Dionysus on a Bike

2 Corinthians 13:11-13 – 5/31/2026 – Trinity Sunday & The Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth

Today’s Lectionary texts from the New Testament, both the Epistle reading and the Gospel, were chosen because they highlight the three persons of the Trinity whose feast it is today, this first Sunday after Pentecost. The Epistle text from 2 Corinthians not only invokes the names of the three persons of the Trinitarian God, verse 13 also serves as the traditional greeting in Evangelical Lutheran Liturgy, as well as much of the Western Church. These are the words that the pastor or priest says either just before or just after confession and forgiveness and the Kyrie, “Lord, have mercy” to greet the congregation in the names of the persons of our Triune God.

The liturgy as a whole, including the words here at the beginning of most Sunday Word and Sacrament worship services, serves as the repetition of key parts of scripture, applied to our life with God and one another in a gratitude and reverence. Scripture is not only for study to interpret divine truths pertaining to our salvation. Scripture, through the lens of tradition and practice, is lived out through its use in ordering our connection to God in Word and Sacrament. Scripture is not only narrative and conceptual content, Scripture is also ritual. When it is all three at once — a story of our salvation, the conceptual understanding of that salvation, and the lived expression of it as a community coming together to make the good news a reality, then Scripture becomes more than simply words on a page, it becomes living text, embodied by being spoken aloud in the assembly of the baptized.

Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary.