The Day of Pentecost, Whitsunday, Year A, May 24, 2026

Prayer

O God the Holy Ghost
Who art light unto thine elect
Evermore enlighten us.
Thou who art fire of love
Evermore enkindle us.
Thou who art Lord and Giver of Life,
Evermore live in us.
Thou who bestowest sevenfold grace,
Evermore replenish us.
As the wind is thy symbol,
So forward our goings.
As the dove, so launch us heavenwards.
As water, so purify our spirits.
As a cloud, so abate our temptations.
As dew, so revive our languor.
As fire, so purge our dross

Christina Rossetti (AD 1830-1894)
Read more at: http://www.faithandworship.com/prayers_Pentecost.htm#ixzz1OuaDzu2R

Some Thoughts on John 20:19-31


"What is more, he keeps showing up. As he came back a week later for Thomas, Jesus keeps coming back week after week among his gathered disciples -- in the word, the water, the bread, and the wine -- not wanting any to miss out on the life and peace he gives."
Commentary, Elisabeth Johnson, John 20:19-31, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.

"Sometimes I think we have more faith in our fears than we do in God, in the Risen Christ. Have you ever been locked in by your fears?"
"Locked In And Locked Out," Alyce M. McKenzie, Edgy Exegesis, 2013.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text


Our passage begins on the evening of the first day. Ignatius believed this was the moment when Christians began to associate Sunday morning worship with the resurrected Lord over and against the sabbath.  That the first day of the week was a day of work, to begin with, the work God has given us through the Holy Spirit.

Certainly, this is indeed what happens.  Jesus comes and is in their midst.
Raymond Brown points out that this is typical of the Johannine resurrection pieces:

1. A bereft situation
2. The appearance
3. Greeting
4. Recognition
5. Command (John, Anchor Bible, 1028)

He tells his followers that he is sending them out and that they are to receive the Holy Spirit. The passing of the Holy Spirit over to the disciples is a giving of authority. They are representatives of the family of God in their proclamation, mission, and service to others.

We spent time on this passage previously the Sunday following Easter, so I don't want to spend time on the resurrection appearance. I would rather focus on the powers given over to the disciples.

The Holy Spirit has been given to them directly from God.

Throughout the whole of John's Gospel, he has refrained from talking about the disciples as apostles; in this passage, he does this for the first time. (Brown, John, 1036)
We see that the grounding, the theology of the trinitarian community ad extra, serves as the grounding for the disciples being sent by Jesus.

They are holy. They are consecrated by the Spirit to bear the Gospel forward.  This breathing on them echoes the first breaths given to man in Genesis 2.7. This is a new creation that is being made.

We might remember our Holy Saturday Great Vigil and the words spoken in Ezekiel's prophecy (ch 37).  In it the "Son of Man" is told to prophesy to the dry bones: "Hear the word of the Lord...I will cause breath [spirit] to enter you, and you shall live." (1037)

I very much like how Raymond Brown speaks of this moment:

Now, another Son of Man, himself fresh from the tomb, speaks as the risen Lord and causes the breath of eternal life to enter those who hear his word.  In the secondary, baptismal symbolism of John 3.5 the readers of the Gospel are told that by water and Spirit they are begotten as God's children; the present scene serves as the Baptism of Jesus' immediate disciples and a pledge of divine begetting to all believers of a future period represented by the disciples. (Small wonder that the custom of breathing upon the subject to be baptized found its way into the baptismal ceremonial.)  Now they are truly Jesus' brothers and can call his Father their Father (20.17)  The gift of the Spirit is the "ultimate climax of the personal relations between Jesus and his disciples. (1037ff)

This Sunday, we will all celebrate the great gift of the Holy Spirit. Some will call this the birthday of the church, and many will wear read. It will be a festive and exciting time.

We must not lose sight, though, that the gift of the spirit is a missionary gift. The recreation of humanity is not for the church alone but for the whole body of God's people around the world.

We should have a glorious celebration of the Church's new creation, but as the first fruits of the great community of God, the reign of God yet to be fulfilled, and the mission of God in which we have the privilege to participate.

Some Thoughts on I Corinthians 12:3-13

"I would have fit in well in Corinth. The Corinthian Christians' struggles, which Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 14, resemble my own: jealousy, striving, arrogance, and a propensity to measure one's worth through comparisons with other people."

