Prism view
Commentary
Five fine crystal ornaments hang in one window of our home. We received them as gifts
years ago -- one to represent each member of our family. Some look like snowflakes,
others more like stylized stars. On their own each is very pretty, but when light streams
through that window the ornaments come alive and announce their presence everywhere.
They function as prisms, bending sunbeams and spraying the walls and ceiling with
colorful rainbows that slide and shimmer and dance just out of reach. The transparent
brilliance of sunlight is subtly altered through these delicate cuts of glass, and emerges
partitioned and visible. The unseen takes on form. The invisible becomes hued.
This may serve as a metaphor for today and the passages of scripture that shape our Holy Trinity Sunday worship themes. Advent reminds us of the work of the Creator, forming our world and holding it together in its fallen condition until a Redeemer could be sent. Christmas, Lent, and Easter broaden our understanding of God by introducing us to Jesus our Savior, divinity incarnate. Finally we round out the liturgical year with Pentecost, and review again the coming of the Holy Spirit to breathe life into the church and its mission. So here, a week later, we have a fuller concept of God: The invisible has been diffused into hues and shades that are more accessible or understandable. Holy Trinity Sunday is our prism that takes the glory light of heaven and allows its constituent parts to be the focus of our attention for a short while.
The Trinity is Christianity's unique and essential doctrine. Christianity is monotheistic, yet confesses three divine persons who are both inseparable and unconfusable. No wonder there have been charges against Christianity for being tritheistic or irrational or absurd. Yet the doctrine of the Trinity remains, not because theologians want some esoteric puzzle to keep them employed from century to century, but because we meet God first as transcendent Creator, then as incarnate Redeemer, and finally as indwelling Sanctifier. The "Trinity" is not so much a theological or philosophical construct that we need somehow to explicate as it is a reflection of our historical encounter with God that we need to understand more fully.
There are a number of analogies that have become most popular when pastors try to tackle and teach the three-person-monotheism doctrine. Some balance an egg on the pulpit and talk about the shell, the white, and the yolk as inseparable dimensions of an egg: each can be isolated, but when that happens whatever there was of "eggness" is lost. Some show pictures of themselves in relation to other important people in their lives: they are children to their aging parents, spouses to their significant others, and parents to their own children, unique in each role yet uncontrovertibly the same being throughout. Others point to three-leafed clovers, or the Revealer/Receiver/Revelation triumvirate, or the Lover/Loved/Love mystical trinity as parallels from other worlds or dimensions.
When all is said and done, however, all of these Trinitarian analogies can be reduced to two primary groupings. The "Psychological Analogies" of the Trinity always start with one essence (light), personality (human psyche), or identity (egg), and try to figure out some way to isolate three strong dimensions. God is One, but God condescends to us, showing us only a portion of God's self at a time, accommodating to our weaknesses and limitations of understanding so as not to overwhelm us with the ineffable. These approaches strongly safeguard Christianity's monotheism and align it with Judaism and Islam, its historical bookends. At the same time, however, they push toward something called "modalism," which the church has consistently denied as heresy. Modalism emphasizes the oneness of God with such vigor that it tends to portray the personalities of Father, Son, and Spirit as merely temporary faces adopted by the deity briefly to make a point or two.
The "Sociological Analogies" of the Trinity approach the matter from precisely the opposite point of view. Scenes like those of Jesus' baptism confront us with the undeniable separate realities of Father (voice from heaven), Son (man in the water), and Holy Spirit (descending dove of consecration), and we must find someway to explain their essential unity. Sociological Analogies generally deal with the matter in some form of genus and species dialogue. Just as any given room (like a worship auditorium on a Sunday morning) contains only one humanity, but usually a variety of individual persons who are each fully human yet different from one another, so there is but one deity with exactly three persons, each of whom is fully divine and yet distinct from the others. In this manner of teaching Trinity theory, the major difficulties are those of stumbling into actual tritheism, or some deficient Christologies (like Nestorianism, Arianism, or Eutychianism), which cannot find a good way to keep the human person, Jesus, fully integrated into the divine community.
