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Sentence

Christ Jesus came and preached peace to you all; through him we have access in the one Spirit to the Father. Ephesians 2:17-18

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

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Collect  

                                                                                                                                                                 

O blessed Trinity, in whom we know the Maker of all things, seen
and unseen, the Saviour of all, both near and far:
by your Spirit enable us so to worship your divine majesty, that with all the company of heaven we may magnify your glorious name, saying, holy, holy, holy. Glory to you, O Lord most high. Amen

Readings

This week:

• Isaiah 6:1-8
  Psalm 29
  Romans 8:12-17
  John 3:1-17

• Next week:

• 1 Samuel 8:4-11
  Psalm 29
  Romans 8:12-17
  John 3:1-17

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A Thought to Ponder

Trinity Sunday – John 3:1-17
“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
Ordinary Time resumes with the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity. Originating in France in the eighth century and was adopted by the universal Church in 1334. Today’s celebration focuses on the essence of our faith: the revelation of God as Creator, the climax of his creation in Jesus the Redeemer, the fullness of the love of God poured out on us in the Sustainer Spirit.
Today’s Solemnity of the Holy Trinity celebrates the many ways God makes his presence known in our lives, in the manifestations of his love in our lives and our world. This Sunday of the Trinity invites us to look with a new awareness to behold God in our midst: God is the Father and Creator of all life, including our very selves, who fashions every molecule and atom that nurtures and sustains our lives; God is the Son and the Brother, the Redeemer who teaches us the unfathomable love of the God we seek; God is the Spirit of that love that creates and enables us to break out of the isolation that entraps us and become family and community.
Before returning to God, the Risen Jesus commissions his fledgling church to teach and baptise in the name of the Holy One who reveals himself as Father, Son and Spirit. In faith centred in our covenant with the Triune God we find our identity as the people of God.
In the Trinity, we praise God as God has revealed himself to us: the loving providence of the Creator who continually invites us back to him; the selfless servanthood of the Redeemer who “emptied” himself to become like us in order that we might become like him; the joyful love of the Spirit that is the unique unity of the Father and Son.
Christ has revealed to us the depth of the Creator’s love and has called us to share with one another the unique Spirit of love that binds Father and Son and now binds Father and Son to us, God’s holy people and Christ’s Church.
Love is the heart of our Trinitarian faith: the Love who created our world and fashioned it with care; the Love who passionately desired to become one of us and for a little while pitched his tent among us; the Love who could never leave us but remains with us to inhabit every moment of our existence.
The core of all of Jesus’ teaching is the revelation of God as Father to humanity: Our God seeks a relationship with humankind based not on the all-powerful Creator demanding homage from the lowly slaves he created but as a loving Parent who welcomes his own children back home.
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Sermon

You can read the Pew Sheet here

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Sentence

‘A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you,’ says the Lord God; ‘I will put my spirit within you and you shall live.’ Ezekiel 36:26; 37:14

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

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Collect  

                                                                                                                                                                     

Almighty God, you sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your Church:
open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love, joy, and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

Readings

This week:

• Acts 2:1-21
• Psalm 104:26-36
• Romans 8:22-27
• John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

• Next week:

• Isaiah 6:1-8
• Psalm 29
• Romans 8:12-17
• John 3:1-17

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A Thought to Ponder

Day of Pentecost – John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Acts 2: 1-11
Jesus breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit …”John 20:19-23
Pentecost was the Jewish festival of the harvest (also called the Feast of Weeks), celebrated 50 days after Passover, when the first fruits of the corn harvest were offered to the Lord. A feast of pilgrimage (hence the presence in Jerusalem of so many “devout Jews of every nation”), Pentecost also commemorated Moses’ receiving the Law on Mount Sinai. For the new Israel, Pentecost becomes the celebration of the Spirit of God’s compassion, peace and forgiveness – the Spirit that transcends the Law and becomes the point of departure for the young Church’s universal mission (the planting of a new harvest?).
In his Acts of the Apostles (Reading 1), Luke invokes the First Testament images of wind and fire in his account of the new Church’s Pentecost: God frequently revealed his presence in fire (the pillar of fire in the Sinai) and in wind (the wind that sweeps over the earth to make the waters of the Great Flood subside). The Hebrew word for spirit, ruah, and the Greek word pneuma also refer to the movement of air, not only as wind, but also of life-giving breath (as in God’s creation of man in Genesis 2 and the revivification of the dry bones in Ezekiel 37). Through his life-giving “breath,” the Lord begins the era of the new Israel on Pentecost.
Today’s Gospel of the first appearance of the Risen Jesus before his ten disciples (remember Thomas is not present) on Easter night is John’s version of the Pentecost event. In “breathing” the Holy Spirit upon them, Jesus imitates God’s act of creation in Genesis. Just as Adam’s life came from God, so the disciples’ new life of the Spirit comes from Jesus. In the Resurrection, the Spirit replaces their sense of self-centred fear and confusion with the “peace” of understanding, enthusiasm and joy and shatters all barriers among them to make of them a community of hope and forgiveness. By Christ’s sending them forth, the disciples become apostles – “those sent.”
The feast of Pentecost celebrates the unseen, immeasurable presence of God in our lives and in our Church – the ruah that animates us to do the work of the Gospel of the Risen One, the ruah that makes God’s will our will, the ruah of God living in us and transforming us so that we might bring his life and love to our broken world. God “breathes” his Spirit into our souls that we may live in his life and love; God ignites the “fire” of his Spirit within our hearts and minds that we may seek God in all things in order to realise the coming of his reign.
In Jesus’ “breathing” upon them the new life of the Spirit, the community of the Resurrection – the Church – takes flight. That same Spirit continues to “blow” through today’s Church to give life and direction to our mission and ministry to preach the Gospel to every nation, to proclaim the forgiveness and reconciliation in God’s name, to baptise all humanity into the life of Jesus’
Resurrection.
The Spirit of God enables the Eleven – and us – to do things they could not do on their own: to understand the “truth” of God’s great love for his people that is embodied in the Risen Christ, and then to boldly proclaim the Gospel of Christ. The Spirit empowers us with the grace to do the difficult work of Gospel justice, forgiveness, and compassion.
The miracle of Pentecost (Acts 2) is the Spirit’s overcoming the barriers of language and perception to open not only the minds of the Apostles’ hearers but their hearts as well to understanding and embracing the Word of God.
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Sermon

