In my recent quest to engage in photography as a hobby, I’ve been learning how to use a photo editing program called Lightroom Classic. It’s a powerful tool, so much so that I’ve wondered whether using it is a form of cheating. The fact of the matter is that all professional photographers edit their photos, whether it's erasing the obnoxious photobomber at the beach or the piece of spinach in someone’s teeth. But the more I’ve used Lightroom Classic, the more I’ve discovered that the editing process isn’t cheating at all. It's a creative process of recovering the original, raw image that the camera was trying to capture.
No matter how sophisticated they may be, cameras are fallible. They’re only as good as the quality of the light when a photograph is taken and the skill level of the photographer. If the day is too bright, the photo is overexposed. If it’s too gray, the range of color is muted. If the camera is held upside down, the image is skewed. Editing software simply allows the photographer to approximate the original image as much as possible, to recover what was initially seen with the naked human eye.
But what do we do with images that can’t be physically seen, that is, eternal images? How do we fallible humans in 2025 recapture an image of the perfect God, the One in whose image we were made, the One who has never been seen with the naked eye, who can’t be seen in this life by human sight, and who was only seen most visibly in Christ two millennia ago? The doctrine of the Trinity is, at its heart, a valiant, if imperfect, quest to recover an image of God that is so often hidden beneath the changes and chances of this mortal life. Even if no living human can see God face to face, we yet long for an understanding of where we came from and where we’re going. The more we understand who God is, the more we understand who we’re called to be as humans created in God’s image. Speaking about the Trinity is a way of going back to the raw image of God, an image that even the most pious Christian is at risk of forgetting.
It might seem odd that a book from the Old Testament would provide a bit of help in recovering this image of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But there’s a method to this madness. The Book of Proverbs presents us with a striking image of Wisdom standing in the public square, open and transparent for all to see, calling out for all to follow her. Her cry is an invitation, a summons back to a God who is at the heart of creation. Wisdom herself was with God when all was created and the universe was set into motion. Wisdom is nothing short of an invitation into the life of God, a life of delight in all of creation, including humanity. Can you imagine that? A God delighting in all of creation?
But what we don’t hear today is the preceding chapter in Proverbs, where we encounter Wisdom’s foil, otherwise known as Folly. She’s depicted in negative terms, a crude contrast to Wisdom. Folly is one who lures the unwise person into deviant paths and away from God.
The metaphorical person of Folly is a voice that I’m afraid we all know too well. It is, at times, subtle, lurking in our subconscious or slithering through our everyday speech or masquerading as light within theological circles. At other times, the voice of Folly is less subtle, increasingly so in our technological age of social media and anxiety-laden news. The voice of Folly in our own day is not so much the voice of a sexual temptress, as in the Book of Proverbs, but more the voice of deceit. The voice of Folly is the one who makes us believe in a distorted, fallacious image of God. But on this Trinity Sunday, with the help of the Church’s beautiful doctrine, we’re trying to recover and celebrate the raw, original image of God who constantly calls us back into relationship with him.
We all know the voice of Folly. It’s the voice that trumpets the inherent malevolence of the human condition. It’s the voice that chips away daily at our hope. It’s the voice that convinces us that our world is circling the drain into despair. It’s the voice that accepts unthinkingly the demise of the Church. It’s a seductive voice in its own way because we don’t need to look far to find evidence that supports the claims of the voice of Folly.
But if we’re looking to recover the raw image of God, we can look beyond the voice of Folly. We don’t need to doctor a flawed image to make a God that is likeable to us. We only need to heed the voice of Wisdom, who calls us back into relationship with God, to savor the image of God that has always been true and always will be true.
Wisdom calls us back to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, the first account of creation. And in Wisdom’s bold cry in the public square, we’re offered a charming retelling of that first account of creation, a version that is reminiscent of one told by the late Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In Tutu’s retelling of the creation story, we’re brought very close to that original image that can tell us quite a bit about God’s nature as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “In the very beginning,” Tutu recounts, “God’s love bubbled over when there was nothing else.” What an image! God’s love bubbled over! And when God had finished creating everything, “God looked at everything that he had made and clapped his hands together in delight. ‘Isn’t it wonderful!’ And on the seventh day, God laughed, and rested, and enjoyed his glorious creation.”[1]
This sounds so much like Wisdom’s account of creation in the Book of Proverbs, where she’s with God when all was created, sharing in God’s unending delight and joy. To borrow Archbishop Tutu’s words, this delight and joy bubble over. Infinite love and delight and joy can’t be contained within the Godhead, and so they overflow into the created world. Infinity touches finitude.
It’s as if Wisdom, crying out for all to hear, is inviting all of creation to share in the divine life of joy and delight and love. And so, it’s no wonder that ancient interpreters of Scripture found a type of Jesus, the Word made flesh, in Wisdom. Jesus as the incarnate Word is the One who always was with God and certainly was with God when all was created with joy and delight, when God clapped his hands and laughed. And in that moment in human time when the Word dwelt among us, Jesus was the visible image of God—rather like Wisdom—calling us back to God.
Jesus was not a judgmental Savior come to earth to save us so that God’s wrath could be appeased. Jesus was the fulfillment of Wisdom’s image in Proverbs, the embodiment of the eternal Word come to earth to invite us back into relationship with God, to rediscover that original raw image of a God who has always and will always rejoice and delight in his creation.
Every call to repentance for our sin and every judgment of our sinful recalcitrance is not a condemnation but an invitation to shun the voice of Folly and to heed the voice of Wisdom, the voice of love, that calls us back into relationship with God. In Jesus, the Word made flesh, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, God’s love bubbles over into our world, to draw us back to God so that we might share in the divine life.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not an intellectual exercise. It’s a call to share in the delight of God that still spills over into our world. It’s a summons to remember whence we came and where we’re headed. We came from goodness, and we’re called back to goodness. We came from the impetus of delight, and we’re called back to delight. We came from God; we’re called back to God.
In many ways, the Christian life is a pilgrimage in which we stand with two voices calling out to us. The voice of Folly is the voice of deception, feeding a perverse obsession with our own unworthiness and a desperate preoccupation with despair over the state of the world. The other voice, the voice of Wisdom, is the voice embodied in our Lord and Savior, the One who came to stand boldly in the public square and to invite us back into the life of God.
So, beloved in Christ, heed our Lord’s call. Come to the living water, the springs of eternal life. Come to the Bread of Life, who will feed you with his very life. Come to the One who makes everything new. Come to the One who calls you from your forlorn state into the life of God, a life of love, joy, and delight. Return home to the One who created you and has redeemed you and still sustains you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and whose raw image is one of unbounded love that continues to bubble over into our world. Come to the One who delights in you. And when you have captured this image in your soul, you will have found your true home.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday
June 15, 2025
[1] Desmond Tutu, Children of God Storybook Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), pp. 1 and 3