While both families of Trinity theory add helpful dimensions to our understandings, neither is fully satisfactory. Yet each may provide insights that are beneficial for our teaching explorations on Holy Trinity Sunday. In the lectionary passages assigned for the day, Proverbs 8 focuses on the Creator and may allude to the Redeemer as a cohort in the creative enterprise. Romans 5 keeps Jesus the Redeemer center stage, but ensures his partnership with the Creator and to a lesser extent the Sanctifier. In John 16, Jesus is the speaker, and brings into purview both the Creator and the Sanctifier. Preaching today may prove to be highly suggestive, impenetrably dense, or tediously boring. Hopefully, however, it will also be energetic, enlightening, and encouraging.
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
The book of Proverbs consists of a number of collections of "Wisdom Literature" gathered into a single package. The largest grouping is "The Proverbs of Solomon" (10:1- -22:16), which, along with its addendum ("More Proverbs of Solomon"; 25:1--29:27), provides the name for the whole in its canonical form. Along with these are other short collections of proverbs and sayings, the famous acrostic poem on the virtuous wife that concludes the whole, and a nine-chapter, carefully crafted, lecture on wisdom that opens the book. In the first nine chapters there is a balanced presentation of the whims and whiles of two women -- Wisdom and Folly. These are feminine nouns in the Hebrew language, and they are used as foils over against a young male ("my son") who is about to leave home and find his way in the world. Wisdom and Folly personify paradigms or worldviews or value systems through which we interpret and respond to life. Proverbs 1- 9 insists that we must choose one or the other, for these are the only options. The lectures also insist that opting for Folly's ways will bring us difficulties, destruction, dehumanization, and death, while Wisdom will always lead us into health and wholeness and happiness. The portrayals are overstated and stylized and absolutized, of course, but that is the way of paradigms.
Wisdom is clearly identified as the manifestation of and companion to God. Nowhere is that more clear than in chapter 8. Yet the poetic personification of Wisdom has led to a variety of interpretations. When abstracted from its clear use within the lectures of Proverbs 1-9, Wisdom has often become an allegory of the second person of the Trinity. If the Father is to be identified with the Creator, then the Son becomes the Father's eternal companion. Moreover, the brief note that opens the gospel of John (speaking of the Word as eternal with God and the agent of creation and the essence of the incarnated Jesus) has led many preachers to expound upon Proverbs 8 as a hymn of Christ.
Since Proverbs 8 is a chosen lectionary passage for Holy Trinity Sunday it may be assumed that the lectionary creators are offering it up for this use, as well. In that case, one must ignore its literary context and adapt it in allegorical form as a pre-incarnation analogy of the second person of the Trinity. Homiletic development may include reflections on the close relationship between the first and second persons of the Trinity, the creative energy emanating from the pre-incarnate Son, and the ultimate fulfillment of human destiny that can only be found in compliance to Wisdom's designs.
Perhaps a better approach would be to use Holy Trinity Sunday to explicate the "Sociological Analogy of the Trinity" and then use a passage like Proverbs 8 to show how the value of community is at the heart of the universe -- originated among the persons of the deity and thus normative for the best of human lifestyle, as "Wisdom" shows. A powerful example of this is found in Ernest Gordon's book To End All Wars (Zondervan, 2002). It is the true tale of what took place in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp made famous by the movie The Bridge over the River Kwai. The camp stood at the end of the Bataan death march that brought Allied soldiers deep into the jungles of Asia. Few would survive, and everyone knew it. In order to make the best of a terrible situation they teamed up in pairs, each watching out for a buddy.
One prisoner was a strapping six-foot-three fellow built like a tower of iron. If any could come out of this alive, all felt he would. That was before his buddy got malaria. The smaller fellow was much weaker, and very likely to die. Their captors did not want to deal with sickness, so anyone who was unable to work was confined in a "hot house" until he succumbed to heat exhaustion, dehydration, and the collapse of his bodily systems.
