The season of Easter has a close connection to the Jewish Passover. It begins on Easter Day and lasts 50 days, ending on Pentecost. In most churches, the decorations are white, gold, or white and gold. White represents the angels who announced the resurrection, while gold symbolizes triumph. Orthodox churches use the Julian calendar to calculate Easter Day and adjust the date so that it falls after the Jewish Passover. For them, Easter Season also lasts fifty days, ending on Pentecost. Ascension Day, the fortieth day of Easter, thus always a Thursday.
There are several Eastertide customs across the Christian world, including sunrise services, exclaiming the Paschal greeting, clipping the church (English custom of encircling the church with people, facing outward toward the community, symbolizing love for the church and community), and decorating Easter eggs, a symbol of the empty tomb. The Easter lily, a symbol of the resurrection, traditionally serve as the chancel flowers that decorate the chancel area of churches throughout Eastertide. Other Eastertide customs include egg hunting, eating special Easter foods and watching Easter parades.
Easter Season celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. It was such a surprise. It reminds us of the event nature of the Christian faith. In this moment, we find the revelation of the truth, as Christians understand truth. Too many times, Christians will domesticate Easter by drawing analogies, such as the rhythms of sleep and waking, death and birth, the change of seasons, life passages, and so on. Resurrection is not a supreme instance of immortality. We can try to make the particular and unique event of Good Friday and Easter become a familiar universal that relates to some dimension of philosophical anthropology or cosmology. This event, however, is a new, unique and unrepeatable point in time and space.[1] We do not reason ourselves to the truth of resurrection. We receive the gift revealed in the resurrection of Jesus. We live in a world dominated by death. We live in a Good Friday type of world. The accounts of appearances at the close of Matthew, Luke, and John and the account by Paul in I Corinthians 15 presume doubts and questions whether the resurrection of Jesus really happened. Ancients and moderns know that dead people stay dead. Some ancients who were sympathetic to Christianity may have thought that Jesus only appeared to die or that he appeared to have a body, but the New Testament is clear in defending and stressing his death and the physicality of his resurrection. Our human experience is that the tomb is the end. Science informs us that entropy will be victorious over the energy and the power of the universe so that it too will decay and die. The end, the destiny, of the universe is death and nothingness. If people say they do not believe God raised Jesus from the dead, it means they believe something else more strongly. Easter challenges our certainties. Experience teaches us that death wins. Everyone succumbs to it. Easter raises the question of whether we can be so sure that death truly wins. It opens the door to the possibility that while death is real, death is not final. The resurrection of Jesus tells us that God has the final word. God says life will have the final word.[2] Christians have a small and shaky basis for believing that the destiny of the universe and humanity is the fullness and completeness of life in God. That basis consists in witnesses. That is why the acceptance of apostolic teaching is so important, for their witness on this crucial portion of the proclamation of the early church takes precedence over our experience and over the conclusions of science. The reason is that this proclamation discloses who God is, according to Christian belief and teaching. God is the one who raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, Easter transforming our belief in who Jesus and who God is, and thereby transforming the way we look upon the wholeness of a human life. Easter anticipates the promised victory of life over death, light over darkness, and fullness over emptiness. The Trinity is active in the resurrection. The Father sent Son. The Son embraced the will of the Father, even to the cross. The life-giving Spirit gave life to the Jesus of Nazareth, verifying the life and ministry of Jesus as reflecting the will and purpose of the Father. This same Spirit will give life to the community of the faithful.
The discovery of the empty tomb is a fact to which the writers can point. The earliest written account of the discovery of the empty tomb is in Mark 16:1-6, 8. Even if we can demonstrate that it was empty, the reason for the tomb becoming empty would not be historically certain. Nor can the historian take refuge in faith. If we take at face value the account of the gospel narratives that people saw the tomb empty, then it was not an object of faith that it was empty. Rather, this perception becomes a matter of observation, and we must trust that the early accounts are accurate at this point. I find it at least credible that the church around Jerusalem maintained the tradition of appearances occurring around the empty tomb, a tradition that would have been quite meaningful to that church, but not as persuasive to the churches to which Paul wrote in Greece.[3] For them, appearances to the leaders of the church, including him, would have far more weight. Yet, the message of the resurrection that the disciples brought back to Jerusalem could not have survived a single hour if anyone could have shown the body to be in the tomb.[4] Yet, would resurrection require an empty tomb? Impressive at first glance is the view of Herod expressed in Mark 6:14, 16, namely, that Jesus was the beheaded Baptist risen again. However, the re-embodiment of a dead person in someone else is different from an eschatological resurrection of the dead and transformation into a life that is vastly different from existence on earth.[5] Thus, the empty tomb still has its place in the story of Jesus. The trustworthiness of the historicity of the discovery of the empty tomb receives confirmation in the early Jewish polemic against the Christian message. It does not offer any suggestion that the grave of Jesus had remained untouched. To make a bold statement, the separate nature of the appearance tradition and the secondary tradition of the empty tomb makes the testimony of the early church that God raised Jesus from the dead historically very probable.[6]However, to go to the length of saying it involves proof is a step I would be unwilling to take.
The emptiness of the tomb is highly suggestive, even if it clearly remains ambiguous historical evidence. As the Gospel writers admit, its emptiness was not evidence of the risen Lord. Such evidence came only with the appearances.[7] Yet, if the tomb is empty, it creates problems with the theory that the disciples hallucinated the appearances. The empty tomb also resists any superficial spiritualizing of the Easter message. It connects the earthly corporeality of Jesus with the eschatological reality of a new life. The empty tomb tradition is a separate and secondary independent witness to what happened to Jesus after his death. The empty tomb is a hint that the end of humanity and indeed for all creation is not death, the abyss, emptiness, and silence. Rather, the end involves a word and act of God that says life, meaning, and fullness are the end. Such an end finds its anticipation during our lives as well as human history. It also finds anticipation in nature. Yet, the fact the present anticipates the end reminds us of the ambiguity of our present. As Easter surprise to the women and the disciples, so the end will be a surprise to all. The end will be the surprise God brings to bring to fulfillment all that God has made.
