Trinity Sunday , May 26, 2013 (full size gallery)
A glorious trinity Sunday! Memorial Day weekend has been cooler that any in memory with temperatures in the 60’s and 70’s, too cool for swimming but wonderful times to spend outside.
This week the trackers as part of the organ were repaired by Mark Thompson’s firm. A generous parishioner provided $3,400 for this process. We have pictures of three generations of trackers – the new ones (white), ones that are original to the 1850’s organ and those repaired since that time. Trackers are the main mechanism for producing sound on these type of organs as opposed to electronic organs. It is part of the ongoing maintenance and upgrades for our wonderful. instrument.
One of the favorite ways on Memorial Day to remember those who served is visiting the National Cemetry in Fredericksburg. With 15,300 war dead and American flags surrounding their graves, it is quite a site. I took pictures both on Friday evening at dusk, then again in early Sat. morning and finally at the lumanaria in the evening.
St. Peter’s remembered its veterans. There are many flags American around graves of Charles Gravatt, confederate flags for William Friend and Dave Powers and American flags for WWII veterans such as Austin Hoyt. The sun produced a variety of patterns on the graves.
9am had only 7 parishioners. It was Morning prayer since 11am was reserved for Trinity Eucharist. Elizabeth introduced her project to have us donate books for elementary school students completing the SOL’s. She donated the Secret Garden and it is a way to show reading is fun
10am had the first of 4 "Affirming our Faith" sessions. While mainly for those seeking confirmation, it’s a good refresher of our tradition. Catherine had a number of newer resources helping in planning services. Today was the Bible, overview of the prayer book and hymn book. Next week is the Eucharist. It is never too late to come!
11am had 37 people for Eucharist. Probably what will be remembered is the congregation linking arms and dancing. As the sermon stated – "Brendan O’Malley tells us that in the Christian Church for the first thousand years Christians danced in procession to and from the church. This dance was known as the “Tripudium, which means three steps or transport of joy… The dancers linked arms and danced in row after row…moving through the streets and into the church and around it during the hymns of the service, and then out through the streets as a recessional.” So we danced through the church. In a society that closely linked life and church it is not surprising. It was one of the things the Puritans reacted against in the 17th century. Later Catherine processed out with dancing. The readings for the Sunday are here and the bulletin is here for 11am
Catherine also introduced FredCamp and ways we can support it. Basically, youth and adults living together for a week in a Christian community and refurbishing homes. More information next week. There is one easy way to support it – bring a flyer from Ruby Tuesday and eat at the Mine Road location in Fredericksburg. Ruby Tuesday will donate 20% of the bill to Fred Camp.
We celebrated Dave Fannon’s birthday on May 30 and Cindy and Stanley’s anniversary next week.
Betty also distributed the UTO boxes at 11am- "the blue boxes". Read more about the UTO mission here
The concept of the Trinity has not been easy to understand and decisively define. From the time of the Council of Nicea in 325AD, there has not been universal agreement as to what the Trinity is. We know the Father, Son and Holy Spirit but melding 3 into 1 has been a task. How do they work together ?
It wasn’t any easier for the disciples. Jesus said in our reading "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"
But it is during his farewell message that Jesus most fully explores and explains the Spirit that he was to give to his disciples: “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22). And in his farewell message and prayer Jesus weaves the connection between God, the Father, himself, and the Spirit. We have been exploring these relationships as the season of Easter has come to an end.
How are we to know God? We know God because we have known Jesus. In his prayer Jesus reminded us, “you, Father, are in me and I am in you . . . so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them” (John 17:21, 23). The proclamations he made, what Jesus taught — “The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works” (John 14:10) — Jesus speaks the words of the Father, and the Spirit. The Paraclete “will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears” (John 16:13) from Jesus. The Father speaks to Jesus, who speaks to the Spirit, who will “guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13).
The Holy Trinity is about relationship and indwelling which helps us produce of our community.
The Trinity is our way of life made possible by God. The Trinity invites us every day to live our lives in the embrace of that love because that is where we find the strength and the security to invest in the relationships that we have. It’s where we find the strength to build community in the places where we live. That is the invitation of the doctrine of the Trinity.
The imporance of all this is that it gives us hope to throughout our lives. And this gets us to Paul’s reading in Romans who talks about the Spirit. As Paul writes, "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 sermon quotes Ellen Davis from Duke that we “Christians confess that God not only created the world but dwelt in it as a human being and God now continues to be present in our midst through the Holy Spirit, one of whose seven gifts is the wisdom of God.”
It can also be likened to a dance. The sermon introduces the concept of ‘perichoreisis.’
"Catherine LaCugna, a theologian who wrote about the Trinity, tells us that perichoresis expresses the idea that the three divine persons mutually exist permanently in one another, draw life from one another, are what they are by relation to one another." "We have been made partners in the divine dance, because everything comes from God, and everything returns to God."
Peter Leithart writes that Perichoresis describes the Persons as eternally giving themselves over into one another. "It is not that the Father has (at some “moment” in eternity past) poured Himself out into the Son, but that He is continually pouring Himself into the Son, and the Son into the Spirit, and the Spirit into the Father, and so on. To talk about God’s “perichoretic” unity is to talk about a dynamic unity, and to talk about a God who is always at work, always in motion, pure act."
How do we apply it to ourselves ? Theologian David Lose provides an apt commentary on this. "God promises to be with us amid suffering, and even work through that to build character and endurance and increase our capacity for hope"…"Paul saw God take shape in the world and in his own life most concretely in the cross of Christ, the cross by which God dignifies and sanctifies all human suffering by promising to be there with us and for us, and the cross that we bear as we struggle to be faithful in this world…"
"Precisely because God determined to make God’s own self known in the concrete form of Jesus and his suffering, we can look for God in the concrete, ordinary, and every day forms our lives take. In our relationships, in our jobs, hobbies, volunteer activities, and more. God hallows all of this by promising to use anything done for the good of the neighbor as a way to extend God’s love and concern to all of God’s beloved people."
Our world is filled with disaster and disappoingment. We saw both this week in the tornado i Oklahoma. But hope is in the routine.
As Lose concludes, "So where is God in Oklahoma? Working through rescue workers, comforting the grieving, encouraging those who are helping out, and guiding those who try to plan to avoid such disasters in the future. And where is God in our sometimes painfully mundane daily lives? Present with us in the struggles, rejoicing in the triumphs, nurturing our best relationships, encouraging us to care for those around us and receive their care in turn, using us and even our daily routines to love and care for the world and people God loves so much.