Commentary, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13, Matt Skinner, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

"... [Paul] is thinking about people who make claims that their actions flow from the Spirit. In effect it is indeed possible to curse Christ by what we do and think, even when we are claim to be acting and speaking by the inspiration of the Spirit."

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

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

On this Pentecost, we attach Paul's writing on the gifts of the spirit.  Of course, Paul is writing because there is an argument over whose gifts are most important and who is more important and what gifts are acceptable...blah blah blah.  It is typical of Christian community to argue not only over who is in and who is out but also what the hierarchy is once you are part of the group.  I think this is not unique to the Christian community but the problem with community in general.

While the community is focused on the spiritual gift of speech, Paul reorients them to understand that there are many gifts.  Deep within the text is a bit of important trinitarian theology.  Paul writes: “Same Spirit ... same Lord ... same God” The Spirit is a gift of the Father; Christ was to serve or minister, and the Father is the creator of all things. This is where and how the gift-giving is rooted in God. Nothing is for personal use. All of it builds up the kingdom, builds up the church, and does God's work in the world.

There is the speaking but also wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracle-working, prophecy, discernment, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues.  We each receive gifts for this work - the work of the church.

Because baptism is through the Spirit, these gifts are through the Spirit as well. Everyone, no matter what their background, family of origin, or place within the Roman social hierarchy - are given gifts for ministry.

I believe that the place where these sermons go wrong - including my own in the past - is when we narrowly define the purpose of the gifts.  I think we do a good job of telling people they have gifts, that God receives them all into his kingdom, and that they are each blessed and chosen by God for his work. We fall down on this message when we so narrowly focus on the gifts so as to imply that their use is only within the four walls of a church building.  When we do this, we create a separate world apart from the world that God came to save.

God does welcome us all into his family. Regardless of who we are and where we have been, he radically forgives and welcomes the prodigals.  He does this so that the world may know him and be reconciled.  The work takes place out in the world. The kingdom gifts are given to each and every person so that in their families, in their work, and in their life - in general - they may be a witness.  God has not raised all of us up, go through this extraordinary ordeal, and sent his Holy Spirit so that we might figure out how to keep the lights on in an empty church.  Our gifts are given for evangelism - spreading the Good News of Salvation through the unique witness of God in Christ Jesus, AND our gifts are given that we might serve our neighbour and, in so doing, serve the God who created and has made all things - who gives life and light and love.  That is a much more important mission, and it is the mission for which these gifts have been given.

Some Thoughts on Acts 2:1-21

Oremus Online NRSV First Text 

As many are aware, there are several passages that describe the moment in which the Holy Spirit descends upon the disciples. John’s version is very much an imparting from Jesus as he breathes on them and gives them peace. Luke’s is the story of the mighty rushing wind and it is more likely the popular version people remember.

In Paul’s sermon at Pisidian Antioch he says, “[Jesus is the fulfillment of] the holy and faithful things of David.” (Acts 13:13-41 as referred to in connection with this passage by Richard Hays in Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 232.) Luke is clear regardless of who is speaking, Peter or Paul, that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Isaiah prophecy that God’s reign will be victorious and that it is meant for the whole world. The Gospel authors, Luke included, read the Old Testament as the prefigured and prophetic work of the Word at work in the world.

The coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples is clearly the way/manner in which this gospel message of fulfilment will be taken into the world. And, the coming of the Holy Spirit (as discussed in previous passages on Peter’s speech) is also part of the fulfilment itself. For while Jesus is the culmination of the work of the Word, it is the Holy Spirit that shall reweave and restore creation and humanity. And Jesus is to be the Lord of all.

This is all clouded in the midst of our celebrations of Pentecost Sunday. The message will be muddled by reading the story in different languages. It will be obscured by the celebrations of the “birthday of the church”. It really isn’t a story about the inside, but our celebrations tend to reinforce a stayed church institution and hermeneutic of attraction. The story is instead one of sending, of going, of being empowered with gifts for the journey and being unmoored from our appointed seats at the table to a world hoping for light in the midst of a shadow. Pentecost is NOT about the birth of a church it is about the ever-expanding reign of God and the Good News of the Gospel of God in Christ Jesus outside our church boxes and upper rooms and actively spreading into the world around us.

