INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Year B - Trinity Sunday

ISAIAH 6:1-8.   These few verses describe the call of Isaiah to his ministry of speaking for God to Israel during a critical period of its history in the late 8th century BC. Amid the smoke from the sacrifice on the altar in the temple, Isaiah had a vision of God attended by heavenly creatures. One of the heavenly beings touched his lips with a live coal symbolizing his freedom from sin and worthiness to proclaim God’s message to Israel. Then Isaiah heard the voice of God calling for someone to speak for God to God's sinful people; and he responds.

PSALM 29.   Although beginning with praise to God, the emphasis in this psalm is on the voice of God as if heard in the violence of a thunderstorm.

ROMANS 8:12-17.  Paul claims that having the Spirit of the risen Christ is the key to Christian discipleship. The Spirit dwelling within us enables us to live as the people of God rather than as slaves to the value system of the world around us.

JOHN 3:1-17. Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, learns from Jesus how the Spirit makes us new spiritual persons through faith in the crucified and risen Christ. This comes about because God loves the world so much that God sent Jesus into the world to save us with this faith.

This majestic passage is one of many in the New Testament witnessing to what subsequently became the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It describes the ministry Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit as God at work in the world.

Some people look at verse 16 as the secret for obtaining eternal life beyond death. In this passage, however, John makes the point that God is as much concerned about how we live in this life now as with what happens to us afterward. As the subsequent verses 18 to 21 explain, God's judgment occurs and eternal life begins when we believe who Jesus is and what his coming into the world really means.

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ISAIAH 6:1-8.   These few verses describe the call of Isaiah to his ministry of speaking for God to Israel during a critical period of its history in the late 8th century BC. The late Dr. R.B.Y. Scott, my professor of Old Testament at McGill University, Montreal, later of Princeton University, wrote an exceptional exegesis of this passage in The Interpreter's Bible (6: 204ff) which is well worth reading in full. Scott described this as an ecstatic vision, "one of the outstanding passages of the Bible which justify a

doctrine of revelation in and through recorded spiritual experience.... We can participate imaginatively in Isaiah's vision and feel the same pang of conscience in the presence of the unutterable and sovereign glory of the goodness of God."

Amid the smoke from the sacrifice on the altar in the temple, Isaiah had a vision of God attended by heavenly creatures. One of the heavenly beings touched his lips with a live coal symbolizing his freedom from sin and worthiness to proclaim God’s message to Israel. Then Isaiah heard the voice of God calling for someone to speak for God to God's sinful people; and he responds.

The event has a specific historical context: "the year that King Uzziah died." The year 742 BCE was the approximate date, although biblical historians cannot be altogether sure. II Kings 15:1ff gave the king another name, Azariah (cf.14:21; 15:13). Isaiah may have been one of the courtiers or a member of the priesthood. He had contact with several kings of Judah, the southern kingdom, through perilous times until at least 701 BCE. His oracles often met with royal displeasure because they counseled

actions which, however spiritually motivated, were politically unpalatable (chs. 36-39).

The passage emphasizes the holiness of Yahweh in that in the intensity of his vision when Isaiah "sees" Yahweh and hears the divine summons, Yahweh's face and feet are hidden from him. It is the six winged seraphim, the heavenly attendants of Yahweh, of which Isaiah catches sight. In other words, spiritual being can only be spiritually encountered. The experience can only be expressed in humanly relevant terms. As Scott says, "Holiness is the essential quality of deity, glory is the manifestation of deity in the natural world."

Isaiah's familiarity with the cult of Yahweh underlies the ritual act of mouth-purification (vss. 6-7) symbolizing divine forgiveness enabling the prophet to speak in Yahweh's name, "Thus saith the Lord ...." Contact with the holiness of Yahweh sanctified Isaiah for his prophetic mission. His humble response, "Here am I! Send me," represents total commitment that countless others have made in similar circumstances. Vocation remains our best human response to a divine summons.

Not all prophets or pastors, from ancient times to the present day, have been called in such dramatic fashion. This brief narrative gives scriptural credibility to the ecstatic nature of some calls to ministry. It may be easy for modern secular minds the cast doubt on the validity of such calls. For those to whom it has happened, it has been a life-changing experience, not the hallucinations of religious fanatics. For me, the compelling power of the experience has lasted for sixty-two years.

PSALM 29.   Praise for the glory of God in a thunderstorm? That is an imaginative interpretation of a very natural occurrence in almost any part of the world. Yet that is the chief emphasis in this psalm.

The power of a storm attracted the poet's attention.  In ancient times, nature’s mighty elements had the status of demi-gods. It was they who are addressed in vss. 1-2 as "heavenly beings" and summoned to ascribe glory to Yahweh, their "holy array" in the heavens worshiping as if in the temple.