The sick man was locked into a hothouse and left to die. Surprisingly, he did not die, because every mealtime his strong buddy went out to him, under curses and threats from the guards, and shared his meager rations. Every night, his strong buddy sneaked from the prison barracks, braved the watchful eyes above that held guns of death, and brought his own slim blanket to cover the fevered convulsions of the sick man.
At the end of two weeks, the sick man astounded the guards by recovering well enough to be able to return to work. He even survived the entire camp experience and lived to tell about it. His buddy, however -- the strong man all thought invincible -- died very shortly of malaria, exposure, and dysentery. He had given his life to save his friend.
The story does not end there. When Allied troops liberated that camp at the close of the war in the Pacific, virtually every prisoner was a Christian. There was a symphony orchestra in camp, with instruments made of the crudest materials. There were worship services every Sunday, and the death toll was far lower than any expected. All this because of the silent testimony made by a strong man toward his buddy facing death.
There is much that pretends to be wise in our world, but nothing can match the profound wisdom of divinity-imitating community and the strength of true mercy.
Romans 5:1-5
Paul's letter to the Roman church was written at the end of his third mission journey while he spent a winter in Corinth. Paul was gathering an offering for the poor to bring to Jerusalem for distribution, and he hoped soon after that to make a trip to Rome. His goal was to spend time with friends there (whom he had met in a variety of circumstances and places during his journeys), explain his teachings to the Roman congregation (which was somewhat divided in their reactions to this powerhouse leader who had so strongly influenced the expanding church), and then give them opportunity to send him off with prayers and financial assistance in his next mission journey to Spain. Paul's hopes were transformed significantly when he was arrested in Jerusalem, kept in prison for several years by cowardly politicians, shipwrecked on the voyage to Rome, and presented finally in the great city as a captive.
Because Paul is writing a brief summary of and apology for his faith, Romans is more organized and logically developed than many of Paul's letters. In it, Paul provides a summary statement of God's righteousness recently revealed (1:1-17), and then launches into a depressing testimony of the human condition (1:18--3:20). At this nadir Paul begins the powerful turnaround of the gospel, using the towering figure of Abraham as his first illustrative point (ch. 4). Here in chapter 5 Paul summarizes the heart of the gospel, showing the Father's good favor expressed in the work of the Son, our shared journey through the sufferings of the Son, and the grace we receive by way of the strengthening of the Holy Spirit. In a nutshell, Paul clarifies the changing condition of those who are transformed by the grace of God, and does so in a way that briefly identifies the unique work of each person of the Trinity as God invests divine energy into our need and situation.
This is the essential lesson of Christianity, and we all have to learn it in some way. Thomas Long told about the examination of ministerial candidates in a North Carolina Presbytery. One elderly minister always kept quiet through the bulk of the ordeals, according to Long, and then invariably asked the same final set of questions just at the close of each examination.
"Look out that window," he would order the candidates. "Tell me when you see someone walking out there." So they did. When someone walked by, he would say, "Now, describe that person to me theologically."
Each person's answer would be a bit different from the others, of course. Yet they consistently could be reduced to just two basic ideas. One group of ministers-to-be would say something like: "Well, there goes a sinner who is on his way to hell unless he repents!"
The other group responded something like this: "There goes a person who is a child of God. God loves that person so very much, and the best thing that can happen to him is to find out how good it is to love God in return!"
Funny thing, said the old minister, both responses are probably right. Still, those who respond in the latter way always make better pastors. Why? Because they have learned to live life beyond perfection. For when the roll is called up yonder, the grades on the report cards that make it won't be "A" for excellent, or "B" for good, or even "C" for nice try. The only grade that will make it will be "G" -- for grace.
John 16:12-15
The gospel of John is shaped significantly differently from the synoptics. Many scholars see a clear two-part structure with the division between chapters 12 and 13. The first section is often called "The Book of Signs" because John clearly identifies seven "miraculous signs" by which Jesus is increasingly revealed as the divine Redeemer. Once that is accomplished Jesus moves with his disciples into what is often termed "The Book of Glory," where the Farewell Discourse (13-17) and the Passion and Resurrection (18- 20) take center stage. The gospel is introduced by the marvelous Prologue of 1:1-18, and concluded with the Epilogue of chapter 21, which seems to have been appended a bit later.
