Preachers' Bibliography for Sundays After Pentecost (Ordinary Time)

(* indicates a good place to start)

Dunn, James D. G. Jesus and the Spirit: A Study of the Religious and Charismatic Experience of Jesus and the First Christians as Reflected in the New Testament. London: S.C.M. Press, 1975.

González, Catherine, and Justo González. "Babel and Empire: Pentecost and Empire." Journal for Preachers 16/4 (Pentecost 1993): 22-26.

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.

*Rouwhorst, Gerard. “The Origins and Evolution of Early Christian Pentecost.” Studia Patristica 35 (1999): 309-22.

Saunders, Stanley P., and Charles L. Campbell. "Anything But Ordinary: Worship and Preaching in Ordinary Time." Journal for Preachers 18/4 (Pentecost 1995): 25-31.

Social Themes of the Christian Year: A Commentary on the Lectionary, edited by Dieter T. Hessel. Philadelphia: Geneva Press, 1983, 210-53.

Trinity Sunday:

Alfs, Matthew. Concepts of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: A Classification and Description of the Trinitarian and Non-Trinitarian Theologies Existent within Christendom. Minneapolis: Old Theology Book House, 1984.

Brown, Sally A. “Speaking Again of the Trinity.” Theology Today 64 (2007): 145-58.

Hayden, Hilary. “The Trinity in Liturgy: Reflections on God for Us.” Liturgy 13/1 (Winter 1996): 51-59.

*LaCugna, Catherine Mowry. "Making the Most of Trinity Sunday." Worship 60 (1986): 210-24; reprinted in Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year, edited by Maxwell E. Johnson, 244-61. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000.

Lee, Jung Young. The Trinity in Asian Perspective. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996.

*Liturgy 13/1 (1996) – special issue: “Trinity Sunday and Beyond.”

Living Pulpit 8/2 (April-June 1999) - special issue.

MacKenzie, Charles Sherrard. The Trinity and Culture. New York: Peter Lang, 1987.

Marsh, Thomas A. The Triune God: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Study. Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1994.

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.

The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Wainwright, Geoffrey. “The Ecumenical Rediscovery of the Trinity.” One in Christ 34 (1998): 95-124.

All Saints/All Souls Day

Alexander, J. Neil. “Rejoice in the Glorious Company of the Saints.” Liturgy 14/3 (Winter 1998): 1-15.

Costa, Nathan. “‘For All the Saints’: A Feast for All People and All Time.” Worship 81 (2007): 482-508.

*Delooz, Pierre. "The Social Function of the Canonisation of Saints." In Models of Holiness, edited by Christian Duquoc and Casiano Floristán, 14-24. Concilium. Vol. 129. New York: Seabury, 1979.

Johnson, Elizabeth A. Friends of God and Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints. New York: Continuum, 1998.

Lamberts, Josef. “The Reform of the Roman Calendar.” In Christian Feast and Festival: The Dynamics of Western Liturgy and Culture, edited by P. Post, G. Rouwhorst, L. van Tongeren & A. Scheer, 461-84. Liturgia Condenda, v. 12. Leuven: Peeters, 2001.

*Liturgy special issues: 12/2 (1994-95) – “All Saints Among the Churches;” 14/3 (1998) – “Souls, Saints, and Services.”

Lochman, Jan Milič. The Faith We Confess: An Ecumenical Dogmatics. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984, 209-17 ("The Communion of Saints").

McBrien, Richard P. "The Saints: An Ecclesiological Reflection." Theology Digest 48 (2001): 303-17.

*Prevallet, Elaine M. “The Communion of Saints: Challenge of a Dangerous Memory.” Weavings 14/6 (Nov-Dec 1999): 41-48.

Steere, Douglas V. On Beginning from Within. New York: Harper, 1943, 33-64 ("The Saint and Society"), 65-86 ("The Authority of the Saint").

*Talley, Thomas J. “For All the Saints: A Brief History.” Liturgy 12/2 (1995): 39-46.

*Whalen, Michael D. “In the Company of Women? The Politics of Memory in the Liturgical Commemoration of Saints – Male and Female.” Worship 73 (1999): 482-504.

White, James F. “Forgetting and Remembering the Saints.” In Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year, edited by Maxwell E. Johnson, 401-14. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000.

Witczak, Michael. "All Saints, Feast of." New Dictionary of Sacramental Worship, edited by Peter E. Fink, S.J., 41. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990.

______. "All Souls, Feast of." New Dictionary of Sacramental Worship, edited by Peter E. Fink, S.J., 42-43. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990.

Reign of Christ Sunday

González, Catherine Gunsalus. “At the Doorway to the Church Year.” Liturgy 13/2 (Spring 1996): 21-25.

*Liturgy special issue: 13/2 (1996) – “Christ Reigns.”

What About Preaching During the Season after Pentecost?

A couple of points to make here. First, perhaps from the liturgical OCD department: the proper terminology is “the season after Pentecost,” not “the season of Pentecost.” As in, this Sunday is “the Xth Sunday after Pentecost.” Why be so picky? Well, there are actually good theological reasons for the distinction. Pentecost (“fiftieth day” in Greek) is the culmination of the grand intervention by God in human affairs called the crucifixion-resurrection-ascension-sending of the Spirit. The earliest Christians wisely perceived a unity in these separate activities of God, namely, the event of salvation bestowed by the God of Love through Jesus Christ. These events were understood to display just how far God’s love would go – as Paul reminded the Philippians (chapter 2) of an early hymn about Jesus sung by Christians:

6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death —
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

A few decades later, historian and theologian Luke stretched these events over a 50-day spread, culminating in the return of God/Jesus in the form of God’s Holy Spirit to the community of faith during the Jewish festival of Pentecost, which had evolved to become a celebration of God’s gift of the Law at Sinai, God’s revelation to the Hebrew community of faith of God’s plan for human societal life in harmony. At Luke’s prompting, Christians quickly latched onto the gift of the Spirit precisely on that festival not so much as “you got the Law, but we got the Spirit (so there!),” as much as the Spirit animating a community formed around the crucified Jesus as the embodiment of the living God, now given to the community of faith, and shoving it to the ends of the earth to create precisely that divinely-intended New Humanity.

The liturgical season after Pentecost developed to explore the variegated dimensions of this movement of God the Holy Spirit animating the community of faith. Paul called this community the “body of Christ,” by which he meant not a particular status to be lorded over others, but as a task: the community of faith was, and still is, the living embodiment of the ministry of Jesus Christ in the world. What Jesus did, he helps us do, through the Spirit of the risen Lord.

I guess you could say that, in a way, “after Pentecost” does stand as a reminder of our status: we who are recipients of the spirit of the crucified, raised, and exalted Lord – who, let us remember, deliberately chose to retain the nail cuts in his hands and feet (see Luke 24:40 and especially John 20:27) – serve the One who came among us “not to be served, but to serve” (Mark 10:45). Pentecost catapulted us into a new room, so to speak. The season after Pentecost gives us a long stretch of time to explore its nooks and crannies.