sacraconversazione.org

postmodern preaching

Trinity Sunday: Year A

  • Genesis 1: 1- 2:4a

This story of creation was probably written after the captivity in Babylon.  It begins with a haunting scene: “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the earth….”   A vaguely defined “wind” from God “swept over the face of the waters.”  Now that the scene has be set, God speaks: “let there be light and there was light.”  God sees the light and pronounces it “good.”  God separates light “calling” it day from the darkness, “calling” it night.  Seven more times God “speaks” and creation is fully formed, including woman and man.  Each time God sees the result of speaking and describes it as “good.”  When all is complete,  God sees that it was “very good,” and rested on the seventh day and “hallowed” it.”

  • Psalm 8

Verses 8 and 9 of this psalm are a poetic rendering of the first creation story.  The Lord is represented as designer/architect/engineer of all creation, down to the smallest, most delicate detail.  Humankind’s position is made clear: less thatn divine, but “crowned with glory and grandeur.”

  • II Corinthians 13: 11-13

Paul’s benediction at the conclusion of his second letter to the Christians in Corinth testified to his cumulative experience of God, which is most clear in “grace” as experienced in Jesus; “love” of the Father/creator; and the “communion” of God’s ever-present Spirit.

  • Matthew 28: 16-20

Matthew’s version of the passing of God’s work in the world from Jesus to his followers concludes with a unique formula: “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  Those who believe and follow are promised that they will have the God-given capabilities to fulfill this bold responsibility “to the end of the earth.”

Heidegger, Gadamer, Derrida, Wittgenstein, Ricoeur and many other writers generally regarded as post-Modern push our awareness of a trait unique to humanity in opposite directions– language.  Language, they insist, is both more limited and more powerful than had been understood, when there was a presumption of a direct, total  correlation between reality and the human languages.  What this belief critically  missed was that there is always a slippage, a near-miss between human language and reality. Human languages are effective enough to navigate the vastness and complexity of reality, sometimes with dazzling success and sometimes with consequential failure.  (To use the language of the psalmist, perhaps this is a feature of our status as less than divine but crowned with glory and grandeur.)  But human languages never fully capurre the meainng of experience itself.

On Trinity Sunday, preachers can easily get lost in many words that attempt to make sense of a “doctrine” of the “Trinity.”  Gadamer offers a timely reminder for the preacher about the limits and the power of language, in particular the language of theology:  it “can certainly take part in the conceptual explication of faith,” “but it cannot take part in its consummation; that is the affair of faith itself.”  (Heidegger’s Ways, p. 177)   

Today’s readings, psalm and gospel move us toward a “consummation” more than “explication.”  In the second creation story in the Hebrew scriptures, God becomes “voice” right at the very beginning which declares all creation “good,” “very good.”   Then, through Moses, the prophets and the psalmists, God’s voice nurtures a love affair with all creation through God’s chosen people that perseveres  despite continuous human infidelity.  In Jesus, that same “Word became flesh,” giving God a human face, hands, feet; a body vulnerable to human love and human malice.  Because of Jesus, we are now to see each other through the eyes of God,  just as Jesus did, leaving us with the model performance of true humanity.  The sacred texts reach their climax (for Christians) with the promise of the Holy Spirit, through whom there is the guarantee that God’s love story with humankind continues and we are participants, if we chose.  Each of these three revelations are complementary; each is in  it’s own way powerful; none supersedes the others; each illuminates the others.  All three experiences of God — Creator, Incarnated/Anointed One and Spirit–lead us to the same staggering conclusion:  “God is love.”  The Christian life unfolds, Jean-Luc Marion explains, “according to a free innovation that never ceases to perform the only love story in the history of the universe,”  (Prolegomena to Charity, p. 144)  This is not a conclusion based on “explication,” so much as it is a decision based on our response; a “consummation.”  We can never fully describe it, but we can live it.

Comments are closed.