Second Sunday after the Epiphany, A, January 18, 2026

Prayer

On all who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints let the Spirit descend and remain, so that filled with grace and peace, we may reveal the One whom we testify to be the Son of God. 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 A, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on John 1:29-42

"Perhaps in most congregations, it might be more effective to ignore all the different possible Christological implications of these titles, and simple tell a story about little Andrew who responded to the invitation to come and see and then did his own small part to spread the knowledge of the Messiah to his brother and throughout his town."

Exegetical Notes by Brian Stoffregen at CrossMarks Christian Resources.

"But the hospitality of Jesus was controversial. He chafed against the limits of social propriety by welcoming prostitutes and adulterers, crooks and outcasts into his gracious presence. His hospitality knew no limit. It was not just indiscriminate: it was promiscuous."

"The Other 'H' Word," Mark Ralls, The Christian Century, 2005.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

In this week's appointed Gospel lesson we see a continuing pattern of acknowledgment about the person of Jesus as proclaimed by the first Christians. Last week we were given a vision of Jesus Christ as Son, servant, inaugurator of the new exodus and creation, and the one who fulfills all righteousness. This week we hear in the voice of John the Baptist that Jesus is: Lamb of God, the pre-existent one, the one on whom the Holy Spirit descends, and as the chosen one.

The theme of our season of the Epiphany (a season of God with us) is a season wherein we are able to proclaim and speak clearly about the person of Jesus Christ and our understanding of him as followers. As the Lamb of God, we understand Jesus in terms of the suffering servant from Isaiah. Our early church fathers also saw him clearly as the paschal lamb provided by God for the sake of the world.

The Johannine scholar Raymond Brown writes, "John the Baptist hailed Jesus as the lamb of Jewish apocalyptic expectation who was to be raised up by God to destroy evil in the world, a picture not too far from that of Rev. xvii 14." (John, vol 1, Anchor Bible, 60)  Tying in the first words of John's Gospel, the Baptist reminds us of the concept that Jesus is the incarnation of God and intimately involved in the creation itself.

There is some debate around the idea that this may be more the author's polemic than the Baptist's prophecy. However, this line of thinking seems less interesting than the idea that the first Christians proclaimed and understood that Jesus was God. The second person of the Trinity in accordance with the creeds that would later be formed but nonetheless grounded in these first thoughts. What also seems clear is that many believed Jesus in their first-hand experience to be the "one to come" prophesied in the writings of the Old Testament. (Brown, 64)

Jesus is the one upon whom the Holy Spirit descended. We understand as did the first followers that this is an indication not simply of his holiness but that Jesus was an instrument of God. He is in the words of Isaiah the Messiah, the servant, the one to lead us. We end the scene with the identity of Jesus as the Chosen One. Each of the previous theological typologies for understanding the person of Jesus leads to this one. Jesus in his baptism is the one in whom God is pleased.

While we might look over our long and sacred history and see those saints that came before Jesus and those that came after we cannot help but recognize the first Christian testimony that Jesus is the uniquely chosen one by God to provide deliverance and new life to God's people - gentile and Jew alike. It is a marvel that our author could provide such a rich Isaiah like Christology in these first verses of his Gospel.

We have an opportunity as preachers and teachers to share this unique scriptural witness with those around us. More importantly that as we listen and engage in conversation with those around us we are showing this Christology already at work in their lives and the lives of those in our community.  The challenge this week will be the primary pastoral challenge of the Gospel - to connect the unique story of Christ with the everyday lives of God's people.

Some Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 1:1-9

"Private faith of a personal future is more comforting and marketable, but has little to do with the hope Jesus came to bring and doesn't really spell good news for the poor except in another life."
"First Thoughts on Year A Epistle Passages in the Lectionary: Epiphany 2," William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"It is perhaps not surprising that Paul, as he addresses the church in Corinth, speaks of the gift given, God's grace shared, as "speech and knowledge of every kind" and wealth (i.e., being enriched in Christ Jesus)."
Commentary, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Dirk G. Lange, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

Here again, we begin with the Pauline formula of using Greek letter writing traditions.  He, of course, adapts it for his own purposes and inserts a wonderful prayer.

