TRINITY SUNDAY 15/06/2025
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INTRODUCTION:
SENTENCE FROM SCRIPTURE:
O Lord, our Governor, how excellent is your name in all the world. (Psalm 8)
HYMN-
GREETING
Grace and peace to you from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
COLLECT FOR PURITY
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.
SUMMARY OF THE LAW
Our Lord Jesus Christ said: The first commandment is this:
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.”
The second is this: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these. Amen. Lord, have mercy.
CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION
God is love and we are God’s children. There is no room for fear in love. We love because God loved us first.
Let us confess our sins in penitence and faith.
SILENCE
God our Father,
we confess to you
and to our fellow members in the Body of Christ
that we have sinned in thought, word and deed,
and in what we have failed to do.
We are truly sorry.
Forgive us our sins,
and deliver us from the power of evil,
for the sake of your Son who died for us, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
ABSOLUTION
God, who is both power and love,
forgive you and free you from your sins,
heal and strengthen you by the Holy Spirit,
and raise you to new life in Christ our Lord. Amen.
GLORIA
sung by Sue St Joseph
COLLECT
Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us grace in the profession of true faith
to recognise the glory of the eternal Trinity:
keep us steadfast in this faith
and bring us to see you in your perfect and eternal unity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, world without end. Amen
PROCLAIMING & RECEIVING GOD’S WORD
FIRST READING
Proverbs 8.1–4, 22–31,
read by David Kerr
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Thus says the wisdom of God: 1 Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? 2 On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; 3 beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out: 4 ‘To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live. 22 The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. 23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. 24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. 25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth – 26 when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil.
27 When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30 then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, 31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.’
SILENCE
SECOND READING
Romans 5.1–5,
read by Amie Byers
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1 Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
SILENCE
GRADUAL HYMN
GOSPEL READING
John 16.12–15,
read by Rev Dr Steven Ballard
Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John, Chapter 16, beginning at verse 12.
Glory to Christ our Saviour
Jesus said to his disciples: 12 ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak
on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.
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14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.’
Give thanks to the Lord for his glorious Gospel
Praise to Christ our Lord.
SERMON
I wonder if you can guess who the biggest selling author of all time is?
It’s actually Agatha Christie, and it’s estimated people have bought around 2 billion of her books in many different languages. Agatha Christie was, in fact, married to an archaeologist and ventured to say that an archaeologist was the happiest profession for a woman to have as a spouse, because the older you are, the more interested he becomes in you!
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Many of Agatha Christie’s stories have been made into well-known films like ‘Death on the Nile’ and ‘Murder on the Orient Express’. No other writer has been more successful in the “whodunnit” genre, and one of the most brilliant of her stories is, I think, ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ where the murderer was not only one person but twelve, who all got their revenge. These stories keep us guessing until the mystery is revealed. It’s a contest between ourselves and the author to see if we can get it right.
Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday, but this has to do with a mystery of a very different kind because we know that in this life, at least, there will never be any full disclosure of precisely who it is that lies behind the mystery. Maths has never been my strongest suit, but I doubt whether even Roger Penrose, who is probably Britian’s most brilliant mathematician, could have a go at explaining how one is three and three is one.
To make any sense of this at all we need to recognize that the first Christians didn’t start with doctrine – the gospel they preached grew out of their experience.
There are many places in the Old Testament which speak of God as Spirit. The first chapter of Genesis, for example, refers to the Spirit of God moving over the primeval waters. Nevertheless, it was what Jesus taught the disciples about the intimacy of the Father’s love that led them to know that God can also be experienced also as Father, the kind of loving father most beautifully illustrated in Jesus’s Parable of the Prodigal Son.
No artist has depicted this more wonderfully than Rembrandt who paints the father with his hands on his son’s shoulders, his face full of compassion. His son, the Prodigal, kneels at his feet, dressed in tattered, dirty rags.
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There was still one piece of the Trinity jigsaw missing, and that was the Person of the Son. I’ve used the jigsaw-analogy, but there was no picture on the front of the box to help the disciples put the pieces into place. They did this only after Jesus had been crucified and God had raised him from the dead. The Spirit given to the apostles at Pentecost led them to realize that this was not merely a great man whom God had appointed as a prophet, but no less than God himself who had been living among them and had shown his love for them and for the world in so many ways.
So it was that Jesus became Emmanuel for them, “God with us” in the fullest sense of the term. ‘The Word was made flesh,’ says St John ‘and came to dwell among us and we saw his glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth. ‘(St John 1, verse 14).
It’s important to be clear, as we celebrate the Holy Trinity, that we are monotheists, not polytheists. We worship not three gods, like the Hindu gods; Brahma, Siva and Vishnu, but one God who has revealed himself in three modes of his being, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is in this faith, of course, that all of us have been baptized.
