Day of Pentecost, Whitsunday, Year C, June 15, 2025

Holy Spirit Window, Rome

Prayer

O God of the covenant, you revealed yourself on the holy mountain in fire and on Pentecost in the flame of the Holy Spirit, Let your mighty fire burn away our pride, consume our hatreds, annihilate the armaments of death, and kindle instead, within the whole human family, the welcome fire of your love.  We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on John 14:8-17, (25-27)

…Tens of thousands of Christians who aren't waiting for denominational leaders to fix things. They're just getting on with it.

Brian McLaren


"Finally, Jesus challenged them to love him and to keep his commandments. I suspect everyone seated in that room nodded their head and thought, 'I do love you and of course, I will keep your commandments.' But in a few short hours their teacher would be arrested and tried. In a few short hours his life would be ended and their lives filled with fear that the same thing would happened to them. Would they still love him? Could they keep his commandments?"

Commentary, John 14:8-17, 25-27, Lucy Lind Hogan, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

"Whether in the company of Jesus or, in his absence, in the company of the Spirit, what ultimately matters is recognizing God's action and becoming part of it. All else is subordinate to that."

"First Thoughts on Year C Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

In this, the last of Jesus’ teachings to his disciples the topics focus on the issues of leadership that will be present upon his leaving.

Jesus is concerned pastorally for his followers. In part because his followers can only understand death’s victory. We must remember at this time there is NO victory over death. They look at the oncoming trial and sure death sentence at the end. They perhaps see it as the end of the movement, the end of the work towards the kingdom, the end of their own ministries, the end of a friend’s life, the end of (dare we say) hope.

In the immortal words of Jim Morrison and the Doors:

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again
It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die
This is the end

This is a really creepy song but it captures and tells of the reality that life’s pleasures will not keep death from its work. So Jesus is combating the very real understanding of death’s finality. Jesus offers them this understanding, He “demands that they have faith in him” and that this is more than a request but a necessary piece of participation in the victory over death that is to come. (R. Brown, John, Anchor Bible, vol II, 624)

Jesus is saying, have faith in me. This is a very real living faith that unites them with God. In the victory of the resurrection, they will come through death’s door to dwell with God and with Son.  And, to do this, to make their journey, they must be prepared. Just as Jesus goes to prepare a place, the follower must be prepared too. (625)

They are to be prepared by doing the same work as Jesus, even greater works. Jesus tells them to ask for great things and he will on their behalf. God will be glorified in this relationship, this conversation between worlds. It seems then that part of the work, part of the preparation is prayer ad continued relationship with Jesus even after his death. The disciple must trust and engage in work, and do so in prayer conversation with Jesus.

The work they are to do is to follow Jesus’ commandments and love him. The commandments are simply to love one another, to love God above all else, and to love Jesus. This is the Maundy, the commandment of love within the apostolic community. A love for one another that mirrors the love of God. Love for one another spins out the action in the world at the same time as it draws others into the community. The work of the disciple is to work and to work out of the empowering relationship of love with God - the Trinitarian community.

The family of God metaphor is revealed again in the paradigm of children of God who are united to the community of God when Jesus promises not to leave them orphaned. Jesus reflects that he is going away, but within this apostolic community he will never be far away and in fact, will be one with those who participate in the commandment to love. Moreover, Jesus himself and God will be glorified and revealed in the uniting spirit of this community, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, the perfect love of Father for Son, and Son for Father.

Raymond Brown writes so much better than I:

Jesus emphasizes that divine indwelling flows from the Father’s love for the disciples of His Son. In 3.16 we heard that God loved the world so much that He gave the only Son – if the incarnation (and death) of the Son was an act of the Father’s love for the world, the post-resurrectional indwelling is a special act of love for the Christian. In 2 we found the word “dwelling place” used for the heavenly abode with the Father to which Jesus would take his disciples; here [at the end of the lesson] it is used for the indwelling of the Father and the Son with the believer…in Johannine thought this was now the hour when men would worship the Father neither on Mount Gerizim nor in the Jerusalem Temple, but in Spirit and truth. (648)

Some Thoughts on Romans 8:14-17

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

This week we shift to Paul's letter to the Romans.  He is teaching about the Holy Spirit and how it participates in the Christian life.  Paul believes that the Spirit works in two ways. The first is to draw people into the family of God so that we become children of God.  The second is to help individuals live a life following Jesus.

