the three ecumenical creeds to differentiate the true church from the various Trinitarian heresies that were cropping up during the first few centuries of the church. As much as they might want to claim we’re basically the same, the theology codified in the creeds says we are not. In fact, we couldn’t be more different.

They talk about Jesus. They’ll talk about how he died on Good Friday. They’ll talk about how he’s god, but they won’t confess the Trinity. They won’t say he and the Father and the Holy Spirit are the same God. There is no reconciling these two things. In that respect, they are no different than the various heretics that cropped up during the first several centuries of the church. Many had great difficulty coming to terms with Jesus being God and man. Some would argue he wasn’t God. Others that he wasn’t a man. Still others would say God and man were there but they weren’t joined together.

In all of those cases, the church had to go back to the Bible and look at what God said about himself. It didn’t really matter how implausible any of it sounded. People could argue and debate God’s character, the kinds of things he would or wouldn’t do. They could argue about logic and what made sense based on what we know of the world and how it works. They could argue about how possible anything might be. In the end, the only one who truly knows what God would or would not do is God. The only one who truly knows how the world works and what is possible within it is God. If we cannot accept what God says about himself, then there really isn’t anything concrete we can say about him at all.

Jews, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many more smaller groups all continue to argue that Jesus isn’t who he says he is in the Bible. As I’ve said before, just about every religion in the world has something to say about who Jesus is. They come up with their own explanations for who he is and what he did. They try to fit him into their system. Just because the Jews, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and those like them are similar to us in a number of ways, they are all false religions and will all be condemned. That’s why, for as much as we might disagree with groups like the Pentecostals and others like them that have strange ways of doing things and teach many things that are not supported by the Bible, we can at least agree on the Trinity and we are able, at least tenuously, to call them brothers and sisters in Christ.

The big heresies of old and the ones that persist today continue to plague the church and confuse the world as to who God truly is. The big, sweeping heresies like this aren’t the only ones out there. There are plenty of others, many that are more subtle and pious sounding. The old Ben Franklin adage, “God helps those who help themselves,” is a classic example. It sounds good and might even have some noble intentions behind it, like trying to keep people from becoming defeatist or lazy, but they still don’t accurately describe God. The blindly loving and accepting god championed by churches like the ELCA and the UCC is no different. God does say he loves everyone, but at no point does he give carte blanche to anyone to live in whatever manner feels best to them. God describes himself as a God of love, but also a God of rules and order, of covenants and responsibilities. The god they describe is anything but that.

Then there are the even more subtle and insidious heresies we come up with entirely on our own. “God won’t forgive that. God won’t forgive you. God won’t forgive me. God doesn’t want you because you’re a (fill in the blank of whatever group I don’t like). God doesn’t think I’m important because I’m no good at (fill in the blank of whatever skill I think makes me valuable to God). God doesn’t love poor folks. God doesn’t love rich folks. God must hate me because he didn’t give me (fill in the blank again).” The list goes on and on and on. There are all sorts of ways we refuse to let God speak for himself. We assume he doesn’t mean it or perhaps misspoke. He must not have truly understood the situation or maybe he said something that was true at one time but the times have changed and what was once true is no longer the case.

Whatever my explanation or rationale is, I’ve decided that the God of the Bible isn’t actually the real god. Using my own limited faculties, I’ve decided on my own authority to redefine God, to change him to fit my own perception of who he should be and what he should do. We end up looking at the creeds and scribbling out the parts we don’t think fit quite right, or maybe adding a few extra notes in the margins to explain why the original meaning is a mistake.

There aren’t too many places in the Bible where you can see all three persons of the Trinity in evidence at the same time. Usually it’s the Father or Jesus, rarely the Holy Spirit. Here in the beginning, in the first moments of creation, we see the Trinity working in unison. That isn’t to say that God is ever divided, but we don’t often see him working in this way. Nevertheless, here they are, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all active, all involved in the work of creation. Here is God creating ex nihilo, out of nothing. This is something many today argue is not what God does or how he works. Some argue he does create the world and people, but he does so by letting the world come together over millions of years and then more millions of years for people to eventually come about.

God describes himself here. He is not a God who works haphazardly, through the chaotic smashing of planetary objects that eventually form a world of earth, water, and air. He is not a God who creates life by letting molecules bumble around in the primordial soup until somehow life materializes. God is here creating intentionally. Every part of creation is thoughtfully called into being. Even as God turns to the task of creating Adam and Eve, he does so with care, forming Adam and later Eve with his own hands. They are not apes who worked their way up to humanity. They were created intentionally and with purpose.

This same Triune God who created the world and everything in it also knew before he began speaking the world into existence that this man and woman he would fashion would end up making a terrible mess of things. They would bring rot and ruin into the world and condemn everything to death. Before God had scooped up the dirt that he would use to form the first man, he knew he would have to die to save this wayward, rebellious man and every man and woman afterward. The hands that dug out the mud and clay that would be used to make Adam were already prepared to one day take the nails that would pay for his sins.

The God who describes himself, who reveals himself in the Bible is a God of rules and order, of organization and structure. He is the creator of all that is and continues to rule it. He rules in righteousness and justice, holding the wrongdoer accountable and safeguarding his creation. At the same time, he is not a heartless dictator. He is a merciful and loving God who cares deeply for everything he made, especially the people. He sees our plight and how incapable we are of dealing with our own problems. He determined to save us, even knowing the cost. He determined to bring us back and rescue us from the fate we were bringing upon ourselves.

God is all of these things and more. We know all of this, not because we were so smart we could figure it out on our own. It’s only because he chooses to tell us these things that we know them. It’s only because he demonstrates it all to us again and again that we know much of anything about him at all.

We still have the same problems Adam and Eve did. We want to be our own gods. We want to be the ones who make the decisions and determine what’s good and what isn’t. We want to be acknowledged as capable, more than capable, of taking care of our own business. If we could get rid of God entirely, we probably would. Since that isn’t an option, the next best choice to decide what kind of God he is. If we can at least tell God what he can and can’t do, that’s a close second. But our feelings on the subject of God don’t actually change who God is or what he does.

God created you because he loves you. He created an order and a structure to his creation to help you know how to live in the world he made. When you fail to live according to his rules and commandments, he forgives you. He forgives you because he chooses to, because he loves you, because he suffered and died for you. He created you to live eternally because he wants you to live, to live with him forever.

Every Sunday is a celebration of what God does, specifically in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Trinity Sunday in particular is a celebration of who God is. Our God alone is creator of heaven and earth. Our God alone took on human flesh to die and rise again for our salvation. Our God alone calls us in from the dark so that we may be restored to who we were created to be. Our God alone is a triune God who reigns forever and ever in love and mercy over his wondrous creation.