Nottingham North East Circuit 
Home Service, 30th May 2021
This act of worship has been prepared by Revd Moses Agyam for you to use at home. If you are well enough, why not spend a few moments with God, knowing that other people are sharing this act of worship with you. Hymns are taken from Songs of Fellowship
CALL TO WORSHIP
Let all the earth praise God. Sing to the glory of God’s holy name. Come to see what God has done. Let the sound of his praise be heard. Blessed is God who has not withdrawn from us God’s love and care. Psalm 66:1, 2, 5, 8, 20
Let us worship God.
HYMN: SoF 183 Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!
PRAYER OF ADORATION
Worthy of praise from every mouth, of confession from every tongue, of worship from every creature, is your glorious name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God for ever. You created the world in your grace, and by your compassion you redeemed it in Jesus. Heaven and earth are full of your praises: glory be to you, loving God. Angels and archangels and all the hosts of heaven worship you. We are not worthy to praise you; but, for your mercy’s sake, accept the praises of all your people, from our homes and throughout the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Gracious Father your love is all-embracing, your wisdom beyond knowledge, mercy beyond all telling. You have put eternity into our hearts, and made us hunger and thirst for you. Satisfy the longings you have implanted that we may find you in life, and find life in you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
As we have sung, God is holy. We are not. In humility let’s confess our sins together.
Holy God, made in your image, with a mind to know you, a heart to love you, and a will to serve you, our knowledge is imperfect, our love inconstant, our obedience incomplete. Day by day we fail to grow into your likeness; yet you are slow to anger. For the sake of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Saviour, do not hold our sins against us but, in love, forgive.
Silence
Almighty & merciful Lord, grant pardon and remission of all our sins, time for amendment of life, & the grace and comfort of the Holy Spirit. In Christ our sins are forgiven.
Amen. Thanks be to God.
FIRST READING Romans 8:12-17
FIRST REFLECTION
How not to explain the Trinity!
In one of my favourite of Graham Greene’s novels, Monsignor Quixote, there is a scene where we find Father Quixote attempting to explain to the Mayor of El Toboso, an avowed atheist, the meaning of the Trinity. Their conversation goes like this:
“What puzzles me, my friend” says the Mayor, “is how you can believe in so many incompatible ideas. For example, the Trinity. It’s worse than higher mathematics. Can you explain the Trinity to me? It was more than they could do in Salamanca”.
“I can try”. “Try then”. “You see these bottles?” “Of course.”
“Two bottles equal in size. The wine they contained was of the same substance and it was born at the same time. There you have God the Father and God the Son and there, in the half bottle, God the Holy Ghost. Same substance. Same birth. They’re inseparable. Whoever partakes of one partakes of all three”. “I was never able to see the point of the Holy Ghost. He has always seemed to me a bit redundant”.
“We were not satisfied with two bottles, were we? That half bottle gave us the extra spark of life we both needed. We wouldn’t have been so happy without it. Perhaps we wouldn’t have had the courage to continue our journey. Even our friendship might have ceased without the Holy Spirit”. “You are very ingenious friend. I begin at least to understand what you mean by the Trinity. Not to believe in it, mind you. That will never do”.
Father Quixote sat in silence looking at the bottles. When the Mayor struck a match to light a cigarette, he saw the bowed heard of his companion. It was as though he had been deserted by the Spirit he had praised. “What is the matter, father?” he asked. “May God forgive me,” Father Quixote said, “for I have sinned.”
“It was only a joke, Father, surely your God can understand a joke.”
“I have been guilty of heresy,” Father Quixote replied. “I think – perhaps – I am unworthy to be a priest”. “What have you done?”
“I have given wrong instruction. The Holy Ghost is equal in all respects to the Father and the Son. I have represented Him by this half bottle”. “Is that a serious error?”
“It is anathema. It was condemned expressly at I forget which Council: very early Council. Perhaps it was Nicaea”. “Don’t worry, Father. The matter is easily put right. We will throw away this half bottle and I will bring a whole bottle from the car”.
“I have drunk more than I should. If I hadn’t drunk so much I would never, never have made that mistake. There is no sin worse than the sin against the Holy Ghost”. “Forget it. We will put the matter right at once”. So it was, they drank another bottle. Father Quixote felt comforted and he was touched too by the sympathy of his companion.
HYMN: SoF 205 I cannot tell
GOSPEL READING– John 3:1-17
SECOND REFLECTION
How to explain the Trinity!
The words of the Mayor resonate with we often think of the Trinity. It is a puzzle, a riddle, “worse than higher mathematics”. Though we don’t quite understand or see the point of it to our faith, we feel obliged to hold on to it because it is part of our faith and tradition. We find that like Father Quixote we need to come up with ingenious ways to explain it, only to end up in difficulty with the Spirit coming up short as a half-bottle of wine, not co-equal with the Father and the Son. This is the heresy of subordinationism and therefore an anathema!
You will be glad to know that I’m not going to go down that route. The picture we get from our readings today about the Trinity is not “higher mathematics” or mental gymnastics but something down to earth and transforming. If only we keep close to the New Testament, our understanding of the Trinity would be far simpler and richer.
The more I learn about the Trinity, the more I have come to appreciate it as everything to my faith as a Christian. Jürgen Moltmann helps me to see why this is. He says that the story of the gospel is “the great love story of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, a divine love story in which we are all involved together with heaven and earth” (Humanity in God, p. 88).
