Weekly for 4 June 2023 (Trinity Sunday)

Dear People of God

Grace and Peace to you all

Great thanks to Wilma and all the willing helpers who organised and ran the Parish Luncheon on Wednesday. They set up, cooked, served, cleared away, washed up and cleaned the place afterwards plus raised $1000 through their efforts. Around 50 people from the local churches plus others from as far away as Kurri Kurri and Telarah-Rutherford parishes not only had a good meal but learned about Assistance Dogs from the lead speaker, Fudge, who trains the dogs. Most of you will probably realise the Jenny Morrison-Cleary has an Assistance Dog, Honeybun, so there is a very local impact of their work.

Have you seen the ad for the Beresfield Hall on the Facebook page? It was hired out for a wedding reception a short while ago and this is how it looked. Very smart indeed!

A reminder that Bishop Peter will be visiting the parish on 18 June: he will be the celebrant and preacher at both services on that day.

Praying when you don’t know what to say: at the Silent Retreat, Bishop Jeremy James spoke about the Jesus Prayer, which is widely used in the Orthodox tradition. Many of you will be familiar with it and use it yourselves. Take it slowly, perhaps a breath to a phrase, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner” Use your fingers as a “rosary-style counter”, unconsciously, or perhaps even a chain of beads if you have a rosary, and think about a “decade”: say it contemplatively ten times. It’s not mechanical but it does help to focus you for deeper prayer.

The other suggestion is the prayer which is simply “Tell me what you want me to hear; show me what you want me to see; teach me what you want me to say; lead me where you want me to go.” It’s a prayer of total surrender to God, even when we don’t much feel like surrendering!

Over the next few months I want to focus some teaching on the Sacraments of the Church. We are familiar with the two Dominical Sacraments, Baptism and the Eucharist (“dominical” because they are the two directly instituted by the Lord) but we are not so familiar with considering the sacramental nature of the five we call the “Lesser Sacraments” which are not all necessary for a full Christian life, ie Holy Orders, Confirmation, Holy Matrimony, Holy Unction, and Reconciliation (Confession and Absolution). We have rightly recommenced Holy Unction for healing, grace and renewal within our weekly Eucharist, and more to come on the topic of specific Healing Eucharists later.

In the meantime, see you in Church.

The Lord be with you

Fr George

gmainprize@bigpond.com 0410 586 119

PROPERS for TRINITY SUNDAY

Sentence

Proclaim the Name: ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” (Exodus 34.6)

Collect

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity: keep us steadfast in this faith, and evermore defend us from all adversities, for you live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

Readings

Exodus 34:1-8 Moses makes the new stone tablets

Song of the Three Young Men vv29-34

2 Corinthians 13;11-13 Benediction

Matthew 28:16-20 Commissioning of the Disciples

SERMON (Fr George)

In the Name of God. Amen

Trinity Sunday is traditionally a time of throwing the most junior of the clergy into the deep end and watching them tangle themselves up completely in endeavouring to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. I am not so cruel and am well able to tie myself in knots!

The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity is one of those points at which, in spite of our common allegiance to the God who was, and is, and is to come, between Christian, Jewish and Moslem believers, we are seriously separated. Both of those faiths look at us and, perplexedly, call us polytheists. It is interesting to sit down with them and discuss how and why we see the Godhead so differently. Nonetheless, if you press many Christians on the point they too will tend towards effective polytheism when they stumble over the notion of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It caused ructions the in the Church in the first few centuries and was finally settled at the Council of Nicea, but rumbled away and finally divided the Eastern and Western branches of the Church, Orthodox and Catholic, over whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (single procession, Orthodox) or from the Father AND the Son (double procession, Catholic). And, as I have said before, if you want to get a case of mental indigestion, try reading the Athanasian Creed! It’s in your Prayer Books (page 836 in the complete version). It includes the memorable line ‘the Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible’ to which someone will invariably add ‘and the sermon incomprehensible’!

It is helpful to think of God as a verb. You will remember your primary school grammar (do they still teach it, I wonder?) when we learned that a verb is a “doing word”. The verb “to be” is the root verb: “I am, you are, he/she is” etc. And what is the name God told Moses when he asked the god who appeared to him in the burning bush? YAHWEH, “I AM”! The name can also be described as the sound of breathing: breathe in (yah), breathe out (weh), so a second meaning of the Divine Name implies the very essence of life. And don’t we sometimes speak of the Holy Spirit as “breathing life into Creation”?

Thinking of God in terms of activity starts to give us a new perspective: Father Creator, Son Reconciler, Spirit Sanctifier/Inspirer, or simply “Creating, Reconciling, Sanctifying”, Now think of God in terms of, say, a lighthouse whose beam illuminates even in a wild storm, guiding ships to safety. Around the lighthouse structure we can place the description “Creating, Redeeming, Sanctifying”.

Jesus, whom we believe to be the manifestation of God, the Word made Flesh, speaks of God in relational terms, “Abba, Father”. His humanity he shares with the created order, i.e us, and his divinity is his essential being in God the Lighthouse. His humanity he shares fully with us: “that which he did not assume he did not redeem/reconcile with God” (St Gregory the Theologian).

We believe that God is constant, unchanging. God is always creating, always reconciling, always inspiring. Scientists tell us that that this Creation will eventually come to an end (Third Law of Thermodynamics, thanks for asking) but faith believes that just as this creation began with “The Big Bang”, creation out of nothing, so God, eternally creating, starts the new creation even when this one has wound down.

We would find it hard to relate to a verb: the labels Father, Son and Spirit are relational. They describe how our being fits in with God. Jews and Moslems also describe God in relational terms, either explicit or implicit: That Day of Atonement for the Hebrews describes their reconciliation with God, Passover celebrates their relationship with God through deliverance from Egypt and God leading them to safety. Moslems speak of God as “Allah the Merciful” and so forth, describing attributes of God.

We perceive God from different perspectives. To continue our image of God as the Lighthouse, as we journey through our lives, being guided if you like on our journey to God, we perceive God as Creating, Reconciling, Sanctifying, but it is us who have moved, and experienced the unchanging God from different perspectives.

And to that same God, the eternal Trinity, ever creating, ever redeeming, ever sanctifying, be glory now and for ever. Amen

INTERCESSIONS (Dawn Holland)