St Clement Church Community Trinity Sunday Service 26

St Clement Church Community Trinity Sunday 2026

Good morning to you as we celebrate our Trinity Sunday Service.

We are holding a Eucharist in our church building at 10.15, this Service of the Word is for those who aren’t able to be with us in person, but will be worshipping with us in spirit.

Much love and prayers and may Christ’s love sustain you always.

Rev Di and family xx

Let us pray;

O Lord, open our eyes to see what is beautiful, open our minds to know what is true, and our hearts to seek what is good, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Hymn: ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty’

Our prayers of Penitence

Let us examine our lives in the light of St Paul’s teaching about the nature of love: ‘Love is patient, love is kind, is not envious, or boastful, or arrogant or rude. Does not insist on its own way, is not irritable, or resentful and does not rejoice in wrongdoing…..’

We confess to God that our attitudes and behaviour often fall short of these standards: Most merciful God, we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart, nor have we loved our neighbours as ourselves.

We ask that in you 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.

Let us pray our Collect for Trinity Sunday

Holy God, faithful and unchanging: enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth, and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love, that we may truly worship you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings:

Isaiah 40. 12-17, 27-end. 2 Corinthians 13. 11-end

Hymn: ‘Immortal, Invisible, God only Wise’

Gospel: Matthew 28. 16-end

(Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew)

Response: ‘Glory to you O Lord.’)

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

(This is the Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, O Christ.)

Reflection

It must be said that there’s a tradition among us clergy to always be unavailable to preach on Trinity Sunday, as the subject is just too complicated and confusing to talk about.

I was never quite quick enough to book the day off, but thankfully as most of you know, somehow, I’d always manage to ‘persuade’ Liz to preach, but I couldn’t ask her to do both Pentecost and Trinity, could I…….  Trinity Sunday - the only Sunday on the ecclesiastical calendar dedicated to a doctrine. All our other special days hark back to events - Christmas, Easter, Pentecost - but not this one.

Trinity Sunday is the day we Christians celebrate the reality of one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Yes, the doctrine of the Trinity is confusing. Even the finest theologians find themselves at a loss to explain it well, so what hope do I have, I ask!

Some scholars use the analogy of the masks worn by actors in the old Greek plays. One actor wearing three different masks can play three parts, or personas, but is still just one actor.

Other theologians have used the idea of roles and relationships. For instance, I can be at the same time; a priest, a wife, a mother - one person, but with three roles (three of many, I might add!)

The doctrine of the Trinity is the very limited way in which we describe the God we have come to know both in the pages of scripture, and the life of our faith.

Our experience of God is marvellous and mysterious.  We have and know the God of Isaiah - the God who is high and lifted up in his temple, who speaks and brings forth all of creation, who is judge, lord, ruler, King - the God who is in light inaccessible hid from our eyes. This God is strange to us and beyond us, even though we see this God's signs all around us in creation.

And then we have the God who is in Christ, and who is Christ - the God who is lowly, and humble, who reaches out.  The God who serves others, who walks the earth with us, cries and laughs with us; the God who calls God; Abba, Father, who is tempted with us, hungers and thirsts with us, who embraces and encourages us.  The God who surrenders himself to death for us, having only the promise and the hope of being raised again.

And we have and know God the Spirit - God the bringer of visions and dreams, God the source of strength and of hope, God the supplier of healing words and of comforting prayer.  The wind, the breath, the air we breathe, God the transformer, the one who gives new birth, new life, the presence within us and all around us.  The God calling to us - and calling for us.

Confusing isn’t it, trying to understand the Trinity. I’ve told you this story before, but I thinks it’s a good example of the Trinity, so I shall tell it again….. Whilst I was undergoing ordination training, we studied the book; The Shack.’  written by William P. Young.

At the time it raised a lot of questions among churches worldwide and was considered very controversial. Here’s the storyline in brief:

Mack, the main character of the story, receives an invitation from ‘Papa’ to visit the shack – a hut in the forest.  From his scanty religious background, Mack knows that Papa is God himself.

Four years prior to this invitation, Mack had lost his young daughter Missy, and since then he’d been overcome by, what he called, “The Great Sadness.”   So, he responds to the invitation.

What he encounters at the shack are the manifestations of the three persons of the Trinity: God the Father takes the form of an African American woman, who calls herself Elousia, or just ‘Papa’;

The Son is a Middle Eastern carpenter; and the Holy Spirit physically manifests as an Asian woman named Sarayu.

In that encounter with the Trinity, Mack is helped to deal with the loss of his daughter, and in the process, learns a few hard lessons about God, suffering, and life itself, and the Trinity eventually restores life and wisdom to Mack.  It’s worth reading.

To me, it’s a modern parable, even though every description that talks about God has its limitations, and even though The Shack has its problem areas, what I liked about it most is that it invites us to experience God in a different light, and to be open to the variety of ways we experience God.

The key point is: our belief in God as the Trinity isn’t just a line in the Bible, nor is it a mere answer to a question in the catechism.

Our belief in God is an invitation to experience.

And the Trinity is the way we experience God in the mystery in His different dimensions, which we might lose the significance of, if we just fossilise that mystery into a religious doctrine.

The Trinity is a model that captures the three ways God has been experienced in history, or the three ways He has revealed Himself.

It also reminds us of the three ways in which we – as individuals and as community – might experience Him today.

Our Christian life then, is to experience God as the Father, a loving parent.  God the Son, a dear Brother, and God the Holy Spirit, a caring presence, – to enable us to encounter God in his complete nature.

Most of us like to think that things are either black or white - and we’ll often go to incredible lengths to fit things around us into one or the other category -but God is greater than any category - any system of thought or classification, and so is our life in him.

May it be so, both now and for ever more.  Amen.

Hymn: ‘Lord, Enthroned in Heavenly Splendour’

Affirmation of our faith

Let us declare our faith in God: We believe and trust in God the Father, source of all being and life, the one for whom we exist. We believe and trust in God the Son, who took our human nature, died for us and rose again. We believe and trust in God the Holy Spirit, who gives life to the people of God and makes Christ known in the world. This is the faith of the Church. This is our faith. We believe and trust in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our Intercessions are written by Liz Davies

To God the Father who first loved us and made us in his own image; to God the Son who loved us and washed away our sins in his own blood; to God the Holy Spirit who spreads the Love of God abroad in our hearts, we raise our prayers this morning.

Gracious God, fountain of all wisdom, we pray for your Church throughout the world, for those that are thriving and those that have lost a sense of direction. We give thanks for our church and its people and gladly acknowledge all the gifts you have given us through its life. We ask you to open wide our hearts that we may welcome the stranger and share our faith with others.

Open our minds that we may receive new truth and understand your will. Open wide our doors that as we have come into worship so we may go out with you to the service of the world. Open wide our lives that through discipline and prayer we may experience your power in our daily living.

We pray for all Christian people … for David and James our Bishops and for all who teach and guard the faith. May the word of Christ dwell richly in our hearts and knit us together in the bond of your love.