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1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he 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. 6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. 9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. 14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day. 20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day. 24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” 29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. 1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. 4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. (Genesis 1:1-2:4a)
Dear Friend, this is the very beginning of all things. This is the sonogram of all of us, pasted on God's refrigerator! I'm old enough (yes, again!) to remember rabbits having to die in order for parents to know if they were expecting or not. And you old rock fans will remember that in a lyric by Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion." But later, comes the sonogram and now couples share with parents "photos" of their soon-to-be grandchildren.
Before the first creature drew breath. Before the first morning broke over the first mountain. Before any human eye opened to see a sky or a sea or a growing thing — there was God. And the very first thing the Bible wants us to know about God is that he creates.
Genesis 1 is the foundation of everything. It is the text the church has read on Trinity Sunday for centuries, not because it contains the word Trinity — it does not — but because, read in the light of the full revelation of Scripture, it is unmistakably Trinitarian. The God who creates is already, in these opening verses, Father, Son, and Spirit — working together, speaking together, making together. The community that God is has always been there, from before the beginning.
Let us look at what creation tells us about the God who made it.
The passage opens with two movements that the New Testament will later identify as two persons of the Trinity doing what they have always done together.
First, the Spirit. “The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” The Hebrew word for hovering — merachefet — is the word used for a bird hovering over its nest, wings spread, present and attentive and ready. Before a single word of creation has been spoken, the Spirit is already there — brooding over the chaos, present in the darkness, ready to bring life and order out of formlessness and void. This is the same Spirit who hovered over the disciples in the upper room at Pentecost, the same Spirit who renews the face of the ground, the same Spirit who takes up residence in the life of every believer. He has been doing this from the very first moment of creation. He was there before the light.
Then the Word. “And God said…” Ten times in Genesis 1, those two words appear. God said — and it was. John’s Gospel opens with a deliberate echo of this moment: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made.” The Word by whom all things were made is the same Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus Christ was not a late arrival in the story of God’s relationship with creation. He was there at the very first word. Every star, every creature, every blade of grass was spoken into being through him.
Father, Son, and Spirit — all present, all active, all working together at the very first moment. The Trinity did not become community at the Incarnation. It has always been community. Creation is the overflow of a love that was already complete before the world began.
On the sixth day, God pauses before the climax of creation and speaks in a way he has not spoken before. Not “Let there be” — the commanding word that called everything else into existence. But “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.”
Us. Our. The plural has puzzled and fascinated interpreters for centuries. Some have suggested it is the royal we, or God addressing the heavenly court. But read in the light of the whole of Scripture, it is most naturally understood as the first whisper of the Trinitarian nature of God that will be progressively revealed through the rest of the biblical story. The God who is community speaks in community, creates in community, and makes a creature uniquely capable of reflecting that community back.
To be made in the image of a Trinitarian God is to be made for relationship. Not self-sufficient, not solitary, not complete in isolation — but made for the kind of love and communion that has always existed within God himself. When God looked at the man alone in the garden and said “it is not good for the man to be alone,” he was not correcting an oversight. He was revealing something about the image in which humanity was made: we image a God who is never alone, whose very being is the eternal exchange of love between Father, Son, and Spirit.
The hunger for genuine community — the longing to be truly known and truly loved — is not a weakness or a neediness to be overcome. It is the image of God in us, reaching toward the God who made us for himself.
Trinity Sunday invites us to begin at the beginning — to go all the way back to the first verse of the first book and ask: what does creation tell us about the God who made it?
It tells us that the God who created is never alone. The Spirit was already hovering. The Word was already present. The Father was already speaking. Before anything else existed, there was the community of the Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the eternal exchange of love that is the source and ground of everything that exists.
It tells us that we are made in the image of that God. We are made for love and community and genuine relationship because the God whose image we bear has always been love, community, and relationship. The longing we feel for these things is not incidental to who we are. It is essential.
And it tells us that the God who called the world “very good” has not abandoned what he made. The same Spirit who hovered over the waters at the beginning is hovering still. The same Word through whom all things were made has entered that creation in flesh and bone and nail and resurrection. The same Father who rested on the seventh day and saw that it was good is still at work, through Son and Spirit, bringing the creation he loves to the wholeness he intended.
That is the God we worship on Trinity Sunday. The one who was there before the light. The one who spoke, and it was. The one who hovered, and still hovers, over everything he loves.
PRAYER: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — you who were present before the first light and are present still — let the image in which you made us draw us deeper into the love and community that has always been at the heart of who you are. Amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: This week, invest in one relationship with the deliberate awareness that you are made in the image of a communal God — listen more deeply, show up more fully, or reach out to someone from whom you have grown distant — as an act of living into the image of the Trinity.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me. Remember in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and God created you!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
