Lectionary Commentaries for June 16, 2019
Holy Trinity

During this extended farewell discourse, Jesus has now for the fifth time tried to explain to the disciples the benefits of both his departure and the coming of the paraclete (John 14:16-17, 14:26, 15:26, 16:7-11, 16:12-15).

In John’s Gospel, Jesus centralizes the work of the Spirit in ways that are unique to his account, offering an abiding and enlightening presence for the disciples meant to replace the very tangible presence of Jesus the disciples had experienced. There are no spiritual gift lists for churches to later put into organized inventories like we find in Paul’s letters, nor is their direction for specific actions attributed to the Spirt as we might see in Acts. Instead, the Spirit is described as a sage-like presence that will care for and guide the entire community after Jesus departs, offering exactly what these disciples need in a moment of grand anxiety. We would do well to remember this as we prepare our sermons for a day as wrought with the temptation to heady exhortation, Trinity Sunday.

The Trinity through tears

In our passage for this Sunday, Jesus continues his work of trying to convince the disciples that his imminent departure is a positive both for them and for the entire community. But frankly, the disciples don’t seem to believe it. Though this discourse is offered primarily from the perspective of Jesus, we can sense the confusion and fear of the disciples. What were the facial expressions of the disciples as they were listening? What was their body language like as Jesus repeatedly tells them that he’s leaving? What tone did Jesus take as he offered these words? Even without those details, we know from Jesus’ repeated calls to find joy that Jesus is speaking with sad and fearful disciples who are not sure just what they can bear. Jesus is offering a soul-salve for these disciples that were about to lose their teacher, leader, and friend.

Though we have language about the Father, Son, and Spirit together in a tight package, offering an adequate pericope to drown in the doctrine of the Trinity, Jesus seems to be doing anything but dealing with theological abstraction. Maybe through tears of his own, and possibly to weeping disciples, Jesus offers hope to those that he loves. In a world where loss, anxiety, and fear are legion, there will be no shortage of disciples in our midst who are in need of reassurance. Our mission seems to be to offer ways that the relationship Jesus describes in this passage, between Himself, the Father, and the Spirit, brings hope to an anxious people instead of wrestling with the particulars of the Trinity.

Vouching for the One to come

The disciples knew Jesus — they could see, touch, smell, hear Jesus. Their lived relationship with Jesus required faith, but not the kind of faith that would be required to believe in this paraclete that was coming at some undetermined time. Jesus finds himself in a role familiar to the one that John the Baptist played for him, as one preparing the way for another who is to come. Differently though, Jesus can vouch for the work of the Spirit with a different kind of authority than John the Baptist could ever vouch for him because of the relationship that Jesus had established with the disciples and the power and peace that He has already demonstrated to them. They know for themselves the power and presence of Jesus, and here Jesus is using that shared experience as a means of grounding his promise of the one to come.

Though Jesus has to repeat these instructions over and over, the connections that he makes between Himself and the Spirit, birthed from their testimony of life together, must offer comfort for the disciples gathered there. How can we help our people remember what God has already done, as a way of undergirding a hope for what is to come? What can we say about what Jesus has already done for our communities that will lay the groundwork for a hope and reassurance in current crisis or future dilemmas?

A prophetic particularity

I have to be honest, I smirked at Jesus’ words in verse 12 when I first read them, thinking to myself, “more things to say that they can’t bear, how do you think they’ve borne everything you’ve said up to this point?!” Over the course of Jesus’ goodbye speech, they’ve had to bear quite of bit of Jesus’ teaching. In this elongated teaching moment that if not for the emphasis on the Spirit would feel more at home in Matthew’s Gospel than John’s, Jesus has been downloading quite a bit of information about love, future events, new commandments, and this mysterious paraclete that isn’t mentioned anywhere else.