The fact of the empty tomb is a presupposition for the proclamation of the theological message that the God of Israel raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. It was not until the risen Lord came to the women and the disciples that the ambiguity of the empty tomb received its proper interpretation. The basis of the message is the primitive Christian testimonies to the appearances of the risen Lord to the disciples, along with the discovery of the empty tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem. We cannot believe just because of the authority of this ancient witness. However, we might believe after considering whether the testimony holds up by testing other reported facts. In this context, the oldest New Testament witness to the resurrection and ascension of Jesus form a single event. This suggests that the account of the appearance of the risen Lord “from heaven” to Paul in Galatians 1:6 is an indication of what is behind the Gospel stories of the appearances as well.[8] Unlike other parts of the gospel stories in which the writers had a tradition of the sayings, parables, and deeds of Jesus, there were no traditions regarding the content of the appearances of the risen Lord. Thus, the gospel writers pattern the appearances after the appearances of the Lord in the Old Testament. The reason for the differences in each gospel is the theological point they want to make. Matthew, Luke, and John have unique theological perspectives that we find them communicating directly in the stories of the appearances. They could adopt this approach because they had no tradition upon which they relied for the says, parables, healings, and exorcisms of Jesus. They had in mind giving to the followers of Jesus ways of understanding the continuing presence of the risen Lord with them. The miracle of the resurrection of Jesus is incredible, even for the ancients. They wanted to show it was true that God acted in this way and that if accepted it would transform the way they experienced life. The followers of Jesus throughout the centuries continue to experience their risen Lord as a living reality after his death.
Even if one could “prove” it, it would not be enough. An historical event does not change your life. What does change your life is when you entrust yourself to its truth.[9] When we come to the resurrection, the church is not asking you to make a historical judgment. Deciding an event is historical does not change your life. The church is asking you to consider your core values and beliefs. The church is asking you to look at what gives your life its meaning and power. The church is asking you to become a disciple, a follower, of Jesus Christ to transform this world of sin, darkness, and death into a place that reflects our creation in the image of God, reflects light, and brings life.
Lloyd Douglas, in The Robe, has Marcelus, the Roman centurion who had the robe of Jesus become a Christian and tells his fiancée the story of Jesus. She responds, "It's a beautiful story, Marcellus, but we don't have to do anything about it, do we? Let's leave it just where it is." Marcellus says, "That's just it, I cannot forget it. Because it happened, things can never be the same for me again."
I keep trying to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. You see, I am not prone to believe in such things. I do not think aliens from another planet ever visited here. I do not think there is any such things as ghosts. Parapsychology is not worthy of my attention. Yet, I keep coming back to the first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus and find myself trusting them. I have no other reason for accepting as truth that God raised Jesus from the dead, and therefore to view my life as companionship with the risen Lord, other than their witness. Yes, “he lives within my heart,” as the song says, but that is not a reason to believe, but rather, is the result of a belief. I cannot read off the resurrection of Jesus from my experience, from nature, from psychology, from philosophy, or from history. I can read it only as revelation from God.
I want to say something else just gently and firmly. The stories of the appearances would have no validity were it not based upon the report of real events. The witness of the first followers of Jesus and of Paul is that the risen Lord appeared to them. They did not seek him. The risen Lord sought them. He appeared to the women who had travelled with Jesus while in Galilee and accompanied him on his journey to Jerusalem. He appeared to Peter and to the Twelve. We can rightly understand these appearances as focusing upon the grace of forgiveness from God through the risen Lord to those who denied and deserted Jesus at the end of his life. He appeared to the 500, to James, and to all the apostles. We can rightly understand these appearances as the risen Lord imparting the outpouring of the Spirit upon the community that would be the first witnesses to what God had done in Jesus. The risen Lord, the Son of God, revealed (ἀποκαλύψαι, Galatians 1:16) himself to Paul in a way that that helped him to see the depth of his sin, the grace extended to him through Christ, the awakening he needed to see the Jewish scripture in a new way, and the power the Spirit would give him to witness to the nations (I Corinthians 15:5-8). We can conclude that the grace Paul received in the revelation of the risen Lord to him was something like the grace received in the revelation given to the disciples and the first witnesses. The risen Lord also appeared to John toward the end of the century in a unique way (Book of Revelation), calling upon followers to remain faithful amid persecution from the beast-like powers of this world. These appearances revealed or disclosed to the first witnesses the identity of Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Jewish Messiah. Its presupposition is the emptiness of the tomb. The tomb is not evidence of the veracity of the witnesses, but their witness does presuppose it. Without its emptiness, early opponents of their witness could have gone to the tomb and shown others the body. Its emptiness does not prove that God did something miraculous to the corpse of Jesus of Nazareth. We need to be clear at this point. No one was present to witness to the resurrection itself. We today accept the witness of the burial of Jesus, the emptiness of the tomb, and the appearances of the risen Lord. However, we also need to accept that a gap exists between the emptiness of the tomb and the appearances. The first witnesses understood what happened in that gap as the Father, the God of the Jewish people, raising Jesus of Nazareth from the dead through the life-giving power of the Spirit. We accept the trustworthiness of their witness. We also accept the trustworthiness of their interpretation of these events as the fulfillment of the promises found in the Old Testament, especially the psalms and the prophets, and the anticipated end of the ages in the general resurrection of the dead as promised in Jewish apocalyptic. We need to take seriously the Jewishness of Jesus. If we do, then we must take seriously that he called the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Lord revealed to Moses, who guided a people through the tribal