Printable services for those unable to attend St C

St Clement Church Community Trinity Sunday Service

Good morning to you as we celebrate our Trinity Sunday service.

This Service of the Word is if you’re unable to worship with us this Sunday in person, but will be with us in spirit at home.

Much love and prayers and may Christ’s love sustain you always.

Rev Di and family xx

Let us pray;

Almighty and eternal God, you have revealed yourself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and live and reign in the perfect unity of love: hold us firm in this faith, that we may know you in all your ways and evermore rejoice in your eternal glory. Amen.

Hymn; ‘Angel voices ever singing’

Our prayers of Penitence

As we celebrate the holiness and goodness of God, we remember the shadows in our own lives:

Father God, we confess that we often take the gifts of your creation for granted, and use them chiefly to further our own interests….

Lord, have mercy.

Saviour Christ, we confess that we easily fall into temptation and forget to seek your forgiveness….

Christ, have mercy.

Holy Spirit, we confess that we often close our minds to your influence, and fail to bear good fruit in our lives…

Lord, have mercy.

May Almighty God have mercy upon us, forgive us our failings, and bring us to everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Let us pray our Collect for Trinity Sunday

Holy God, faithful and unchanging: enable our minds to understand the knowledge of your truth, and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love, that we may truly worship you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings:

Isaiah 6. 1-8

Romans 8. 12-17

Hymn; ‘‘Firmly I Believe & Truly’

The Gospel Reading

Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John (3. 1-17)

Glory to you, O Lord.

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’

Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old?

Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’

Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.”

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

This is the Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, O Christ.

Reflection

My first sermon in my curacy at St Agnes in 2010 was on the Trinity, and since then I’ve learnt to either book Trinity Sunday off, or get Liz to preach,  but you’ve got me again this year, so here goes!

Trinity Sunday - the only Sunday on the ecclesiastical calendar dedicated to a doctrine. All our other special days hark back to events - Christmas, Easter, Pentecost - but not this one. Trinity Sunday is the day we Christians celebrate the reality of one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yes, the doctrine of the Trinity is confusing. Even the finest theologians find themselves at a loss to explain it well, so what hope do I have I ask!

A story is told of a little girl who was asked at school to write an essay on birth, so she went home and asked her mother how she had been born.  Her mother, who was busy at the time, said 'the stork brought you darling, and left you on the doorstep.'

Continuing her research, she asked her dad how he'd been born.

Being in the middle of something, her father likewise deflected the question by saying, 'I was found at the bottom of the garden.  The fairies brought me.'

Then the girl went and asked her grandmother how she had arrived. 'I was picked from a gooseberry bush', said grandma.

With this information the girl wrote her essay, and when the teacher asked her later to read it in front of the class, she stood up and began, "There has not been a natural birth in our family for three generations......."

In our Gospel reading today, poor old Nicodemus was struggling to understand the difference between natural and spiritual birth, when Jesus spoke to him of being born from above he was of course, not talking of a natural birth.  As he explained to Nicodemus, he was talking of a spiritual birth - a birth that was, and is, somehow, supernatural, and we also struggle alongside Nicodemus to think about this today, Trinity Sunday.

Our experience of God is a marvellous and mysterious experience.

We have and know the God of Isaiah - the God who is high and lifted up in his temple, the God who speaks and brings forth all of creation, who is judge, lord, ruler, king - the God who is in light inaccessible hid from our eyes.

This God is strange to us, and beyond us, this God we dare not touch even though we know him and he knows us, even though we see this God's signs all around us in creation.

And then we have the God who is in Christ, the God who is Christ - the God who is lowly, and humble, who walks the earth with us, cries and laughs with us.  The God who calls God Abba, Father, who is tempted with us, who hungers and thirsts with us.  The God who embraces and encourages us, who surrenders himself to death for us, having only the promise and the hope of being raised again.

And we have and know God the Spirit - God the bringer of visions and dreams, the source of strength and of hope. God the supplier of healing words and comfort filling prayer.  God the wind, the breath, the air we breathe, the transformer who gives new birth, new life, the presence within us and all around us.

But we can’t profess to know all about God, God is always greater than our knowledge of him - but we do know what God has shown about himself in our lives.  We know him in three ways, we experience him in three ways and we love him in three ways.

The key point is: our belief in God as Trinity isn’t just a line in the Bible, nor is it a mere answer to a question in the catechism.  Our belief in God is an invitation to experience, and the Trinity is the way we experience God in his different dimensions.

But we might lose the significance of the mystery of the Trinity, if we just fossilize that mystery in a dogma and think we know it all, so we should be open to the varieties of ways we experience God.

The Trinity is a model that captures the three ways God has revealed himself; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a loving parent, a dear brother, and a caring presence.

It also reminds of the three ways in which we – as individuals and as community – might experience Him today.

That my friends, is just part of the truth that Jesus spoke of to Nicodemus.

Poor soul, he had a hard time grabbing hold of that truth, he couldn't quite understand how one could be born anew by the divine gift of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

But hopefully we’ve done our best today!  Amen.

Hymn; ‘May the Grace of Christ my Saviour’

Affirmation of our faith

Let us declare our faith in God.

We believe and trust in God the Father, source of all being and life, the one for whom we exist. We believe and trust in God the Son, who took our human nature, died for us and rose again.

We believe and trust in God the Holy Spirit, who gives life to the people of God and makes Christ known in the world.

This is the faith of the Church. This is our faith.

We believe and trust in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our Intercessions are written by Daphne Hawkins

Almighty God, most blessed and most holy, we gather on this Trinity Sunday with lowly reverence and love as we acknowledge your infinite glory, and worship thee for ever.