This word about what the disciples can bear then must not be about capacity, because if that were the case Jesus could’ve stopped speaking a long time ago! But maybe this isn’t about capacity, at least not in the immediate sense. A chapter ago, in John 15:15, Jesus noted that he has already made known to the them everything that he received from the Father. This observation about what they can bear is not about capacity in terms of the sheer amount of information that they can understand, but instead it seems to be about time and context. They can’t bear the many words, now, because there are words that they need to hear in the future that would not make sense now.

The Spirit will guide them to truth in the future, for a word that they need to hear in that moment. The word will still be from the one that they trust and have a relationship with, “he will speak whatever he hears,” but the word will fit the needs of the community at that time. You can’t bear it now, but then is a different story. The assurance here is not of some intellectual truth but a reassurance of a presence, of the same kind of comforting words that Jesus offered the disciples along their journey together.

This is not only a word of comfort, but something that should excite us, as we marvel at the fact that Jesus’ word, that the Word, will be with us in the ways that we need, when we need it! Whether we deal with the particulars of the Trinity or not, our preaching today should reassure our community that the abiding presence of the Word will speak to us how we need it, when we need it! On a day that offers so many temptations to teeter towards the head, Jesus’ words remind us of the need to reassure and calm our community’s heart.

Proverbs 8 is one of the most beautiful and stirring poems in the book.

While the lectionary only includes a portion of this text, these selections are part of a larger character study of Wisdom personified as a woman, and the preacher will do well to listen to the entirety of Wisdom’s address in preparing the sermon. The poem begins with Wisdom situated at the crossroads of the public square, making her appeal to all who pass by. Her voice is commanding, urgent, and trustworthy. She offers her instruction to “all that live” (Proverbs 8:4), yet it is specifically addressed to simpletons and fools that they might acquire the prudence and discernment to follow wisdom’s ways (verse 5).

Wisdom’s appeal in Proverbs 8 does not exist in isolation but is part of a larger dialogue of voices across the book that prompt the student to discern the way of wisdom from the way of foolishness. The audience of simpletons and fools is also the object of another woman’s appeal. In the preceding chapter, the voice of the Strange Woman, who embodies foolishness and danger, similarly stands at the crossroads and makes an appeal to the simpleton who passes by (Proverbs 7:6-12). She entices him with her smooth words (7:21), yet her ways ultimately lead to destruction (7:27). Nonetheless, the poem grants the desirability of her appeal. Her words are sweet and smooth, promising fragrant delights.

Proverbs 8 offers an alternative vision of desirable speech. Throughout the poem, Wisdom is figured as an alluring woman whose beauty is grounded in the virtues she possesses. Her desirability is found in her strength and sense of justice, her produce better than riches (verses 14-21).

It is striking that the voices of these women in Proverbs 7-8 are in many ways comparable. They both appeal directly to the student in the first-person voice, and their plea is regarded as compelling and desirable. Yet the consequences of following their voices are depicted in radically different ways. Whereas the appeal of the Strange Woman ends in death, woman Wisdom offers flourishing life. Through offering these alternative visions side by side, Proverbs enacts a process of discernment that requires the student to develop facility in negotiating competing voices to choose the wiser course.

In a certain sense, this is no different than the skills required of contemporary readers navigating a world in which we are constantly confronted by competing visions of flourishing. Through the media and entertainment, in the comments of friends and neighbors, and by the advertising that inevitably infiltrates our vision, we are barraged daily with voices that appeal to our desires and seek to shape our habits, choices, and character.

One needs look no further than Facebook to confront the manifold voices that compete for our attention. Each voice is laden with its own values that may do us help or harm, thus requiring discernment to see beneath the surface in order to choose the wise course. In this sense, with its many voices, Proverbs mimics the daily realities that its students face in the world and aims to equip its readers with the capacities to become astute interpreters of wisdom. The call of Wisdom in Proverbs 8 seeks to shape the student’s desires in the way of righteousness, justice, and truth, so that the student may learn to seek the things that lead to wise living.