In the prayer he thanks God for grace and spiritual gifts, especially those given to the Corinthian church.  He also gives a nod to the imminent return of Christ.  He tells them that God is present in their lives at this very time and that God is supporting them in their work.  And, as in many of his themes he reminds them of God's own faithfulness to humanity and that he promises to us to be with us and to be with us to the very end.  

Ultimately, Paul is reminding the readers of the past and readers today of God's blessings and care for them.  This passage offers us a moment to invite our listeners to ponder the blessings of life.

In AA and Alanon gratitude is a constant theme.  Without gratitude to our higher power, we begin to believe that we are self-sufficient, all-powerful and in control.  It is always good to encourage our people for they are indeed richly blessed and our encouragement can help lead them to the right use of those blessings. However, in a world of super egoism and narcissism, it may be an even more urgent need to remind them that it is God who provides for them, in fact, provides all things, and provides even their/our very life.

Some Thoughts on Isaiah 49:1-7


"As always, it's important here to state the big story at work in Isaiah in order to grasp the power of Isaiah's proclamation in chapter 49."Commentary, Isaiah 49:1-7, Amy Oden, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.

Oremus Online NRSV Old Testament Text 

The passage we have this week from Isaiah is often referred to as the “Second Servant Song.” It is a promise from God through the mouth of Isaiah to the people in Babylon that God will not leave God’s people scattered. That God will not only “comfort, comfort” God’s people but that God will also draw God’s people home to God’s self. In so doing, God’s work will be manifestly witnessed to by all people – there will, in fact, be a universal understanding of God, God’s faithfulness, God’s desire to unite God’s people, to be united with God’s people, and finally to free and deliver God’s people.

This passage had a profound impact on the Gospel authors. The message that God’s light and God’s mission would reach to the ends of the earth-inspired the Gospel authors as they interpreted the ministry of Jesus. They understood specifically that Jesus was not only this “suffering servant” but that God in Christ Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit was going to undertake this work. The universal proclamation in Mark and Luke is especially tied to this particular passage. Jesus is the light, his work of salvation will reach all people. The comfort that Isaiah proclaims is spoken again by Simeon and the people are being prepared for the light and life which he brings. Lips will be freed so that all the nations will resound a prophetic acclamation of God’s work and mission. Richard Hays writes in Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (a fantastic read) that the Gospels are “hardwired” for this mission.

Paul in Acts says this most clearly: “To this day I have had help from God, and so I stand here, testifying to both small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would take place: that the Messiah* must suffer, and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.’”

Sunday after Christmas All Years - December 28, 2025

Prayer

May we welcome this mystery of your love and thus delight in the joy that will be ours as children and heirs of your kingdom. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

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


Some Thoughts on John 1:1-18

"For an alternative approach, rather than helping our hearers to see the light of Christ shining in the darkness, preachers might help them to hear Jesus as God’s love song, singing life into the world’s babble, chaos, and voices of death."

Commentary, John 1:1-14, Craig a. Satterlee, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"The gospel message does not go forward without witnesses like John, and one of the tasks in this sermon is to help show what it looks like to point our fingers towards Jesus. In the age of talk of missional churches, how does that work out practically? How can we point towards Jesus in mission in such a way that others come to know him and come to know and love God?"

Commentary, John 1:(1-9), 10-18 (Christmas 2), Ginger Barfield, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

"It would be truly horrendous to be in the hands of an all-intrusive God who never left us alone, and who, when it came time to send his messiah, sent one who ruled the earth like some heavenly Mussolini. In the very unobtrusiveness of the light of Christ, God honors our finite freedom."
"Penetrating the Darkness," Ronald Goetz, The Christian Century, 1988. At Religion Online.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text


I like how Raymond E. Brown approaches this text. There is first the Word with God (John 1:1-2). The opening verses of this Christ hymn used to frame an entrance into the Johannine Gospel are brief and are completely, or I should say "seemingly," uninterested in a metaphysical conversation about the nature of God. It is, however, very clear that salvation history begins with the relationship between God, revealed through the living Word, and humanity. Quite simply, God reveals God-self to us in the work of creation—and by John’s usage here; creation also reveals something about the salvation of humanity as well. Creation is by its very nature a revealing act (Brown, John, vol. 1, 23–24).