You will have noticed from our readings today that both Paul’s and Jesus’ teaching of this divine love story involving the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit comes in the context of prayer, worship, and confession, not as theological speculation! This is where all our talk about the Trinity must begin and end – in prayer, worship and confession. Jesus’ beautiful image in John 3 is of the Spirit together with the Father and the Son creating a new birth in us, a birth from above forming the basis of faith. But I want to reflect briefly on the epistle reading from Romans because Paul teaches how the divine love story affects and works in us.
You could say that our reading from Romans is all about learning to breathe well. This is because Paul uses a word for the Spirit which can be translated as “breath”. We could pause here and reflect on how “breath” has become an important symbol in recent times in the wake of the pandemic, of images of people struggling to breathe and for breath. Or, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, the images of #icantbreathe.
In our reading today, you get the sense that “S/spirit” or breath is very important to Paul. I did a slow reading of Romans 8 counting how many times the word spirit appears. It appears 21 times and, in our passage, it is used 5 times. What I find most striking is that it’s not always clear whose “spirit” Paul is talking about (hence why I’m using small ‘s’ instead of big ‘S’ for the spirit): God’s spirit? Christ’s? Ours? The answer, it seems to me, is all of the above. Paul seems to say that the spirit is the divine breath that merges with our breath so that we might, as John says, “have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). This spirit, Paul wants us to grasp, is God’s antidote for our spiritual breathing problems today. But how might the spirit (“divine love story” in Moltmann’s apt term for the Trinity) become a remedy for our spiritual breathing problems today? How do we indwell the inner life of God – the Trinity?
Let’s note, first of all, the way Paul says the divine spirit operates. First, the spirit leads us (Rom. 8:14). The late Jimmy Dunn, a Methodist, says: when we’re led by the Spirit, we’re “constrained by a compelling force . . .surrendering to an overpowering compulsion”; like an addiction. Imagine being as overwhelmed this compulsion as we are to check our devices these days or to tend our gardens or eat fish and chips or whatever passions we have.
The second thing Paul says is that we receive this breath (Rom. 8:15) as a gift. God won’t force it on us. Only by receiving it do we avail ourselves of a gift that’s already ours: the mingling of our breath with the breath of God. For Paul, the divine spirit comes in alongside our spirit (Rom. 8:16) to impart spiritual life and newness in us.
But then, thirdly, Paul says something amazing happens when the divine spirit mingles with our spirit: we become full- fledged members of the divine household. We don’t have space to talk about the rich background behind Paul’s language of “heirs” or inheritance. But in effect, Paul is saying that our status has changed; we’ve been incorporated into the divine love story; the distinction between us and Christ has elided: we are “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Rom 8:17). As Christ is God’s “son”, so are we. God’s “estate” will be split evenly among us. Isn’t this mind-blowing? I think this ought to give us pause for thought! We have been incorporated into the Trinity – into the divine life and love in Christ through the spirit.
In conclusion, the next time someone asks you to explain the Trinity to them, don’t do it Father Quixote’s way. Do it Paul’s way. Talk about the Trinity as the opening of God’s relational love to include us so that we and all people may become children and heirs of God. So that we might “have life, and have it abundantly” for ever (John 10:10).
When all is said and done, the Trinity is deeply about life of prayer. And so: May we, as individuals and as God’s people, learn again to breathe well spiritually. Filled with and led by God’s breath, may we show the world, especially as we re-emerge from the pandemic, what God’s life- giving love and power looks like. And, animated by God’s breath, may we live in our sure hope that death and life, pains and worries, have been defeated by God in Christ through the Spirit, in the trinitarian life of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION
Inspired by the Spirit, we now offer our prayers to God in the name of the Jesus Christ, saying, in Christ, we are all heirs of God.
We pray for all who have not known love. For children who have been neglected and abused, especially during these stressful times of the pandemic. For all who have been abandoned and rejected. For all who live with a sense of feeling unwanted:
(Silence)
In Christ, we are all heirs of God.
We pray for all who feel lonely, isolated or cut off from others. For those living with depression or other mental illness. For all our members and others who are either housebound or becoming housebound through disability or ageing:
(Silence)
In Christ, we are all heirs of God.
We pray for all who are struggling right now, especially those known to us on our pastoral lists, with illness, and those who care for other. For all who are in chronic pain, or waiting for treatment. For all who are facing the end of their life:
(Silence)
In Christ, we are all heirs of God.
We pray for us ourselves, for our own liberation as the heirs of God from the bandage of fear. For renewed witness to share the good news of God’s redeeming and life-transforming love in Christ through the Spirit to be known and experience by all in our communities:
(Silence)
In Christ, we are all heirs of God.
Finally, we let us remember in prayer, all who have died, all whom we have known and loved. For those who seemed to have no one to mourn their death or have little or no time to grieve and mourn because of the pandemic.
(Silence)
In Christ, we are all heirs of God.
God of grace, may we all know that we are held in the heart of your triune love. May we all realize that we are cherished and belong, that there is nothing we need to do to earn our place in the divine love story but simply to open ourselves to you and receive the gift of your breathing Spirit; to see the new perspectives and possibilities before us. Give us your deep confidence now to live from that place of grace, love and peace, in Christ and through the Spirit. Amen.
Let us unite our prayers together in prayer Jesus taught us, in the language or version must familiar and natural to you.
Our Father who art heaven . . .
HYMN: SoF 31 As with gladness men of old
THE BLESSING
God the Holy Trinity,
Father, Son and Spirit,
hold us now in the place where we belong, in your heart of divine love. Blessing us now as we open our eyes, to see one another as beloved children, heirs and joint heirs with Christ, to see your image set in each one of us, to know that we are loved. Amen.
Notes words for adoration and confession are adapted from Common Order © Panel on Worship of the Church of Scotland, 2015.
