Context

Twitter has continued to reflect on THAT sermon from the Royal Wedding last week. Never has a sermon caused so much comment or made so much impact. Even when people didn’t like it, they were talking about it. Even atheists remarked that it was enough to bring them back into faith!

Tuesday saw the first anniversary of the Manchester Arena attack in 2017. There was a service in Manchester Cathedral followed by a concert and the ringing of bells at 10.31pm.

The public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire began this week, and has been listening to the stories of those who died in the fire. Churches and faith groups played a big part in the immediate response to the tragedy last June. The Bishop of Kensington made a commitment this week that the Church would always be there for the survivors.

Thy Kingdom Come 2018 – the ten days of prayer between Ascension and Pentecost – reached its finale last Sunday, with a series of big services of celebration. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry once again brought tears to the eyes on his video contribution on Saturday 19 May. 

There were thousands of modest gatherings for prayer throughout the land. We met every day to say prayers and use the published novena. One of those who had attended knocked on my door on Monday evening to say that a feeling had been developing in her throughout the ten days that she should help the asylum seekers who come to our church. She was experiencing God’s calling to serve. It was for her a very real experience of God.

 

Reflection

The Trinity is as much about how we encounter and experience God as about how we try to understand and make sense of the God we meet. At the heart of the Trinity is love. The relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit is Love. God is love. That’s why Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s sermon about the redemptive power of love was also about the Trinity – though that word was never mentioned. When we encounter the power of love, we meet God. When we accept that love, we become children, not slaves. When we enter into that love, we find light. When we rejoice in that Love, we discover eternal life.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, in the darkness, and he meets the one true light. Isaiah encounters the light and glory of God and is convicted of his own inner darkness. Paul is addressing those who have emerged from the darkness of spiritual slavery into the light of adoption as children of God.

God as love, God as Trinity, is present in every place and in every situation. That is easier to see at times of joy like a wedding or moments of spiritual significance like the events for Thy Kingdom Come. It can be harder to encounter God in dark times of tragedy like the Manchester attack or the Grenfell Tower fire, though there were many examples of the love of God shining through the love shown by the community. We have many opportunities to meet God, and we will experience God in different ways, depending on the situation and on what’s going on in our own lives. But it’s still God.

The way God relates to us spills out onto how we relate to the people around us, not condemning but caring, not enslaving but liberating, and bringing God’s glory into dark places.

 

Prayer

A meditation to reflect on in a group.

God, I have questions. I have loads of questions.
But when I tell you my questions and look to you for an answer,
It’s like you’re off on a tangent and you seem to be talking about something else entirely.
So, I get confused.
I want to understand!
I want to know more about you!
Tell me about how you are one and three, all at the same time.
Show me how it all makes sense.
And when you’ve answered all that, I have lots more to ask you.

But instead, you come alongside me.
It’s like a long deep hug.
And when my life is dark, and it does get so dark sometimes,
You are there as a little light that never goes out.
And when everything feels tight, constricted,
You open up amazing vistas.
Then I am no longer trapped because you bring such freedom.

I am looking for words, and you give me encounter.
I am looking for knowledge, and you give me experience.
So what’s this all about?
And where are you taking me?

 

Questions

• What does Nicodemus’s story have to teach us about baptism? Go through the story and pick out the words and phrases that have something to say about baptism.

• What does Nicodemus’s story have to teach us about God? Go through the story and pick out the words and phrases that have something to say about God.

• Jesus did not come to condemn the world but to save the world (v.17). The world is much faster to condemn those who are different. How can we face up to our own impulses to condemn? What should we do about them?

 

All-age activity

You will need: sheets printed with hearts on coloured paper, scissors, pens/pencils, split pins. Print out sheets with hearts (either draw them, or find a simple heart shape on the internet) – 6 hearts per A4 page is a good size. You might want to print them on different coloured paper. Don’t spend a lot of time cutting out each heart – just separate them.

Give everyone three hearts. If you have different coloured hearts, three different colours would be great. People will need access to scissors to cut them out.

Ask people to think about how God loves us: how God the Father loves us, how Jesus loves us, how the Holy Spirit loves us. (This could be creating the world, what Jesus did, the way the Holy Spirit works with us.) Write words or draw pictures on each of the hearts.

Give out split pins. Hold the three hearts together at the pointed, and push the split pin through, to hold the hearts together. Then open the hearts like a flower (or shamrock) – one flower, but representing God’s love in three different ways. (You could use a stapler to fasten the three hearts together – it would be easier – but the hearts would be fixed.)

 

Young people

For each person, print off a triquetra symbol of the Holy Trinity. Decorate the symbol, and write words within it that represent what God means to you. When everyone has finished, talk with each other about what you have done and what it means.

 

Meg Gilley is an Anglican parish priest serving in Gateshead.

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