(All our songs this morning are from Singing the Faith (StF) numbers will be given where available)
Welcome to our Sunday Service, today shared on paper across our circuit and with the congregation at Northcliffe Church a local Ecumenical Partnership, with the Methodist and United Reformed Churches working and worshipping together and led by Rev Nick Blundell one of our Circuit Ministers. Today is both Trinity and Aldersgate Sunday.
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
Let us come to God who is Holy Trinity:
God the Father, who creates and sustains us;
God the Son, who saves and keeps us;
God the Holy Spirit, who lives within us and warms our hearts.
Let us enter into the mystery of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Call to worship
Give unto the Lord, O you mighty ones, give unto the Lord glory and strength.
Give unto the Lord the glory due to His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
Song – StF 34 – O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness
Our Prayers are based on the experience of Nicodemus, who we meet in our gospel reading: Nicodemus came to you by night. He didn’t want to be seen for fear of what others would think. We are guilty of hiding too from you, from each other, from ourselves. We hide from experiences we don’t understand. We shy away from the unknown, from uncertainty.
Lord God, grant us a humble spirit to know when we are not on the right track.
Forgive us when we are falling short of who we really can be in you.
Help us to stop hiding and give ourselves up to our new forgiven life, finding new experiences,
new joys to share.
Our confidence is in you, Lord.
Amen
Our mighty God waits for us to come to him, as Nicodemus came to Jesus.
He knows when we are truly open to him.
He fills that openness with everything we truly need.
He forgives us our sins and gives us peace.
We thank you, forgiving and holy God.
We believe in you and your loving kindness.
We trust you to make us whole.
Amen.
Reading
Song – StF 663 – I, the Lord of sea and sky
Reading
Reflection
‘You are Israel’s teacher,’ said Jesus, ‘and do you not understand these things?
Is understanding necessary? Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night, when all is unclear, in response to the signs that Jesus was doing, seeing in these signs something of God. Jesus acknowledges him, but in the conversation that follows offers the confusing picture of new birth and seeks to help Nicodemus to understand. Did he understand, did he get it? He appears again in chapter 7 speaking up for Jesus before his peers, and in chapter 19 bringing costly myrrh and aloes for Jesus’ burial, so maybe.
There is paradox this Sunday, this year, for those of us who are methodists, as two Sundays fall together. Today is Trinity Sunday, for us, but also for most of our Christian brothers and sisters in other denominations. If you were to go to Mass at St Walburgas’ Roman Catholic Church in Shipley this morning, or worship with the Anglicans at St Matthew’s in Wilsden, it would be Trinity Sunday. Homily, sermon or reflection, the chances are the theme would be Trinity. But, for those of us who are methodists, today is also Aldersgate Sunday, to which most of our other-denominational friends would say, ‘Alders what Sunday??’
The one is widely if not universally recognised, the other more specific to the peculiar people known as methodists.
Yet, as I reflect on this paradox, I wonder if it might not be quite helpful?
Trinity Sunday points us to the mystery of God, the otherness, the holiness. The lectionary for Trinity Sunday gives us Isaiah’s vision of a God high and lifted up, the prophet’s description seeking to capture that which is beyond words, attempting to portray a scene of angels and holiness and glory beyond human ken. This is the God who inspires awe and wonder, whose presence shakes the temple to its foundations.
This is God beyond, above, outside, God who is greater, over, more than we can comprehend or even imagine.
Aldersgate Sunday takes us to a London Street, now the location of Slough House in Mick Herron’s brilliant Slow horses spy fiction series, but back in 1738 the venue for a meeting at which John Wesley, troubled Anglican priest, found his heart strangely warmed. As a person read from Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to Romans, to quote Wesley’s own words:
“While he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
Up to this point both John and his brother Charles had worked hard to serve the God they worshipped, to earn their place in God’s purposes. But the God they served was the one beyond, above, outside, and however hard they tried they could not reach the level they felt was required. In May 1738 the brothers (Charles had experienced similar grace a few days earlier) realised that they could not earn what God wanted to give, they simply had to receive. This realisation looked not to that God apart and lifted up, but to Jesus Christ, lifted up yes, but on a cross, God emptied of all but love that human hearts might recognise and be warmed by the closeness of God’s presence. From this time onwards the Wesleys, and their growing methodist band, would work hard not to earn their place, but to share the news in word and deed that all people could receive this wonderful grace. Whatever their status, or lack of it; learning, or lack of it, God’s grace – love, forgiveness, calling – God’s grace was for all!
To return to the present, what the Wesleys realised then is still true now – God’s grace is for all, and the warmed heart still beats in the chest of those who are open to receive. We do not need to understand the divine mystery that is the Trinity, it is, after all, mystery. Rather, we are invited to look to Jesus, in the bible and in those Jesus-shaped people we know, and to be open to receive.
Song – StF 15 – The splendour of the King, How great is our God,
We offer our prayers….
God beyond our understanding
come close to us in Christ and warm our hearts
God beyond our imagining
place your Spirit within us and send us to serve.
We pray for one another, here and now and through the week to come. Particularly for those facing challenges or living with difficulties or disabilities.
God beyond our understanding
come close to us in Christ and warm our hearts
God beyond our imagining
place your Spirit within us and send us to serve.
We pray for those living in situations of conflict and great need. Particularly for those whose daily existence is fear and hardship. For those who are vulnerable, and those who are not able to protect or provide for them. And for those working for peace or resolution, or bringing much-needed provisions, shelter or medicine.
God beyond our understanding
come close to us in Christ and warm our hearts
God beyond our imagining
place your Spirit within us and send us to serve.
We pray for our sister churches, across the circuit, district, and of other denominations. For all their leaders, ordained and lay, for all who carry responsibility. May each be led to look outward, to those needing your grace and open to receive.
God beyond our understanding
come close to us in Christ and warm our hearts
God beyond our imagining
place your Spirit within us, and send us to serve.
Amen.
We bring our prayers together, as we pray, with all God’s people, the Lord’s Prayer.
On Aldersgate Sunday we close with Charles Wesley’s great hymn,
Song – StF 345 or H&P 216 – And can it be that I should gain
We go in peace, in the power of the Spirit, to live and work to God’s praise and glory. Amen.
We bless one another, and all those we have brought to mind this day, as we share the Grace:
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all, now and always. Amen.
