**Please note this service is based on the format of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada. Unless otherwise indicated, all prayers come from Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW). Hymns and other prayers have been sourced to give appropriate credit.
**NRSV translation used for the readings, unless otherwise stated.
Introduction to the day
“O Lord our Lord, how majestic is your name
in all the earth!” Today we celebrate the holy Trinity. Paul writes that
through Jesus we have peace with God, whose love pours into our hearts through
the Holy Spirit, giving us lasting hope. We celebrate the gracious One-in-Three,
eternal Three-in-One, as we worship in community; as we share water and word,
bread and wine; and as we bring God’s love and hope to our neighbors.
Confession and Forgiveness
Blessed
be the holy Trinity,☩ one God,
whose
steadfast love endures forever.
Amen.
Let us confess our sin in the presence of God and of one another.
Merciful
God,
we
confess that we have not followed your path
but
have chosen our own way.
Instead
of putting others before ourselves,
we
long to take the best seats at the table.
When
met by those in need,
we
have too often passed by on the other side.
Set
us again on the path of life.
Save
us from ourselves
and
free us to love our neighbors.
Amen.
Hear
the good news!
God
does not deal with us according to our sins
but
delights in granting pardon and mercy.
In
the name of ☩ Jesus Christ, your sins are
forgiven.
You
are free to love as God loves.
Amen.
Gathering
Song – Come,
Thou Almighty King (ELW #408)
Greeting
The
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God,
and
the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
And also with you.
Kyrie
Canticle
Of Praise
Prayer
of the Day
Let
us pray.
Almighty
Creator and ever-living God: we worship your glory, eternal Three-in-One, and
we praise your power, majestic One-in-Three. Keep us steadfast in this faith,
defend us in all adversity, and bring us at last into your presence, where you
live in endless joy and love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, now and
forever.
Amen.
Readings
A
reading from the Book of Proverbs. (8:1-4, 22-31)
Does
not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
“To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.
The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth— 26when he had not yet
made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
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,
then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.”
The
word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Psalm
8
O Lord our
Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
you whose glory is chanted above the heavens out of the mouths of
infants and children;
you have set up a fortress against your enemies, to silence the foe
and avenger.
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,
what are mere mortals that you should be mindful of them,
human beings that you should care for them?
Yet you have made them little less than divine;
with glory and honor you crown them.
You have made them rule over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet:
all flocks and cattle,
even the wild beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, the fish of the sea,
and whatever passes along the paths of the sea.
O Lord our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
A
reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans. (5:1-5)
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 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. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 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.
The
word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Gospel
Acclamation
The
Lord be with you.
And
also with you.
The
holy gospel according to John. (16:12-15)
Glory
to you, O Lord.
[Jesus said,] “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 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. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that God has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
The gospel
of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
Sermon
Barbara Brown Taylor is a best-selling author,
teacher, and Episcopal priest. She has served on the faculties of Piedmont
College, Emory University, Mercer University, Columbia Seminary, Oblate School
of Theology, and the Certificate in Theological Studies program at Arrendale
State Prison for Women in Alto, Georgia.
This is from a sermon she wrote.
Students
of Zen Buddhism love to tell stories about the koans their teachers have given
them to aid their spiritual awakening. These small impenetrable questions are
designed to frustrate the logical mind so that deeper understanding may take
place.
“Understanding”
may be the wrong word. When a koan does its work, the result is more an
experience than an understanding. Those on the receiving end say they discover
a level of reality that lies far beyond reason.
One
famous Zen koan is “What was the appearance of your face before your parents
were born?”
Another
is “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
Students
of Christianity have some koans of their own. Many of Jesus’ parables belong in
this category, as do sayings such as “those who find their life will lose it,
and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:39)
One
of our toughest koans however is not by Jesus but about him.
It
is the status in the godhead – father, son, and holy spirit – and while
theologians may look upon the doctrine of the Trinity as the answer to that
question, it remains a logic buster.
Why
does one God need three names?
How
does one God inhabit three forms?
How
can God be both three and one?
Our
bible often compounds the problem by making it sound as if all three operate
independently of one another.
In
John 16 Jesus says, “Now I am going to him who sent me. Nevertheless, it is to
your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the advocate will not
come to you; bit if I go, I will send him to you.”
Finally,
Jesus says, “All that the Father has is mine. For this reason, I said that he
will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
Who
are all these people?
How
can God the father be his own son?