You can read the Pew Sheet here

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Sentence

Jesus prayed, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.’ John 17:11

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

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Collect  

                                                                                                                                                                     

Almighty God, your blessed Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things: mercifully give us faith to trust that, as he promised, he abides with us on earth until the end of time; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

Readings

This week:

• Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
• Psalm 1
• 1 John 5:9-13
• John 17:6-19

• Next week:

• Acts 2:1-21
• Psalm 104:26-36
• Romans 8:22-27
• John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

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A Thought to Ponder

Easter 7 – John 17:6-19

“Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one . . . “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.”
In John’s account of the Last Supper, after his final teachings to his disciples before his passion, Jesus addresses his Father in heaven. Today’s Gospel is from Chapter 17 of John’s Gospel, the “high priestly prayer” of Jesus in which he prays for his disciples, that they may be united in love, persevere despite the world’s “hatred” of them for the Word that they will proclaim, and be “consecrated” in the “truth.”
The Gospel challenges us to recognise the prejudices, biases and ambitions that exist within each one of us and to realise how they affect our perception of the “truth” and the decisions we make based on that perception. We are called to uphold, regardless of the cost, the holiness of “truth” – truth that is rooted in the reality of God’s love and in the sacredness of every person as created in the image and life of God.
Jesus’ call to discipleship demands the courage and integrity to be willing to embrace the “light” of truth – to recognise the hand of God in all things, to embrace the life of God “breathing” in every human interaction, to realise the sacredness of every human being as created in the image and life of God.
The empty tomb of Easter speaks to the simple yet profound truth of God’s great love for us. Christ calls us, his Church, to speak the joy of that truth to a world hungry to hear it.
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Sermon

You can read the Pew Sheet here

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Sentence

Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit.”

John 15:16

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

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Collect  

                                                                                                                                                                     

Loving God, your Son has chosen us and called us to be his friends:
give us grace to keep his commandments, to love one another, and to bear fruit which will abide; through him who is the true vine, the source of all our life, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Readings

This week:

• Acts 10:44-48
• Psalm 98
• 1 John 5:1-12
• John 15:9-17

• Next week:

• Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
• Psalm 1
• 1 John 5:9-13
• John 17:6-19

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A Thought to Ponder

Easter 6 – John 15:9-17
“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. “I do not call you servants any longer … but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father.”
Chapters 13 through 17 of John’s Gospel, Jesus’ Last Supper discourse, might be described as Jesus’ last will and testament to his fledgling church. Continuing last Sunday’s theme of the vine and branches, Jesus speaks of the love of God as the bonding agent of the new Israel. The model of love for the faithful disciple – “to love one another as I have loved you” – is extreme, limitless, and unconditional. The love manifested in the Gospel and the resurrection of Christ creates an entirely new relationship between God and humanity. Again Christ, the obedient Servant Redeemer, is the great “connector” between God and us.
In Christ, we are not “slaves” of a distant divine Creator but “friends” of God who hears the prayers and cries made to him in Jesus’ name. As “friends of God,” we are called to reflect that love to the rest of the world.
This is the commandment that Jesus gave to us who would be his Church: to love one another as Jesus, God made human, has loved us: As Christ gave himself for others, we are to imitate his example of service to others; as Christ brought healing and peace into the lives of those he encountered, we are to bring that same healing and peace into the many lives we touch; as Christ revealed to the world a God who loves humanity as a parent loves his children, we are to love one another as brothers and sisters.
Christ transforms creation’s relationship with its Creator. God is not the distant, aloof, removed architect of the universe; God is not the cruel taskmaster; God is not the unfeeling judge who seeks the destruction of the wicked. God is creative, reconciling, energising love — and Jesus is the perfect expression of that love.
All that God has done in the first creation of Genesis and the re-creation of Easter has been done out of the limitless, unfathomable love of God. Such love invites us not to fear God but to accept his “friendship” with God, not to self-loathing at our unworthiness but to grateful joy at what God has done in us.

© Connections/MediaWorks. All rights reserved

Sermon

You can read the Pew Sheet here