The language of communion echoes through this theological vision: the Word was not just with God but toward God. This subtle distinction reveals eternal intimacy, a movement of love that births creation itself. Here, creation is not utilitarian or expendable but revelatory. It is a sacrament—"not simply made but meant." Every aspect of the created order becomes a medium through which divine intention shimmers. In a world where utility often overrides beauty, this vision insists that matter matters (Brown, 1966).

Secondly, there is the Word and Creation. “All creation bears the stamp of God’s Word,” Brown writes (Brown, John, 25). Here we see the author reflecting and reimagining the opening lines of Genesis. What is clearly of importance is that creation itself existed primarily for the glory of God and the revelation of who God is. The problem is that the creation is broken; it does not fulfill its purpose as God intended. It is not a sustainable creation. Instead, it is one where there is a constant battle to supplant the power and revelation of God. We can return to the creation story in Genesis—certainly this seems on the author’s mind. However, it is not difficult to see and imagine as we read the paper or watch television how humanity has created a non-sustainable kingdom for ourselves and that we wrestle for power with God, placing our needs above creation’s explicit purpose to glorify God.

This reflection asserts that faith is resistance—not merely assent to doctrine but embodied opposition to the claim that what is seen is all there is. The incarnation is God's counter-claim: the Word enters darkness from within it. To behold the incarnate Word is to realize that creation is charged with meaning, that bread and breath, leaf and light, speak of God. Every Eucharist is reimagined as an annunciation, as creation once again becoming womb to divine presence.

The third portion of our Gospel selection is the portion where we are reintroduced to John the Baptist. I say reintroduced because we spend several Sundays reading passages from Matthew that dealt with him and his ministry. Yet here we get a slightly different attempt to speak about how John responded to the living Word, the Light in the world. He was clearly not the one everybody was looking for, but dutifully gave witness to the revelation of God. Moreover, John the Baptist called everyone to a time of preparation and repentance, for the Light itself—the living Word—was entering the world.

We come to the final and fourth portion of our reading, and we return to the relationship between God and humanity—specifically in how the community of God (God’s people) responds to the living Word. God is dwelling with his people. He has made a “tent”; he is incarnated and present within the community (Brown, John, 35). The images here in this last section return not to Genesis but play on our remembrances of the Exodus and the idea that God came and dwelt among the people as they made their way in the wilderness. Here too is an expressed intimacy between God and people. God is not simply outside, having wound the clock tight and now letting it run. On the contrary, just as God was intimately involved with the creation and the people of Israel, God also is involved in the new community post-resurrection. God—the living Word—is making community within God’s tent and is revealing himself and the purpose of creation to all those who would call him by name: Jesus.

The closing affirmation is breathtaking: the Gospel does not merely speak of origins but of destiny. The incarnation is not just God's past intervention but our present calling and future hope. We are invited not simply to believe but to behold—to participate in the divine life and to witness to the world remade in the light of the Word.

In all, this reflection is itself a liturgical act, drawing us into awe, critique, and wonder. It contributes profoundly to an Anglican apologetics that is not about winning arguments but about forming lives. It teaches that to follow Christ is to stand with the Baptist in the wilderness, to behold glory in the face of Christ, and to find in that vision the shape of our salvation.

Some Thoughts on Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7

NRSV at Oremus Bible Browser.

"The Law enforces good behavior, at least outwardly. We obey the Law because if we don't we will be punished. Our obedience is inspired by fear. We obey under duress and we do it resentfully. Now what kind of righteousness is this when we refrain from evil out of fear of punishment? Hence, the righteousness of the Law is at bottom nothing but love of sin and hatred of righteousness."

Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (Galatians 3:20-29) by Martin Luther.

"Perhaps the preacher will find a way to imagine hugely and begin with small steps, holding both before the congregation that continues to believe that faith has indeed come and God's Holy Spirit is not yet finished with us."

Commentary, Galatians 3:23-39 (Pentecost 5C), Sarah Henrich, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.


"Paul was declaring that you could leave large parts of the Bible aside and that you should see it as having its main meaning in what Jesus brought to us."

"First Thoughts on Year C Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 5, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

“For we were all under the watchful eye of the lawguardian until the faith came. The law was our tutor to lead us to Christ so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.” Galatians 3:23–25 

Before faith came, we lived under guard.