Today's lectionary passage is part of the Farewell Discourse. A very helpful recent study that elucidates this text is The Literary Development of John 13-17 (Society of Biblical Literature, 2000). In it the elements of the Discourse are shown to be linked to Jesus' central teaching about the vine and branches in 15:1-7. Although Jesus is about to leave his disciples (due to his death, resurrection, and ascension), he calls on them to "abide in me." How is this possible? In today's lectionary reading the solution becomes clear -- it is the "Paraclete" or Holy Spirit that provides the link between the physically absent Jesus and the ongoing lives of the disciples in the world.
John uniquely gives us Jesus' teaching about the "Paraclete." Translations include "counselor" and "comforter" and "advocate." There is, in this Greek term, the combined ideas of a lawyer who acts on our behalf, a friend who sticks close even through tough times, an instructor who is more mentor than intellectual, and an encourager who believes in us even when we lack the self-confidence to see any personal future.
That can be a powerful influence in a person's life. One writer tells of attending a business conference where awards were being given for outstanding achievements during the past fiscal year. A woman was called to the podium to receive the company's top honor. Clutching her trophy, she beamed out at the crowd of over 3,000 people. Yet, in that moment of triumph, she had eyes for only one person. She looked directly at her supervisor, a woman named Joan.
The award-winner told of the difficult times that she had gone through only a few years earlier. She had experienced personal problems, and, for a time her work had suffered. Some people turned away from her, counting it a liability to be seen with her. Others wrote her off as a loser in the company.
The worst part was that she felt they were right. She had stopped at Joan's desk several times with a letter of resignation in her hand. She knew she was a failure.
But Joan said, "Let's just wait a little bit longer." And Joan said, "Give it one more try." And Joan said, "I never would have hired you if I didn't think you could handle it!"
The woman's voice broke. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she softly said, "Joan believed in me more than I believed in myself!"
This is what Jesus says the Paraclete will help us understand over and over and over again.
Application
It would be a shame to let Holy Trinity Sunday pass by without addressing the central and important Christian doctrine of the Trinity. There is enough material above to make that possible and meaningful.
Alternative Application
John 16:12-15. On this Sunday following Pentecost the gospel reading would be a great choice to further flesh out the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 8
Knowing one's place in the world is an important thing. Indeed, some would say that it is an essential ingredient in being a full, even sane individual. Without a place in which we belong, we are footloose, adrift, and without connection. Without a niche to call our own we become vagabonds of the spirit, always on the move, always looking for a place to land.
Human history could be described as the never-ending search for just such a place. It is an existential conundrum that finds form in this psalm as the writer ponders what it means to be "a little lower than God...." It is a statement that seems a bit arrogant, but upon examination, strikes home. After all, we have been given "dominion" over the works of God's hands. The sheep, ox, beasts of the fields; the birds and the fish of the sea; all of it is in our hands.
It is a frightful thought, for the truth is that human beings have made a complete mess of things. From the looming catastrophe of global warming to the stripping of the seas of life, our "dominion" has not worked out so well. From growing rates of extinction of a host of creatures to the mowing down of rain forests, one has to wonder if God might have made a slight error in judgment here.
Could it be that humans have only heard part of the reading of this psalm? Could it be that we have embraced the dominion part, but missed out somehow on the part where we are to be in awe of the works of God's hands?
Sure. Humans got the bigger brains, the opposable thumb, and an insatiable drive to expand and control. But did we get the part where we're supposed to love God's creation? Have we taken in the magnitude and glory of this remarkable planet? Or is that mountain in the distance just a hill to be removed so we can get at the coal?
Perhaps the time has come for a holistic embrace of what it means to be stewards of God's creation. Maybe now is a time our species might take stock of the world in which we find ourselves and claim some of that oft discussed "personal responsibility" for the shape in which we have left God's world. Could it be that, like the Holy Trinity, expressed in Creation, Word, and Spirit, our understanding of dominion needs also to be expressed in a threefold fashion?
