Weekly Liturgy booklets
|
|
|
Lectionary Notes for Sunday
Gen 1:1-2:3 • Ps 8 • II Cor 13:11-13 • Mtt 28:16-20 The period December-to-May or Advent-to-Pentecost features days com-memorating events of Christ’s life, from his birth to his ascension and the Spirit’s arrival; all those saving events are summed up by the doctrine of the Trinity, that most distinctively Christian doctrine of God.
Today’s collect, a late medieval composition, prays that we may be kept steadfast in our faith in and worship of the Holy Trinity. Genesis 1 was written by a Jew who knew the best Babylonian science of his day, about 500 B.C. According to him, God speaks the universe into being out of a background of chaos. God’s word is an active Agent. Christians developed Genesis 1 into our doctrine of the Word who creates the cosmos and becomes flesh, the foundation of Trinitarianism. Genesis reckons days as starting on the evening before, a reckoning the church follows so that a feast (Christmas, for example) begins on the evening before (the Eve). What Genesis calls the firmament is a dome which ancient astronomers thought vaulted over the sky, holding back waters above it. Windows in it God opens to let precipitation fall. Human beings are images of God not because God has physical human features, but because people mirror God’s attributes such as freedom, reason, and love, and we hold dominion over the other creatures as God holds dominion over us. A refrain repeated at the end of each day of creation the Jewish belief that existence is good, in contrast with, e.g., the Buddhist belief that existence is suffering. Human dominion over other creatures is celebrated by Psalm 8. Contem-plating the night sky, (last night was the June full moon) the author mar-vels that its Creator deigns to regard mankind. The alternate canticle, Benedictus es, comes from additions to Daniel in the Apocrypha. It is part of a hymn in the mouths of the three young men thrown in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. Like Ps 148, it praises God’s glory. For liturgies, Trinitarians have added the Gloria Patri to the Jewish canticle. The end of II Corinthians must have been picked as Trinity Sunday’s epistle because of its last sentence which names Jesus, God, and the Spirit. Like the Benedictus es, that formula, called the Grace, is used in Morning Prayer. The “holy kiss” was the ancient greeting revived in 20th century congregations as the exchange of Peace. At the end of Matthew, Christ tells his followers to baptize in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the form which became standard, despite some apostles having baptized converts “in the Name of Jesus. Rev. Stephen Weissman Asheville, North Carolina Reprinted with permission.
|
June 4th, 2023
|