federation, the formation of sacral kingship, exile, and return to their home, as his Father. Jesus of Nazareth taught us as followers of Jesus to call upon the God of the Jewish people as our Father. The resurrection of Jesus by the Father, through the life-giving power of the Spirit, means that every culture and generation must take seriously the calling of the Jewish people as the people of God. The paradoxical beauty of taking this revelation seriously is that this God known through Jesus Christ shows no partiality. Through this revelation, in other words, we discover that the God of the Jewish people treats all nations, peoples, and cultures potential members of the people of God. Thus, the emptiness of the tomb as the presupposition of the report of the appearances and therefore the resurrection of Jesus suggests that the course of human history and therefore nature itself will find its fulfillment in the redeeming act of God at the promised and hoped for end of history. Such a promise and hope fill our present with meaning and purpose as we join Jesus and the first witnesses in our witness to the world of what God has done in Jesus. On this basis, Christians legitimately reflect upon what God is like through what they see in Jesus. The promised future event of redemption of our finite and temporal life has occurred first in Jesus of Nazareth. The resurrection of Jesus clarifies for us the ambiguity one finds during the life of Jesus. While human judgment led to the conclusion that he was a blasphemer of the Law and of the Jewish view of God, and even a political revolutionary who deserved the worst form of execution, the judgment of God is that he was the faithful servant of the Lord who suffered for others. We may call these appearances visions or apparitions, but they were convincing enough to the first witnesses that what they saw meant the promised resurrection of the dead in the consummation of time occurred within our history to Jesus of Nazareth. Since it occurred, the power of the Spirit the first followers of Jesus experienced with Jesus of Nazareth in his teaching, healings, and exorcisms continued in their community after his death. The risen Lord is now present through the outpouring of the Spirit in the community and in our lives. The continuing work of the Spirit is to set us in the direction of the fulfillment of the work of our lives in union with Christ. The fulfillment of our finite and temporal lives occurs through our participation in the life and eternity of God.[10]
Christians throughout the centuries have continued to experience Jesus as a living spiritual reality, a figure of the present, not simply a memory from the past. The form such presence may vary, but its reality is not something we need to doubt.
Christians can rely on the faithfulness and truthfulness of the first witnesses to the appearances of the risen Lord and to the emptiness of the tomb. The various forms of their spiritual experiences, such as visions, mystical experience, and the sense of the presence of Jesus as a living spiritual reality, which occur in prayer, worship, Eucharist, encounters with people, or during daily life, have validity because of the truthfulness of the first witnesses. The abiding truth of Easter has its basis in what happened in the opening months and years of the first Christian community.
I begin with the Old Testament references for the Sundays of Easter. In the faith of the Old Testament, there is recognition of the power of death to cut short a life intended to bring glory to God. Places like Sheol or the Pit were the shadowy realm of the dead but were also metaphors for the illness or trouble in which people found themselves. The desire and hope were that the joy of the divine presence would not stop at death and that death would not have the final word. If the Lord is our shepherd in life, the hope is that the shepherding would continue beyond death, dwelling in the House of the Lord forever. Our times are in the hand of God. The one rejected has become of central significance. Journey of a human life is a history of suffering, but it is also a history of grace experienced in it and through it. The election of Israel by the Lord was a significant moment in the history of the relationship between the Lord and the peoples of the earth. The hope is that the Lord, who subdued the enemies of Israel in Canaan, would subdue the nations, bringing all peoples into the covenant of the Lord with Abraham. The Lord was present on Mount Sinai and has now made the journey to Mount Zion, from there ruling as the divine king.
The writings of Luke will receive much attention, since the Book of Acts replaces an Old Testament lesson in the Sunday of Easter. I will group the texts from both the Gospel and Acts together so that we can get a sense of the movement that occurs within this gospel. This is important because Luke is the first to describe separate stages of the resurrection of Jesus, the ascension of Jesus to the Father, and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost. Most of the lessons from Acts will focus our attention upon the early proclamation or kerygma of the church as it spread from Jerusalem and Judea, to Samaria, and into Gentile territory.
There are some epistle lessons from the Pauline writings, from I Peter for Year A, and Revelation for Year C
The Gospel lessons from Matthew and Mark are what one would expect: report the discovery of the empty tomb and in the case Matthew a story of the risen Lord coming to the disciples in Galilee.
The writings of John include what we would think from the Gospel and from his letter in Year B.
The movement of the season is toward increasing emphasis upon the work of the Holy Spirit, which also lead to reflection upon the Trinitarian relations.
Here are my scripture studies of the texts. I have received much benefit from Homiletics as a resource for many years. A uniqueness of these studies is that I incorporate the insights of Karl Barth and Wolfhart Pannenberg, both of whom continue to teach me.
Easter Day
Old Testament
Year A
Epistle
Gospel Lesson
Second Sunday of Easter
Gospel Lesson (All Years)
Year A
Year B
Year C
Third Sunday of Easter
Year A
Year B
Year C
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Year A
Year B
Year C
Fifth Sunday of Easter
Year A
Year B
Year C
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Year A
Year B
Year C
Ascension Day (Thursday)
Seventh Sunday of Easter
Year A
Year B
Year C
Pentecost
It can be a challenge for preachers to try saying something new about Pentecost, or at least say something that will enable listeners to enter anew the experience and excitement of the event as it happened in Jerusalem. Within North American culture, the pastor is likely to serve a congregation with different denominational backgrounds, widely varying understandings of Pentecost, and prejudice for or against the phenomena described in Acts 2. There may also be some new clergy whose background is such that they know the narrative of Acts 2, but who go to their first church having no idea what is appropriate for marking the day in the context of worship. Such a lack of liturgical and cultural consensus in our postmodern context can suggest some fruitful avenues for explicating today's texts.
