Sunday, October 5th: "The Image of God: Relationship"

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 The First United Presbyterian Church

“The Image of God: Relationship”

Rev. Amy Morgan

October 5, 2025

Matthew 3:16-17

And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Matthew 28:16-20

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

”5,280. That’s a number we’re pretty familiar with around here. As close as we are to the Mile High city, the number of feet in a mile is engraved on most of our brains. 

But on July 26, that number represented the length of a table, a table where more than 3,400 humans sat down and ate a meal together. Set at the Auraria Campus in Denver, this Mile Long Table brought together folks from all walks of life, all ages and abilities, all income levels and races and backgrounds. As the website for this historic event states, “When we eat together, the table reveals our shared humanity and fundamental sameness and holds the explosive potential to increase our sense of belonging, cultivate understanding and honor our differences.” 

We’ve talked over the last month about how our images of God impact our relationships – with God, the creation, other people, everything. But what is at the heart of all these images – God as animals, human, natural elements, or objects – is God as relationship itself. The God who protects like a lion and nurtures like a mother hen, the God who suffers like a woman in labor and heals like a physician, the God who attracts us like fire and nourishes us like bread – that God is revealed in all those images to be a God in relationship, always in relationship. 

Now, I’ve maintained through this whole series that we’re going to be focusing on biblical images of God. And God as relationship is indeed scriptural, though not exactly explicitly so. Because when we talk about God as relationship, the primary Christian doctrine we’re drawing from is the doctrine of the Trinity. 

The two scripture passages we read today point to the possibility of a triune God. In Jesus’s baptism, you’ve got the voice of God, the human Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in dove form. And Jesus commands his disciples to baptize with the trinitarian formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Later theologians drew from these and other passages to develop an understanding of God as One in Three Persons, mostly to solve theological disputes about polytheism or the worship of Jesus as a new god and rejection of the Hebrew god as evil. Since this isn’t Trinity Sunday, I’m not going to spend too long focusing on the nuances of Trinitarian theology, how it developed or how it’s been reinterpreted over the centuries. Instead, we are going to talk about why it matters. 

If we understand God as a trinity, as three persons, forces, entities, effects, or whatever you want to call them – and we understand these three things to be so co-equal, so consubstantial that we can say they are one – then we have to recognize that relationship is the very essence of God’s being. God is not God without the relationship of God’s three persons. God’s relationship with the world is not complete without the relationship of God’s three persons. God’s mission and vision are not fulfilled without the relationship of God’s three persons. If God is not essentially relationship, then God is not God. At least, not the God of the Bible, who creates the world in love, who redeems the world in the person of Jesus Christ, and who empowers the continuing work of God in the world through the Holy Spirit. 

And what we see throughout the whole of scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, is that this God as relationship is not a closed system. Yes, the three persons of the Trinity are in such intimate relationship that we can say they are one. But the Bible makes it clear that God’s table has more than three chairs. The Triune God is invitational and keeps inviting us, and everyone in all times and places, into that infinitely intimate relationship. God’s desire, as Jesus stated, is that we are all one, that we all belong, that we all have a seat at the table. 

Now, this does not mean that God desires us all to be alike. A very important aspect of trinitarian theology is that the three persons are distinct, different, have different forms and roles. Whether you call them Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or Parent, Partner, and Friend; Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, or Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, and Life-Giver – however we name them, there is diversity in the one-ness of God. 

As the contemplative Richard Rohr writes in his book The Divine Dance, “Goodness isn’t sameness. Goodness, to be goodness, needs contrast and tension, not perfect uniformity.” God as relationship requires diversity, the give-and-take, the multiple perspectives, that are essential components of relationship. 

And so the next thing we understand from God as relationship is that the fullness of God can only be experienced in relationship. American Christianity has largely modeled itself on the individualism that shapes our national identity. But a faith built on the glorification of individual righteousness is not a faith that worships a triune God, a God defined by relationship. Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz Weber asserts, “God from the beginning is, not God as bad math, but God as community.” It isn’t the math – one plus one plus one equals three - that makes the Trinity. It’s the relationship. So the only way to fully know that God is not in personal piety but in devoted community. 

Finally, and maybe most importantly, God as relationship matters, not because of what it tells us about God, but because of what it tells us about ourselves. We who are made in the divine image are created from and for and essentially as relationship. To cut ourselves off from relationship – with anyone or anything – is to diminish our own wholeness. The only way to fully know God is in community, and that is true for ourselves as well. 

And that means in diverse community, not just a community of people who look and act and think like us. We know ourselves not by the echo chambers we silo ourselves in but by the disagreements and challenges, the thought-provoking other perspectives, the relationships that open our eyes to realities we have not experienced ourselves. 

Folks in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints gave us a stunning example of what that looks like this week. After a man wrought horrendous violence upon one of their houses of worship, they began contributing to a fund to support the family of the attacker. Their commitment to relationship is so deep that it extends even to those who have hurt them, even to those who hate them. They aren’t trinitarian in their theology, but they demonstrated what it means to be in relationship with a God of relationship. They showed what it means to be humans made in the image of a relational God.

Like God, humans as relationship are invitational. Our relationships are designed to be open systems, constantly expanding, making the table longer. And a mile isn’t long enough.

That’s why we come to this table, the table where Jesus is host, the table where everyone is invited, the table of communion, of community, of relationship. Especially on this World Communion Sunday, we celebrate that this is a never-ending, always-expanding table. It is the longest table EVER! At this table, we are united with God’s children in all times and in all places, in all our diversity, in all our one-ness. This table reveals our shared humanity and the divine image we bear. This table reveals our fundamental sameness and our beautiful distinctions. This table holds not just the potential to increase our sense of belonging but is the tangible reality that we do belong – to God, to one another, and to the whole creation. In eating and drinking together at this table, we live into our identity as human beings made in the image of a triune God, a God who is relationship. 

So, my friends, when we come to this table today, we can know God more fully, we can know ourselves more fully, we can know each other more fully, in the relationships inherent in this sacrament. And we can go out from this place radiating with the glory of our triune God. And we can create longer tables – in our families and workplaces, in our schools and social groups, in our city and state, in our nation and our world. We are those who know God as relationship, who know we are relationship, who can welcome others into relationship. 

To the Triune God, the Relationship, be all glory forever and ever. Amen.