Those who follow this God through Jesus Christ are new people.  Like Israel, we are claimed and rescued by God. We are set apart in the midst of the world.  God is our Father, God is 'abba'.  This is the very strong theme of this portion of Romans.

What is so very challenging to us today is the very radical notion that we are not the one's being spoken to in Paul's letter.  We are today the ones who reside in the Temple. We are the ones who have already been chosen.  Like ancient Israel, we are the ones who inherit participation in the family through the Holy Spirit.

But God is doing something even greater. Today the Holy Spirit pours out beyond the walls of the Christian Church just as it poured out beyond the Temple walls.  Jesus' followers abound and God is working in their lives as they try and make their pilgrim journey.  We need to hear the words of Romans not as the newly invited follower of Jesus but as the stayed community who is not yet ready for the new interlopers.

What would it be like to open our eyes and see upon whom the Holy Spirit falls today? Who is it that cries out 'abba' but has no home?  Can we open our hearts and doors to welcome the sojourner in?

Even now the Holy Spirit is making new members of the family of God.  May the Episcopal Church open its arms to welcome brothers and sisters who are new and different.

Some Thoughts on Acts 2:1-21

Oremus Online NRSV Text

This is the text that most people think about when they think about the story of Pentecost. Though it is important to remind the congregation there are different stories. Here in this text, Luke weaves the time. The time is a particular time of God's acting. As in the incarnation of the crucifixion - this is God's day and God's time. The coming of the Holy Spirit arrives at the appointed time.

The Holy Spirit comes in wind and tongues of fire. 

What we have here is the inauguration of the next phase of Salvation history for our author. Remember that Luke is telling a story that leads to our personal receiving of the faith of God in Christ Jesus. This final act of the creative God is an act of recreation - for Luke similar to the wind over the waters in Genesis. It is the inauguration of Christ's promise to be with us to the end of the ages. It is the inauguration of the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham.

It is the beginning, the creation story, of the mission of God through the apostles. Those who had been followers (disciples) now become (apostles) and are sent out to renew the face of the earth. The Holy Spirit is the empowering agent of God moving throughout all the nations of the world. 

Many congregations will read out this passage in different languages - reminding the people that the mission is for all people. Unfortunately, this often stops there. 

The truth is that the church today is invited to share in the apostolic mission, to do great deeds of power by the influence of the Holy Spirit in the world. God is waiting for the church and its people to accept the spirit already poured out upon them. To go out of the doors of the church and out into the world. 

It is humorous that on this day where the spirit of God is so clear, that God will not be locked away behind religious closed doors....that literally thousands and thousands of Christians will hear this in churches across the world in huddled mass away from the world. 

The story of Acts inaugurates great stories of going out: 

In Acts 2 the apostles go out and 3,000 discover the Gospel. In Acts 8 Philip goes out to a city in Samaria and many Samaritans come to the Gospel. In Acts 8 Philip is taken to meet the Ethiopian Eunuch who needs someone to help him understand the Gospel and he comes to know Christ. In Acts 22 Ananias helps Paul with his conversion by God - by going out to find Paul. In Acts 10 Peter goes out and bears witness to the Gospel and Cornelius comes to believe. AND the church is transformed and broken open for the gentiles regarding circumcision. In Acts 13 the Proconsul in Seleucia has the Gospel confirmed by Paul and Barnabas and is transformed by the Good News; as are many other gentiles soon after. There is Lydia the merchant who, along with her whole household, is baptized by Paul because he went you to the city of Thyatira and met her outside the gate. Later imprisoned there because of healing the jailer would come to know God in Christ Jesus by their witness. Cionysius and Damaris come to know Christ by meeting Paul in his travels - Acts 17. In the 18th chapter of Acts Crispus and his household come to believe in God through Christ Jesus along with other Corinthians because of Paul's witness. Priscilla and Aquila explain the Good News of God to Apollos and he comes to Christ in chapter 18 of Acts. In the next chapter 25 of the disciples of John are told about the Holy Spirit by Paul and come to believe and are baptized. 

