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Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
June 4, 2023

Trinity Sunday

          Anyone who has spent longer than a nano-second in my office knows that I am deeply in love with four small humans. My desk is filled with their photos which you see as soon as you poke your head in.  The oldest is Evelyn who just turned four and looks a lot like I did at that age. Her little sister is Sabrina, who is 8 months old and bears a strong resemblance to her mother and maternal grandmother, except for the rare occasion when she looks like our son.  Collins just turned 3 and has my mother’s round face, but her ringlet curls are a complete mystery.  Collins’ brother Banks is a new one year old and looks so much like his maternal grandfather.  And of course, whose image they bear is only part of the equation as we wait to see whose personality traits and interests they might also bear as they grow ever more fully into their own person. 

          Looking for the ways family resemblances and traits are passed down from one generation to another gives us some insight into who we are as members of a family.  This morning, in the reading from Genesis, we hear that we humans are made in the image of God.  “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  In today’s gospel reading we hear from one of the few passages that mentions the three persons of the Trinity in one breath.  Jesus says to the disciples “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”  On this Trinity Sunday, our readings call us to think about what it means that we humans are made in the image of one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer and to think about how we reflect that image back to God and to the world.

          First, as we are made in the image of God who is Father or Creator, we are called to be people who are creative and who see potential.  God looked at the formless void that would become creation and God saw tremendous possibility.  God took that potential and turned it into reality.  God’s people have always been called to be creative, especially in difficult times, whether they were finding their way through the wilderness to the Promised Land, or figuring out how to be a nation, or learning to be God’s people while in exile, or figuring out how to be the church coming out of a global pandemic, or how to work for justice and peace in a conflicted world.  We don’t always get that right and sometimes the image God sees back is probably quite amusing.  But we are called to be God’s creative presence in the world.

          Secondly, being made in the image of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit means that we bear the image of Jesus who came to redeem the world.  We promise to seek and serve Christ in all people at every baptism, but we also reflect the image of Christ to the world.  Redeem means taking something that is broken and making it whole.  Can the world understand redemption by our words and actions?  There is clearly no lack of brokenness in need of healing.

          Lastly, we are made in the image of God the Holy Spirit, the Sustainer or Comforter.  The work of creativity and making the broken whole is challenging work, and we are in this work for the long haul.  But we are not alone.  We have the very breath of God, the Holy Spirit, which was blown into us on Pentecost to sustain us.  When the work of living as one human family is hard, when the going gets tough and the temptation is to give up, the Holy Spirit sustains us to press on in the work of living as the image of God in the world. 

          I think back to a Friday night almost exactly three years ago when many of us and hundreds of others gathered for an Interfaith Vigil for justice and peace in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd.  We moved from the Clock Tower, to Christ Church, to First Congregational, then to Temple Beth Sholom stopping each time for prayer and reflection.  Finally we ended on the Green, gathered in candlelight and silence.  The mood was somber as we were called to realize the deep and dark ways we are broken as a human family, and the changes and hard work ahead in order to create something new, to bring wholeness and healing where there is pain, division, and fear, and to sustain the momentum and passion we felt in that moment. We were gathered as Christians, Jews, and Muslims, people of no faith and other faiths.  We were gathered as one human family, longing for a world in which the color of one’s skin does not make one exponentially more vulnerable to violence and death.  That event has become, for me, a parable of what can happen when we put aside all that divides us and live as people made in the image of one God.  At Christ Church, our Interfaith Thanksgiving Service, our work with First Serve as we gather with people of many faiths to make a difference in Akron’s North Hill, our efforts to figure out new ways to serve those in need, and our studies about racism are all part of living as people made in the image of our creative, redeeming, and sustaining God.  Trinity Sunday reminds us as Christians of our fundamental call to understand the human family as one, as God is one, and be people of creativity, radical and inclusive healing, sustained by the Holy Spirit to make a difference in the world. 

                                                                             Amen