Sunday Stretch: Vol. 36

Start off your week with a grounded take on Bible, prayer, the world, and your life ...

Good Morning, Sunday Stretch-ers,

And welcome to all new subscribers! Today is Holy Trinity Sunday in the church, the last Sunday of the “busy” season for any altar guild members, who have been busily changing up paraments (the cloths and decorations surrounding the altar and sanctuary in many churches) for the colors of the changing liturgical seasons.

Traditionally, Holy Trinity uses white paraments, a change from last Sunday’s RED for Pentecost. But rest easy, Altar Guild, because from next Sunday until (in Lutheran Churches) Reformation Sunday at the end of October, you will have smooth sailing. I don’t believe the paraments change again until then.

And in case you’re looking to ease into church volunteer work, could I recommend signing up for Altar Guild in July or August? Of course, this will still mean you have to prepare for communion - and maybe attend church during the summer season which is often the lowest attendance Sundays.

But, enough inside baseball. I mention all this because it’s so easy, especially this time of year, to get caught up in the last-ness of it all - and to exhaustedly sprint out the end of the church year, the end of the school year, and enter into the summer season panting, so that it passes you by all-too-quickly and it’s time again to prepare for the busyness of fall.

Holy Trinity Sunday celebrates the Christian understanding of God in three persons, traditionally known as Father, Son and Holy Spirit - also rendered in other terms, such as Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. More importantly, Holy Trinity invites us to take a step backwards, and ease into a more expansive view of creation and the world.

Often in the Sunday Stretch, I don’t include the Psalm reading, but today I am - because Psalm 8 is such a perfect fit for this Sunday.

We can never see the world as God sees it, but Holy Trinity Sunday invites us to consider God’s perspective anyway, to see the breathtaking beauty of creation, and to understand that the sum of it - like the Trinity - is so much greater than each of the individual parts, and that we are likewise each bound up in one another.

Let’s get to the texts …

Bible Stories

Genesis 1:1-2:4

Gen. 1:1   In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,  ² 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.  ³ Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.  ⁴ And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.  ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Gen. 1:6   And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”  ⁷ So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so.  ⁸ God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

Gen. 1:9   And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so.  ¹⁰ God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.  ¹¹ Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so.  ¹² The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good.  ¹³ And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

Gen. 1:14   And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years,  ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.  ¹⁶ God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.  ¹⁷ God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth,  ¹⁸ to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.  ¹⁹ And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

Gen. 1:20   And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.”  ²¹ So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good.  ²² God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”  ²³ And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

Gen. 1:24   And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so.  ²⁵ God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

Gen. 1:26    Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

²⁷ So God created humankind in his image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

²⁸ God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”  ²⁹ God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.  ³⁰ And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.  ³¹ God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Gen. 2:1   Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude.  ² And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.  ³ So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

Gen. 2:4   These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

My Confirmation students and I spent much of our Bible year together in the book of Genesis, and one of our first lessons was unpacking the somewhat surprising news that Genesis actually contains two distinct Creation stories. Likely the better-known creation story, featuring Adam and Eve, doesn’t come until the second chapter of Genesis, and was authored first - the product of a verbal tradition that told the story of creation like a moral fable. Alternatively, the creation story of Genesis’ first chapter is much different. Instead of told through the point of view of humanity, Genesis 1 attempts to tell creation through God’s eyes. Don’t miss verse 31: “God saw everything that God had made, and indeed, it was very good.” That includes you.

Questions to Ponder

If God never gets tired, why did God need to rest?

How do you see the idea of Sabbath functioning in your life?

What do you think those first waters were like?

Psalm 8

¹ O LORD, our Sovereign,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory above the heavens.

² Out of the mouths of babes and infants

you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,

to silence the enemy and the avenger.

Psa. 8:3    When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have established;

⁴ what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

mortals that you care for them?

Psa. 8:5    Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

and crowned them with glory and honor.

⁶ You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under their feet,

⁷ all sheep and oxen,

and also the beasts of the field,

⁸ the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

Psa. 8:9    O LORD, our Sovereign,

how majestic is your name in all the earth!

It’s easy to get lost in Psalm 8 - and many a theologian and commentator has - as I’ve spent lots of time today reading. There is so much underneath this seemingly simple psalm, so much to understand about humanity’s place in the world and also about God’s creation and majesty, and how it is distinct from human power and majesty. You may have noticed that the image I linked to above is a YouTube video of singer Sandi Patty singing a song based on this Psalm. That song, playing from a tape player downstairs on old-school wooden speakers covered with foam - may as well be the soundtrack of my childhood. It reminds me not to lose the wonder of this Psalm.

Does the Psalmist view God as King? Why or why not?

How does Psalm 8 use imagery and word choice to subvert the way that power works in the world?

What kind of Power does verse 3 reference? Does it remind you of a Father God or a Mother God, or both?

Matthew 28:16-20

Matt. 28:16   Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  ¹⁷ When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.  ¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  ¹⁹ 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,  ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

This text is one of three that I always use in my classes with baptism families. I use it because I teach that, in the Lutheran tradition, each Sacrament has been explicitly requested by Jesus. Here, Jesus instructs that people be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is what I do each time I have the privilege of baptizing someone. I use this