06/04/2023 ~ Trinity Sunday ~ Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20 ~ Communion Sunday ~ Christian Education Sunday ~ VIDEO OF FULL SERVICE: https://vimeo.com/showcase/7960701/video/833395168

God’s Reality

“God saw everything which had been made, was indeed, exceedingly good.” — Genesis 1:31a.

Phineas Taylor Barnum, P. T. to most, was a Nineteenth Century American showman, businessman, politician, remembered mostly for promoting hoaxes. A quote attributed to Barnum says there’s a sucker born every minute.

Are hoaxes perpetrated only on people who cannot think critically or are ignorant or willfully ignorant or is it even more broad than that? Maybe. But there are television shows in what seems to be courtrooms with (quote, unquote) ‘judges.’ These not real but a lot of people watch.

Many also watch all kinds of so called ‘reality TV.’ Reality? Just the presence of TV cameras recording what happens makes that a questionable premise. And now we have AI, artificial intelligence software. It’s likely that will really muddy the water concerning reality.

Indeed, if we could sell tickets back to reality how many buyers would there be? Perhaps these are or should be obvious questions for us: What is real? What is reality? (Slight pause.)

Actual reality can be frighteningly real and really frightening. We’ve probably all seen pictures from smart bombs exploding as they detonate on the unsuspecting.

These are genuine, real, but they look unreal. What’s the reality? The bombs kill people. This juxtaposition of true reality against what is the made up presents a problem: why do people suspend disbelief, abandon critical faculties? Is reality so porous we are readily fooled, sometimes happily fooled, by evocations which look real?

Here’s more reality. Daily real tragedies happen— disasters, wars, poverty, economic, emotional, physical violence so vivid we can feel them. Even when we do not experience it first hand, we empathize, hurt with the wounded, cry out for justice, want to act as peace makers. Our emotions invite us to respond as if they were our own reality.

All this gives voice to our particular dilemma. There are times it’s not easy to discern how we, as Christians, should respond to reality. We can spend more time debating among ourselves about how to respond than responding.

If we fail to respond, have we failed to recognize reality just by dint of inertia? And yes, perhaps our own reality is, at best, flawed, difficult. (Pause.)

This is a related question: what is God’s reality? (Slight pause.) Genesis says, “God saw everything which had been made, was indeed, exceedingly good.” Does the creation story tell us something about God’s reality and the reality of God? (Slight pause.)

Genesis is not concerned with how creation happened. Genesis tells us God and God’s creation is bound together in a distinctive, delicate way, by the gracious involvement of God towards creation. What can clearly be learned from this premise— that God and the creation of God is good— is the Good News of Jesus becomes possible.

You see, we can neither explain away nor adequately analyze the story of creation. Also we can neither explain away nor adequately analyze the story of Jesus. The good news of creation, the Good News of Jesus, can only be affirmed, can only be confessed. These are statements of faith.

In this relationship with creation the characteristic action of God is to speak, name, call, to breathe life. God creates the universe through language, with infinite creativity God authors creation.

Genesis does not use the language of command but uses the language of poetry. So the creation stories in Genesis are a blessing, a liturgy.

As such the creation story is not about scientific description or about origins. The story of creation is a theological, pastoral statement, and again, a statement of faith.

‘Literalists’ would have the Genesis text seen as a blueprint. ‘Rationalists,’ insist there must be a logical explanation and would explain the text as mythology. Both misread the text in a literal way. Both obscure meaning by claiming an overriding definitive structure exists when the essence of the writing eludes any kind of structure.

In its journey with God, Israel is not concerned about God’s technique but God’s intent. So in Genesis ‘good’ is not a moral quality. Good is an aesthetic, a virtue. As a virtue it can never be pinned down, because virtue is verb-like, an ever changing process.

The poetry of Genesis confesses a faith in the reality of the world as God intended it to be. We, God’s creatures, are given a vocation, granted an opportunity to nurture the world, to exercise responsibility as God has exercised responsibility.

The reality of God in Genesis is not oppressive but creative. And we are meant to collaborate in the productiveness of that divine, benign creativeness.

Therefore, we are not meant to swing the cudgels of oppression, wack with sticks of hate, wield hammers of domination. There is a serenity and a peace in God’s work and in God’s world. We are invited, by God, to be participants in that peace, in that world. (Slight pause.)

The words of Genesis, revolutionary when recorded, revolutionary today, offer a gracious, self-giving, present God, not a remote God who reigns by fiat. There is also a revolutionary view of humanity as beings who are not chattel, not owned by God, but possess the free will to seek the same graciousness which God exudes.

We are, hence, ones to whom much is given and from whom comes the fruit of the covenant with God, the fruit of the community. Further, as a community, we are called to engage in this process of creation, called to attempt to remedy that which is unpleasing to God: those disasters, those wars, those conflict, the poverty, the economic, emotional, physical violence.

This is affirmed as a community process because in the Hebrew words employed for the creation of humanity— in those words— the plural is used. This is, thereby, also a bold affirmation that God is reflected not just in us not as individuals, but reflected in the community.

The opening stories in Genesis, therefore, are about process: the process of creation, the initial creation and the continuing creation. This is also about the process of community, each of us engaging with one another as together we seek the will of God.

This is about the process of dialogue between the Creator and the created, the process of dialogue between our flawed perceptions of reality and the perfect reality of God. This is about the process of a faithful God by Whom we are called to fidelity and the reality of a benevolent God who allows for our freedom.

We can either delight in the hard choices with which the ambiguity, the uncertainty of the process presents us. Or we can despair in the hard choices with which the ambiguity, the uncertainty of the process presents us.

We can even choose to abandon the process, abandon any attempt to be both faithful and free. And yes, since we have been granted free will by a gracious God, that choice is ours. All that poses a final question. What reality shall we choose? Which reality shall we decide that we will be a part of? God’s reality or perceived reality? [1] Amen.

06/04/2023
Elijah Kellogg Church, Harpswell, Maine

ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Benediction. This, then, is a précis of what the pastor said before the blessing: “As I said at the start of the service, today is Trinity Sunday. I did not directly address that. So here’s a poem, slightly truncated— by Maren Tirabassi, a pastor and poet. ‘God is like a symphony, not a soloist. / God is like a family, / any shaped family / steps and blends and chosen, / water cooler family and / recovery group family… / not like a hermit. // God is like a soup kitchen / where everyone eats together, / worker and guest…. // God sounds like the United Nations / or a really big airport, / God doesn’t sound / like a national anthem, / anyone’s national anthem. // God is more like prayer concerns / than a sermon, / anyone’s sermon, especially mine. // God is like Facebook (oh, no!) / with pictures of dogs / and vacations / and grandchildren, not a blog. / (Have you looked at the mess / that is the Bible?) // God is like a rambling farmhouse, / or a trailer park / or public housing / all those many, many rooms….’”

BENEDICTION: May the face of God shine upon us; may the peace of Christ rule among us; may the fire of the Spirit burn within us; and may we go from this worship to continue our worship with work and witness, in God’s name we pray. Amen.

[1] This analysis owes its origin to Walter Brueggemann as it is found in Genesis— Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. 1982. Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press.