“How Majestic Is Your Name”
Preached Sunday, June 12, 2022
At Grace we have 4 named values, of course we have many things that we hold close to our hearts that we share with one another, flames that we kindle as we seek to live out our Christian faith together. AND, we have four named values as a church, those which we share and lift up together. And one of those values, our most esoteric value is “Beauty through Wonder.” We define this value as “We worship and praise Christ in God’s earthly creation.” This value has its roots in how fundamental Worship by the Water is for us, our identity, and our faith, here at Vermilion Grace.
But of course, as I said, it’s also kind of esoteric, kind of “woo,” out there, hard to pin down - AND today is Trinity Sunday - which is perhaps the most, uhh, esoteric, kind of “woo,” out there, hard to pin down piece of doctrine that we hold as Christians. The joke that preachers tell each other every year as Trinity Sunday approaches is that maybe we should just do a hymn sing - cause preaching on Trinity Sunday can be a heresy minefield. I seriously thought about a hymn sing…but here I am preaching. But I’ll do my best to not commit any heresies while preaching…
Because the Trinity isn't meant to be explained. It’s a mystery. It’s something beautiful and divine and “woo” and out there and beyond logical explanation and it’s meant to be wondered, marveled, contemplated, and awed at. Not explained away or diagrammed. So in that Spirit, let’s turn to our Scripture for today:
Today’s Psalm is a song of wonder at God for the beauty and love imbued in God’s creation. The refrain for the Psalm is “O Lord, Our Sovereign, how majestic is Your Name in all the Earth!” The Psalmist wonders at how God is reflected through the natural world. God, who is the Creator of the universe, has left God’s fingerprints everywhere over all creation. I think of it like God as the potter, creation is the clay, and God has left fingerprints over all of us - but it’s not an imperfection - the pot, God’s creation, is even more beautiful for having been created and shaped by God.
God’s fingerprints are everywhere in creation and the Psalmist sings about this - in the heavens, the moon and the stars, in the oxen and beasts of the field, the birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea - even human beings.
And today, outside, here at Worship by the Water, on the beautiful shores of Lake Erie, we join the Psalmist in marveling at God’s fingerprints all over our creation - at the clouds and the skies - the birds, Robins and Herons and bald eagles, perhaps you will see some fish jumping out the lake, the breeze as it rustles through the trees - what a beautiful world, thank you God!
“O Lord how Majestic is your name in all the Earth!”
…And what is that name? The name of God, as far as we can know it, is the name of Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the fingerprints of God are the presence of the Trinity in our world.
We are used to thinking of just God the Father (or Mother or Parent, the Godhead), as the Creator - we’re used to this imagery of God the Father, the Sovereign King, the Creator of the Universe.
The God who spoke and it was.
The God who formed humanity out of dirt and breathed into us the breath of life - gracing us with the fingerprints of God.
I think of one of my favorite hymns, “This Is My Father’s World.”
“This is my Father's world,
and to my listening ears
all nature sings, and round me rings
the music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world:
I rest me in the thought
of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
his hand the wonders wrought.”
Truly - God the Father’s fingerprints are all over creation. Our God, Our Sovereign, Our Father, our Creator, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
AND, the other persons of the Trinity are also all over creation - their fingerprints showing from their hand in creation. All members of the Trinity were active in creating and they are reflected back to us through it.
Consider the prologue of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” The Word here is Jesus. In the Beginning was Jesus and Jesus was with God and Jesus was God. Jesus was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Jesus, and without Jesus not one thing came into being.
Jesus is at the center of creation AND all things came into being through him, including us. And we also have a belief in our faith called “imago dei” - it means, the image of God. Think of Genesis where God says “Let us make them in our image.” And I’m not saying that God has a body like ours, two eyes, and two ears, and a nose and mouth and all that…What I am saying is there is something inside of us, something innate to how we were made and who we are - many call it a soul or our capacity for love - that reflects God, the God who is Love, in us.
And God in Jesus DID come and take on flesh, the Divine as fully human, the one who through all things came into being, was and is one of us, Emmanuel, God-With-Us. Jesus had hands and feet…and now we are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to be God to each other - to reflect the God inside of us to the world.
Can we marvel at that? Can we see the beauty of God in each other? After all, we are God’s creation too - we were created by God and called very good, the crown of God’s creation!
O God, Jesus, The Word, our Brother, Creator, how majestic is your name in all the Earth!
And then there is the Spirit. One of my favorite images in all of Scripture comes from the first chapter in Genesis where it says that God’s wind swept across the darkness and chaos and creation began. I’ve said before that one of my sacred places is Camp Asbury. And at Camp there is a small lake there, Lake Hibbard, and early in the morning, while the air is cool but the lake is warmer, mist hovers over the water. Have any of you ever seen something like that before? To me, that mist represents the same Spirit that hovered over the deep as one of the first acts of creation.
So too in the act of Creation when God breathed the breath of life into us, that breath was the Holy Spirit. We are always with the very God who is our breath.
And at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came in the form of tongues of fire.
Let us marvel and wonder at the Holy Spirit! Wind and mist and breathe and fire - the Holy Spirit is a force of Divine nature within and around us, her fingerprints over us and all of creation.
Our God, Holy Spirit, Breath and Mist and Wind and Fire and Creator - How majestic is your name in all the earth!
Yes, we marvel and wonder at the mystery of Trinity and how we see it displayed and all around us in the beauty of creation. And what isn’t a mystery, is our call to be God stewards of God’s creation. If God’s fingerprints are all over this earthly world and over each other and all of humanity, we are called to loving stewardship and loving care for our world. As God cares for us, we are called to care for all that God has created. This is not a harsh dominion or subjugation of the created world - as many have taken it and abused our place in the ordered creation - but to be good, faithful stewards of our world for the wonder and glory of all. So that all creation may continue to wonder at the beautiful mystery of the Divine Creator - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - in all creation.
O Triune God, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Amen.
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