“God’s handiwork” Colchester Federated Church, June 15, 2025, Trinity Sunday (Psalm 8)

Today is Trinity Sunday in the liturgical calendar—the Sunday after Pentecost.  This is a day when we celebrate the doctrine of the Trinity.  We celebrate our God as Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer or Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or Mother, Child, and Breath of God and what this all means.  We contemplate the essence of God and how we understand God’s divine majesty.  On this Trinity Sunday, we hear the sweeping words of the Psalmist from Psalm 8—a hymn of praise for God’s exaltation of humanity.  This is a psalm about divine majesty and human dignity. 

When we look at the world around us, we can see many instances of conflict.  How often do we separate ourselves from one another?  We see Russians and Ukrainians, Palestinians and Israelis (and now Iranians) seemingly at war.  We see immigrants living in fear and raids and protests and counter-protests.  There is a great deal of unrest and uncertainty.  To hear a song of praise like Psalm 8 can be hopeful.  Not hopeful in a way that we just bury our heads in the sand and pretend that everything is fine, but as a way to acknowledge the vastness of God amid the uncertainty and unrest. 

Perhaps this Psalm can serve as a reminder that we will never look into the eyes of someone that God does not love.  As the Psalmist writes, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?  Yet you have made them a little lower than Godand crowned them with glory and honor.”[1] 

Humanity is a manifestation of God’s glory.  We see the amazing handiwork of God as we look at the moon and the stars and the good earth we are blessed to call our home.  Psychology Professor Dacher Keltner defines awe as “the emotion we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that we don’t understand.”[2]  This psalm evokes that feeling of awe, this feeling of encountering a mystery that transcends our understanding.  Even on Trinity Sunday we can acknowledge that the word “Trinity” is nowhere in the Bible.  Yet Christians were working out how to understand the commitment to monotheism, encountering God’s presence in the words and deeds and person of Jesus, and the Spirit of God dwelling among and within us to help be the Church.  Sometimes I think of the early Christians working out the doctrine of the Trinity as a response to awe—encountering vast mysteries that are hard to understand.

The Psalmist is questioning the place of human beings in the midst of it all.  The Psalmist is wondering why God is mindful of us at all given the earth and the sea and the sky?  What value do human beings have in the grand cosmos anyway?  Other biblical writers would ask and answer this question in a more negative way.  Perhaps this is what makes this song of praise about divine majesty and human dignity so helpful to keep on our hearts and minds in these sometimes-tumultuous days—especially when human dignity is not always honored.

To help us understand human dignity and divine majesty the Psalmist pivots to the idea of God giving humanity “dominion” over the works of God’s hands.  Our Christian faith has a lot to say about how we are called to protect heaven and earth.  Some classify this theology as creation care.  We can recall that the word “dominion” gets used in the Creation Story in Genesis.  In the beginning, God says, “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.”[3]

Here in Psalm 8 “dominion” is used when speaking about the relationship we human beings are to have with creation.  We hear an echo of Genesis, “You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.”[4]

Dominion can mean sovereignty or control.  It certainly doesn’t have to mean domination.  That definition has been used tragically in human history as justification for terrible treatment of our earth.  In actuality, we’re talking about being responsible with and for the earth itself.  Why?  Because human beings reflect God’s nature, we resemble God, we possess the likeness of God.  And we have God-given responsibilities as such.  Dominion can point to stewardship. 

To be a steward means to manage people’s property, finances, or other affairs.  The Ministry of Stewardship at our church is responsible for the financial assets of our church and are stewards of church properties.  When we are God’s stewards, we’re taking care of God’s creation.  We are responsible for the earth God gives out of love for all beings.  Since we humans are feeling and thinking beings, then maybe we have a unique responsibility to care for the earth and for the beings in the more-than-human world with whom we share the earth.  We are called to be good caretakers.  Called to be co-creators with God and to help God mend the world. 

There’s this beautiful concept in Judaism called tikkun olam—that human beings participate in the drama of mending the world.  We can’t passively sit on the sidelines and expect others to fix the problems we see, not when we are called to be active co-creators with God.  Some would say that God is Light and Love.  In the act of creation, God diminished God’s own self.  God spread Light and Love out into the world, gifting each of us the Divine Spark.  We are made in the very image and likeness of God. 

Just for a moment, we can picture Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam.”  God reaches out from heaven to give the spark of life to Adam on earth.  Now God is probably not an old white bearded dude in the sky, but you get the idea.  God needs us.  We need God.  This is a famous artistic depiction of this idea.  There’s a relationship present here just like the doctrine of the Trinity is about the relationship among and between God our Creator and Jesus the Christ and the Holy Spirit at work in the world and our lives. 

It ends up that when we help God mend this beautiful world of ours, we spread some of that Light and Love around.  Perhaps we even give these gifts back to God!  Greg Mobley (my former Old Testament professor at Andover Newton) describes tikkun olam by writing: “Before time, the blinding Infinite Light exploded into a billion sparks . . . this creation of the many left the One diminished.  It is the sacred duty of every person to let [their] little light shine, shine, shine, one good deed at a time, and thus restore the full brilliance of the Light of Lights.”[5] 

That’s the thing about our place in the universe as contemplated by the Psalmist, it is such a huge concept that it’s hard to consider our place in the story and what we can possibly do to make a difference.  It is awe-inspiring to consider that when we look at God’s heavens and the work of God’s fingers, when we consider the moon and the stars that God has established, God is mindful of us too.  This is why tikkun olam can be really moving.  Because when we let our little lights shine one good deed at a time, perhaps we are restoring the full brilliance of God.  We are living into the idea that we are created in God’s very image and we have been entrusted to help other beings with whom we share our earth.  We are crowned with glory and honor.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] Psalm 8:3-5, NRSVUE.
[2] Dacher Keltner, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.
[3] Genesis 1:26, NRSV.
[4] Psalm 8:6-8, NRSVUE.
[5] Greg Mobley, The Return of the Chaos Monster—and other Backstories of the Bible, 82.

Photo by Rev. Lauren Ostrout.