“’Let there be light’; and there was light” (Gen. 1:3).
We take life for granted: it’s the air we breathe and the water we drink. To imagine nothing in the place of our universe is to imagine ourselves out of existence: a self-defeating exercise if there ever was one. Every action we take, and every thought we think, presumes the existence of our world. Even if it’s all a dream, like the one the poor people in the Matrix films are having, a dream of another reality, there’s still the existence of the dreamer. Even there, we take life as a given.
But what’s really astonishing is that life exists at all: that there is something rather than nothing. Not to get philosophical too early in the morning, but what we take for granted is actually a gift, a totally gratuitous offering. Looking at the universe this way helps us realize how marvelous the universe actually is. What a gift! I know the absence of anything at all is hard to imagine, but everything we see around us, including our own selves, is a gift not a given. Better yet, if it’s a given, that’s only because there is a Giver who gave it.
In ancient Israel, the realization that God was the maker of heaven and earth grew out of God’s relationship with the family of Abraham. God entered into covenant with the People of Israel, and led them out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land. God remained faithful to the covenant even when the People disobeyed and were unfaithful. The primary fact in shaping their faith in God, was God’s own faithfulness and trustworthiness, time and time again.
But the Scriptures begin with the story of creation, as we heard this morning: with the ancient writers describing God’s creation of the heavens and the earth. This is the something that takes the place of nothing. God was not just the God of Israel but also the creator of all things: the maker of sun and moon and the stars above; of the seas and the dry land; of birds and fish and creeping things of every kind. Finally, of course, the maker of humankind. In the creation story, the Scriptures posited order out of chaos; regularity out of singularity; coherence in the face of a formless void. As it says, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31).
Human beings have received a gift, in the existence of the world and in our own existence. On Trinity Sunday we focus on the Giver of the gift: the One whose existence predicates the existence of everything else. The God who revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush as “I am who I am” (Ex. 3:14) is not defined by anything except his own existence. “I am who I am” (Ex. 3:14) doesn’t give much away. God simply is; and on that account, everything else can be.
As a result, we’ve received a gift. At the beginning of creation God says, “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3); but when God creates humanity he says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). Can you hear the difference? At the first, God simply directs, giving creation its marching orders; but with the creation of humanity there is a deliberative moment, a self-reflective pause before stepping forward into action. This moment of consultation, this “Let us make…” (Gen. 1:26), reflects the complexity of the God who made us: the plurality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit within the foundational unity of God.
Human beings, in themselves, reflect the image and likeness of God. We, like God, are complex; we too have our own self-reflective moments of consideration, deliberative moments before we step ahead into action. Knowing and understanding is a part of who we are. Perhaps there’s some value, after all, in being philosophical so very early in the morning! In imagining that the universe is a gift, we’re actually imaging God. In thinking and reflecting on existence, we’re also reflecting the God who made us. “Let us make humankind in our image” (Gen. 1:26), as its says in the story.
Of course, it’s in loving that we most clearly reflect the image of God. “God is love” (1 Jo. 4:16), as it says in the First Letter of John, and when we love we share in God’s very nature. As St. Paul says in our second reading, God is a God of “love and peace” (2 Cor. 13:11). God reveals his loving nature in making all things, including us: a gratuitous act of love that is a gift.
God is the giver of the gift. God made us, and then remade us by baptism. We’re baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. All of us today have the opportunity to reaffirm that faith along with our confirmands and those being baptized. The gift of new life we celebrate today is no more marvelous than the gift we were given in the beginning, when God said, “Let there be light; and there was light” (Gen. 1:3).