Coming in Currents: "Mea Culpa!"

Perhaps you noticed—or experienced—that life can be overwhelming. For several months, I experienced life as overwhelming and these days I am discovering by the balls I dropped just how overwhelmed I was. When I recruited writers for Preaching Helps, for example, I overlooked a few Sundays and festivals. For this issue, I neglected to recruit someone for Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. “Mea Culpa!” I ask you forgiveness for this (and any other recent) oversight, and I humbly offer these reflections in the hope that they will in some way contribute to your preaching.

On Pentecost (May 24, 2010), Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-21 are paired to compare and contrast how God is at work in human communication. In Genesis, the LORD confuses human language, so that we do not understand one another’s speech, and scatters humanity abroad over all the face of the earth (vv. 7-8). Though we might want to see this diversity as God giving different gifts to different people, I cannot escape understanding God’s confusing and scattering as punishment for creatures made from dust attempting to “make a name” or build a “reputation” for themselves by making a city and tower out of dust. In other words, Babel is humanity’s second attempt to become like God. Regardless of how God intended it, confusion and scattering led to separation, estrangement, mistrust, and competition among the peoples of the world.
As the Book of Acts tells it, God undoes all this by giving the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Each of the apostles, traditionally representing one of the twelve tribes of Israel, received the ability to speak in the language of another nation. Everyone heard the apostles speaking in their native language. Babel was undone. The gospel of Christ Jesus and the Spirit of his death and resurrection unite us. God frees us from needing to make a name for ourselves, by naming us children of God and giving us the Spirit of adoption in baptism, making us heirs with Christ who, like Jesus, cry to God as “Abba” (cf. Rom. 8:14-17). By pouring out the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the unity, reconciliation, trust and cooperation that are ours in Christ Jesus become manifest as each and all hear the gospel in their own tongue. The Spirit frees and empowers humanity to bring glory to God by loving and serving the neighbor.
The doing and undoing of Babel also warns preachers and congregations who have declared their mission and vision and come up with their plan to b careful. Those who steeled on a plain in the land of Shinar had a vision, a mission, and a plan to make their name great. God blew in, scattering their blueprints to the wind and their lives in unimaginable directions. If the Easter readings were any indication, the apostles likewise had a plan: remaining behind locked doors or perhaps resuming a life of fishing. Yet, the Spirit blew and the apostles acted boldly and spoke with power. The pairing of these readings makes plain that, whether gathered or scattered, comprehending or confused, we are utterly dependent upon the Holy Spirit. Our God both gifts and lifts us, so that we might participate in God’s own purpose. And God’s purpose is bigger than giving birth to the church. In Christ, God is about reconciling all humanity to God’s own self in ways that bring the world together. The sermon might help the Christian, congregation and church to consider how the Spirit is empowering and limiting us to share in God’s own work of reconciliation.

On Trinity Sunday (May 31, 2010), the church frequently explains a doctrine rather than proclaiming the gospel through the appointed readings. The homiletic challenge is helping people to understand why knowing God as Triune is important for our lives and for the world. The short answer is that we share the very life of God and Trinity revels to us what that life is and is to be.
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 offers the unexpected image of Lady (or Teacher) Wisdom showing up everywhere and shouting at us to come to her. On Trinity Sunday, this image always causes me confusion. My inclination is to think of God as proclaimed in the Hebrew Scriptures as Father or Creator. Yet, Wisdom’s words in vv. 22-29 remind me of John’s Prologue and Wisdom “rejoicing in the Lord’s inhabited world and delighting in the human race” (v. 30) leads me to think of Matthew’s description of Jesus as Emmanuel (1:23). So, rather than assigning a Person of the Trinity to this passage, the preacher might reflect upon what it suggests about the Triune God. For example, the Trinity is everywhere calling to us. Wisdom as God’s “helper” evokes the reciprocity of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit helping one another in the unity of God. Finally, Wisdom’s persona is joyous; she gladly and overwhelmingly offers her gifts to humanity.
Romans 5:1-5 seems to describe the Trinity’s relationship to humanity. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have access to this grace. God’s love is in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, which has been given to us. So, even as we boast in our hope of sharing the life of the Trinity, we have faith that the Trinity shares of our life of suffering and produces endurances, character and hope within us.
The Holy Spirit is the subject of Jesus’ teaching in John 16:12-15. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of truth” (v. 13), and suggests that truth, like the Trinity, is relational. Just as we often reduce the Trinity to a doctrine, so we often want to embrace or dismiss truth as proposition or fact. The Trinity invites us into the truth that flows out of relationships and that creates and strengthens community. In contrast to the truth of the individual, which so characterizes our culture, the relational Trinity and leads us to value and decide everything in terms of ourselves, the Trinity invites us to decide and value unselfishly, according to whether something points to the Father, glorifies Christ, and is empowered by the Holy Spirit.