As the poem of Proverbs 8 unfolds, it moves from the description of Wisdom’s virtues to her intimate connection to God’s creation of the cosmos. Wisdom’s appeal acquires even greater authority by virtue of her relationship with God. At the very beginning of God’s creative work, Wisdom was beside God. She describes herself as God’s confidant in creation, delighting in God’s creativity (verse 30). The Hebrew term ‘amon in verse 30 can be interpreted as an artisan (NRSV: “master worker”), a quality of faithfulness (NIV: “I was constantly at his side”), or the activity of growing up (NRSV alternate reading: “little child”).

Here it communicates Wisdom’s childlike wonder in the midst of God’s creative work. As William Brown notes, “Wisdom revels in a world that is made both secure and enthralling by God, a world of delight and discovery, a world of wonder. As any child develops most fully by playfully exploring her environment, so Wisdom actively engages creation in her delight. Wisdom’s world is more relational than referential: as God’s partner in play she is ‘beside’ the creator of all while beside herself in joy.”¹

Delight, play, and joy are the proper response to the miracle of God’s creation. As the Common English Bible translates, “I was having fun, smiling before him all the time, frolicking with his inhabited earth and delighting in the human race” (verses 30b-31). When was the last time that you considered having fun as an expression of wisdom? Here Wisdom’s witness reminds us of the capacity for joy that is a divine gift.

This vision of Wisdom in Proverbs 8 also suggests that God does not create alone. While the text makes clear that Wisdom is created by God and she is not a co-creator of the world, nonetheless she is God’s companion and witness through the act of creation. Creation occurs in community.

On Trinity Sunday, we contemplate the triune nature of God as both one and three, confessing that communion is part of God’s very nature. And the image of woman Wisdom reminds us that we too are divinely created for community, designed to delight in our Creator with joy and wonder. In an age when our communities are often fractious and fraying at the seams, Wisdom’s call prompts us to heal the divisions in our own communities and to do so with a deep and abiding joy, delighting in the world and the people that God created.

Notes:

1. William P. Brown, Wisdom’s Wonder: Character, Creation, and Crisis in the Bible’s Wisdom Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 52.

From beginning to end, Psalm 8 addresses God directly. Despite this fact, it is unanimously characterized as a song of praise or a hymn.

Perhaps we should call it a “prayer of praise.” Lending support to this proposal is the fact too that Psalm 8 fails completely to accord with the typical structure of the songs of praise — that is, invitation to praise followed by reasons for praise. Even so, the poetic structure of Psalm 8 is very noticeable and quite significant. It begins and ends with the same exuberant affirmation: “O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

The Hebrew word translated “how” in verses 1 and 9 also occurs as the first word in the first line of verse 4 where it is translated “what.” Verse 4 is exactly the middle line of the psalm when Psalm 8 is laid out in what was probably its original poetic form. Thus, the repetition serves to highlight the frame of the psalm (verses 1, 9), along with its structural center (verse 4 or verses 4-5), effectively focusing attention on the two main and inextricably related characters — God and human beings. The poetic features and structure of this prayer of praise invite, therefore, reflection on the crucial relationship of God and humankind.

Theology and anthropology

Psalm 8 is the first prayer or song of praise in the Psalter; and after the sequence of laments/complaints in Psalms 3-7 has presented an embattled and suffering psalmist, it is a distinct and perhaps surprising turn when we hear that human beings are “little lower than God, and crowned … with glory and honor” (verse 5). The vocabulary in verse 5 is elsewhere associated with royalty. The seemingly small and insignificant human creature (verses 3-4), the constantly opposed and suffering human creature (Psalms 3-7), has been given the royal treatment by the Sovereign of the universe (verses 1, 9). Given the obvious similarities between Psalm 8 and Genesis 1, we might say that the Psalm 8 affirms that human suffering does not mean that humanity is no longer imaging God (see Gen 1:26-27). This exalted view of the human creature is good news!

