One God, in three persons.

First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday, Year A, RCL

Genesis 1:1-2:4aCanticle 13

Trinity Sunday. A day that strikes fear into every seminarian who has to preach this day. In part, it is often difficult to preach about a concept. A concept that goes beyond traditional physics and philosophy. Three individuals forming one being: God. Three in one and one in three. If you’re into quantum mechanics, you may be able to start wrapping your head around such an idea, but frankly, most of us cannot.

To embark on understanding the Trinity, I find it helpful to start at the beginning. As such, we enter into the first two chapters of 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.”

Last week, we talked about the Hebrew word for wind, ruach. Ruach means wind, spirit, and breath. We can read this verse with any of these three words, which present us with three similar yet different imageries.

A wind from God swept over the face of the waters. A spirit from God swept over the face of the waters. A breath from God swept over the face of the waters.

All are correct translations.

Unlike the English translations we are used to, when read in Hebrew, it is filled with wordplay and words with multiple meanings, giving us opportunities to be more imaginative. There is no way to take every word literally when we don’t know which meaning the original author meant to use, or even if they meant the word to have a single meaning. But anyway, we find that God is not alone in the creation of our universe. God was with the Spirit, who was hovering or vibrating over the surface of the waters.

At the opening of John’s Gospel account, he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This one was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing came into being that has come into being. In him was life, and the life was the light of humanity. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”^[i]

John insists that all three persons of the Trinity were present at the beginning, and they were involved in its creation. This should not surprise us. Many of us know how God, Christ, and the Spirit work in our lives. Mysteriously working, moving, guiding, healing, and strengthening our physical bodies from the moment we inhale our first breath to our last. Yet our spiritual being is also on this ride; it is being moved, guided, healed, and strengthened. This creation, our nephesh, will continue into the life to come.

Nothing we know is fixed. Everything moves and changes through time. Right now, life may seem to change quickly, and information can be spread and obtained almost instantly. Even this historic building is not the same as it was when it was built, or in the early nineteen hundreds. But God remains the same, from generation to generation, from millennia to millennia, from before time, through the day our universe collapses and becomes a new one. Whenever this happens, we will remain safe, with our creator, in a place where we will never again hunger or thirst, nor be in the heat of the sun. I know this sounds like utopia, and it is. This is what we are promised through our faith in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Another concept we miss by not reading the text in Hebrew is the diversity in creation. Let’s focus on the word Adam, the exact same word as adam, as in Adam and Eve. In Hebrew, adam means human, humanity, and man, and is often translated to Adam. In the first creation story that we read today, starting with Genesis chapter 1, verse 26, we read “Then God said, ‘Let us make humans / adam in our image.’” Adam is correctly translated as humans in the NRSV translation we read. Then in verse 17 we read that “God created [adam] humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” In these verses, we again find this translation of the Bible to be very good.

In this narrative, God created humans, male and female, at the same time, in the same instant. And since God made men and women at the same time and in God’s image, then God is either of both sexes or neuter, not having a sex. God being neuter is the Jewish understanding of God. God has no gender. But unfortunately, Hebrew, like Spanish and many other languages, does not have neuter nouns. All nouns are either masculine or feminine. Thus God, which is a title, not a name, becomes masculine. The word adomah, meaning earth, dirt, and soil, is feminine. The word “adam" is masculine. This allows some biblical translators to fall into pitfalls that consistently treat God as a male figure. It also doesn’t help that neither English nor Hebrew has neuter pronouns. God again often receives the pronoun “he” since many people are uncomfortable associating "she" with God, but maybe we should take a note from our modern era and use “they” as God’s pronoun.

What we find is that after God animates adam, most people no longer translate adam as human but as Adam or man. But, in the original language, it is not until Eve comes into being, that Adam is called a man and consistently given masculine pronouns. Adam should properly be referred to as “the human,” neither male nor female, until verse 2:23, when God splits adam into two beings, Adam and Eve. It is only at this point that Eve is called ishah, woman, and Adam is now associated with the word ish or man.

This brings us back to the Trinity, One God, in three persons. In Hebrew, the various “names” associated with God are masculine and often portrayed with masculine imagery, though the Jewish people know that God is genderless. Spirit & Wisdom, for the Jewish people, are attributes of God and not separate from God in any way, and they are feminine and often associated with powerful female attributes.

As Christians, we see the Trinity as three individuals dancing together in a way that makes it hard to separate one from the other. Though we may recognize the attributes of one, they share in each other’s work, as they did in creation. Of the three, Jesus is the only one with clear attributes of male, the Son of God, and the son of Mary. Physically human and completely divine. Our image of the Father is formed from the language of the Godhead. It is most often portrayed as masculine and patriarchal, leading to the persona most of us have. As in Judaism, we have historically associated the Spirit with feminine characteristics, offering us counsel, wisdom, and care. Through the ages, these identity markers have been passed down to us through patriarchal societies, which is the reason we find the Bible to be dominated by male figures. Yet we know that God is greater than anything we can imagine. Putting God into gendered roles makes as much sense as saying all ships are female or that all dogs are male.

Having an image of God in our head, a God that is all-powerful, sometimes harsh, and sometimes loving, is difficult. Some people have been hurt by people in their lives, possibly their fathers, and they have trouble relating to God the Father. The pain people have experienced is real, a pain that may not heal in a lifetime. Yet because God is so multifaceted, and all three persons of the Trinity are coequal, perhaps God can be found by letting go of our patriarchal lens. Maybe we can relate to other aspects of God. Maybe we can find God in the most unexpected places. We don’t have to view God as the male figure dominating us. We can view God as a female figure who nurtures and cares for us. No matter how we think of God, we should find God shrouding us with love, knowing that when we cry, she cries with us. When we are happy, the Spirit of joy surrounds us, and when we face the hardships of life, we know that Christ has experienced them as well, in whom we have a friend who is always by our side. No matter how you envision God, it is your God, our God, the one true God, world without end.

[i] John 1:1-5 Lexham English Bible