What if dominion were just one part of a trinity of stewardship? What if there were two other components consisting of compassion and humility? Such an expression of our place in the world might bring a new balance. A holy blend of dominion, compassion, and humility could well be a new expression for how we humans could begin again -- as ones who know their place as stewards and caretakers of one of God's incredible gifts. Creation itself.
This may serve as a metaphor for today and the passages of scripture that shape our Holy Trinity Sunday worship themes. Advent reminds us of the work of the Creator, forming our world and holding it together in its fallen condition until a Redeemer could be sent. Christmas, Lent, and Easter broaden our understanding of God by introducing us to Jesus our Savior, divinity incarnate. Finally we round out the liturgical year with Pentecost, and review again the coming of the Holy Spirit to breathe life into the church and its mission. So here, a week later, we have a fuller concept of God: The invisible has been diffused into hues and shades that are more accessible or understandable. Holy Trinity Sunday is our prism that takes the glory light of heaven and allows its constituent parts to be the focus of our attention for a short while.
The Trinity is Christianity's unique and essential doctrine. Christianity is monotheistic, yet confesses three divine persons who are both inseparable and unconfusable. No wonder there have been charges against Christianity for being tritheistic or irrational or absurd. Yet the doctrine of the Trinity remains, not because theologians want some esoteric puzzle to keep them employed from century to century, but because we meet God first as transcendent Creator, then as incarnate Redeemer, and finally as indwelling Sanctifier. The "Trinity" is not so much a theological or philosophical construct that we need somehow to explicate as it is a reflection of our historical encounter with God that we need to understand more fully.
There are a number of analogies that have become most popular when pastors try to tackle and teach the three-person-monotheism doctrine. Some balance an egg on the pulpit and talk about the shell, the white, and the yolk as inseparable dimensions of an egg: each can be isolated, but when that happens whatever there was of "eggness" is lost. Some show pictures of themselves in relation to other important people in their lives: they are children to their aging parents, spouses to their significant others, and parents to their own children, unique in each role yet uncontrovertibly the same being throughout. Others point to three-leafed clovers, or the Revealer/Receiver/Revelation triumvirate, or the Lover/Loved/Love mystical trinity as parallels from other worlds or dimensions.
When all is said and done, however, all of these Trinitarian analogies can be reduced to two primary groupings. The "Psychological Analogies" of the Trinity always start with one essence (light), personality (human psyche), or identity (egg), and try to figure out some way to isolate three strong dimensions. God is One, but God condescends to us, showing us only a portion of God's self at a time, accommodating to our weaknesses and limitations of understanding so as not to overwhelm us with the ineffable. These approaches strongly safeguard Christianity's monotheism and align it with Judaism and Islam, its historical bookends. At the same time, however, they push toward something called "modalism," which the church has consistently denied as heresy. Modalism emphasizes the oneness of God with such vigor that it tends to portray the personalities of Father, Son, and Spirit as merely temporary faces adopted by the deity briefly to make a point or two.
The "Sociological Analogies" of the Trinity approach the matter from precisely the opposite point of view. Scenes like those of Jesus' baptism confront us with the undeniable separate realities of Father (voice from heaven), Son (man in the water), and Holy Spirit (descending dove of consecration), and we must find someway to explain their essential unity. Sociological Analogies generally deal with the matter in some form of genus and species dialogue. Just as any given room (like a worship auditorium on a Sunday morning) contains only one humanity, but usually a variety of individual persons who are each fully human yet different from one another, so there is but one deity with exactly three persons, each of whom is fully divine and yet distinct from the others. In this manner of teaching Trinity theory, the major difficulties are those of stumbling into actual tritheism, or some deficient Christologies (like Nestorianism, Arianism, or Eutychianism), which cannot find a good way to keep the human person, Jesus, fully integrated into the divine community.