But what does all this mean for God? God’s sovereignty is clearly proclaimed, but it is crucial to note what God does with God’s power — that is, God shares it! As verse 6 says, “You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet.” This verse recalls Genesis 1:26, 28 (even though the Hebrew root underlying “dominion” differs in Psalm 8 and Genesis 1); and the implications are profound.

As Terence Fretheim points out in commenting on Genesis 1, God has engaged in “divine self-limitation,” and what it means is this: “The very act of creation thus might be called the beginning of the passion of God.”¹ In short, God suffers; so, as it turns out, human suffering is part and parcel of what it means to image God.

Not surprisingly, Psalm 8 figures prominently in the book of Job, an extended exploration of what it means to be human in relation to God and vice-versa. In the midst of his abysmal suffering, Job questions the affirmation of Psalm 8 that humankind shares in God’s glory. Job turns Psalm 8:4 upside down: “What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, visit them every morning, test them every moment?” (Job 7:17-18). But what Job ultimately learns is that his suffering is clearly not divine punishment. In the end, Job says, “I change my mind about dust and ashes [that is, the human condition]” (Job 42:6b).² Job has learned that suffering is simply a condition for participation in creation, for humankind and for God. In the final analysis, Job has claimed the perspective of Psalm 8.

Psalm 8 and ecology

We began the treatment of Psalm 8 by pointing out a couple of instances of repetition — the poetic frame of verses 1 and 9, along with the word translated “how” or “what” in verses 1, 4, 9. There is one more important instance of repetition. It is the word “all” in verses 1, 6, 7, and 9. While verses 1 and 9 are identical, the same affirmation sounds different when we consider the intervening material in verses 2-8, especially the material in verses 6-8 where we learn that God’s “all-ness” has been made subject to the dominion of humankind.

Upon hearing the affirmation in verses 1 and 9 the second time, we now know that God’s majesty on earth is intimately affected by the behavior of humankind! To be sure, human behavior can enhance the majesty of God as reflected in God’s earth; but as has become increasingly clear in the past 50 years, human behavior can also diminish and effectively destroy the divine majesty revealed in creation. The responsibility, the choice, is ours; and Psalm 8 suggests that God suffers when we choose to desecrate and destroy rather than to preserve and enhance God’s earth. In the final analysis, praise is not only a liturgical act, but it is also a lifestyle that honors God by honoring God’s creation. As James Limburg puts it, Psalm 8 teaches us “that the God-praising and the earth-caring community are one.”³

Notes:

1. Terence Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Overtures to Biblical Theology; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 58.

2. See J. Gerald Janzen, Job (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching; Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985), 251-259.

3. James Limburg, “Who Cares for the Earth? Psalm 8 and the Environment,” Word and World Supplement Series 1 (1992):51.

Paul has explained how God’s righteousness or justice (dikaiosyne) has been revealed through the gospel in the first four chapters in Romans.

After having used Abraham as an example of justification by faith in Israel’s history in Romans 4, Paul is going to demonstrate how God’s salvation manifests in the life of those justified by faith in Romans 5-8. Paul must not have intended to develop a theology of the Trinity, but he speaks about having peace with God (5:1-11), being united with Christ (6:1-14), and living according to the Spirit (8:1-17), along with discussions of law, sin, and death. Romans 5:1-5 is like a prelude to his following argument, which witnesses the presence of the Holy Trinity in God’s saving action and power.

God’s justice and justification by faith

Since Paul implies that being justified (dikaioo) by faith results in or requires peace with God, it is necessary to consider how Paul addresses “justification by faith.” While the traditional understanding of justification is one’s status of being free from the charge of being guilty in judicial terms, it can also be understood as being in a right relationship with God based on God’s covenant with Israel. When this covenant is also extended to the Gentiles, they need a certain kind of faith to enter into the relationship with God.