And
if Jesus is God, then whom is he speaking to?
And
where does the Holy Spirit come in? Is that the spirit of God, the spirit of
Jesus, or someone else altogether?
If
they are all one, they why do the come and go at different times, and how can
one of them send another of them?
There
are established answers to all of these questions, but I have never entirely
understood any of them. I do however, accept them as earnest efforts to
describe something that cannot ever be described, which is the nature of God.
We
would probably be better off if we left that whole subject alone, but if you
have ever laid out on your back on a summer’s evening looking up into the night
sky filled with stars then you know how hard that is to do.
You
lie there thinking unthinkable things such as what is out there, exactly, and
where does it all stop, and what is beyond that.
You
lie there wondering who made it and why and where a minute speck of dust like
yourself comes in. After a while you either start making up some answers or
else you go inside where it is safe and turn on the television.
In
one of his books, Robert Farrar Capon says that when human beings try to
describe God, we are like a bunch of oysters trying to describe a ballerina. We
simply do not have the equipment – as in the language or realization – to
understand something so utterly beyond us, but that has never stopped us from
trying!
The
prophet Isaiah tried “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and
the hem of his robe filled the temple. (Isaiah 6:1-2)
John,
the writer of the hope filled book of Revelation tried also in chapter 4:2-3, “At
once I was in the spirit, and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated
on the throne! And the one seated there looks like jasper and cornelian, and
around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald.”
In
recent years William Paul Young tried his hand at it with the book and movie
The Shack.
Believers
throughout the centuries have tried their darndest to describe God. Few have
been satisfied with their descriptions. Their words turn out to be too frail to
do the job.
They
cannot paint a true picture of God, because creatures cannot capture their
creator any better than a bed of oysters can dance Swan Lake.
The
best any of us has ever been able to do is to describe what the experience of
God is like – how it sounds, how it feels, what it reminds us of. Whether the
experiences originate in the pages of scripture or in the events of our own
lives, the best any of us has ever been able to do is simply to confess what it
is like when we are in the presence of God.
The
problem is that it is rarely the same experience twice in a row.
Some
days God comes as a judge, walking through our lives wearing white gloves and
exposing all the messes we have made.
Other
days God comes as a shepherd, fending off our enemies and feeding us by hand.
Some
days God comes as a brooding hen who hides us in the shelter of her wings.
Some
days God comes as a dazzling monarch butterfly or a hummingbird and other days
as a silent servant.
If
we were to name all the ways God comes to us, the list would go on forever: God
the teacher, the challenger, the helper, the stranger, God the lover, the
adversary, the yes the no…
God
is many, which is at least one of the mysteries behind the doctrine of the
Trinity. That faith statement is our confession that God comes to us all sorts
of ways, as different from one another as can be.
The
other mystery is that God is one.
There
cannot be a fierce God and a loving one; a
God of the old testament and the New.
When
we experience God in contradictory ways – that is our problem not God’s. We
cannot solve it by driving wedges into the divine self. All we can do is decide
whether or not to open ourselves up to a God whose freedom and imagination
boggle our minds.
We
preachers tie ourselves up in knots trying to explain what all this means –
sometimes we need the help of others who say it better than we ever could!
Trinity
– three leaf clover
H20
– three states: water, ice, and steam
One
Trinity Sunday I found a lumpy envelope on the hood of my car. Inside was a
three musketeers candy bar and a note that read “All for one and one for three!
Happy Trinity!”
All
I know for sure is that if human beings were created in the image of God, then
two things a) God is wonderfully diverse and b) we are more alike than we think.
Meanwhile
I do not know why we hold ourselves responsible for explaining things that
cannot be explained. Perhaps the most faithful sermon on the Trinity is one
that sniffs around the edges of the mystery, hunting for something closer to an
experience than an understanding.
What,
for instance, is the sound of three hands clapping?
Dear
God, you are the Eternal Mystery that enables, enfolds, and enlivens all things.
We can only see who You are in what is and we ask for such perfect seeing.
Amen.
Hymn
of the Day
– Holy God, We Praise Your Name (ELW #414)
Nicene
Creed
Let
us confess the faith of our baptism as we say together the Nicene 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,
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 and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped 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.
Prayers
of Intercession
United in Christ and guided by the Spirit, we pray for the church, the creation, and all in need.