This is the great climax of the Easter-Pentecost season. It should be marked with a festive common meal and special gatherings. The Lord's Supper celebrated with joy should be a part of the celebration as well.
Red is the dominant color. Also, descending dove, tongues of flame, symbols of the church, like a ship or rainbow, and a downward arrow.
The music would be celebrative.
Displays of the various gifts of the church could be designed.
It is suitable for baptisms, confirmations, and renewals of faith.
Drama based on the disciples experience at Pentecost.
I offer this prayer.
God, you are in the faith by which I overcome the fear of loneliness, helplessness, failure, and death. You are in the hope that, like a shaft of light, brings light to the dark abyss of sin, suffering, and despair. You are the love that creates, protects, and forgives. You are the Spirit that broods over the chaos I have made, disturbing its static wrongs and stirring into life the formless beginnings of the new and better world. The promise of Pentecost is the promise of power. I need that power to be a peacemaker in a world torn by violence. I need the power to forgive in a world so full of the spirit of revenge. I need the power to live a human life that must face dangers and risks. I need that power to live a Christian life, which will have its additional dangers and risks. I need that power to offer hope and joy amid a world filled with so much suffering and pain. I need such power to testify to your presence in the world, to exemplify your love for humanity, and to open my heart to your transforming Spirit. Thank you for the transforming gift of your Holy Spirit. With a generous and thankful heart, I offer my gifts of time, treasure, and talent to you, with the desire that you use them for your purpose and glory.
Pentecost is a fitting conclusion to the Season of Easter. It was the life-giving power of the Spirit that raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. The Spirit is the promise of the Father to give life to the children of God. The readings for the season of Easter increasingly focus on the Spirit.
God institutes the church by not letting the resurrection of Jesus be the end of world history as we know it, thereby immediately bringing the world into the rule of God of which Jesus preached. Jesus anticipated the formation of this community in the formation of a community with the Twelve, in the prayer Jesus taught the disciples to pray in anticipation of the rule of God, and in the meals he shared with the disciples and the marginalized of that society, a meal-fellowship broken by crucifixion and restored by the risen Lord. The baptism of Jesus by John makes of baptism as practiced by the church a mark of its missionary nature. Baptism is sign of justification and sanctification because it anticipates the righteousness and holiness of the rule of God. Baptism is an initiatory anointing of a community of priests and prophets. Baptism unites those who receive it into the fate of Jesus and this forms the body of Christ, making Christ available to the world. Baptism is a mark of the saving, liberating, and healing work of the Spirit in dealing with the weakness and rebellion that is part of the human condition. The delay of the rule of God gave to the disciples a mission, vocation, and task to form a community that would anticipate in its life and its proclamation the coming rule of God. Thus, it is true that while Jesus preached the soon arrival of the rule of God, what came was the good news, the kerygma, through which God through the agency of the Holy Spirit called a community into existence. The gospel or kerygma defines what the church is to prophecy. The community faithful to Scripture is one that most often and thoughtfully read and hear it, in light of its creeds, liturgies, and statements of faith. This word is a lively word present in the church and shapes its life, giving it a privileged status within the living discourse of the church. Luke has dramatically pictured the process of creating this community in having the disciples asking when the restoration of the kingdom to Israel would occur, and the risen Lord avoids answering the question and instead promises the gift of the Father, the Holy Spirit, who will empower them to witness in word and deed. The church becomes the detour toward the God of Israel fulfilling the promises to Israel. The Lord is patient for the sake of fulfilling the mission of Israel. The people of God anticipate the coming rule of God, doing so as the body of Christ and as the Temple of the foretaste or down payment it receives in the outpouring of the Spirit. Thus, we could imagine a different scenario in which the Father determined that the saints of canonical Israel would rise together with Jesus, so that the resurrection of Jesus would be the end, brought about the arrival of the rule of God Jesus preached through the power of the Holy Spirit. There would have been no church. Pentecost is the contribution the Spirit makes to the delay of the rule of God preached by Jesus, opening the time for the church. The Spirit frees a human community for union with the Son and to be in its life, as defined by its embodiment of the Lord’s Prayer, its genuine hearing and doing of the Ten Commandments, and its adherence to the Love of God and neighbor, and in its proclamation, as defined by the gospel or kerygma, an anticipation of the fulfillment of creation as it moves toward its transformation into the rule of God. A proper understanding of the Christian life occurs within the context of an understanding of the doctrine of the church. Once the delay of the rule of God became reality, so did the need for offices within the church become necessary to continue the church beyond the apostolic generation. History shows that the basic cannons, liturgies, and creeds of the church arose within a church also united by an episcopal form of governance. However, a coherent narrative of the church hangs together not by its beginning but by its anticipation of its end, a notion that must not be used to set aside the past but be used to open the future to the transformation necessary for life in the rule of God. The nature of the Infinite and Eternal God means that creation in every time and place is just one place for God. The difference between the consummation of the ages in the coming of Christ in the future and presence of God now is one of style, for God is not coming from one place where God is to a place where God is not now. The rule of God comes where the rule of God already is.[11]
First, the meaning of Pentecost in Jewish history suggests a new "take" on our observance of the feast in worship. The word "Pentecost" is based on the Greek word for 50; Pentecost was a feast observed 50 days after the Passover. One purpose of the day was a spring harvest festival: a time of thanksgiving to God for the earth's bounty. References to this feast may be found in Exodus 23:16; 34:22; Leviticus 23:15-16; Deuteronomy 16:1-17.