‘Behold, I tell you a mystery,’ writes St Paul, and then he goes on to reveal how it may be at the resurrection of the dead. As far as the mystery of the Holy Trinity is concerned, however, St Paul, like every other Christian writer who has ever lived, was reticent. He realized that is a mystery which exceeds by far our rational comprehension, and so he never dared to say outrageous things like, “Behold I tell you the mystery of the Holy Trinity.”
To understand the status of Christian doctrine, and particularly the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, it may be helpful to use an analogy here.
This is a map of the London Underground. When I used to watch cricket at Lords during the summer of 1976, I took the train into Marylebone from High Wycombe and then got on the Jubilee line to St John’s Wood. The map tells you precisely how to get from A to B.
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The important point to note, though, is that the map isn’t an exact replica. It can’t begin to show in any detail the twists and turns that the actual lines take. You would need a map as big as the whole of the London Underground to do this with complete accuracy!
I hope you’ve grasped the purpose of this analogy. The map acts like a pointer to ensure that our journey gets us in the right direction, but it is only a partial sketch of the real thing – and the same is true of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It represents our best attempts to understand what this means.
Many Christians today are especially attracted to Celtic spirituality, which is strongly Trinitarian in its ethos, and I know this is something that Simon and Kate Lidwell have drawn on in engaging and creative ways in the Quartz group over the past few years.
Perhaps the Celtic Christian we identify with most strongly on Trinity Sunday is St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. It is a day on which the prayer of St Patrick’s breastplate set to a hymn tune is especially appropriate. It begins, I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity, by invocation of the same, the Three in One and One in Three.’
David Adam was for many years the Vicar of Lindisfarne, in Northumberland, and a very prolific writer who has introduced many readers to Celtic spirituality. He has also adapted many Celtic Christian prayers to make them more available to the general reader.
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In his book, ‘Tides and Seasons – Modern Prayers in the Celtic Tradition’ David Adam offers a paraphrase of St Patrick’s breastplate, which he entitles as “a dressing prayer” I’ve selected this now as a short prayerful devotion on this Trinity Sunday, after which we shall keep a short period of silence before we profess our faith in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the words of the Nicene Creed.
This day I bind around me
The power of the Sacred Three
The hand to hold,
The heart to love,
The eye to see,
The Presence of the Trinity.
I wrap around my mortal frame
the power of the Creator’s name:
The Father’s might, His holy arm,
To shield this day and keep from harm.
I cover myself from above
With the great Redeemer’s love.
The sun’s bright light to shine on me,
To protect this day to eternity.
I pull around me with morning light
The knowledge of the Spirit’s sight.
The Strengthener’s eye to keep guard,
Covering my path when it is hard.
This day I bind around me
The power of the Sacred Three
Amen
THE CREED
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
God from God,
Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one substance with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven;
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father.
With the Father and the Son,
he is worshipped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
PRAYERS
Prayers for Trinity SundayGod, the Father, we thank you for the world you have created. We praise you for its magnificence—for the starry heavens, the grandeur of the mountains, the vastness of the oceans and the varied landscapes of ice, desert and greenery. You have entrusted it to us to maintain and hand on to future generations.
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We confess that we exploit the earth and pay no heed to the needs of those who will follow us. Forgive us and challenge us.
God the Father, all who rule derive their authority from you. We pray for the leaders of the world and ask that they will seek your guidance in the difficult decisions they have to make. Rule in their hearts that they will be motivated by the need to bring about peace and justice throughout your world.
God, the Father, watch over the church and where it is in error correct it; where it is under threat protect and strengthen it, where there is doubt bring certainty.
Lord, hear us
Lord, graciously hear us
God, the Son, you came to share our life on earth. You healed the sick and showed compassion on those who were grieving. You commended those who acted with generosity and challenged those who abused the system for their own ends. Be with those who need your healing touch or your comfort. Help us to see people as you see them—to be compassionate to those in need, generous with what we have and courageous to share your values when the world is falling short.
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God the Spirit, be with us. Thank you that when we do not know how to pray you are there to intercede for us. You came as fire and as a dove. Guide us with your strength and wisdom this week and always.
Lord hear us
Lord, graciously hear us
God, the Son, Isaiah prophesied that you would be the Prince of Peace. We pray for peace for our fellow citizens across the world remembering especially the people of Ukraine, Gaza, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Myanmar and the many other places where daily life involves living with conflict. In the midst of all that is evil may they know each day some sign of hope.
Lord, hear us
Lord, graciously hear us
Amen
Merciful Father accept these prayers for the sake of your Son,
our Saviour Jesus Christ who taught us to pray together
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those
who sin against us.
Do not bring us
to the time of trial
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power
and the glory are yours,
now and forever. Amen.
BLESSING
Christ the Son of God gladden your hearts with the good news of his kingdom; and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.
HYMN –
DISMISSAL
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord
In the name of Christ. Amen
