An Ordo for Trinity Sunday (11 June 2017)

Trinity Sunday

11 June 2017

The Gathering of the Community

Gathering Music

Announcements

Opening Hymn

‘I Bind unto Myself Today’  Common Praise 436 vv. 1, 2, 3

Introductory Responses

Blessed be the holy and undivided Trinity:

the Author of creation,

the Word of redemption,

and the Spirit of wisdom,

one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

The Presider chants the biddings and the Community responds. [i]

In peace, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, hear and have mercy.

Lord, hear and have mercy.

For the peace from above, and for our salvation, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, hear and have mercy.

Lord, hear and have mercy.

For the peace of the whole world, for the well-being of the church of God,

and for the unity of all, let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, hear and have mercy.

Lord, hear and have mercy.

For this holy house, and for all who offer here their worship and praise,

let us pray to the Lord.

Lord, hear and have mercy.

Lord, hear and have mercy.

Help, save, comfort and defend us, gracious Lord.

Lord, hear and have mercy.

Lord, hear and have mercy.

The Collect of the Day

Let us pray.

O God,

your name is veiled in mystery,

yet you have made us and call us by name;

draw us more deeply into your divine life,

so that we may show forth in our lives

your justice, kindness and humility;

for you alone are holy, one God,

now and for ever.  Amen. [ii]

The Proclamation of the Word

The First Reading

A reading from Genesis (1.1-2.4a).

            ^1.1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ² the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  ³ Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.  ⁴ And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.  ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.  And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

            ⁶ And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.”  ⁷ So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome.  And it was so.  ⁸ God called the dome Sky.  And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

            ⁹ And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.”  And it was so.  ¹⁰ God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas.  And God saw that it was good.  ¹¹ Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.”  And it was so.  ¹² The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it.  And God saw that it was good.  ¹³ And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

            ¹⁴ And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.”  And it was so.  ¹⁶ God made the two great lights — the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night — and the stars.  ¹⁷ God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, ¹⁸ to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness.  And God saw that it was good.  ¹⁹ And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

            ²⁰ And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.”  ²¹ So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind.  And God saw that it was good.  ²² God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”  ²³ And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

            ²⁴ And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.”  And it was so.  ²⁵ God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind.  And God saw that it was good.

            ²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

            ²⁷ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

            ²⁸ God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”  ²⁹ God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.  ³⁰ And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.”  And it was so.  ³¹ God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.  And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

            ^2.1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude.  ² And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.  ³ So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.

            ⁴ These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.

Thanks be to God.

The Psalm

Psalm 8 from Songs for the Holy One.

Refrain (sung twice):  May we ever honour the Holy One, our Creator.

O Holy One, our Sovereign,

            how wonderful is your name throughout the world!

            Your majesty is spread over the heavens.

Even the mouths of babes and sucklings

            have proclaimed your power to overcome your enemies

            and to put an end to foe and avenger.

Refrain:  May we ever honour the Holy One, our Creator.

When I consider your heavens made by your fingers,

            the moon and stars you set in place,

what are we that you should remember us,

            or we mortals that you notice us?

But you make us little less than God,

            crown us with glory and honour.

Refrain:  May we ever honour the Holy One, our Creator.

You give us dominion over your handiwork,

            put all things under our feet:

sheep and cattle, all of them,

            even the wild beasts, birds of the air, fish of the sea,

            all that travel the paths of the sea.

Refrain:  May we ever honour the Holy One, our Creator.

O Holy One, our Sovereign,

            how wonderful is your name throughout the world!

Refrain:  May we ever honour the Holy One, our Creator.

The Second Reading

A reading from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians (13.11-13).

            ^13.11 Finally, brothers and sisters, farewell.  Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.  ¹² Greet one another with a holy kiss.  All the saints greet you.

            ¹³ The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.

Thanks be to God.

Hymn before the Gospel

‘I Bind unto Myself Today’  Common Praise 436 v. 5 (line 1)

The Gospel

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew (28.16-20).

Glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

            ^28.16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  ¹⁷ When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.  ¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The Gospel of Christ.

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Hymn after the Gospel

‘I Bind unto Myself Today’  Common Praise 436 v. 5 (line 2)

The Homily

The Nicene Creed

Let us confess our faith, as we say,

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,

eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

of one being with the Father;

through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven,

was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary

and became truly human.

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,

who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified,

who 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.

The Prayers of the Community

Intercessions, Petitions and Thanksgivings

The Exchange of the Peace

May the peace of the risen Christ be always with you.