Another theme of Pentecost was commemoration of the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai. As Moses' encounter with God on Sinai was accompanied by lightning (divine fire) and wind, so also the events in Jerusalem are described in terms of divine fire and wind/Spirit. Both the Decalogue (literally, ten words) and Holy Spirit are gifts from a righteous and loving God, and the faithful human response to such gifts is gratitude and obedience. Retelling the history of Pentecost, with its symbols of wind and fire, gift and response may enhance the biblical literacy of a congregation with little background in the faith. It can also move the focus away from manifestation and evaluation of charismatic gifts, drawing listener attention to the variety of God's gracious initiatives to people, both in the Bible and in our own time.
A second direction for the sermon results from an explicit pairing of the Genesis and Acts readings for the day. The preacher may or may not want to make note of questions raised in each of the texts: in Genesis, statement in 11:1 that "the whole earth had one language and few words" contradicts the assertions of 10:5, 20, 31, which declare that the various nations already had different languages. In the Acts passage, there is ambiguity as to whether the "tongues" spoken are indeed languages spoken by foreigners present, or ecstatic but incoherent speech utterance (as in 1 Cor 14:1-33) made intelligible only by the Spirit at work in both listeners and speakers. Without attempting to answer the questions about either text, the preacher can invite listeners to "take a step back" and look at the function of the stories in the larger narrative. In Genesis, the tale of human disobedience at Babel is preceded by the story of the great flood, which was divine punishment for human evil. Babel is followed by the call of Abraham, i.e., a representative (of Israel) person called into special covenant with God. Through Abraham's faithfulness, God's promise and purpose in salvation history would be manifest. If we look at Acts 2 in its context, we see that not only is God's action at Babel reversed (because through divine action language barriers are dissolved), but a new covenant people is established. The followers of Jesus, called just as Abraham was called, are given a new identity - church - and live out that identity as they participate in God's purpose for all creation. If the texts are expounded from this angle, the sermon will include an invitation to respond to the "new thing" God continues to do among those who would be Christ's disciples. Listeners are enabled to recognize the Spirit's gifts in their midst and exhorted to employ those gifts to announce that "whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Acts 2:21)
Jesus did not establish the church, either in the “rock” saying of Matthew or in the calling of the twelve, the latter we are to understand as a symbolic representation of the re-constituted people of God. Collective enthusiasm at Pentecost is not the starting point of the church. Christian meetings with the risen Lord are not the starting point of the church. Proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus and his exaltation into the presence of God is the starting point of the church. The community awaited the consummation of the reign of God as a gathering of friends. Since the religious leaders of the Jewish people rejected both Jesus and the proclamation of the disciples, a rupture in fellowship was inevitable.
The church had small beginnings in a prayer meeting in Jerusalem. It began in fellowship with the apostles. The presence of the Spirit unites the church of the past, present, and future. The Spirit brings people together and creates the community of faith. The individual does not experience faith apart from the community. In Paul, the foundation of the church is Jesus Christ. In Luke, however, the power of the Holy Spirit establishes the church; he views the origin of the church in the enthusiasm of a small band of followers. Other accounts view the origin of the church in the vision of the risen Jesus. In either case, the church began proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus. Any view of the church must integrate these conceptions. John’s statements are helpful in that they share with Luke an interest in the Spirit as an independent entity intricately connected to the work of Jesus.
Only by the work of the Spirit is Jesus the foundation of the church, for the Spirit glorifies the Son. Western theology often did not perceive this connection. It isolated the illumination of the Spirit by faith from the work of the Spirit in creation and even in one's own life. Instead, we need to view the church as the creation of the Spirit and the Son. This occurs through the word of the gospel.
The fellowship of the church mediates the gift of the Spirit, even while the fellowship of the church, far from controlling the Spirit, has its foundation from outside itself in the gift of the Spirit. The church has the responsibility of reminding itself of this foundation that comes from outside of it. The church becomes an anticipation of the future fellowship of humanity renewed in the reign of God. The Spirit enables us to perceive the grounding of the church, not only in Jesus, but also in the end time consummation of creation. Our understanding of the church has to take this provisional nature of a sign, the horizon of the future of the reign of God.
The presence of the Spirit in the life of the church and believers relates to the phenomenon of life in all its breadth in the world, from creation, to sustaining life, and to the consummation and fulfillment of life in the end. The presence of the Spirit in the life of the church and believers relates to the phenomenon of life in all its breadth in the world, from creation, to sustaining life, and to the consummation and fulfillment of life in the end. Individual entities in the world have life in themselves, even though its source is in the Spirit. The word “spirited” comes closest to expressing the meaning of Spirit here. Spirit is the principle of life and vitality in the universe. We see evidence of this spirit in psychological and sociological factors. We cannot explain humanity solely by reference to the social world or to physics and biology. We come face to face with ourselves, thereby liberating ourselves from captivity to biological drives or from the shaping by the social world. As a result, we ask questions and receive answers and commands. We do not receive clarity in either answers or commands, whether in general form or specific application. The Spirit of God is active in creation, breathing life into the world that God has made. This presence in creation helps us to understand the role of the Spirit in bringing life to human beings. The Spirit of life gained victory over death in Jesus. The Spirit teaches us to know Jesus of Nazareth and moves our hearts to praise God through faith, love, and hope. Yet, the work of the Spirit does limit itself to making intelligible what would otherwise be unintelligible. The same Spirit who gives life to all creation also gives new life to believers now by dwelling in them.