Not one, not one of these, happens in a religious setting or behind the closed doors of a church. The witness of the Holy Spirit is that the apostles are sent out and in being sent outcome into contact with others and through their conversations and witness people are moved to be baptized because they desire to participate in the Good News of God through Jesus Christ. 

Imagine the names that heard the news but where never confirmed. Imagine the names of those who heard the news and came to believe later outside of the narrative. What is clear is that the Holy Spirit sends people out. 

So on this day of Pentecost as we imagine what God was doing, let us be clear that God was not imagining that we would be sitting in church with the doors closed to the outside world. 

Some Thoughts on Genesis 11:1-9 

Oremus Online NRSV Text

From my book on vocation entitled The Jesus Heist

Take the story of Babel, for instance, in the eleventh chapter of Genesis.

The story of Babel is one of the best-known stories of the Bible because it captures

our imagination. Typically, in Christian church contexts, it is told this

way: Once upon a time there was a people and who built a tower that would

reach to heaven. In doing this they became like gods. They made a name for

themselves—the story says. God is displeased with them because, like gods,

they will be able to do many things. “Nothing will be impossible for them.”

So God scatters the people. Most of us aren’t even aware of the ambiguity

in this passage. We read this story as a cautionary tale about human sin and

God’s judgment, is a lesson learned in Mrs. Irving’s fourth grade Sunday school

class. But something more is going on here.

Let us look at the actual story, which is an origin story about creation that

repeats the narrative of how God populated the earth with people. People are

being scattered. Just before the Babel story, we are told that Noah’s descendants

are scattered. They are sent out to populate creation. There is great

debate about this very short origin story, and whether its verdict on the populating

of the earth by the scattering of the people is positive or negative.2 But

I want to focus on the disbursement itself.

One of the issues in the story is that the people want to stay together.

They don’t want to be scattered. So they build a tower. The purpose of the

tower is to reach to heaven. God, on the other hand, wants the people to be

scattered. It seems that in the scattering, regardless of its causes, God is present.

God is present in the scattering after Eden, God is present in the scattering

after Babel, God is present in the scattering after Egypt, and after the fall

of the first temple in Jerusalem. God is present at the edges, on the margins,

in the scattering. God is not particularly interested in towers that reach up

to heaven and make names for those who build them. A very large number

of Jewish and Christian scholars believe that humanity’s want to cohere is

directly opposed to God’s desire. It displeases God when people are all in one

place where they are comfortable, avoiding being scattered.

The church has a Babel quality to it. It builds towers that are gates to

God. It especially likes big ones. The church attracts people and holds them

in place so they aren’t scattered. In my own tradition, we joke about how there

is effectively assigned seating on Sunday morning. The institutional church

creates a holding pattern, a safe routine. Every year in liturgical traditions of

Christianity, fifty days after Easter, the feast of Pentecost is celebrated. The

institutional church celebrates Pentecost as its birthday. We never stop to

think about the absurdity, the contradictory themes of the Bible passages read

on this day every year, read to people sitting in thousands of shrines that boast

to be the gates to heaven, or gather inside rooms to hear about God disbursing

his followers into the world. The lens here is wrong. We can imagine a lot

of things about the story of Pentecost and what God intended and imagines

will take place as a society of friends of Jesus. But one of those things is not

that some two thousand years later the followers of Jesus would be sitting in

a room listening to a story.

