May 31 2010
Pastor’s notes
Good Day and welcome …
Today is Trinity Sunday – I was thinking about the reason for having a special day for this; after all, its not at all like Easter, or Christmas, or Pentecost in which we focus on an aspect of the faith story. But today is about a particular doctrine – a teaching which we believe is essential to our faith. I guess that the Church (long, long ago!) realized the complexity of this aspect of our faith in which we believe that there is only one God but who exists in three Persons, and so ordered its ministers to teach on this doctrine at least once a year. It’s the same with baptism. We are required to teach on baptism, this essential step for the initiation of our faith journey, also once per annum. I suppose that it is so easy – and its our default mode – to neglect that which we do not fully understand. And the result is that powerful concepts of our faith become dilute and wishy-washy.
Margie and I have been reading the Biblical account of Solomon this past week and we have seen the danger of this. Solomon, the son of David, was a wise king but he failed to keep God’s commands and his reign ended in disarray through the worship of false gods. If he had but only kept to the basics of God’s intention.
And so today we are going to have a brief look at the Tri-unity of God. It is a difficult concept but it is central to our faith. We worship One God. In the tri-unity of the Godhead there are three-in-one, of the same substance: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. They are equally God in their being, power, holiness and eternality. God is one in essence and three in person. Scripture affirms both the oneness of God, and the deity of the Father, Son and Spirit. The Father is our Creator, the Son our Redeemer and the Spirit our Sanctifier. They are distinct and yet not solitary. We, in our limited human understanding, attempt to define the three persons by a role which seems dominant and yet all three Persons are forever together. Father, Son and Spirit were present in creation; Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” and He promised to be with us always in the Person of the Comforter (Holy Spirit).
Today we also have Matthew with us. He is a student from Iran and will share the testimony of his faith journey with us. We all have a faith journey to share for God deals with each of us in a unique way and it is in the sharing of our testimony that we build each other up in faith. Thank you, Matthew for coming to share your story with us this weekend.
After the service today we will have our quarterly Congregation Meeting. I have had peep at the agenda and while there are some items dealing with past things (the journey), there are also some exciting things about the future. The greatest thing about following Jesus is that He is always leading us into the future. Our faith is about that which lies ahead and the certainty of our hope. I want to share a little of what I believe the Lord is saying to me and we will also hear something about Ride for Life, Internet broadcasting of services and propose membership of Pneuma. In a way these are all connected and are aspects of the journey which still lies before us. Kennon Callahan said, “Hope is stronger than memory. Memory is strong, hope is stronger. We are the Easter People, the People of the Empty Tomb, we are the People of Hope.” God bless you and may He be with you
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