While both families of Trinity theory add helpful dimensions to our understandings, neither is fully satisfactory. Yet each may provide insights that are beneficial for our teaching explorations on Holy Trinity Sunday. In the lectionary passages assigned for the day, Proverbs 8 focuses on the Creator and may allude to the Redeemer as a cohort in the creative enterprise. Romans 5 keeps Jesus the Redeemer center stage, but ensures his partnership with the Creator and to a lesser extent the Sanctifier. In John 16, Jesus is the speaker, and brings into purview both the Creator and the Sanctifier. Preaching today may prove to be highly suggestive, impenetrably dense, or tediously boring. Hopefully, however, it will also be energetic, enlightening, and encouraging.
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
The book of Proverbs consists of a number of collections of "Wisdom Literature" gathered into a single package. The largest grouping is "The Proverbs of Solomon" (10:1- -22:16), which, along with its addendum ("More Proverbs of Solomon"; 25:1--29:27), provides the name for the whole in its canonical form. Along with these are other short collections of proverbs and sayings, the famous acrostic poem on the virtuous wife that concludes the whole, and a nine-chapter, carefully crafted, lecture on wisdom that opens the book. In the first nine chapters there is a balanced presentation of the whims and whiles of two women -- Wisdom and Folly. These are feminine nouns in the Hebrew language, and they are used as foils over against a young male ("my son") who is about to leave home and find his way in the world. Wisdom and Folly personify paradigms or worldviews or value systems through which we interpret and respond to life. Proverbs 1- 9 insists that we must choose one or the other, for these are the only options. The lectures also insist that opting for Folly's ways will bring us difficulties, destruction, dehumanization, and death, while Wisdom will always lead us into health and wholeness and happiness. The portrayals are overstated and stylized and absolutized, of course, but that is the way of paradigms.
Wisdom is clearly identified as the manifestation of and companion to God. Nowhere is that more clear than in chapter 8. Yet the poetic personification of Wisdom has led to a variety of interpretations. When abstracted from its clear use within the lectures of Proverbs 1-9, Wisdom has often become an allegory of the second person of the Trinity. If the Father is to be identified with the Creator, then the Son becomes the Father's eternal companion. Moreover, the brief note that opens the gospel of John (speaking of the Word as eternal with God and the agent of creation and the essence of the incarnated Jesus) has led many preachers to expound upon Proverbs 8 as a hymn of Christ.
Since Proverbs 8 is a chosen lectionary passage for Holy Trinity Sunday it may be assumed that the lectionary creators are offering it up for this use, as well. In that case, one must ignore its literary context and adapt it in allegorical form as a pre-incarnation analogy of the second person of the Trinity. Homiletic development may include reflections on the close relationship between the first and second persons of the Trinity, the creative energy emanating from the pre-incarnate Son, and the ultimate fulfillment of human destiny that can only be found in compliance to Wisdom's designs.
Perhaps a better approach would be to use Holy Trinity Sunday to explicate the "Sociological Analogy of the Trinity" and then use a passage like Proverbs 8 to show how the value of community is at the heart of the universe -- originated among the persons of the deity and thus normative for the best of human lifestyle, as "Wisdom" shows. A powerful example of this is found in Ernest Gordon's book To End All Wars (Zondervan, 2002). It is the true tale of what took place in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp made famous by the movie The Bridge over the River Kwai. The camp stood at the end of the Bataan death march that brought Allied soldiers deep into the jungles of Asia. Few would survive, and everyone knew it. In order to make the best of a terrible situation they teamed up in pairs, each watching out for a buddy.
One prisoner was a strapping six-foot-three fellow built like a tower of iron. If any could come out of this alive, all felt he would. That was before his buddy got malaria. The smaller fellow was much weaker, and very likely to die. Their captors did not want to deal with sickness, so anyone who was unable to work was confined in a "hot house" until he succumbed to heat exhaustion, dehydration, and the collapse of his bodily systems.
The sick man was locked into a hothouse and left to die. Surprisingly, he did not die, because every mealtime his strong buddy went out to him, under curses and threats from the guards, and shared his meager rations. Every night, his strong buddy sneaked from the prison barracks, braved the watchful eyes above that held guns of death, and brought his own slim blanket to cover the fevered convulsions of the sick man.
