Proverbs 8: 22-31 (links validated 5/25/22)
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Illustrated Resources from the Archives
Preaching Helps (Trinity)(C)(2016)
Some while back I read an author who contends that this is the quintessential, the most basic, of American proverbs: ‘Different strokes for different folks.’ But you cannot detect a lot of respect for universally underlying truths of God’s creation design in that proverb. When faced with lifestyles that run the gamut from church-going religious types all the way over to pornography consuming men who cheat on their wives, Americans shrug through their most-loved proverbs. ‘Different strokes for different folks. Live and let live. To each his own. A man’s home is his castle. Don’t rock the boat.’ These are America’s most-loved proverbs. But what they all boil down to is that one-word phrase which, though not a proverb, in many ways spells the doom of all biblical proverbs: the great postmodern verbal shrug of ‘Whatever!’...Trinity Sunday (C)(2016)
I’d like to draw your attention to what is arguably the most famous and easily recognised painting in the history of Christian art: Michelangelo’s Creation, which is in the Sistine Chapel. Most people tend to focus on the very centre of the picture – which is what Michelangelo intended us to do – and hone in on the narrow space between the outstretched hand of God and that of humanity, personified in Adam. This point of almost-contact is the point at which the Spirit – the breath, ruach, pneuma – of God is poured into human life, giving it life – literally, animating humanity. But there’s another aspect of this painting that I’d like you to examine...The Trinity: A Christian Dreaming
("The first of the dream-forms is that of Sophia, or divine Wisdom, a feminine figure who waits in the liminal places, the thresholds of crossing between divine and human realities: 'Does not Wisdom call, And does not understanding raise her voice?...")Trinity Sunday (C)(2010)
("As Tom Long once pointed out, most everyone takes their cues from some set of guiding principles that often gets summarized in adages and pithy slogans. Americans are no different, it's just that our favorite and most-often quoted national proverbs cut against the grain of the biblical Book of Proverbs. Some while back I read an author who contends that this is the quintessential, the most basic, of American proverbs...")Superfluity or Superabundance?
There’s a delightful little passage from My Brilliant Friend, which captures the sheer depth of human encounter. To love another is to drown in abundance. We never exhaust the other, never find the bottom of his or her person. Elena remembers walking the streets of Naples with Lila. We were twelve years old, but we walked along the hot streets of the neighborhood, amid the dust and flies that the occasional old trucks stirred up as they passed, like two old ladies taking the measure of lives of disappointment, clinging tightly to each other. No one understood us, only we two—I thought—understood one another.Holy Wisdom (Proverbs)
The structure pictured here is Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey. It is now a museum. Before that it was a mosque. But at its construction it was a Christian church. Hagia Sophia. Which is not a reference to St. Sophia. The official name is Ναός τῆς Ἁγίας τοῦ Θεοῦ Σοφίας, Naos tēs Hagias tou Theou Sophias, "Shrine of the Holy Wisdom of God."Trinity (C)(2001)
The Navaho have what they call Grandfather Stories. They’re just what you think, stories told be grandfathers to their grandchildren. Here’s a short one about the Holy People and the First Dog. The Holy People were the first people on earth to have a dog. However, he had the habit of barking early in the morning, just as the sun was coming up. The Holy People began to dislike the dog because he did so much noisy barking. They talked about the dog, wondering what they should do about him and his barking. They decided it would be best to kill him and be rid of him forever. The First Dog heard what they were saying. To save his life, he decided not to do any more barking. Early the next morning some other Holy People from the west approached. The dog saw them, but he did not bark at them. He was afraid his masters would kill him...
Other Resources from 2022
Sermon Starters (Trinity)(C)(2022)
“Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mean that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, and the mystery within us are all the same mystery. Thus the Trinity is a way of saying something about us and the way we experience God. The Trinity is also a way of saying something about God and the way he is within himself, i.e., God does not need the Creation in order to have something to love because within himself love happens. In other words, the love God is is love not as a noun but as a verb. This verb is reflexive as well as transitive.”The Call of Lady Wisdom
Tony Campolo talks about throwing his grandson up in the air, catching him, and then setting him on the floor. Like any other small child, his grandson wanted him to do it again and again. Campolo writes, “After doing it fifty times, he was all the more exuberant, screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘Do it again, Pop-Pop! Do it again!’ “Thinking about this, [Campolo] asks, ‘How did God create daisies? Did he just say, “Daisies be!” Or after creating the first little daisy, did something childlike inside the heart of God yell, “Do it again”? So God created daisy number two. And once more, something inside God said “Do it again!” And daisy number three was created. And then four, five and six. And each time God clapped his hands and shouted “Do it again! Do it again! Do it again!” And fifty billion trillion daisies later, the great God of the universe is still jumping up and down, clapping his hands and yelling, “Do it again!”’"...
Other Resources from 2019 to 2021
Lady Wisdom
here’s how one author describes the Trinity and Creation: “Creation itself sprang from a bubbling overflow of God’s love. Like a shaken-up bottle of champagne, so also God’s love within the Trinity was so effervescent, so richly pressured and full that sooner or later the cork had to explode out and when it did, a river of sparkling love gushed forth and sprayed everywhere. Creation is that overflow of love. “God wanted to share the life and the love he already had so exquisitely among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Greek theologians of the Trinity in the early church liked to talk about what they termed […] the interpenetrating dance of love shared by the three persons in the Godhead...