Storms of great violence still occur in Palestine. Sweeping down from the heights of Mount Lebanon, strong cold fronts collide with warm air from the deserts of the Arabian and Sinai peninsulas. This results in furious storms which can do great damage to the unwary, especially those poor enough or foolish enough to build their fragile shelters in the wadis of the wilderness or the valleys of spring-fed mountain  streams.  Such disasters still happen in even the most modern urban communities of

California and in the barrios of Central and South America. Those who live in "Tornado Alley" on the plains of the American midwest can also attest to the violence of such storms. Insurance policies still include a clause defining some destructive events as "acts of God."

The psalmist heard the majestic voice of God in the sound of thunder as the storm rolls closer (vs. 3-4). The cedars of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon (Sirion) bent before the wind, skipping like a calf or a young wild ox. The psalmist may have referred to wild aurochs, from which cattle were domesticated, that may not have been entirely extinct in the more remote foothills of the Bekah Valley in Lebanon (vss. 5-6). Lightning appeared as flames from the same mouth from which the voice of Yahweh thunders (vs. 7). The references to Lebanon in the north and the wilderness of Kadesh in the southern desert on the borders of Sinai (vs. 8) represent the expanse of the whole nation over which the storm spreads its fury.

Due to the absence of vowels in Hebrew, some versions translate vs. 9 differently. The KJV has it, "The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve." The Hebrew word chuwl or chiyl has many meanings, but essentially means “to twist or whirl.” Another meaning is “to writhe in pain as in giving birth.”  The KJV sense might be possible in a heavy storm if the deer were as terrified as some humans were at such times. The more exact translation in the NRSV and several other modern versions better serve the intended poetic parallelism. A tornado whistling through a forest has the power to strip leaves from trees or uproot great oaks and whirl them to the ground. That would appear to be the image the poet has in mind.

As the storm passed, reflection on its meaning calmed the poet. The One who is sovereign over all the most powerful forces of nature was also able to give strength and peace to Israel, Yahweh's chosen people.

ROMANS 8:12-17.  Here Paul claims that having the Spirit of the risen Christ is the key to Christian discipleship. The Spirit enables us to live as the people of God rather than as slaves to the value system of the world around us.

A good deal of scholarly effort has concentrated on what Paul meant by "the flesh." Most probably, his concept of the term arose from his early life in Tarsus famous for its Stoic philosophers as well as his long, intense association and training with the Pharisees. In contrast to the Hebrew concept of a unified human nature, the Greeks believed that the spiritual and the physical aspects of human beings were totally separate and impossible to unite in the same person.

In a word, “the flesh” (Gk. = sarx) meant sin, anything that separates us from God and spiritual life. To quote William Barclay in his The Mind of Paul (Harper, 1958. 190): "Sin is not simply an influence or a force; it is a kind of personal demonic power which invades a man and takes up residence in him. It is in fact there that Paul's whole conception of the body and the flesh comes in. Any invading enemy requires a bridgehead; it is the flesh which gives sin a bridgehead. The flesh is not simply the body; and the sins of the flesh are not simply fleshly sins. Idolatry, hatred, strife, wrath, heresy are all sins of the flesh (Gal. 5:20). The flesh is the human nature apart from God. And it is just there that sin obtains the bridgehead for the invasion whose end is the occupation of the human personality."

Putting that in terms of contemporary thought, "the flesh" represents the value system of the dominate culture to which everyone is attracted and subjected, consciously or unconsciously. The moral and spiritual power that enables us to live free of the dominating influence of the culture in which we live is the Holy Spirit (vss. 12-13). But as the whole body of his correspondence with the apostolic churches makes abundantly clear, Paul had no illusions about the challenge of living by the Spirit and not the flesh in that era and in this.

E.P Sanders carried Paul's understanding of "the flesh" even farther: "His penetrating observations have to do with how it is that the man who does not have faith in Christ is not only lost in a formal and external sense - handed over to destruction - but even lost to himself, being unable to achieve the goal which he so ardently desires. For that which is desired - life - can only be received as a gift, so that the effort to attain it is self-defeating." (Paul and Palestinian Judaism. SCM Press, 1977. 509)

The antidote to this universal human predicament is found in vs. 14 of this passage. Those who through faith in Christ receive the gift of the Holy Spirit "are the children of God." In vs. 15, Paul uses the metaphor of adoption into the family of God in contrast to slavery as the means by which the gift is given to us. Anyone, parent or child, who has experienced adoption senses immediately the difference. The adopted child in regarded as a member of the family as much as if born into the family naturally. However intimately a slave or servant may be regarded, or how long he or she may serve in a household, that person never becomes a member of the family with all the incumbent rights and privileges of an adopted child. The adopted child can never be removed from the family circle. As Paul described this intimately spiritual experience in vs. 17: "if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ."

Paul ends this segment of his message with the startling affirmation of the implications of being a member of the family of God with Christ: "If, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him." We receive everything that accrues to the family, whether great riches and honour, or as the Romans may well have been about to experience when Paul wrote to them, persecution, privation and unjust punishment for crimes they did not commit. Tradition holds that not long after Paul wrote this letter, he arrived in Rome and suffered martyrdom there during Nero’s persecution of the Christian community for the great fire instigated by the mad emperor himself.

There is one more brief reference in vs. 15b-16 which bears investigation. At one time or another, every Christian feels frustrated by his or her feeble efforts to pray. When crises come upon on us, many feel especially bereft of the spiritual connections that make prayer meaningful and helpful. Like terrified children we can only cry out, "Daddy, help me!" It is then, in our moments of terror, we most need the Spirit to interpret our cries for help and to reassure us that we are indeed the children

of the living, loving God who knows our plight and will not desert us in our need.

Had Paul heard what was happening to the Christian community in Rome under the mad emperor Nero? Had he determined to appeal to the emperor himself so that he might join them in their time of danger? Nero was fiercely anti-Semitic as had been his adoptive father, Claudius, whom he succeeded as emperor. Paul met two of his closest co-workers in Corinth, Priscilla and Aquila, after Claudius had banished them from Rome with other Jews in 49/50 CE. The postscript to the Letter to the Romans (16:3) includes a warm greeting to Priscilla and Aquila which indicates that there were

once again back in the capital of the empire. We can only speculate how Paul may have intended his reference to Spirit-assisted prayer to be understood by his audience. Our own interpretation of it, however, may yield a fruitful homily for the early summer.

JOHN 3:1-17.    Reading this fourth and last gospel in New Testament nearly two millennia after it was composed, we need to remember that those who wrote the gospels knew about, believed in and assumed they were inspired by the Holy Spirit

of God as they created these texts from the oral traditions to which they had access. And who is to say that they were not? This majestic passage is one of many in the New Testament witnessing to what subsequently became the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It describes the ministry Jesus and the activity of the Holy Spirit as God engaged in God's redeeming work in and for the world.

The story is a simple one: Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, learns from Jesus how the Spirit makes us new spiritual persons through faith in the crucified and risen Christ. This comes about because God loves the world so much that God sent Jesus into the world to save us humans and this planet through this faith.

Some people look at John 3:16 as the secret for obtaining eternal life beyond death. In this passage, however, John makes the point that God is as much concerned about how we live in this life now as with what happens to us afterward. As the subsequent verses 18 to 21 explain, God's judgment occurs and eternal life begins when we believe who Jesus is and what his coming into the world really means.

In the theological struggles of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, "born again" has become the rallying cry of conservatively minded Christians, the magical open sesame to salvation. In many respects it has the same force as the synoptic gospel proclamation, "repent and believe the gospel." The phrase is not a magic ticket to enter “that better life in the great beyond.” It is a metaphor for a new moral and spiritual beginning which comes about for those who have faith that Jesus is the one to whom the early Christian community witnessed: the Messiah/Christ, Son of God. As Messiah, Jesus came to show us the way of life God requires of us all. Was it not out of such a context that Jesus chided the doubting Nicodemus, "Are you a teacher of Israel and you do not understand these things? (vs. 10) 

In all of the discourses of Jesus which John includes in his gospel, it is difficult to distinguish how much are remembrances of what Jesus may have actually said or the commentary of John himself. Obviously is vss. 11-17, Jesus, or more probably John, was thinking about the whole story of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of God's sovereign love made manifest in Jesus. Another metaphor of universal salvation comes in the comparison of the crucifixion to Moses' elevation of the serpent which prevented the Israelites from dying of a plague of poisonous snakes

(vss. 14-15 cf. Numbers 21:4-9). John reiterates that this is God's intention in the classic statement about salvation in vs. 16.

If that were not enough to convince the unbelieving, and especially the Jewish element of his audience, John drives his point home in vs. 17-21 by introducing the constant Old Testament theme of divine judgment on sin. Yet here John differentiates Christian from Jewish theology. God's judgment does not come for the purpose of condemning the wicked who transgress a moral law or ritual code, as so often stated in the Old Testament. The purpose of divine judgment is to bring the whole world to faith and spiritual fellowship with God. This reaffirms in a remarkable way that Jesus is the full expression of divine love in human form as stated so exquisitely in vs. 16.

What, then, is the Holy Trinity but God who is love coming to us in whatever way we humans can receive the gift of God's own spiritual life and thereby be recreated as new persons who express love in all our relationships?

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