Silence
One God, giver of life, you established peace through your
Son and gave your church the hope of sharing in your glory. Enliven us by your
Spirit to speak and act in love for the sake of the world.
God of grace,
hear our prayer.
Creator of all, you rejoice in creation and have given
humankind responsibility for the works of your hands. Instill in everyone your
Spirit of care for the earth, especially in areas threatened by ecological
devastation.
God of grace,
hear our prayer.
Loving Redeemer, you delight in the human race. Move the
hearts of world leaders to seek wisdom, speak truth, and care for all
endangered by poverty, prejudice, or violence. Further the work of
international collaboration and peacemaking.
God of grace,
hear our prayer.
Abiding Comforter, you call out to all who live. Restore
severed relationships and protect children who lack trustworthy caregivers.
Grant hope to those who are experiencing fear, pain, or grief.
God of grace,
hear our prayer.
Holy Three, you are community and you create community.
Build up ministries that support those who are isolated or lonely. Give
endurance as we nurture vital relationships in our congregation and beyond.
God of grace,
hear our prayer.
Holy God, we remember your saints for their strong faith and
witness, even unto death. Console grieving families. Stir up in us the resolve
to end the sin of white supremacy and pursue the courageous path of justice
God of grace,
hear our prayer.
God of every time and place, in Jesus’ name and filled with
your Holy Spirit, we entrust these spoken prayers and those in our hearts into
your holy keeping.
Amen.
Peace
The
peace of Christ be with you always.
And also with you.
Offering
Hymn – Come,
Join the Dance of Trinity (ELW #412)
Offering
Prayer
Let
us pray.
God
of abundance, you have set before us a plentiful harvest. As we feast on your
goodness, strengthen us to labor in your field, and equip us to bear fruit for
the good of all, in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
Dialogue
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.
Preface
It
is indeed right, our duty and our joy,
that
we should at all times and in all places
give
thanks and praise to you, almighty and merciful God,
through
our Savior Jesus Christ;
who
on this day overcame death and the grave,
and
by his glorious resurrection opened to us the way of everlasting life.
And
so, with all the choirs of angels,
with
the church on earth and the hosts of heaven,
we praise your name and join their unending hymn:
Holy, Holy, Holy
Thanksgiving at
the Table
Holy
God,
our Maker, Redeemer, and Healer,
in the harmonious world of your creation,
the plants and animals,
the seas and stars
were whole and well in your praise.
When
sin had scarred the world,
you sent your Son to heal our ills
and to form us again into one.
In
the night in which he was betrayed,
our Lord Jesus took bread, and gave thanks;
broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying:
Take and eat; this is my body, given for you.
Do
this for the remembrance of me.
Again,
after supper, he took the cup, gave thanks,
and gave it for all to drink, saying:
This cup is the new covenant in my blood,
shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin.
Do
this for the remembrance of me.
Remembering,
therefore,
his acts of healing,
his body given up,
and his victory over death,
we await that day when all the peoples of the earth
will come to the river to enjoy the tree of life.
Send
your Spirit upon us and this meal:
as grains scattered on the hillside become one bread,
so let your Church be gathered from the ends of the earth,
that all may be fed with the Bread of life, your Son.
Through
him all glory and honor is yours,
Almighty Father, with the Holy Spirit,
in your holy Church,
both now and forever.
Amen
Lord’s Prayer
Gathered into one by the Holy Spirit, let us pray as Jesus taught us.
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 forever. Amen.
Invitation to Communion
This
is the table of Christ. It is made ready for those who love him, and for those
who want to love him more. Come, whether you have much faith or little, have
tried to follow, or are afraid that you have failed. Come. Because it is
Christ's will that those who want to meet him, might meet him here. These are
the gifts of God for the people of God.
Thanks be to God.
Sharing of the Eucharist
Table
Blessing
The body and blood of our Lord
Jesus Christ strengthen you
and keep you in his grace.
Amen.
Prayer
After Communion
As
we have feasted around the table, let us pray.
Life-giving
God, through this meal you have bandaged our wounds and fed us with your mercy.
Now send us forth to live for others, both friend and stranger, that all may
come to know your love. This we pray in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
Blessing
The
God of peace,
Father,
☩ Son, and Holy Spirit,
bless
you, comfort you,
and
show you the path of life
this
day and always.
Amen.
Sending
Song – This
Little Light of Mine (ELW #677)
Dismissal
Go
in peace to love and serve your neighbor.
Thanks be to God.