At the end of two weeks, the sick man astounded the guards by recovering well enough to be able to return to work. He even survived the entire camp experience and lived to tell about it. His buddy, however -- the strong man all thought invincible -- died very shortly of malaria, exposure, and dysentery. He had given his life to save his friend.
The story does not end there. When Allied troops liberated that camp at the close of the war in the Pacific, virtually every prisoner was a Christian. There was a symphony orchestra in camp, with instruments made of the crudest materials. There were worship services every Sunday, and the death toll was far lower than any expected. All this because of the silent testimony made by a strong man toward his buddy facing death.
There is much that pretends to be wise in our world, but nothing can match the profound wisdom of divinity-imitating community and the strength of true mercy.
Romans 5:1-5
Paul's letter to the Roman church was written at the end of his third mission journey while he spent a winter in Corinth. Paul was gathering an offering for the poor to bring to Jerusalem for distribution, and he hoped soon after that to make a trip to Rome. His goal was to spend time with friends there (whom he had met in a variety of circumstances and places during his journeys), explain his teachings to the Roman congregation (which was somewhat divided in their reactions to this powerhouse leader who had so strongly influenced the expanding church), and then give them opportunity to send him off with prayers and financial assistance in his next mission journey to Spain. Paul's hopes were transformed significantly when he was arrested in Jerusalem, kept in prison for several years by cowardly politicians, shipwrecked on the voyage to Rome, and presented finally in the great city as a captive.
Because Paul is writing a brief summary of and apology for his faith, Romans is more organized and logically developed than many of Paul's letters. In it, Paul provides a summary statement of God's righteousness recently revealed (1:1-17), and then launches into a depressing testimony of the human condition (1:18--3:20). At this nadir Paul begins the powerful turnaround of the gospel, using the towering figure of Abraham as his first illustrative point (ch. 4). Here in chapter 5 Paul summarizes the heart of the gospel, showing the Father's good favor expressed in the work of the Son, our shared journey through the sufferings of the Son, and the grace we receive by way of the strengthening of the Holy Spirit. In a nutshell, Paul clarifies the changing condition of those who are transformed by the grace of God, and does so in a way that briefly identifies the unique work of each person of the Trinity as God invests divine energy into our need and situation.
This is the essential lesson of Christianity, and we all have to learn it in some way. Thomas Long told about the examination of ministerial candidates in a North Carolina Presbytery. One elderly minister always kept quiet through the bulk of the ordeals, according to Long, and then invariably asked the same final set of questions just at the close of each examination.
"Look out that window," he would order the candidates. "Tell me when you see someone walking out there." So they did. When someone walked by, he would say, "Now, describe that person to me theologically."
Each person's answer would be a bit different from the others, of course. Yet they consistently could be reduced to just two basic ideas. One group of ministers-to-be would say something like: "Well, there goes a sinner who is on his way to hell unless he repents!"
The other group responded something like this: "There goes a person who is a child of God. God loves that person so very much, and the best thing that can happen to him is to find out how good it is to love God in return!"
Funny thing, said the old minister, both responses are probably right. Still, those who respond in the latter way always make better pastors. Why? Because they have learned to live life beyond perfection. For when the roll is called up yonder, the grades on the report cards that make it won't be "A" for excellent, or "B" for good, or even "C" for nice try. The only grade that will make it will be "G" -- for grace.
John 16:12-15
The gospel of John is shaped significantly differently from the synoptics. Many scholars see a clear two-part structure with the division between chapters 12 and 13. The first section is often called "The Book of Signs" because John clearly identifies seven "miraculous signs" by which Jesus is increasingly revealed as the divine Redeemer. Once that is accomplished Jesus moves with his disciples into what is often termed "The Book of Glory," where the Farewell Discourse (13-17) and the Passion and Resurrection (18- 20) take center stage. The gospel is introduced by the marvelous Prologue of 1:1-18, and concluded with the Epilogue of chapter 21, which seems to have been appended a bit later.
