The Adventurous Lectionary – The First Sunday after Pentecost – May 31, 2015

The Adventurous Lectionary – The First Sunday after Pentecost – May 31, 2015 May 24, 2015

Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17

Today’s readings invite us to experience the mystical presence of God, revealed in creation, our inner lives, and the call to mission.

Isaiah’s mystical vision is one of the most powerful witnesses to humankind’s encounter with the divine, or better put, God’s breaking into human life in a life-transforming way. God is always present, moving gently and sometimes dramatically in our lives. Still, there are moments that change everything. As I imagine Isaiah’s experience, I see the future prophet attending a worship service. People are standing beside him, but in ways he can’t imagine, God speaks directly to him. No one may notice anything peculiar in Isaiah’s demeanor, but for Isaiah, God is real, present, and challenging him to a new vision. When he entered the Temple Isaiah may just have wanted to find a little peace of mind in a time of political turmoil. Instead, he encounters the living God and discovers his life’s vocation.

Isaiah is overwhelmed before the God of the universe. He protests his imperfection and unimportance in the scheme of things. The distance between the infinite and the finite, regardless of our sense of God’s immanence, should provoke what Abraham Joshua Heschel describes as “radical amazement.” Anything less than amazement fails to do justice to the wondrous complexity and wisdom of the universe and its creator. “How great thou art” is Isaiah’s cry and our own when we experience the utter holiness and wonder of life.

Angels praise and Isaiah realizes that the whole earth is filled with God’s glory. Each moment is a theophany, each encounter an epiphany. Senses aware perhaps for the first time to the majesty of creation and the Creator, Isaiah experiences the world as God-filled. Mysticism leads to mission: God needs us. Who will speak for God? Who will be God’s companion in healing the world? Transformed, Isaiah embraces a new vocation, to call the nation back to God’s ways.

Worship can be life-transforming. It can alter our senses and understanding of the world. Worship can lead us to significant new insights and the willingness to take on God’s mission in our time and place. We are invited to come to worship expecting the unexpected; we are called upon to be open to new vistas of understanding God and the world.

Psalm 29 is a hymn to divine glory. God is beyond our imagination, energetically creating in all things. Thundering yet giving life. Praise and amazement at God’s wisdom and creativity is the only appropriate response.

The words of Romans 8:12-17 assert that God of infinite space and time is also infinitely personal. God is moving in our cells and our souls. God is calling us to holiness and wholeness, to freedom and creativity. God’s Spirit is our deepest reality and the Spirit’s movements enable us to call upon God and claim God’s freedom and courage in the living of each day.

John 3:1-17 speaks of the fullness of God’s loving revelation in our lives and the world. God moves in our lives; the Spirit is free and unbounded, embracing all, and calling us beyond the heaviness of the past, both positive and negative, to new life. We can be born anew, regardless of age or experience. The God who calls us to new life calls all creation to new life. God loves the world, cosmos, both non-human and human. God’s love is manifest in the life of Jesus, the Child, the Son, and the Beloved, who invites us to move from receptivity to acknowledgment and activity and partnership with God. God’s aim is wholeness and salvation for all creation. God is in the salvation business, not the business of condemnation. God’s aim is toward everlasting life in moment and forever.

Today’s scriptures reflect the wondrous presence of God in the world: majestic, yet loving; transcendent, yet immanent; mighty, yet graceful; defined by love, not unrestricted power; relational and needing our partnership to heal the world.


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