We lived under the law, and the law was good. It set up guardrails for our lives, helping to keep us on track. But it could not make us free. The law held down the wildness of our hearts, but it could not redeem our wild hearts. The law was our tutor, or guardian, drawing boundaries to keep us in line, but not giving us the freedom of sonship. The law pointed ahead, but could not pull us into the future. Its voice was corrective; it was not inviting.

But now faith has come. Faith in Jesus Christ—not just an idea to assent to, but a living reality to enter into, the reality of new life in Christ. The faith that would change our lives, not just make them better. The faith that breaks the boundaries. The faith that releases the captivity. The faith that brings us from student status under a harsh disciplinarian to children in the household of God. The faith that lets us live, not from fear of punishment, but from love.

This is the arc of our liturgical life as well. The cycle of the seasons in the Church’s year, and especially the movement from Advent to Christmas and Lent to Easter, enacts and recapitulates the journey from waiting to celebration, from penitence to praise. As our Book of Common Prayer says, “the whole Church is called to keep watch and pray,” but it is always toward the realization of God’s love made known in Christ.

Paul says that “in the fullness of time,” God sent his Son, in human history, not too soon, and not too late, but at just the right moment. When the world had become weary with waiting, Christ was born, of a woman, under the law, under the boundaries that would keep all humanity captive, but stepping into the darkness to redeem us from it. Not only to forgive our sins, but to make us his own—to take us out of the courtroom and bring us into the family room.

This is not only true in Anglican spirituality; it is not only preached, but enacted in the sacraments. In the waters of baptism, we are “sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.” In the Eucharist, we are reminded that our adoption as God’s children is not an abstract reality but an embodied one. Christ did not stay in the ether; he did not remain an idea. He came into our condition and by his presence within us our own identity is transfigured.

We have not only been redeemed; we have been adopted. And because we are his sons and daughters, God has given the Spirit of his Son into our hearts. That Spirit does not whisper a list of dos and don’ts. It cries out with intimacy and tenderness, “Abba! Father!” The cry of the heart has changed. From duty to love, from obedience to affection, from distant to near. It is not just that we say “Our Father,” it is that the Spirit within us cries out, “Abba!”

This intimacy is lived out in the sacramental life of the Church in which the Spirit is made known not just in private piety but in the gathered people of God. As Bishop Andrew Doyle has written, “the Church’s worship and sacramental practices serve as a narrative apologetic,” a visible, tangible, bodily telling of God’s invitation to relationship, love, and family.

We are no longer slaves, but sons and daughters. And if we are children, we are also heirs, heirs of God’s promises, co-heirs with Christ. This is not a performance-based religion. This is the unearned reality of grace. God has not only cleared our ledger; he has given us a place in His will, a place at His table, and called us home.

Let this settle deep within us. We are not defined by what once bound us. We are not our failures, or our past, or our performance. We are His. We belong. And in Christ, we are finally, truly free.

Some Thoughts on Isaiah 61:10-62:3

NRSV at Oremus Bible Browser.

"The mission given to the prophet of Isaiah 61:10-62:3 is still needed today, so long as the world is populated by those who are brokenhearted, mourning and in captivity."

Commentary, Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3, Michael J. Chan, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.

"The lectionary's creators evidently viewed this portion of Isaiah as both eminently appropriate to Christmas and flexible in its boundaries."

Commentary, Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3, Patricia Tull, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"In other words, the people as a whole will be entrusted with the former monarchical function of administering God's justice and righteousness in the world."

Commentary, Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3, J. Clinton McCann, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

The prophet Isaiah cries out, “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God” (Isaiah 61:10). These words frame our meditation and create the challenge for us as Anglicans. In many ways this passage is textbook Isaiah with references to salvation, clothing and righteousness within a cosmic scene. What intrigues me and is our task today is how the rejoicing takes place in “my whole being”. The way that Isaiah puts it is profound for Anglicans for he talks about rejoicing with a “whole being that is clothed… with the garments of salvation, and has as covering the robe of righteousness.” This is an embodied rejoicing and one that happens not as an atomistic being, as in liberalism, but one that enfleshed within the people of God whose beauty is the covenant. In our baptismal liturgy in the Anglican tradition we say we are “putting on Christ” (Galatians 3: 27) which is both cognitive assent and a ritual, incarnational, transfiguring activity. We see this aesthetic truth writ large and big in the body, eucharistic and liturgical life of the Church, as the gathering of saints which over time are formed (and formed back again) body and soul to know and see that salvation is not an individual possession but a communal participation in the transformation, reconciliation, healing, hope and beauty of God for the world.

