June 15, 2014 (The Holy Trinity) – Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Making a Safe Place
The Holy Trinity – June 15, 2014
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
When the baby is about to arrive, you create a safe place for it, right?
You make a nice nursery so its life can flourish.
When you want to make a garden you cultivate and till and weed and fertilize and
create a safe place for the plants before you put them in.
Well – God does exactly the same thing in the very opening of the Bible.
God wants to create a safe place where life can flourish.
You’ll notice that the very first thing God does is create the safe place.
God makes the dome of the sky, the dry earth, and the watery seas.
Then God makes plants as food.
God’s first work is creating a safe place for the living creatures.
Only then does God create the creatures on the fifth day:
birds to fill the sky, sea creatures to fill the seas, and
domestic animals and wild animals to fill the earth.
Then God does something unexpected, something that breaks the nice pattern in the story.
God makes a creature in God’s image; God makes something like the divine self.
God creates human beings in God’s image.
And what does it mean to be created in God’s image?
Well, it can pretty much mean only one thing at this point in the story:
the only thing God has done up to now has been to create safe places for living things to
live and flourish.
It’s not rocket science, right?
Human beings are made for a purpose: for the meaningful work of caring for creation so that
it can be a safe place for the animals and other human beings.
That’s what it means to be made in the image of God.
The person who wrote Psalm 8 is riffing on the same theme, right?
He’s out at night, looking at the vastness of creation.
And he wonders: human beings are so puny! Why are you mindful of us, God?
He wonders: why would we think that God cares for us?
At the Synod Study Conference this week our speaker Rolf Jacobson reminded us that
there are lots of answers in the Bible to the question of why God cares for us.
We’re baptized children of God, we’re included in God’s people, Jesus died for love of us.
But the writer of Psalm 8 has a different answer.
The answer there is that it’s because God has given us godly work to do.
God has given us responsibility for the works of God’s hands.
For domestic animals and wild animals.
For the birds of the air and the fish of the sea.
For every other person on the face of the earth, especially the vulnerable.
We’ve been given godly work to do: that’s why God cares for us.
We have been made in the image of God: to be in mission with God to create and
sustain safe places for all living creatures.
That’s what we’re for. That’s our purpose.
We are made in the image of God.
Christians believe and celebrate that God is triune,
that God is most like a loving community of three persons.
See: God not only creates safe places for living creatures.
God is a safe place for all living creatures:
creation is an act of the three-personed God,
as if all creation were held in the embrace of this
perfectly loving community of three persons.
For within the embrace of the three-personed God is a loving, safe place to be.
What Jesus does is invite us into that embrace,
so that we might find safety and peace and love there.
When I was a child we used to confess the Athanasian Creed on Trinity Sunday:
Ah! The good old days!
Let me tell you it was looooooooong!
It was confessed at the Study Conference this week and I was reminded of the gold that
is buried deep within its depths.
The Athanasian Creed speaks at length of the triune God: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.
But it’s what it says about Jesus that is most helpful.
It says that in Jesus,
the amazing thing is not so much that the Divine turned into something human.
Rather, the amazing thing is that in Jesus God took humanity into the Divine!
Into the safe loving embrace of the Triune God!
That’s our true home where finally nothing can harm us!
That is the safe place that is especially for us.
And, living there, we invite others into that safe embrace,
for that is what we were made for:
to create and sustain safe places for all living things.
As a congregation – as a community – that is our purpose.
To be a community of loving persons to create and sustain safe places for all living things.
We are made in the image of God to be the image of God.
If God is most like a loving community of three persons then
I guess when people see or experience our loving community they will see God.
Now that’s something to think about.
In his second letter to the Corinthians,
Paul addresses a very divided , quarrelling community in Corinth.
Yet, how does he end the letter? With these well-known words:
Agree with one another, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
You can see how he’s inviting them to live into the life of the triune God whose
image they are to be.
He’s inviting them to be what they were created to be –
the image of the loving community of three persons –
by dwelling in the grace, love, and communion of the Triune God.
Here is where you get to do that.
The first words out of my mouth are not accidental: the first words out of my mouth on
Sunday morning invite you into that loving embrace at the very beginning of worship
to remind you that that is where you are:
right in the safe embrace of the perfectly loving triune God.
No matter what has happened to you during the week,
that is where you find yourself right now, and that is where you remain.
Within the safe embrace of the triune God.
And that is what you are invited to become as a community:
a safe embrace for all living creatures:
By the way you act as a community, by your ministries,
by the way you care for the vulnerable and strangers,
and by the way you conduct yourselves when you leave this place and
the decisions you make for a creation in peril.
And you are indeed becoming the image of the triune God you have found a home in here.
You are creating a safe place for all God’s children.
Many of you know that several years ago 2 children were shot and injured on this street
just 5 houses down from our building.
When it happened I wondered whether some would once again raise the possibility of
moving from this neighbourhood.
But not a single person did.
Instead, the voices I heard said, “How can we create a safe place for the children of this street?”
So together we created the Kids Club free drop-in ministry during the summer months for
children age 6 to 12 in our neighbourhood.
This summer the program will be in its 5th year.
It’s a sign of the purpose for which you have been made.
It’s a sign of your fundamental purpose as a congregation.
It’s a confession of what you fundamentally believe:
that you were created in the image of the triune God whose first task is creating
a safe place for all living creatures, so that life may flourish.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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