And also with you.

The Holy Communion

Offertory Hymn

‘Sing Praise to God’  Common Praise #424

Prayer over the Gifts

Let us pray.

Blessed are you, O God,

maker of all things.

Through your goodness

you have blessed with these gifts:

our selves, our time and our possessions.

Use us, and what we have gathered,

in feeding the world with your love,

through the one who gave himself for us,

Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord.  Amen. [iii]

The Thanksgiving at the Table

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

We give you thanks and praise, almighty God, for the gift of a world full of wonder, and for our life which comes from you.  By your power you sustain the universe.

Glory to you for ever and ever.

You created us to love you with all our heart, and to love each other as ourselves, but we rebel against you by the evil that we do.

In Jesus, your Servant, you bring healing to our world and gather us into one great family.  Therefore, with all who serve you on earth and in heaven, we praise your wonderful name, as we sing,

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory.  Hosanna in the highest.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.  Hosanna in the highest. [iv]

We give you thanks and praise, loving Creator, because in sending Jesus, your Beloved, to us you showed us how much you love us.  He cares for the poor and the hungry.  He suffers with the sick and the rejected.

Betrayed and forsaken, he did not strike back but overcame hatred with love.  On the cross he defeated the power of sin and death.  By raising him from the dead you show us the power of your love to bring new life to all your people.

Glory to you for ever and ever.

On the night before he gave up his life for us, Jesus, at supper with his friends, took bread, gave thanks to you, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “Take this, all of you, and eat it:  this is my body which is given for you.”

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, said the blessing, gave it to his friends, and said, “Drink this, all of you:  this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which is shed for you and for all people.  Do this in memory of me.”

Glory to you for ever and ever.

Gracious God, with this bread and wine we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus, and we offer ourselves to you in him.

Send your Holy Spirit on us and on these gifts, so that we may know the presence of Jesus in the breaking of bread, and share in the life of the family of your children.

Glory to you for ever and ever.

Giver of life, you call us to be your servants; fill us with the courage and love of Jesus, so that all the world may gather in joy at the table of your kingdom.

We sing your praise, God our Creator, through Jesus, our Lord, in the power of the Holy Spirit, now and for ever.

Glory to you for ever and ever.  Amen. [v]

The Lord’s Prayer

As our Saviour taught us, let us pray,

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.

Save us from the time of trial,

and deliver us from evil.

For the kingdom, the power,

and the glory are yours,

now and for ever.  Amen.

The Breaking of the Bread

We break this bread

to share in the body of Christ.

We, being many, are one body,

for we all share in the one bread.

These are the gifts of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Communion

The Hymn after Communion

‘Today I Awake’  Common Praise #9

The Sending Forth of the Community

Prayer after Communion

Let us pray.

God of abundance,

with this bread of life and cup of salvation

you have united us with Christ,

making us one with all your people.

Now send us forth in the power of your Spirit,

so that we may proclaim your redeeming love to the world

and continue forever in the risen life of Jesus Christ, our Lord.  Amen. [vi]

Glory to God,

whose power, working in us,

can do infinitely more

than we can ask or imagine.

Glory to God from generation to generation,

in the Church and in Christ Jesus,

for ever and ever.  Amen.

Closing Hymn

‘I Bind unto Myself Today’  Common Praise 436 vv. 4, 6

Dismissal

The Deacon sends the Community forth with an appropriate Dismissal.

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[i] Litany Tone 5 in The Book of Alternative Services 1985.

[ii] Liturgy Task Force 2006, 27.

[iii] Evangelical Lutheran Worship 2006, 107 alt.

[iv] Common Praise 1995, #719.

[v] The Book of Alternative Services 1985, 204-206 alt.

[vi] Evangelical Lutheran Worship 2006, 114 alt.

What a Difference an 'S' Makes: Reflections on John 20.19-23 (Pentecost A, 4 June 2017)

What a Difference an ‘S’ Makes

Reflections on John 20.19-23

Pentecost A

4 June 2017

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Click here to listen to the Sermon as it was preached at the 10.00 Eucharist on Sunday, 4 June 2017.

John 20.19-23

                  ^20.19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the [Jewish authorities], Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”  ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.  Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.  ²¹ Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  ²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

            In 1928, the year my father was born, the American Episcopal Church approved a new Prayer Book.  In many ways it continued the tradition of its two predecessors, but there were some changes.  One of the more notable was a change in the Lord’s Prayer from ‘as we forgive them that trespass against us’ to ‘as we forgive those who trespass against us’.  I am sure that some of the changes tripped up my grandmother, but it was the book my father grew up using, so it was familiar to him.