In the beginning, shortly after the resurrection, the disciples had a custom

of getting together. We already talked about this in a previous chapter. Every

time they gathered, Jesus appeared and told them to get out. In Matthew, they

are on a mountaintop and Jesus appears and they are sent out into the world

(Matt. 28:16–20). The shorter ending of Mark tells us they were sent out to

the east and west (Mark 16:8). In the longer version of Mark, Jesus appears to

them in a room where they are all sitting at a table. Jesus “upbraided them for

their lack of faith and stubbornness” and then sends them out to do the work

(Mark 16:14–20). In John’s Gospel, he appears and gives them the Holy Spirit

by breathing on them. Then, in a series of visits, Jesus explains that they are to

love as he has loved, and they are to follow Jesus in the way that Jesus lived—

including his suffering and death (John 20:1–31). Each of these stories makes

clear that the work of the gospel is living in the world just as Jesus lived.

Now, most people who know the story will tell you the story of Pentecost

that matches the one found in Luke’s writing. So let us ponder the Christian

story of Babel found in chapter 2 of Luke’s second book, Acts of the Apostles.

We are told that, as in the other Gospels, the disciples have a habit of meeting

together. They get together, men and women, for prayer. It happened

that they were together on the day of the religious festival called Pentecost.

Pentecost was a pilgrim festival in Jerusalem—it was a holiday from work—

and people from all around would make their way to Jerusalem for special

observances at the temple. Pentecost was also called the Feast of Weeks, and

it happened fifty days after the festival called First Fruits. So the disciples are

together. There is fear and anxiety about what has happened to Jesus. They are

trying to figure out what they are supposed to do. They are worried that they

will be taken away, scattered, and killed. In this setting, the disciples experience

a mighty epiphanic moment: they have an experience of God’s presence.

I like Eugene Peterson’s telling of this story in his well-known biblical paraphrase

called The Message. He writes that there is a sound that fills the whole

house. The sound is like a great and mighty wind. It is a gale-force wind, a

knock-you-down wind. Then there is a wildfire that comes upon them. Some

translations say tongues of fire. I prefer Peterson’s imagery of a wildfire. A fire

that is wild comes upon them. It is madness.

This moment is a recreative act. It is an image that recalls God’s mighty

acts in history, including Babel. We are reminded of the book of Genesis

when the mighty wind moves over the waters of the earth. We are reminded

of the creation story of Israel, when God appears to Moses in a burning bush

that is not consumed. The inauguration of the freeing of Israel happens before

Moses, and a pillar of fire leads them away from Egypt. These images and

words are intended to capture our imagination and show us the remaking of

the disciples.

Like Babel, God does not intend for them to be sequestered in upper

rooms. God does not intend for them to make spaces that are the gate to

heaven. God pours out God’s recreative fire that they may be disbursed, that

they may go out. God disburses the disciples so that the gospel story of God

in Christ Jesus might be shared with all the people. And so those who followed

Jesus, who were praying together so they would not be scattered, who

were taking care of widows and orphans, who were in a holding position,

are sent out into the world. The doors burst open and they go out. And they

speak in many languages.

Those disciples who had previously been known only as followers—that

is what “disciple” means—were turned into apostles—people who are sent.

That is what “apostle” means—people who go. All the disciples were made

apostles; all disciples are to be made apostles. There is no place for Christian

towers of Babel among the friends of Jesus. We are set free. We are the laborers

sent out on the fiftieth day for the harvest. We are the laborers that God in

Christ Jesus has been praying to be sent (Luke 10:1–20). Christ’s resurrection

on Easter is the first fruit; it happens on the festival of the first fruit. Jesus is

the first fruit of this re-creation and new Genesis. The Christian Babel story

is the harvest story that falls fifty days later in parallel with the religious feast.

God is at the margins; God is disbursed. God’s people are to move to the

margins and be disbursed.

