June 2022 – A Preacher’s Ponderings

Sounds of silence

Second Sunday after Pentecost; 19 June 2022; Proper 7C (RCL); 1 Kings 19:1-15a; Psalms 42-43; Glatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39.

The reading from 1 Kings is quite rich. Elijah has just won his contest with the 450 prophets of Baal, and has had them killed at the Wadi Kishon, and the people had fallen on their faces and acknowledged the Lord as God. Jezebel has threatened Elijah, who has fled for his life, to Beersheba, in Judah, out of her reach. In the wilderness, he sits under a broom tree and asks to die. Jonah would echo Elijah as he sat under the castor bean plant outside Nineveh.

Trinity

Trinity Sunday; 12 June 2022; Trinity Sunday C (RCL); Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15.

It seems like the designers of the lectionary might have found passages that seemed more directly to refer to the persons of the Trinity — some of the blessings in Paul’s letters seem to come close to a doctrine of the Trinity. Perhaps we used all those up in Years A and B, and this is all that’s left for Year C. In any event, the doctrine itself isn’t explicit in the New Testament, and was only settled after centuries of reflection on the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, and took its shape from the doctrine of the Incarnation.

Greater works

Pentecost; 5 June 2022; Day of Pentecost C (RCL); Acts 2:1-21; Psalm 104:25-35, 37; Romans 8:14-17; John 14:8-17, 25-27.

Luke has loaded these verses in Acts with a wealth of intertextual references. There is the reference to the creation story (God’s breath blowing over the primal chaos), the pillar of fire in the wilderness, and of course the quasi-reversal of Babel (the story of Babel is one of the optional readings on this day).