            In the late summer of 1967, the year that I turned fifteen, our parish priest, Father Palmer, made an announcement before the Sunday service.  He held up a little booklet entitled ‘The Liturgy of the Lord’s Supper’.  It marked the moment when liturgical change began for my generation.  Canada would wait a few more years.  After all, in 1967, the ‘new’ Prayer Book was only five years old, but there were voices already suggesting that changes would need to take place.

            I remember having to get familiar with a change in the Agnus Dei, an ancient prayer used in the communion liturgy.  As a choir member I was accustomed to singing ‘O Lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us.’  Now we had a new text to learn:  ‘O Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world.  Have mercy upon us.’  As I look back, it wasn’t the change from Tudor English to more contemporary American English that threw me; it was the change from ‘sin’ to ‘sins’.  Even at fifteen I knew that a theological change had occurred and not for the better.

            There is a significant difference between saying that Jesus takes away the sin of the world and saying that Jesus takes away the sins of the world.  Over the centuries untold amounts of ink and paper have been consumed as theologians and church authorities have argued about what it means to forgive sins and how it is done and by whom it is done.  Some Christians have even been persecuted by other Christians over such differences.

            Now let me be clear.  You and I, as members of the body of Christ, have been called to be ministers of reconciliation.  You and I, as members of the body of Christ, have also been called to hold people to account for acts of injustice, for lack of compassion and for attitudes of arrogance towards God’s creation and God’s creatures.  But we need to be clear what sin is, the root cause of humanity’s ills and evils, rather than becoming entangled in the thorny world of sins, the symptoms of the disease that afflicts all human beings, whether young or old, male or female, rich or poor, believer or non-believer, perpetrator or victim.

            Over the Easter season our Sunday gospels have come from the Gospel according to John.  For John the ‘sin of the world’ is not ‘a moral category of behavior but a theological category about one’s response to the revelation of God in Jesus’. [1]  You have heard me quote my professor of theology, the late Jim Griffiss, who began his opening lecture on theology by saying, ‘When you meet Jesus, you meet God.  Everything else is commentary.’ 

            For John and for my professor the sin of the world is the refusal to recognize what God has shown us again and again, first in the law and the prophets, then in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  God expects us to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with God (Micah 6.8).  This is the message embodied in the ‘Summary of the Law’ that many of us grew up hearing almost every Sunday:  ‘. . . hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.  This is the first and the great commandment.  And the second is like unto it:  thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets’. [2]

            What we call sins are symptoms of a more deeply embedded shadow in the human soul.  We find it so hard to believe that all that exists was created by Love.  We find it so hard to believe that we are loved so much that the One who created the universe comes among us to restore us to show us how to live in harmony.  We find it so hard to believe that we are loved so much that God breathes love into every human being in the hopes that this loves fans into a steady flame a desire to love others as we have been loved.

            And this Love that holds the universe so dear and that gives itself so freely goes one step further.  God enlists those who choose to follow the way of Jesus into the same work that Jesus began:  ‘²¹ Jesus said to [the apostles] again, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  ²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”’

            Just as God sent Jesus, the Word, into the world, so does God give us the Holy Spirit to continue that work begun in Jesus.  We are sent into the world not as morality police or bedroom spies to make people afraid.  We are sent into the world to take the blinders from the eyes of those who cannot see, who do not see, who will not see, the works of God in their own lives, in the lives of their friends and families, in their neighbourhoods and communities.  The ancient sin continues to hold sway over many we know and love; we ‘forgive’ their sin when we help them, by our words and our examples, see the God who has loved them, loves them and will always love them.

            When we are able to see God at work and know that we are called to be co-workers with God in the great work of creation, redemption and renewal, then we become conscious of the behaviours, the thoughts, the habits that draw us away from becoming who we are truly called to be and from doing what we are called to do.  There is an ancient word for this --- metanoia  --- ‘seeing the world as God sees it’, ‘looking at the world with new eyes’ --- eyes shaped by love not fear, hope not despair, generosity not miserliness.

            Jesus is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.  How?  By showing us how to live authentic lives, open to God’s possibilities working in us and through us.  By sharing with us the divine breath that turns disciples into friends and frightened people into apostles, ambassadors through whom God appeals to the whole world.  What a difference getting rid of an ‘s’ can make!

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[1] The New Interpreter’s Study Bible 2003.

[2] The Book of Alternative Services 1985, 231.