Epiphany 5C, Sunday February 9, 2025

Prayer

Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Luke 5:1-11

"Tristam (Land of Israel) says of the fish in the Sea of Galilee: "The shoals are marvelous, black masses, many hundred yards long, with their black fins projecting out of the water as thick as they could pack. Any net would break that enclosed such a shoal.""

From The People's New Testament, B.W. Johnson, 1891.

"God often becomes manifest in the ordinary, even seemingly unnecessary events of a person's life ? events which nevertheless are in accord with some purpose that is or is not known."
Commentary, Luke 5:1-11, Arland J. Hultgren, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

"Despite signs of legendary development the bearers of the Jesus tradition never divinised Peter. He remained one of them, one of us; leadership by grace. The best traditions let it remain so. They also affirm his role and the continuing role and need for leadership and its accountability in the church. Ultimately Luke is linking that leadership to Jesus? own leadership and mission declared before his home town synagogue. It is a leadership that sets free."
"First Thoughts on Year C Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Epiphany 5, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"The reason for the call is not to say to Peter, 'Buck up, little buddy, you're not so bad,' but rather, 'Stop being afraid now. We have work to do.'"
"Regular People as Disciples," Mary Hinkle, Pilgrim Preaching: Keeping Company with Biblical Texts and the People Who Hear and Preach Them.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

[This is taken from my reflections on the text in my book Vocātiō.]

Let us return to the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Luke’s Gospel tells the story of the calling of the first disciples as a fishing miracle. Jesus came by and taught the people using the boat as a platform. He then invited the disciples to cast out into the sea and to put out their nets. 

Let me pause here for a second. There are several kinds of words used for nets in the New Testament. They are: δίκτυον, ἀμφίβληστρον, σαγήνη.  Scholars point out that the word ἀμφίβληστρον and σαγήνη designate specifically nets for fishing like a casting-net, generally pear-shaped. I want to point out the word used in our lesson today is δίκτυον and it is a seine or dragnet. 

The fishermen doubted as they had been fishing all night with nothing to show for their efforts. They did as Jesus said and a great multitude of fish was brought aboard. Luke tells us that their nets were breaking. They called other boats to come and help. Peter immediately told Jesus he was not worthy to follow. Jesus told Peter, James, and John to join him and he would teach them to fish for people (Luke 5:1–11).

I want to broaden it to fit into a wider discussion of the disciples’ work as peacebuilders, because followers of Jesus are doing work in this world that will remain at the end of the age. Jesus used the dragnet as a metaphor for this peace-making enterprise. The community the disciples build was to be universal and catholic—everyone was included.

Dragnets gather in everything because they dredge the seafloor. They capture wood and plants as well as fish. They capture inedible fish as well as edible fish. The community of peace that Jesus inaugurated in this world has the same characteristic of indiscriminateness. God is making a community that connects, or networks, all kinds of people. While we normally think of this kingdom-net only containing fish, and good fish at that, it truly contains everything: the weeds, the detritus of dysfunctional relationships and human brokenness, the debris of daily life lived in service to the masters of economies and political powermongers. The community of shalom, our dragnet, “touches everything in the world: not just souls, but bodies, and not just people, but all things, animal, vegetable, and mineral.”[i] God in Christ Jesus is in this very world gathering into the community of shalom the whole of creation. As God in Christ was lifted up on the cross, the great crossroads of community was bridged—heaven with earth, humanity with God. All were drawn to God’s self (John 12:32). As the book of Revelation indicates, all of creation is drawn to God in Christ—not just people.