The Spirit fulfills the work of Jesus in the world. The Spirit gives the hope of new life for humanity, so that death does not have the final word. Among the positive insights of 20th century, biblical exegesis has been this connection between the giving of the Spirit and eschatology. The Spirit is the awakening power by which the risen Lord created the church as a provisional representation of the entire world of humanity that God justifies in Christ. However, we must also make the future saving work of the Spirit related to the creative work of God. The New Testament closely relates the work of the Spirit with that of the Son, in creation, in the creation of the church, and in consummating human history and creation. The risen Lord imparts the Spirit to believers. The Spirit continues the work of Jesus by recalling what Jesus said by bearing to witness to Jesus, whom the Spirit glorifies. In this way, the sending of the Spirit by the Son relates to the special nature of his work in connection with the revelation of salvation. We cannot limit the work of the Spirit to continuing the ministry of Jesus, however. Rather, both the Son and the Spirit have their life grounded in the Father. Paul stresses the relation between the Spirit and the resurrection life of Jesus. John depicts the hypostatic power that is distinct from Jesus but that glorifies Jesus after his parting from the disciples. Both supplement the eschatological function of the Spirit. Christ gives the Spirit as a gift to the church as an anticipation of the eschatological outpouring of the Spirit because that end has appeared in the ministry of Jesus.
The Hebrew Scriptures speak of the Spirit as capacities for insight, artistic gifts, prophetic inspiration, and leadership charisma; yet, the gift of the Spirit ends at death.
The New Testament, through its emphasis upon the role of the Spirit in the resurrection of Jesus, brings the work of the Spirit into a vision of the end of the human history. The Spirit is the gift in which the fellowship of the Father and Son find fulfillment in mutual love, finding fulfillment in Trinitarian life. The Spirit becomes a lasting possession of believers. Yet, this imparting of the Spirit as gift is a transitional stage in the work of salvation. The form of the gift does not mean that the Spirit comes under our control, but that the Spirit comes to us and makes possible our independent and spontaneous entry into the action of God in reconciling the world. We participate in the movement of the reconciling love of God toward the world.
The gift of the Spirit aims at the building up of the fellowship of believers. By faith in the one Lord, we have unity with all other believers. The Spirit respects our individuality while at the same time bringing us into fellowship of the community of the church. The work of the Spirit toward salvation unites individuality and community. The historical separation of the risen Lord and the gift of the Spirit that Luke suggests is an important theological statement about the relation of the church to the Spirit. The church has a firm connection to the end time gift of the Spirit, and is thus a provisional community, a sign of the future action of God. At Pentecost, Luke portrays the gift of the Spirit with five elements. He portrays the foundation of the church as a unity of ecstasy and structure. The ecstatic experience of the disciples created a faith in the disciples that the crucifixion almost destroyed. Pentecost also initiated an experience of love that expresses itself in mutual service. Pentecost provided a unity while maintaining the individuality of those who experienced the gift of the Spirit. Pentecost provided the missionary impulse, a universality that drove the church beyond itself to new cultures and peoples.
The Spirit of God has an ecstatic character. Yet, this statement does contain the idea of irrational states of intoxication. Ecstasy can mean that people, while outside themselves, are supremely with themselves. Every living thing lives outside itself, that is, in and by the world around it. The Spirit gives life by lifting us above ourselves. Spiritual experiences like artistic inspiration, or sudden insights through illumination have the same character. Such experiences give an inner freedom. Despite our disillusion, we constantly open ourselves to what is around us, to the world. Our faith in God lifts us above ourselves because God is powerfully present to us as the light of our final future and assures us at the same time of our own eternal salvation. We are linked with others in the fellowship of believers whose common setting is faith in the one Lord. The ecstatic integration of this fellowship by the Spirit into the common praise of God can mediate the sense of an initial removing of alienation between this and that individual and therefore also of the antagonism between the individual and society.
Could we not use a higher level of imagination and thrusting out into fresh creative and innovative realms? What greater time than this for the achievement of “souls on fire,” not the fire which is merely of this world, or the pseudo firs of human concoction or construction, nor the fires enflamed by demonic or evil forces, but rather the fire which is the illumination, contagion, warmth, and power of the Holy Spirit of God! It may not be an error at all that causes the apostle to use alcohol and drunkenness in comparison with the operation of the Spirit: “Be not drunk with win but be filled with the Spirit.” William James wrote: “Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.”[12] I am not suggesting literal drunkenness, of course. I have had a father like that; I know what it can do to destroy a family. However, I do think that we often have an overly sober experience of the Christian faith and life. We all too rarely allow our minds, hearts, and lives to receive the expanded vision of new life that the Spirit wants to give.
The Spirit can work in you with a soft but insistent voice, telling you that your life is empty and meaningless, but that there are chances of a new life waiting before the door of your inner self to fill its void and to conquer its dullness. The Spirit can work in you, awakening the desire to strive towards the sublime against the profanity of the average day. The Spirit can give you the courage that says “Yes” to life despite the destructiveness you have experienced around you and within you. The Spirit can reveal to you that you have hurt somebody deeply, but it can also give you the right word that reunites him with you. The Spirit can make you love, with the divine love, someone you profoundly dislike or in whom you have no interest. The Spirit can conquer your sloth towards what you know is the aim of your life, and it can transform your moods of aggression and depression into stability and serenity. The Spirit can liberate you from hidden enmity against those whom you love and from open vengefulness against those by whom you feel violated. The Spirit can give you the strength to throw off false anxieties and to take upon yourself the anxiety that belongs to life itself. The Spirit can awaken you to sudden insight into the way you must take your world, and it can open your eyes to a view of it that makes everything new. The Spirit can give you joy amid ordinary routine as well as in the depth of sorrow. The Spirit can create warmth in the coldness you feel within you and around you, and it can give you wisdom and strength where your human love towards a loved one has failed. The Spirit can throw you into a hell of despair about yourself and then give you the certainty that life has accepted you just when you felt totally rejected and when you rejected yourself totally.[13]
The church is on a pilgrimage or journey, rather than resting in the fulfillment of some divine purpose. We find the meaning of the church in what it is moving toward, rather than what it is.
