06/05/2026
We observed Trinity Sunday this week. The first lesson for the day was the first creation story that we read in Genesis. Psalm 137 (“By the waters of Babylon…”) recalls the distress of the exiles from Jerusalem when they found themselves in Babylon. “How can we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?” In Babylon, they encountered strange ideas that did not line up with their experience of God, including a creation story. It told of the birth of the gods out of the waters of chaos and their subsequent battles. It probably derived from the seven clay tablets of Enauma Elis, which you can look up, if you like. I have seen a detailed comparison of the stories which showed how the Genesis version was developed as a correction to the Babylonian ideas. There was only one God, who Himself created those waters. There was no struggle between good and bad, because everything worked at His command, and He declared it to be good. Because their faith was founded on seeing God at work in their historical experiences, the Jews had not really needed a creation story until Babylonian ideas started to creep in.
I see the formation of the Nicene Creed in the fourth century as a similar situation. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were encountered and mentioned together in our scriptures and in early Christian writings, but by the time the Church became legal, there were many people trying to figure out how this all worked. Thanks to our forebears, we have been taught to accept the mysterious existence of three in one, but then people new to the faith wanted to know if God created Jesus, in which case Jesus could not be God. Was Jesus a lesser god? Two gods? Was Jesus really flesh or in reality a spiritual being? The prolific Gnostics suggested, with many variations, that the world was created by an evil god, and Jesus was held captive by it until He broke free. Like the Jews in Babylon, the Church needed to make a statement, and Constantine called for councils to do it.
I was taught that the Nicene Creed is placed in our Prayer Book as a response to the whole Liturgy of the Word, as Psalms and canticles are placed after the readings. With its fourth century concerns, it is not meant to be a personal profession of faith for today’s Episcopalians, but it is an historical document that we can recite in unity with Christians around the world and throughout the ages. We begin, ”We believe….” As with the Lord’s Prayer, we can say it with the whole Communion of Saints. "Through the Church the song goes on," we sang on Sunday morning (Hymn #366, The Hymnal 1982).
So, can three be one? A rather eccentric friend of mine said, “Yes, look at bubble gum. You have the hard original gum right out of the wrapper, and the soft warm gum in your mouth, and the gum wrapped about your breath when you blow a bubble.”
Thoughts from an aged parishioner