Today's lectionary passage is part of the Farewell Discourse. A very helpful recent study that elucidates this text is The Literary Development of John 13-17 (Society of Biblical Literature, 2000). In it the elements of the Discourse are shown to be linked to Jesus' central teaching about the vine and branches in 15:1-7. Although Jesus is about to leave his disciples (due to his death, resurrection, and ascension), he calls on them to "abide in me." How is this possible? In today's lectionary reading the solution becomes clear -- it is the "Paraclete" or Holy Spirit that provides the link between the physically absent Jesus and the ongoing lives of the disciples in the world.
John uniquely gives us Jesus' teaching about the "Paraclete." Translations include "counselor" and "comforter" and "advocate." There is, in this Greek term, the combined ideas of a lawyer who acts on our behalf, a friend who sticks close even through tough times, an instructor who is more mentor than intellectual, and an encourager who believes in us even when we lack the self-confidence to see any personal future.
That can be a powerful influence in a person's life. One writer tells of attending a business conference where awards were being given for outstanding achievements during the past fiscal year. A woman was called to the podium to receive the company's top honor. Clutching her trophy, she beamed out at the crowd of over 3,000 people. Yet, in that moment of triumph, she had eyes for only one person. She looked directly at her supervisor, a woman named Joan.
The award-winner told of the difficult times that she had gone through only a few years earlier. She had experienced personal problems, and, for a time her work had suffered. Some people turned away from her, counting it a liability to be seen with her. Others wrote her off as a loser in the company.
The worst part was that she felt they were right. She had stopped at Joan's desk several times with a letter of resignation in her hand. She knew she was a failure.
But Joan said, "Let's just wait a little bit longer." And Joan said, "Give it one more try." And Joan said, "I never would have hired you if I didn't think you could handle it!"
The woman's voice broke. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she softly said, "Joan believed in me more than I believed in myself!"
This is what Jesus says the Paraclete will help us understand over and over and over again.
Application
It would be a shame to let Holy Trinity Sunday pass by without addressing the central and important Christian doctrine of the Trinity. There is enough material above to make that possible and meaningful.
Alternative Application
John 16:12-15. On this Sunday following Pentecost the gospel reading would be a great choice to further flesh out the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 8
Knowing one's place in the world is an important thing. Indeed, some would say that it is an essential ingredient in being a full, even sane individual. Without a place in which we belong, we are footloose, adrift, and without connection. Without a niche to call our own we become vagabonds of the spirit, always on the move, always looking for a place to land.
Human history could be described as the never-ending search for just such a place. It is an existential conundrum that finds form in this psalm as the writer ponders what it means to be "a little lower than God...." It is a statement that seems a bit arrogant, but upon examination, strikes home. After all, we have been given "dominion" over the works of God's hands. The sheep, ox, beasts of the fields; the birds and the fish of the sea; all of it is in our hands.
It is a frightful thought, for the truth is that human beings have made a complete mess of things. From the looming catastrophe of global warming to the stripping of the seas of life, our "dominion" has not worked out so well. From growing rates of extinction of a host of creatures to the mowing down of rain forests, one has to wonder if God might have made a slight error in judgment here.
Could it be that humans have only heard part of the reading of this psalm? Could it be that we have embraced the dominion part, but missed out somehow on the part where we are to be in awe of the works of God's hands?
Sure. Humans got the bigger brains, the opposable thumb, and an insatiable drive to expand and control. But did we get the part where we're supposed to love God's creation? Have we taken in the magnitude and glory of this remarkable planet? Or is that mountain in the distance just a hill to be removed so we can get at the coal?
Perhaps the time has come for a holistic embrace of what it means to be stewards of God's creation. Maybe now is a time our species might take stock of the world in which we find ourselves and claim some of that oft discussed "personal responsibility" for the shape in which we have left God's world. Could it be that, like the Holy Trinity, expressed in Creation, Word, and Spirit, our understanding of dominion needs also to be expressed in a threefold fashion?
What if dominion were just one part of a trinity of stewardship? What if there were two other components consisting of compassion and humility? Such an expression of our place in the world might bring a new balance. A holy blend of dominion, compassion, and humility could well be a new expression for how we humans could begin again -- as ones who know their place as stewards and caretakers of one of God's incredible gifts. Creation itself.