The disciples were called to participate in the transfiguration of the world, which is partly why they were led down from the mountainside after Jesus’s transfiguration. They were to be the transfigured Christ in the world. The work of transfiguring creation only happens down in the village where demons are cast out and people are healed (Matt. 17:1–27). The mystery of the community of shalom is that it includes God and people and must also include the whole of creation. Secular moderns, imprisoned as we are in our immanent frame, want to differentiate between what is worth capturing in the net and what is not, but no such distinction is made in the parables of the kingdom in the Gospels.[ii] The dragnet rejects nothing in the sea; it encompasses all things. The only people missing from God’s dragnet when it is hauled ashore will be those who carve themselves out of the net with their own sickle of judgment. This is what the scriptures imply when they say that the sickle will soon enough come for those who refuse the community of peace and instead choose power, abuse of the poor by neglect, and do violence to others and creation (Matt. 25:31–46; Rev. 14). The sickle comes for those who cannot live with the least, the lost, and the unclean. They have spent their whole life being different from those “other” people. They hold too much judgment in their heart, keeping track of the negative marks against others. It is difficult for people who routinely use their power and authority to keep others down to accept that God has invited everyone into the reign of peace. I pray that it will be very difficult indeed to resist God’s grace, to deny God’s sacrifice is enough even for my enemy, and to reject God’s love when I come face-to-face with God’s eternal peace.[iii]

The story of scripture also tells us that the separation of judgment will not take place before the transfiguration at the end of the age. There is always time. In this hope we live and work and have our being. Between now and the end of time, the disciples of Jesus can reject nothing, for the dragnet rejects nothing, and the community of peace has no “business setting itself up in the judging business. And, neither, a fortiori, does the church.”[iv] The disciples are to follow Jesus and learn from him, as participants in the great narrative of God’s shalom. We are to learn how this new dragnet of community is to hold all kinds of people. This is how the band of Jesus followers become a “sacrament,” the continuing body of Christ in the world. We will have to “avoid the temptation to act like a sport fishermen who is interested only in speckled trout and hand-tied flies,” says Capon.[v] Disciples are called to be the worst kind of fishers. The only thing we are to discard is the temptation to reject the mess of creation and humanity. Our community of shalom in this world participates in the reign of God at the end of the age if it remains in relationship with all the “old boots, bottles, and beer cans” that a truly random dredging of humanity must be. The Church will be transfigured to the extent that it is one and the same with the mess it intends to drag in.[vi]

To point out how important this work is, Luke follows the call story of the disciples with an encounter with a leper. Lepers were shunned from the religious community of the day. Their illness made intimacy and belonging impossible. Lepers were seen as sinful and unworthy of community membership, but Jesus restored one such leper back to the community by engagement with the God of creation. God’s Living Word made the leper whole, rejecting the status quo. God in Christ Jesus engaged someone who was not to be engaged (Luke 5:12–16). Moreover, Jesus tied his healing of the leper into the story of Moses.

[i]  Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 113.
[ii] Ibid., 115.
[iii] There are multiple theologies of atonement that are accepted within orthodox Christianity. Most people are familiar with the one where God requires Jesus to be a blood sacrificed. If you are interested in the many theologies of the Christian Church. I suggest reading The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2017). This is an excellent text on the subject.
[iv] Capon, Kingdom, 115.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

"The entirety of this chapter is the eloquent center of Paul's primary argument for the Resurrection."
Commentary, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Susan Hedahl, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"Whether then it is we or they (and may God make it both), so let us proclaim, that the world might come to believe; that Christ Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he we raised again."
Commentary, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Karl Jacobson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

"Affirming that God raised Jesus from the dead (whether with a transformation model or a replacement model) is foundational for reading the story of Jesus as paradigmatic for us all: there is death and there is hope!"
"First Thoughts on Passages on Year B Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Easter Day, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

This passage also appears on Easter Day in year B. 

Paul begins by drawing the readers of his letter back to the good news of God in Christ Jesus that he proclaimed to them...that Jesus died upon the cross for all and to save all people. That all people are reconciled to God through the work of Christ on the cross. What this means is that we are reconciled first to Christ and then to each other.

I have always thought that we reveal our relationship with God and Christ through our relationship with others. In other words, our relationships with others (good, bad, indifferent) are all rooted in our understanding of Christ's work. And, if Christ saves me and I truly have that hope, and it is not in vain, then I must see all others in the same relationship with Christ's saving act. And, in so doing I see the potential hope of our own reconciliation.