When Paul says in Romans 5:1 that “we are justified by faith” (dikaiothentes ek pisteos), the Greek preposition ek (“out of”) implies the causality of justification. This same expression appears in 3:26 where Paul adds “of Jesus”: the one who justifies the one who is of (the) faith of Jesus (dikaiounta ton ek pisteos Iesou). While it is translated as “he [God] justifies the one who has faith in Jesus,” it can also mean the faith Jesus had or Jesus’ faithfulness. In other places, Paul uses God’s justice or justification “dia” (through) faith, but again the preacher would decide how to read it: whose faith is it? (3:22; see also 3:30)

Through our Lord Jesus Christ

Interpreting “pistis christou” as faith or faithfulness of Christ is a possible option because Paul says a little later, “For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). Our entering into right relationship with God is the consequence of Jesus’ faithful obedience to God in his death and resurrection (4:25). Then, what Paul means becomes clear when he says, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Through Jesus Christ and his faithful obedience, “we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand” (Romans 5:2). While peace with God is grace (charis), that is, freely given, Paul also says we received grace (and apostleship) through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection in order to “bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles” (1:4-5; 15:18; 16:26). Justification by faith is neither the mere acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior or a peaceful status of being with God, but an active response to Jesus’ faithfulness by our faithful obedience.

Romans is addressed to the Roman congregations whose majority is Gentile Christians after Jews, who had been expelled from Rome under Claudius, returned under Nero. Jewish Christians encountered adversities both from the society and within the church. Thus, Paul’s primary conversation partner is the Gentile Christians who boasted against Israel. For Paul, obedience to God (1:5, 13) and boasting against God are antithetical (1:5, 13, 18-2:5).¹ Although our lection is only Romans 5:1-5, let us see how the theme of boasting functions in the structure, which 5:1 and verse 11 bracket.

•  Peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (verse 1)
• boast in our hope (verse 2)
• boast in our sufferings (verse 3)
• boast in God (verse 11)
• Reconciliation to God through our Lord Jesus (verse 11)

What is recognizable in this passage is that peace with and reconciliation to God are synonymous. When the Roman emperor is deified as the Lord (kyrios) and Roman peace (Pax Romana) is propagated as the “good news,” Paul proclaims that those Gentile believers have peace with God through “our Lord Jesus Christ,” who was executed on the cross at the hands of Rome. It was a shameful death. Yet, it is the paradox that God’s justice manifests in the cross as the ultimate expression of God’s love reconciling the ungodly to God (verses 5, 8):

• for while we were still weak Christ died for the ungodly (verses 6-7).
• for while we were still sinners Christ died for us (verses 8-9).
• for…while we were enemies…through the death of his son (verse 10).

This is why they can boast only in the suffering that Jesus Christ has already experienced and shared with them: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship [suffering], or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (8:35). Yet, suffering is not a sin “producing” death (7:13; see 4:15), but suffering “produces” endurance, and character, and then hope (5:4). Hope does not put us to shame (NIV; ESV) because, just as Jesus’ death has brought about our justification and reconciliation with God:

• we will be saved through him (verse 9).
• we will be saved by his life (verse 10).

The Spirit as the assurance of God’s love in suffering

If Christ’s faithful obedience in his death brought our peace with God, a group of people cannot claim superiority over others. Instead, God’s love unites all through Christ’s death that is “on our behalf.” Moreover, since his death is not an event isolated from the resurrection, we will be saved “by his life,” which brings “newness of life” (Romans 6:4). This newness of life is possible because of the “newness of the Spirit” (7:6).

The Spirit appears only once in the text assigned for Holy Trinity Sunday: God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). Yet, she is the one who generates and sustains the newness of life in the midst of sufferings that all humanity and creation share until the redemption of our bodies (8:23). Neither suffering nor anything can separate us from the love of Christ. This is why we boast in hope, as well as in sufferings (5:2, 3) assured by the Holy Spirit of God’s love in Jesus Christ.

Notes:

1. Neil Elliott, Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 129.