John 16:12-15
"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
I like Trinity Sunday.
Maybe this is the most fitting time to read from the Gospel of John. A bit murky. Sorta hard to understand.
Kinda like God.
Willimon - in some of his latest podcasts - has some lectures he must have given to some Methodist colleagues. They are titled: God Talk Preaching.
They include a number of stories he uses over and over. Good stories, worth hearing a number of times. He likes to refer to Robert Jenson, who says that the way you can tell that you are in the presence of a living God is that this God surprises. A dead god is totally predictable. Nice.
At a text study group the other day. A good bit of the conversation was looking at how awesome creation is.
True, God is pretty awesome. Space is pretty big. We’re quite small. YET, that great God does love us, does condescend to reach out to us.
I thought of the Monty Python bit, where the monk is praying: “O God, you are so huge. So incredibly large. We’re all right impressed down here.”
Talk of the magnitude of creation can be pretty interesting. (Ever see the videos “The Blue Planet”? AWESOME!) Yet, there will not be a lot of Gospel there.
I thought of this quote while sitting at this text study:
God is in all things, in the stone, in the fire, in the water, and in the rope, but he wants us to seek him only in the Word, which is clear and plain. Luther Sermon on the Sacraments, paraphrased in Wingren, Luther on Vocation p 122
"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth...”
We might wonder at how the Spirit might guide you into all the truth. Might this guiding be a bit like believing itself? Willimon makes the point that he has preached on Jesus’ call “follow me.” The fitting questions are: “what are you about?” “Why should I follow you?” But those questions aren’t asked. Faith seems to be lived in a backwards order. One learns who Jesus is by following. Perhaps the teaching the Holy Spirit will do will be lived out in a backwards order. You will learn about this one with whom you live, by living with this one in the community the Holy Spirit calls together.
I think of a quote the Norse Horse will often share with us; suggesting that for Luther:
the only dis-embodied spirit is the devil.
Indeed.
May our preaching of the Holy Trinity be embodied by the one in whom we live and move and have our being.
6 comments:
I liked this, from correspondence with the Vicar of Vice
Willimon . . . says that a mortician friend claims that Willimon only has 3 sermons that he preaches in endless repetition:
1) "God is large, mysterious, and there is no way I could explain it to someone like you."
2) "Life is a mess, and there is no way I can explain it to someone like you."
3) "Christianity is weird, odd, peculiar, I can't believe you people actually want to be Christians."
three years ago - on doless - I added these quotes:
To try to deny the Trinity endangers your salvation, to try to comprehend the Trinity endangers your sanity." Martin Luther
I realize that the only time the church is really sufferable is when it is at prayer. When it talks, it claims too much for itself. Reinhold Niebuhr
Great sermon title: "You Can't Handle the Truth"
I was casting about on the ELCA web site.
Ran across "Sermon Starters" - by the Rev. Sara Yotter of the S. Central Synod of Wisconsin
John 16:12-15
Someday I imagine, Jack Nicholson will play the role of Jesus in a blockbuster movie. And when we get to chapter 16 of John, it will be rewritten from, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” to a familiar line from one of his other movies, “You can’t handle the truth!”
[then there's lots of nice - churchy sorta stuff, but I liked this opening]
I have been thinking about Trinity Sunday from the point of view of the Romans 5 text. What I find interesting is how Father, Son, and Holy Spirit weave in and through the joys and sorrows of real life. This Trinity seems to be the way God gives to us what we have from God. (I'm not sure what that just meant.) And that is the way God effects us, supports us, lives with/in us, etc, to the end that life matures around faith hope and love. But I don't know how to preach this.
PNT, I don't know what that meant either, "This Trinity seems to be the way God gives to us what we have from God." But I have to add, "isn't that the truth?" Last week, I sought to use a line from Willimon, that God will get what God wants. The gift of the Holy Spirit as something which God gives, so that God might love our neighbors through us is a rich way to consider Pentecost.
The same may hold with conversation about the Trinity.
That the Trinity is not so much a way for us to understand God, as it is the way in which God will get what God wants: a relationship with you that flows into the lives of others.
In the same vein, Willimon speaks of how a lot of preaching which he encounters now is preaching "in the wisdom mode." That is; sermons like "4 principles for a happy marriage."
As he says about these sermons - there isn't much mention of God. Which makes sense. Who needs God when you have 4 Principles?
In that sort of preaching, God is quite useful. A utilitarian God.
On the other hand, the Trinity is of no use at all. A God who up and dies on the cross is of no use to us.
Yet, this God, this Trinity, may be the one God worthy of our praise. This Trinity may make excellent use of you. . .
It is through living, indeed through dying and being damned that one becomes a theologian, not through understanding, reading, or speculation. Martin Luther
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