The bridal imagery of Isaiah, with the eschatological twist of Revelation’s vision of the Church as bride (Rev. 21), of course takes this even further. It is not self-fashioning. God clothes, God beautifies, God brings righteousness forth from the earth like springtime shoots (Isaiah 61:11). In this image is a beautiful theology of divine first initiative as a constant refrain which we hear in prevenient grace but also as aesthetic and luminous: God does not add grace to nature, God calls nature to its radiant actuality. In the tradition of Lancelot Andrewes and Richard Hooker that truth is both ontological and aesthetic. This kind of beauty cannot be produced by an ideology that only sees justice or mercy in any impoverished terms. As William Stringfellow, our spiritual guide and provocateur of the Episcopal Reformation, said, authentic, liberating salvation cannot be had while we remain under the thrall of idolatrous powers that act to contract, diminish and enslave human life. Authentic, liberating salvation of Zion breaks these idolatries and the Church of Christ out of captivity to nationalism, technologism, materialism and ecclesial narcissism over its own furniture, buildings and careers.

In a different way, Isaiah shifts in Isaiah 62. No longer just description, now exhortation: “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent.” The Church is called to intercession for the sake of Zion and the sake of those watching over Zion in prayer (62:6). This is an intercessory posture, because salvation is not so certain it can be passive, silent or lacking in embodied, attentive, hope-full watchfulness. In an Anglican reading, faith involves a kind of muscular and experiential counter-tension to doubt, apophatic openness, ambiguity and creative perception, as we are encouraged by Cardinal Lawrence and others like Iain McGilchrist. The latter’s analysis of our contemporary mechanistic, two-world view consciousness speaks directly to the broken tension at the core of faith. The metaphors we use for Zion are not abstract, grid-like patterns to be observed by algorithmic reductionism but are realities to be apprehended by “right hemisphere” knowing in direct relationship to the world and to God who is the Truth of the World, a knowing that both beholds beauty and acts in wonder.

“Jerusalem shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord” (Isaiah 62:3). Holy city! To be holy is not perfectionism but to be in communion. The Church is and is not the city but eucharistically, as a gathered and broken Body, it is and is not the holy city, adorned and adorning at once, wounded, radiant, broken and beloved. In the theological and eucharistic vision of Hooker and Andrewes and Aquinas and Le Guillou, the eucharist is not a spectacle for an audience but a mystery for entry in which the human is divinised through the utterly self-giving Christ.

We are promised a “new name” (Isaiah 62: 2), a name we do not give to ourselves by the power of an ideology or a brand. It is a name spoken by God and heard only within the community of mutuality and worship. This is where the anguished cry of the modern and prophetic document Beyond Code and Creed is a fitting reminder of the way in which attention is constantly mediated by algorithmic systems and protocols so that algorithmic systems seem to be the world. Isaiah’s vision and all biblical imagination challenge that precisely by the irreducible dignity of embodiment, gathered presence, holiness. Salvation is not code. Justice is not data. Faith cannot be automated. These things are and must be lived out in body, in hand, in gesture, in communities who gather to lament and to praise.

Isaiah’s final scene of righteousness springing forth like vegetation from the earth (61: 11) is a vision open onto an eschatological horizon. In one way, this is pneumaesthetic imagination rather than escapism. As Embodied Faith in the Future envisions through Le Guin, Margaret, and Robin Kimmerer, the great and the true text is creation and creation speaks in all its earth, animal and vegetal texture. Robins annotate the dawn, river stones gloss gravity and earth breath, fungal networks footnote the economy of reciprocity and promise keeping. Theologians notice that God is there and the truth of creation, the Logos is where a grammar of hope speaks sacrament and protest alike.

But in the end this is not just Isaiah’s vision. It is ours to live, ours to embody, ours to be sent with, ours to be gathered, adorned and named. Faith lived in body and community is both the medium and the message: God clothes the broken, names the outcast, and sends us out into the world to allow justice and beauty to flower for all, for Zion.