Postils for Preaching

Commentaries on the Revised Lectionary, Year C

Rollefson

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498290531
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Postils for Preaching repristinates an old term for commentaries on the appointed texts by assisting preachers in their time-honored calling of preaching the Word. "Post illa," some think, probably refers to the reflecting "after this" (meaning upon the texts) that preachers must do in the context of the lives of their congregations and larger communities. These essays do not aim to be sermons but sermon-starters, goads and incitements to consider the assigned texts with serious imagination and good humor, all in the context of the church year and its inter-textual connections. The intention of this publication is to dip into a lifetime of that exegetical and homiletical "bag of tricks" as Jesus himself obliquely recommended when he noted how "every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old" (Matt 13:52). Please consider these postils a "thesaurus" ("treasury") from which to borrow insights, references, and allusions as needed and found of value.

Time After Pentecost, YEAR C

The Holy Trinity, First Sunday after Pentecost

Psalm 8

Proverbs 8:1–4, 22–31

Romans 5:1–5

John 16:12–15

. . . what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,

and crowned them with glory and honor.

—Psalm 8:4–5

Come, Join the Dance of Trinity

Our readings from Hebrew scripture, from Proverbs 8 and Psalm 8, chant an antiphonal hymn between God and humanity in which the mediating figure of Wisdom serves as cantor. Proverbs 8’s opening verses portray Wisdom as a woman standing at the public intersection of the city traffic hailing passersby and inviting them to stop and welcome her into their lives. Verses 22 and following just as provocatively represent a shift in perspective in which woman Wisdom now is found narrating her autobiography, so to speak, in which she stakes her claim to be God’s first act of creation and witness to all that then transpired. More than that, in famously ambiguous Hebrew, Wisdom describes herself as being “beside” the Creator God “like a master worker,” or alternatively, “as a little child” (v 30). The OT scholar Samuel Terrien prefers the translation “architect” and further suggests that the “feminine Wisdom at play” of this passage might be understood best as the “daughter of YHWH,” much as the prologue to John’s Gospel will later identify the Word as the preexistent son of the Father become incarnate in Jesus. Wisdom, Terrien concludes, “incongruous as it may seem, should be considered the pivot of Scripture, the motif that, more than any other, leads from the Old Testament to the New.”32

And then there’s Psalm 8 which can be understood as a kind of antiphonal paraphrase on the part of a humanity wistfully and reverently meditating on the glories of God’s creation and the special mindfulness God evidences towards us human types. This too is a wisdom song, a song we can join in singing as we heed Wisdom’s invitation amid the busy crossroads of life to stop and consider the origin and purpose of existence—and to delight in God.

Both NT readings seem to have been chosen due to their implicit three-fold sense of God. “God” (but also “the glory of God” and “God’s love”), “our Lord Jesus Christ,” and “the Holy Spirit” all are mentioned in five short verses of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. The unselfconsciousness of the intertwining of these various references to what would only in time come to be called the “triune” God in the context of a much-loved and used pastoral counsel to the suffering is a vital witness to the NT’s sense of a God who will not be bound to a single referent or name. Rather, God is experienced variously and yet identified as one with the “elusive presence” of the YHWH of Hebrew scripture and tradition, the “I will be who I will be” God.33

Holy Trinity is a Sunday dreaded by many who might prefer the church’s holy day to be preempted by other spring-time holidays like Memorial Day or Mother’s Day. The challenge of preaching a doctrinal sermon is one few of us relish because we fear that the trinity is a teaching often judged as arcane, abstruse and heavy that simply will not prove appetizing to the lighter appetites of contemporary church-goers. I vividly remember sitting in a dimly lit, chilly Edinburgh lecture hall, wooden benches and writing desks steeply rising above the podium, listening to black-gowned Professor John McIntyre, Principal of New College, as he held forth for a full term on the intricacies of the doctrine of the trinity. He read from a mimeographed script that he had passed out to us at the beginning of the course, punctuating it with wry asides which passed for Scottish humor, to which we students would stomp on the wooden risers to show our appreciation—smiles and chuckles apparently not being acceptable for intermediate divinity students to exhibit. I emerged from that course newly appreciative of trinitarian theology of which there’s been quite a revival in more recent years, so that returned to Yale Divinity School for my final year of seminary I found George Lindbeck’s course in “comparative dogmatics” one of my favorite classes.

No less than Dorothy Sayers, the Christian apologist, Dante scholar and author of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, argued memorably in an essay published nearly seventy years ago that “the dogma is the drama,” by which she meant, “ . . . not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death—but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death.” “Show that to the heathen,” she concluded, “and they may not believe it, but at least they may realize that here is something a man (sic) might be glad to believe.”34

Today we might say, “show that to our congregations” and our fear may be that we will be hooted down as too intellectual, out of touch or insufficiently contextual. But that’s where we’re dead wrong. We dare not underestimate our congregations, ourselves, and the delectable Word and occasion set before us today. Holy Trinity Sunday presents a terrific opportunity to revel in the “delight” of God in humankind and for us to delight in the praise and contemplation of our triune God—the God of scripture and tradition who is also the God of our experience and hope, our origin and destination in whom we live and move and have our being. Ours is a God who continues to surprise and astonish us and shatter our religious complacency, redefining even our sense of our own religious “needs.” Without vaporizing the doctrine of the holy trinity into a “new age” celebration of sheer spiritualization, allow the scripture with Psalm 8 and Proverbs 8 leading the way, to seduce you and your people into exploration and appreciation of what it might mean for God and humankind’s relationship to be one of mutual delight, originating with God and reciprocated by the likes of us earthlings created in the trinity’s image. Since those Edinburgh days there’s even appeared a hymn that sings of the interpenetration of the Godhead we learned to call “perichoresis” which in Greek literally means “to dance around.” “Come, Join the Dance of Trinity” (ELW #412) is sung to a lilting English folk tune or try one of the many hymns to the Holy Trinity written by British hymnodist Brian Wren.

Lectionary 8, Proper 3 (See Epiphany 8, Year C)

Lectionary 9, Proper 4

Psalm 96:1–9

1 Kings 8:22–23, 41–43

Galatians 1:1–12

Luke 7:1–10

O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth . . .

For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;

he is to be revered above all gods.

For all the gods of the peoples are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.

—Psalm 96:1, 4–5

Solomonic?

Today’s first reading from 1 Kings transports us back nearly three millennia to a glorious time in the life of God’s specially chosen people Israel. The text we hear read doesn’t adequately set the context of Solomon’s words which comprise almost the entire, long eighth chapter of 1 Kings. Suffice it to say that this was one of the grandest moments of Israel’s history in which King Solomon, David’s son and successor, is pictured before the just completed temple in Jerusalem, seven years in the building. It was one of the great wonders of the ancient world, erected in honor of YHWH to whom Solomon is found speaking his dedicatory prayer before all the people of Israel.

Scholars tell us that the site of the temple, atop Mt. Zion in Jerusalem, was located on the foundations of an ancient threshing floor of the people David had displaced, a site sacred to adherents of the Canaa...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Season of Advent
• Season of Christmas
• Time After Epiphany
• Season of Lent
• Holy Week
• Time after easter
• Time After Pentecost, Year C
• Epilogue
• Bibliography