Paul then bears witness to how this extra-historical event of great magnitude was literally witnessed by others. He writes,

"Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures,and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

Paul then writes that he received such grace that he himself became a missionary of this message. The power of Paul's belief, and reception of the good news is what has spurred him on.

I feel that Paul is deeply rooting not only his own mission and ministry in the cross of Christ, but he is reminding anyone who would call themselves a follower that they too are rooted here in this cross. Before we raise our banners high for our Christian sect or our belief that we have it right and others wrong...before we start to claim that the future of the church...this or that...is dependent upon our actions...I feel Paul is reminding us that everything is dependent upon Christ and his cross and resurrection.

I wonder if things in church, our arguments, those things we think are so essential, would be approached in a very different manner if we started out where Paul starts out in this passage.

Isaiah 6:1-8, (9-13)

"We are sent to join God in mission because we have encountered God, because we have been brought face to face with God's holiness and our brokenness, and because we have been made whole by God's grace."

"Worship that Sends," Patrick Johnson, Missional Preaching: Equipping for Witness, 2015.

"When we encounter the God who is majestic and merciful, what matters is humility and honesty. When we can have the courage to respond in this way, we find ourselves connected to the source of all life, all love, and all joy. And we find ourselves somehow more connected to ourselves, and to everything and everyone around us."
"Majestic and Merciful," Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer.

"Volunteerism, an expression of stewardship, is a major theological theme in this text. The majestic nature of the liturgical drama that unfolds invokes a sense of praise and makes clear the sacredness of God, the moment, and the call to serve."
Lectionary Commentary, Cheryl Kirk-Duggan, The African American Lectionary, 2009.

"We must learn to understand this judgment as an opportunity to truly know ourselves as sinners. We must accept this judgment, ultimately, as an expression of God's grace."
5 Epiphany, Year C: Isaiah 6:1-13, Biblische Ausbildung, Dr. Stephen L. Cook, Virginia Theological Seminary.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

John's gospel understands that Isaiah is a witness to the divinity of Christ. Isaiah is the voice crying out in the wilderness (John 1.23). Then again in 53.1 and 6.10, John uses Isaiah again to reveal that Jesus is fulfilling prophesy. (Richard Hays, Echoes of the Scripture in the Gospels, 293.)

This is all very important because what Christian biblical theologians argue is that Isaiah has this vision (the one from today's lesson) he is not simply seeing God on the throne, but he is seeing the incarnation, the Christ, on the throne. Hays argues that this is John's view too and this is why it is so important for him to enlist Isaiah as a witness to God in Christ Jesus. (Hays, 289.) This is a witness to the triadic nature of God and the eternal presence of the incarnation. (Hays would say Jesus...but I think that is theologically incorrect.)

This is an important reading of scripture because it is both triune and it begins to reveal how the first evangelists and followers of Jesus understood who Jesus was without a New Testament.

One of the real issues on Trinity Sunday is not so much the Trinity, but our lack of good theological and scriptural underpinning.

What I am saying here is quite important, at least to my theology and understanding of the creation. People often suggest that the Trinity is a mere mystery planted into theology because of early Christian infighting over the idea of who Jesus was and the deep desire to not appear anything other than monotheist. Secondly, we err on the side of believing that the incarnation begins with Jesus' birth - which it decidedly does not...if you are a true Trinitarian that is. And, lastly, we make the mistake of believing that the only reason that Jesus comes into the world is because of sin. That is hogwash too. You see most people get a good understanding of Augustine's trinitarian doctrine and don't go any further. Without doing so what we get is the heresy of modalism... another words...as Augustine says himself: the trinity is really about describing three somethings. (Augustine, De Trinitate 7.9 (CCSL, 50A:259).

