Light in the Darkness

Trinity Sunday

June 15, 2014

Genesis 1:1-2: 4a (translation from The Tanakh)

When God began to create heaven and earth— the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water— God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.

God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water.” God made the expanse, and it separated the water which was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse. And it was so. God called the expanse Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

God said, “Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area, that the dry land may appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of waters He called Seas. And God saw that this was good. And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation: seed-bearing plants, fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night; they shall serve as signs for the set times—the days and the years; and they shall serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth.” And it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to dominate the day and the lesser light to dominate the night, and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth, to dominate the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.

God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” God created the great sea monsters, and all the living creatures of every kind that creep, which the waters brought forth in swarms, and all the winged birds of every kind. And God saw that this was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fertile and increase, fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.

God said, “Let the earth bring forth every kind of living creature: cattle, creeping things, and wild beasts of every kind.” And it was so. God made wild beasts of every kind and cattle of every kind, and all kinds of creeping things of the earth. And God saw that this was good. And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.” And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.”

God said, “See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food. And to all the animals on land, to all the birds of the sky, and to everything that creeps on earth, in which there is the breath of life, [I give] all the green plants for food.” And it was so. And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array. On the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing, and He ceased on the seventh day from all the work that He had done. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation that He had done. Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created.

Have you ever been in a room that was completely and totally dark? I’m not talking about a room where the lights are off, the shades drawn, the door closed. Not, I mean completely dark. I’m talking about being in a room where there isn’t even a sliver of light anywhere, where there isn’t that muted darkness that we most often speak about as dark. If you’ve ever been in a room that dark, in a place that dark, how did you feel? Did you feel safe, did you feel comfortable? For most people, complete and total darkness is not something that brings with it comfort. In fact, for most people, being in a place of complete and total darkness is terrifying. Darkness is cold, impersonal uncomfortable.

I would wager that most of us probably sleep with a little bit of light somewhere. Maybe it’s a night light – whether in our room or just outside in the hallway. Maybe it’s a sliver of light that peaks itself around the curtains from a light outside. Maybe it’s the glow of a clock. Maybe it’s the glow of a television that scatters the darkness. Both of our girls like to sleep with a light on. We tried early on having them sleep in darkness, but it didn’t work. In the beginning it mainly didn’t work for us. When they were much younger and cried at 2 o’clock in the morning and we tried to make our way to their side in darkness, we tended to bring our toes into contact with doors, or dressers, or the legs of beds; and that contact was not gentle. The darkness of the room sometimes caused us to use some rather dark language in response to our stubbed toes and banged knees. It was just easier (and far less painful for us) to have a light of some kind in the girls room. Now, they sleep with night lights on. If we forget to turn on the light, we are definitely reminded to do something about it. Light, the presence of light in a dark room is comforting, light is good.

That’s the way the beginning of the creation story ends, ‘God saw that the light was good.’ Light is good; and it makes sense then that the opposite would be true: darkness is bad. Light good, dark bad. It reminds me of the old western movies, of the Lone Ranger, or Roy Rogers; the good guys wore white hats, while the bad guys wore black ones. It was an easy way to see in a glance who was good, who was bad. That works great until a bad guy decides to put on a white hat, or Batman puts on an all-black costume, then our nice little order that we create dissolves into chaos.

Most theologians speak about the creation story as one of ordering chaos. Darkness and water were both seen by ancient people as being chaotic. In the first few verses of Genesis we find both water and darkness combined; an image more chaotic to an ancient person than darkness covering the face of the deep, darkness covering the immensity of waters, would be hard to come up with. God creates, breaks into the chaos, breaks into the darkness; light pierces the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it, a sense of order enters into the chaos.

I think it’s safe for me to say that most of us find order to be far more comfortable than chaos. That when we are surrounded by chaos, by things that just aren’t working right we are far from being at ease. However, when we are in a situation that seems ordered, where we know what is going to happen, or what should happen, suddenly we feel better, we feel much more at ease, comfortable, comforted by the relative lack of chaos.

According to Genesis, God came into a universe that was chaotic, without form and feature, and brought structure and reason. God came into the chaos that had been, and created an order that God himself declared ‘good.’ Life can often seem like whatever it was before God acted, a little chaotic, a little dark; it might be hard to see the order around us; and that’s when we look to the continuing breaking in of God into this universe, this world, our lives.

When we think about God, when we think about the ways that God breaks into our lives, that is one of the times when it’s easy to see God fully. Today is trinity Sunday. Last week we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, today we remind ourselves of the fullness of God: traditionally referred to as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God breaks into our lives in each person of the Godhead, and in each one we see more of who God is, and understand ourselves and our relationship to God just a little bit more.

Paul reminds us and the church in Corinth of this when he writes: “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” The grace of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Grace, that free gift of God that is given to us without us having first done anything to be deserving of it. Grace, the gift from God that keeps on giving. Jesus came to save us simply because we needed to be saved, not because we had done something right, not because we had prayed hard enough or followed the right commandments, or recognized him as Lord. No, he came and did all that he did for us before we had done anything, before we knew who he was, before we had come to love him. Grace, salvation, was opened up to us while we still didn’t have a clue we needed to be saved.

The grace of Jesus was offered to us through the incredible love of God. We all know what John 3 says,” For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (vs. 16,17). God’s love was so intense for us that it would not even allow him to keep his own beloved Son from suffering. God’s love reaches out and embraces us, brings us in from where we have been and claims us as his own. God’s love for his creation has never ceased or diminished since he named it good.

We have been claimed, and in our claiming we have been named God’s children, and have become sisters and brothers. Through the love of God we are claimed, and through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit we are united. That’s really what that word communion means that Paul uses: united. Through the Spirit we come together in communion, we come together in fellowship we come together with one another and with God. The Holy Spirit is that glue that connects us. It opens up our hearts, minds, and eyes to see God more fully, and to see those around us. The Holy Spirit helps us to break down the barriers that keep us apart, those walls and boundaries we are so fond of creating as humans; those things we like because we can then define who is on our side of the boundary and who isn’t. The Holy Spirit helps us to see beyond those walls, it helps us to see that the barriers are of our creating, and as such against God’s will. It helps us to reach out, when our human parts tell us to keep to ourselves, to worry about our own needs and not those nameless who we name ‘the least of these.’

The love of God, the Grace of Jesus and the communion of the Holy Spirit; the fullness of God expressed; to bring order to the chaos, light to the darkness, freedom to the captive, comfort to the distressed, forgiveness to the sinner. The idea of the trinity, the fact that we worship a God that is three-in-one, can be difficult to understand, in fact I know many good, believing, church-going people who have problems with it; but our understanding of the nature of God doesn’t change the way that God acts. It doesn’t change the way God loves us, it doesn’t change the incredible gift of grace that God gave us in Jesus, it doesn’t change the way that God unites and brings us together. It doesn’t change the comfort we receive from all that God has done, does, and will do for us. From time to time it may seems as if the darkness is closing in on us, we may feel alone, we may feel unloved; yet God is there, the love of God embraces us and we are reminded of our having been claimed by God as his own, as his own sons and daughters. And that truth can scatter and shatter any darkness. Amen.