Responsive Prayer

All: Holy, Holy, Holy!

The Whole Earth Is full of His Glory.

Today we gather in gratitude and in awe of the beauty of God’s Creation and for the priviledge to be living in it and called to care for it.

All: Holy, Holy, Holy!

The Whole Earth Is full of His Glory.

The power and love of God for his Creation burst forth in the flashes of lightening, the dance of the wind, and the deeply rooted trees of the forest.

All: Holy, Holy, Holy!

The Whole Earth Is full of His Glory.

God of Creation, Mystery of Life, give us your Spirit to work together to restore your creation where it is broken, and to hand on a safe environment and climate to our children and theirs.

All: Holy, Holy, Holy!

The Whole Earth Is full of His Glory.

Let our continued care for the beauty and mystery of your creation be known and shown as your children.

All: Holy, Holy, Holy!

The Whole Earth Is full of His Glory.

Amen

 

 

                                           * The Creed

We are not alone; we live in God's world.

We believe in God: who has created and is creating, who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by the Spirit.

We trust in God. We are called to be the Church: to celebrate God's presence, to live with respect in Creation, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, and to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope. In life, in death, and life beyond death, God is with us.

We are not alone. Thanks, be to God. Amen.

 

Gospel John 3.16-17 & Sermon

 ” Holy, Holy, Holy.”

Announcements & Greeting

 

16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 

Message:

16-18 “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God did not go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted.

 

 

Sermon: Holy Holy Holy

Holy, Holy, Holy!

The Whole Earth Is full of His Glory.

It is Trinity Sunday. The day where we celebrate the concept of the Triune God.

It is reflected in the 3 times we exclaimed Holy Holy Holy.

It was reflected in the 3 X 3 times the bell rung.

The prophet Isaiah said it:

Holy, holy, holy, is the lord, the whole earth is full of his glory.

The number 3 is a significant number in the bible. Jesus rose on the third day. There were 3 patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The wisemen brought 3 gifts to the manger: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

 

God is indeed a mysterious God, who comes in holiness to us as the creator of the majestic creation from every little cell and micro-organism to the elegant blue whales of the oceans and the tall Redwood trees of the forests.

God is indeed a compassionate God, who came in holiness and humanity to us as Jesus Christ born as a child by a woman, raised by loving parents and formed by faith, baptized in the flowing waters of Jordan to step into his ministry of compassion, commitment, change and courage. A life that may had ended on the cross but mysteriously gave new life and hope in life and beyond death.

God is indeed an ever-present God, who blows like the wind among us, between us, above us, around us and in us. To stir our faith and our hope to love God and our neighbor. To do justice, to love kindness and always walk humbly with God with his Spirit pushing us and encouraging us.

 

Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Creator, Comforter and Courage.

Holy Holy Holy.

Trinity Sunday reminds us that the Concept of God is indeed mysterious.

God is three. God is one.

God is undivided. God appears everywhere.

God is now. God has always been.

Trinity Sunday is the day where we honor that mystery.

The wise Pharisee named Nicodemus met Jesus in the night and had a conversation with him about all the mysteries of faith. Nicodemus asks: “How can these things be?”

Trinity Sunday is a reminder to all of us so occupied with explanations, creeds, manuals, certainty and knowledge, that we let the mysterious God embrace us with his mysterious holy ness.

Holy, Holy, Holy!

The Whole Earth Is full of His Glory.

 How would be explain and make any sense of the abundance and mystery of creation.

How would we explain the divine threefold of God to fully understand? Our creeds are our ways of trying to explain and categorize – but can God’s mystery be fully explained and categorized?

Trinity Sunday should give us a sense of awe and mystery and acceptance of uncertainty and even absurdity.

Doesn’t it strike you as absurd that we would attempt to name, to define, to corral the One who is both before and after, everywhere and here, singular and multiple, without gender, race, age, or address?

Nicodemus has it right. He walks away believing, having to be satisfied with the question that hangs in the air, “How can this be?”

You see, the doctrine of the Trinity, properly understood, is as much a way of saying ‘we don’t know’ as of saying ‘we do know.’ To say that the true God is Three and One is to recognize that if there is a God then of course we should not expect him to fit neatly into our little categories. If he did, he would not be God at all, merely a god, a god we might have wanted. 

Holy, holy, holy, is the lord, the whole earth is full of his glory.