Morning Service for Trinity Sunday for 2024

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Service

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September 4, 2024

A can of soup – what is it food or drink – I say it is drink but my wife says it is food. It goes to show the difficulty we face in defining even physical things. If I say I love my family, what do I mean? If you say, I love my family do you mean the same as me? It is even more difficult to define non-physical things, things like love, which we can neither measure nor can we prove they exist in the same way that the can of soup exists.

Morning Service for Trinity Sunday for 2024

HYMN Father of heaven, whose love profound NEH 358- Rievaulx

1 Father of heaven, whose love profound

A ransom for our souls hath found,

Before thy throne we sinners bend:

To us thy pardoning love extend.

3 Eternal Spirit, by whose breath

The soul is raised from sin and death,

Before thy throne we sinners bend:

To us thy quickening power extend.

4 Thrice Holy! Father, Spirit, Son,

Mysterious Godhead, Three in One,

Before thy throne we sinners bend:

Grace, pardon, life to us extend.

PRAYER OF PREPARATION
Almighty God,
to whom all hearts are open,
all desires known,
and from whom no secrets are hidden:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,
and worthily magnify your holy name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen

PRAYERS OF PENITENCE

We recall our Lord’s command to love and in a moment of silence we confess

the many ways we fail to keep his command:

Most merciful God,

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
we confess that we have sinned
in thought, word and deed.
We have not loved you with our whole heart.
We have not loved our neighbours as ourselves.
In your mercy forgive what we have been,
help us to amend what we are,
and direct what we shall be;
that we may do justly, love mercy,
and walk humbly with you, our God. Amen

May the God of love and power
forgive us and free us from our sins,
heal and strengthen us by his Spirit,
and raise us to new life in Christ our Lord. Amen.

THE COLLECT

Almighty and everlasting God,

you have given us your servants grace,

by the confession of a true faith,

to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity

and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:

keep us steadfast in this faith,

that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

FIRST READING – Isaiah 6.1-8

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew.

And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory.”

The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

HYMN I bind unto myself today NEH 159- St Patrick

1 I bind unto myself today

the strong name of the Trinity

by invocation of the same,

the Three in One and One in Three.

2 I bind this day to me forever,

by power of faith, Christ’s incarnation,

his baptism in the Jordan river,

his death on cross for my salvation,

his bursting from the spicèd tomb,

his riding up the heavenly way,

his coming at the day of doom,

I bind unto myself today.

3 I bind unto myself today

the virtues of the starlit heaven,

the glorious sun’s life-giving ray,

the whiteness of the moon at even,

the flashing of the lightning free,

the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,

the stable earth, the deep salt sea

around the old eternal rocks.

4 I bind unto myself today

the power of God to hold and lead,

God’s eye to watch, God’s might to stay,

God’s ear to hearken to my need,

the wisdom of my God to teach,

God’s hand to guide, God’s shield to ward,

the word of God to give me speech,

God’s heavenly host to be my guard.

6 I bind unto myself the name,

the strong name of the Trinity

by invocation of the same,

the Three in One and One in Three,

of whom all nature has creation,

eternal Father, Spirit, Word.

Praise to the Lord of my salvation;

salvation is of Christ the Lord!

GOSPEL – John 3.1-17

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.

SERMON – Keith Atton

Imagine we are in the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century. The Emperor Constantine has just allowed the toleration of Christianity after years of sporadic persecution. Constantine, whose mother is a Christian, wants the religion to be taken seriously, so he gets lots of bishops together to define the faith, because there are different ideas going around about important aspects of it. This dissension is doing no good and it is not a very Roman in its way of thinking – the Romans go for tidy e.g. straight roads. So the bishops came to Nicaea and later in the century to Constantinople and they produced (not without disagreement) the creed we have today.

As Israelites, the Apostles knew there was only one God, who had made agreements (covenants) with His people, who had led them out of Egypt to the promised land and who had spoken through the prophets. He had been responsible for the creation of all from the beginning.

The Apostles had seen and lived with Jesus; they knew he was physically a man. Yet, he had done what they saw as miracles, he had taught with the kind of authority that they saw as only belonging to God and finally, after death, they had discovered he was alive again. His resurrection was the last thing they would have expected. Some groups in Judaism rejected the idea of life after death, other expected the resurrection of all at the end of time but none expected the resurrection of a single individual. Surely, this man was more than just a man. He could only be described as God, but this presented problems; he had to be both God and man at the same time; if there was only one God who remained separate from humanity how could this be?

As we were reminded last week at the first Pentecost, the Apostles suddenly became different men, full of courage and the ability to proclaim the Gospel. Over the centuries there is ample evidence of men and women transformed, supercharged; we think of this as the work of The Holy Spirit, sent by God, at work in them all. So the Holy Spirit too must be God.

The bishops in their attempt to define the faith had to square this circle – there is only one God yet God has been and is experienced in creation, in Jesus and in the action of the Holy Spirit. Whilst Jesus and the Holy Spirit were recognised as God , God the creator could not be absent on earth but must have still been in heaven as always. They philosophised about the relationship between God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit; indeed in the Tenth Century the Roman church and the Orthodox fell out disastrously about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only or from the Father and Son. They set out their creed using the philosophical concepts available in the Greek world of the time, which would not normally be used in such discourse today.

Recently I have read the latest biography of Oppenheimer. Towards the end a young physicist called Nash come to him with pieces of evidence that do not fit with the neatness of the theory of relativity. Oppenheimer was not pleased – the beautiful logic of the theory would be compromised if the young physicist was correct. The fourth century bishops faced the same situation and we today can perhaps do no better, because our theory that is the creed has to fit the evidence; but then the idea of human beings totally successfully defining God is surely a fanciful one anyway. If I were required to invent a creed from scratch that was clear and snappy, ignoring the evidence, I would not invent the one we have; I argue that the complexity of the creed is as it is because it has to fit all the evidence into it and is therefore complex not neat. But it is a true description of the complex best evidence available to us.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH
Let us declare our faith in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ:

Christ died for our sins
in accordance with the scriptures;
he was buried; he was raised to life on the third day
in accordance with the scriptures;
afterwards he appeared to his followers,
and to all the apostles: this we have received,
and this we believe. Amen. 1 Corinthians 15.3-7

HYMN Holy Holy holy, Lord God Almighty NEH 146- Nicaea

1 Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee;
Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity!

2 Holy, Holy, Holy! all the saints adore thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,
Who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.

3 Holy, Holy, Holy! though the darkness hide thee,
Though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
Only thou art holy, there is none beside thee
Perfect in power, in love, and purity.

4 Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!
All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessèd Trinity!

PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION – Kristin Tridimas

‘For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God’ (Romans 8). May we be filled with the spirit of love and the spirit of peace as we pray together.

We pray for the world today: the wars and conflicts; the political turmoil; the natural disasters; the greed of man. We think especially of Gaza/Israel and of Ukraine but there is also Myanmar and the floods in Brazil and many more. For those at war, fill them with the spirit of peace; for those caught up in floods or other disasters, fill them with the spirit of love and hope.