Pentecost Sunday
Psalm (All Years)
Lesson from Acts (All Years
Year A
Old Testament
Year B
Year C
Trinity Sunday or First Sunday after Pentecost
Trinity Sunday is the only Sunday set aside to discuss this doctrine of the church. Since it is the first Sunday after Pentecost, one can study it as the first Sunday of Common Time, making a nice beginning to that season that finds its conclusion in Christ the King Sunday. However, when considering the lectionary texts theologically, it is reasonable to think of this Sunday as connected to both Easter and Pentecost, thereby grounding the doctrine of the Trinity in the work of the redeeming activity of the Father that occurred in the word and deed of Jesus vindicated as such in the resurrection and through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Moses, Jesus, and an old man went golfing. Moses teed off, and his ball went down a waterway, the water parted, and the ball rolled across within four inches of the cup. Jesus then teed off, and the ball hit near the water, skipped across on top of it and came within two inches of the cup. The old man teed off next, and the ball went crooked, hit a tree and bounced. A squirrel picked it up and ran with it across the green. An eagle swooped down, caught the squirrel, flew high up into a thunderstorm and got struck by lightning, which made him drop the squirrel. The squirrel dropped the ball, which hit a terrapin and rolled into the cup. Jesus said, "Nice shot, Dad."[14]
The story is far from new. You have heard or read it before. In this case, my intent is not to be humorous. My intent is to acknowledge the discomfort many people, including pastors and people in the pew, to discuss the Trinity.
For example, the story goes that Cardinal Cushing, in the early days of being a parish priest. Authorities brought him to the side of a man who had collapsed in a store to give last rites. He began with the traditional questions, "Do you believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit." The man opened one eye and said, "Here I am dying, and he asks me a riddle."
One teacher said that any attempt to explain the Trinity is bound to end up in a heresy. To try to put God in a package that the human mind will accommodate involves squeezing the incomprehensible into an absurdly minuscule nutshell. One person understood the Trinity as meeting God in creation, meeting God in history, and meeting God in our hearts.
Trinity Sunday
The Father raised the Son through the life-giving power of the Spirit, an affirmation that arises out of the historical experience of Jesus of Nazareth, his ministry embodying the power of the Spirit, and the Spirit awakening and empowering his followers in the early ministry of the church in Jerusalem and Galilee, and furthering empowering the church to move into the gentile world. Such experience would lead to a reflection upon the relationship between the Father, Son and the Spirit, which is the theme of Trinity Sunday.
Come with me to the fourth century and let us listen in on a debate between Athanasius and Arius.
Is Jesus the Christ really God or not? That was at the heart of the debate. The Nicene Creed is clear. Christ was not made from nothing, as we are, but was "begotten," generated from the very essence of God. When we look at Jesus, we are looking at God. Jesus is God's full communication of himself. When we look at Jesus, we are seeing as much of God as we ever hope to see because this Jew from Nazareth is "of one Being with the Father."
This was too much for Arius. He rejected the Creeds' notion that Jesus was fully divine. What makes God, God? asked Arius. God is God because God can never be fully communicated. Divinity is self-contained, fully complete within itself, needing nothing else. Being completely self-sufficient, deity has no need to extend itself or to communicate itself. It is absolute. Arius rejected the notion that so exalted and self-contained a being as God should become directly involved with the creatures God has made. To do so would be to dirty the hands of the pure, absolute God, to risk God's being dependent upon or involved with mere creatures.
The Christian teaching regarding the Trinity is the result of a debate over distance and nearness, over transcendence and nearness. For Arius, the Nicene Creed, and its delineation of the status of Christ and the Holy Spirit as integral, intimate natures of God was a pagan vulgarization of God. God, the great God on high, is not dependent, derived, divisible, and deficient. Who wants a God who is so weak as to need us for anything? Arius taught that the Son is not equal to God. God made the Son out of nothing. “The Father ... is alone God, is completely alien to the Son in essence." In all of history, there has never been as noble, as exalted a depiction of God's supreme otherness, God's holy distance, than that of Arius. His whole concern was to honor God, setting God high, lifted up, above the contingent, conditioned world of his creatures. Distance. Transcendence.
Enter Athanasius who argued, against Arius, that the complete dependence of Jesus upon God was supreme validation that Jesus was indeed, God. Being self-contained, superior, distant is not the essential mark of divinity, said Athanasius. The clue is in John 16:15, where John says that everything the Father has, the Father has given to the Son. Because the Father loves the Son, the Father has given all things into the hand of the Son. What is the decisive mark of God? God gives or communicates the divine self, a giving marked by the constant communication of love between Father and Son. Between the Father and the Son, there is total and mutual self-giving. Therefore, when we look at the Son, we are looking at the Father. Athanasius charged Arius' god with being an agonos theos, a sterile God who does not generate, does not shine, does not talk, or reveal. The close triune God is always busy relating, communicating, and shining.
A symbol for the Trinity is three interlocked circles, showing love coming from and going back constantly. The Trinity is not some mathematical absurdity. It is a statement about what makes God, God. God's perfection is in God's closeness rather than in God's distance, in God's communicativeness rather than God's inscrutable silence.
A sermon on this theme speaks to the Christian claim that in Jesus of Nazareth we have seen God. Behind the sermon is a claim and the preacher is making sense out of that claim. Don Browing (in The Moral Context of Pastoral Care) noted that many modern people are in pain, not from some psychological problem, but simply because they are confused. Having not taken the trouble to think through the faith, they become victims of false faith. The teaching ministry is therefore an integral part of the pastoral ministry. The preacher might dare to teach on this day.
Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and John of Damascus are at the heart of the classical formulation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. They are essential reading for anyone who wants to gain insight into this doctrine. Anyone who has earnest questions related to the classical formulation of the doctrine needs to read these authors.
Let us pause for a moment to reflect upon the significance of the triadic formulas we find in the New Testament.[15]
Augustine, one of the greatest minds of the Western world, put his head to thinking about the Trinity. Augustine, a master of words, took 15 books to talk about the Trinity, 15 books that took him over a decade to write. Augustine's On the Trinity continues to be helpful in thinking through that which is difficult to think about, and talking about that which is difficult to describe, namely the nature of God who comes to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Early on in his massive treatise, Augustine had seven statements about God: The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. The Son is not the Father. The Father is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Son. And then, after these six statements, Augustine adds one more. There is only one God. This is the thinking that is tough to get into our brains. We have experienced three rather distinctive modes of God's presence. God is the Father, the creator of us and the world. God is the Son, the one who comes to us as Jesus, living, suffering, dying, and rising among us. We experience God as Holy Spirit, that power that has intruded into our world as the near presence and power of God. And yet, we are not tri-theists, we do not believe in three gods. We know, with Israel, that is only one God. These names, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three names for the same thing. They are three names of one God. And how to make sense of that? You can certainly understand our sisters and brothers the Jews who hear talk of this kind and who may think to themselves, "Christians are no longer monotheist. They no longer believe in one God but in three gods." No, what we are attempting to do in the Trinity is make sense of how there can be one God, and yet that one God being experienced by us in three special ways.
In the Council of Nicaea, they spoke of God's "three persons." In our language, that sounds like we are talking about three different people. No, Nicaea was building upon the Greek experience, from Greek drama of the way in which one character in a Greek play portrayed a number of different people in the play by simply moving off stage, putting on another mask which was called a persona, and returning to the stage as a different actor. One actor could play three different roles. I am one person, but I play the roles of father, husband, and son. In a similar way, though there is one God, we experience that God working in three different ways in the world. And yet, like most analogies about God, this analogy helped, but not completely.
In Book 7 of On the Trinity, Augustine tried this. Rather than looking specifically in Scripture, or in the world, for analogies to speak about God, he looked within himself. In looking within himself, Augustine noted how the human soul itself is Triadic, Trinitarian. There is a kind of triune way in which we experience ourselves, as if the Trinity is built right into the structure of our reality. We say, for instance, "I love myself." According to Jesus, it is all right to love ourselves, for we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. So, we can say, "I love myself." When we do so, we are speaking in a triune way. When I say, "I love myself," there is a lover that is doing the loving; namely, me loving myself. There is also the beloved, the object of my love, which is also me; then, there is the loving, the act and energy of the lover upon the beloved. So even with the one, there is the lover, the beloved, and the loving. Thus, within our own hearts, in our own experience, Augustine said that there is the vestigia trinitatis. Reality is trinitarian. It is as if the Trinity, God's dynamic, effusive nature, appears to be built right into the structure of who I am and what the world is. There is a modern word for talking about this dynamic structure synergy. Within the Trinity, there is constant movement, interaction, as the Father gives to the Son, and the Son is constantly returning praise and glory to the Father, and the Father and the Son give to the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit constantly draws everything back to the Father and the Son. There is the beloved, the lover, and the love.
I saw the blessed Trinity working. I saw that there were these three attributes: fatherhood, motherhood, and lordship - all in one God. In the almighty Father we have been sustained and blessed with regard to our created natural being from before all time. By the skill and wisdom of the Second Person we are sustained, restored, and saved with regard to our sensual nature, for he is our Mother, Brother, and Savior. In our good Lord the Holy Spirit we have, after our life and hardship is over, that reward and rest which surpasses forever any and everything we can possibly desire - such is his abounding grace and magnificent courtesy. Our life too is threefold. In the first stage we have our being, in the second our growth, and in the third our perfection. The first is nature, the second mercy, and the third grace. For the first I realized that the great power of the Trinity is our Father, the deep wisdom our Mother, and the great love our Lord.[16]
Newer talk about the Trinity tends to stress, not substance, as we find in the classic statement from Nicaea, but relationship. The Trinity expresses relationship as being of the very nature of God. The Son is constantly relating to the Father, who is constantly relating to the Son, who is constantly relating to the Holy Spirit, who is constantly relating to the Father, and so on for eternity.
Furthermore, the Trinity shows that God is relationship, relationship not only with the inner life of God, but relationship with the whole world. As in the Trinity, God is constantly reaching out and embracing all the aspects of God, so God is also constantly reaching out to us. We know this through the historical narratives of God's relating to us, which we call Holy Scripture. There is no need to trip up in poetry logic of the Trinity. There is only need to read the biblical story that constantly speaks of a God who is constantly reaching out to us. Therefore, symbols of the Trinity, such as three interlocking circles, or as a triangle, or other symbolic pictures are often more effective for expressing this dynamic life of the Trinity than our words about the Trinity. In the Trinity, we find that the nature of God is relationship, communion, communion of coequals characterized by relationally and mutuality. If Augustine is right in believing that the Trinity is built into the very structure of the universe, this implies that God wills that the whole creation moves toward communion in relationship. Therefore, the very worship is that sharing of food in Jesus - a name that we call Holy Communion.
I offer a statement of my trinitarian view.
Psalm (Year A and C)
Year A
Year B
Year C
[1] Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 59-60.
[2] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=558 Gary R. Koester
[3] Paul Althaus (Die Wahrheit des kirchlichen Osterglaubens, p. 25)
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
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[10] Marcus J. Borg and N. T. Wright (The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions [San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1999], pp. 134-135.) What I have done is to reflect both with and against Borg.
[11]
[12] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 387.
[13] Paul Tillich, Eternal Now, 1963.
[14] Loyal Jones and Billy Edd Wheeler, Hometown Humor: USA
[15] Inspired by William Willimon, Pulpit Resources, 2002.
[16] - Julian of Norwich, 1342-ca.
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