The Trinity's work is part of the very creation of the cosmos. It is present before the birth of Jesus and after. The 1 in 3 and 3 in 1 God is fully active prior to our imagining and will be long after our ingathering. There is one will causing all actions and one substance.

I think that Robert Farrar Capon puts a fun and quite theologically brilliant spin on all of this as he reminds us of the contribution of the early Scotists and Franciscan theologians - good Trinitarians all. I offer you this quote from his book The Third Peacock...well worth the read. Enjoy:

In the Christian scheme of things, the ultimate act by which God runs and rescues creation is the Incarnation. Sent by the Father and conceived by the Spirit, the eternal Word is born of the Virgin Mary and, in the mystery of the indwelling, lives, dies, rises, and reigns. Unfortunately, however, we tend to look on the mystery mechanically. We view it as a fairly straight piece of repairwork which became necessary because of sin. Synopsis: The world gets out of whack; perverse and foolish oft it strays until there is none good, no, not one. Enter therefore God with incarnational tool kit. He fixes up a new Adam in Jesus and then proposes, through the mystery of baptism, to pick up all the fallen members of the old Adam and graft them into Christ. Real twister of an ending: As a result of sin, man ends up higher by redemption than he would have by creation alone.

However venerable that interpretation is, though, it is not the only one. As long ago as the Middle Ages, the Scotist school of Franciscan theologians suggested another. They raised the question of whether the Incarnation would have occurred apart from sen; and they answered it, Yes. In other words, they saw the action of God in Christ, not as an incidental patching of the fabric of creation, but as part of its very texture. For our purposes—in this context of a world run by desire for God—that opens up the possibility that the Word in Jesus was not so much doing bits of busy work to jimmy things into line as he was being his own fetching self right there in the midst of creation.
And there you have the bridge from a mechanical to a personal analogy to the divine help. When we say that a friend “helped” us, two meanings are possible. In the case where our need was for a Band-Aid, a gallon of gas or a push on a cold morning, we have in mind mechanical help; help for times when help was at least possible. But when nothing can be helped, when the dead are irretrievably dead and the beloved lost for good, what do we mean by telling Harry how much help he was to us in our need? He did nothing; he rescued no one from the pit, he brought no one back from the ends of the earth. Still, we are glad of him; we protest that without him we would never have made it. Yet we know perfectly well we could have gotten through it just by breathing in and out. That means, therefore, that what we thank him for is precisely personal help. It was his presence, not the things that he did, that made the difference.

So with God, perhaps. Might not Incarnation be his response, not to the incidental irregularity of sin, but to the unhelpable presence of badness in creation? Perhaps in a world where, for admittedly inscrutable reasons, victimization is the reverse of the coin of being, his help consists of his presence in all victims. At any rate, when he finally does show up in Jesus, that is how it seems to work. His much-heralded coming to put all things to rights ends badly. When the invisible hand that holds the stars finally does its triumphant restoring thing, it does nothing at all but hang there and bleed. That may well be help; but it is not the Band-Aid creation expected on the basis of mechanical analogies. The only way it makes any sense is when it is seen as personal: When we are helpless, there he is. He doesn’t start your stalled car for you; he comes and sits with you in the snowbank. You can object that he should have made a world in which cars don’t stall; but you can’t complain he doesn’t stick by his customers.

So, back to Isaiah. Now, did Isaiah catch a glimpse of God in Christ, the Incarnation, sitting upon the throne? A man with arms and legs? A pre-Jesus. I doubt it but I do not know. But I believe that Isaiah understood clearly that the God who gave him the sight of such a vision was the God who had created the cosmos and would in the end gather us in. It is God, the Lord, who is present at our coming in and our going out. It is this God who, in the wreck of Israel and the end of King Uzziah's rule, is present. Everything can be in the dumps but the Lord sits upon his throne and sits by our side. 

And, it is this certainty of presence that Isaiah bears witness to, that the first disciples experienced both before and after the resurrection, and it is this certainty of presence that John the evangelist records in his Gospel.