Liturgy of the Word for Trinity Sunday, June,7th

If you are not a regular St Martin’s supporter we invite you to

DONATE HERE

Thank you for supporting our ministry during this period of physical distancing

Order of Service

The Liturgy of the Word begins on page 355 of the Book of Common Prayer or online Eucharist Rt II here.

Prelude:  Sarabande (Suite for Organ), Gerald Near with Steven Young on the St Martin’s Organ

Welcome, The Rev’d Mark Sutherland, Rector

Introit: “I Will at All Times Bless the Lord”, F. Handel (1685-1759), Soprano, Lori Istok, St Martin’s Chapel Consort

I will at all times bless the Lord,
My voice shall sing his praise.
I sought the Lord, God heard my prayer.
Let all exalt God’s name.
O taste and see the Lord is good!
In God is lasting hope, in God is joy,
My voice shall sing God’s praise.
I sought the Lord, God heard my prayer.
Let all exalt God’s name.

Hymn:48, “O day of radiant gladness” (vv. 1, 4), St Martin’s Chapel Consort with Steven Young, organ

1 O day of radiant gladness, O day of joy and light,
O balm of care and sadness, most beautiful, most bright;
this day the high and lowly, through ages joined in tune,
sing "Holy, holy, holy" to the great God Triune.
4 That light our hope sustaining, we walk the pilgrim way, at length our rest attaining, our endless Sabbath Day. We sing to thee our praises, O Father, Spirit, Son; the Church her voice upraises to thee, blest Three in One.

Greeting: Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And blessed be God’s kingdom, now and for ever.

Collect for Purity

The The Gloria S277, St Martin’s Chapel Consort with Steven Young accompanying

The Collect for Trinity Sunday

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us
your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to
acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the
power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep
us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to
see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with
the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever
and ever. Amen.

First Reading: Genesis 1:1-2:4 read by Beth Toolan

Canticle: 2 (Pg 49 BCP) sung by members of the St Martin’s Chapel Consort

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, read by David Whitman

Gradual Hymn: 362, Holy, holy, holy! vv1-2, sung St Martin’s Chapel Consort with Steven Young, organ

1 Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!

2 Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore thee,
casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,
who wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.

The Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20 proclaimed by Mark+

Gradual Hymn: 362, Holy, holy, holy! vv1-2, vv3-4

3 Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee,
though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
only thou art holy; there is none beside thee
perfect in pow'r, in love, and purity.

4 Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All thy works shall praise thy name in earth and sky and sea.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!

The Sermon: Linda+  (a stand alone sermon recording and text appears below)

The Nicene Creed: (pg 358 BCP) -(we recite together)

The Anthem:  “Let all things now living” txt/arr. Katherine Kennicott Davis, 1892-1980, Sung by the St Martin’s Chapel Consort with Steven Young at the organ

Let all things now living To God the Creator triumphantly raise, Who fashioned and made us, Protected and stayed us, Who guides us and leads to the end of our days. God’s banners fly o’er us; God’s light goes before us, A pillar of fire shining forth in the night, Till shadows have vanished And darkness is banished, A forward we travel from light into light.   His law he enforces The stars in their courses, The sun in his orbit obediently shine. The hills and the mountains, The rivers and fountains, The deep of the ocean proclaim Him divine. We too should be voicing our love and rejoicing; With glad adoration and song let us raise, Till all things now living Unite in thanksgiving To god in the highest, Hosanna and praise!

Prayers of the People: led by Mark+

The Lord’s Prayer

The General Thanksgiving (pg 101 BCP)

The Peace

Final Hymn: 368, “Holy Father, great Creator vv1,4 sung by the St Martin’s Chapel Consort with organ

1 Holy Father, great Creator,
source of mercy, love, and peace,
look upon the Mediator,
clothe us with his righteousness;
heavenly Father, heavenly Father,
through the Savior hear and bless.
  
4 God the Lord, through every nation
let thy wondrous mercies shine.
In the song of thy salvation
every tongue and race combine.
Great Jehovah, great Jehovah,
form our hearts and make them thine.

Trinity Blessing

The Postlude: Final (Suite for Organ), Gerald Near with Steven Young on St Martin’s organ

• 

Invitation to the Dance

May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

In the beginning, God. In the beginning, God; pouring forth God’s Self, divine into the material—the first incarnation—the holy spark infused into every atom, every particle of stardust. In the beginning, God; loving Creation into being; light and dark, day and night, sun moon and stars commencing their eternal dance; sea and land ebbing and flowing with the tides; plants and all creatures brought forth into their own rhythms of birth, death and renewal.

In the beginning, God; breathing life into God’s first human children:  “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.”

… and indeed, it all was very good.

What does it mean to be made in the image of God?  What does it mean to be created in the image of the loving, outpouring, life-giving source of All That Is?

Early Church theologians wrote of Perichoresis—an articulation of the way the three divine Persons dwell within and between one another in perpetual fellowship and intimacy.

In the beginning was Relationship.

Humankind was created in relationship. We were born into relationship. We were baptized into relationship—in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit–and welcomed into the Household of God.

The fourth century Cappadocian Fathers of the Eastern Church used the metaphor of a flow of love and communion between coequal, coeternal, yet separate Persons of the Trinity. Picture them endlessly giving and endlessly receiving, subject-to-subject, I to Thou, again and again and again. The movement is not hierarchical, it is circular; one part does not dominate the others at any point. Richard Rohr calls this a Divine Dance and cites the beautiful icon by Andrei Rublev—the figures perpetually gesturing and gazing lovingly toward one another.

We’re part of the Divine Dance. And on this Trinity Sunday of 2020 there is a lot riding on how we understand this reality—this image in which we were created– and how seriously we take its challenge and invitation.

The Holy Trinity is a paradigm, a template, for Beloved Community; a community of love, generosity, creativity and healing. To be in God’s image is to be in community. There is no true community where there is no mutual respect, trust, compassion and justice. There is no community in the person who is unaware of their own vulnerability, dependence upon and responsibility for the well being of others. If we envision being in the image of God as being a mirror of God’s self then a community without mutual respect, trust, compassion and justice is like a broken mirror—skewed, fractured, incomplete, with shards that slice, leaving deep scars.

Where to begin with how this image of fracture and wounding reflects our own communities now? Where to begin when stories of violence, injustice and hubris pummel us faster than we can take them in and process them? Where to begin when a parishioner sends me a cartoon of a white policeman smiling down at a small Black child, asking, “So, young man, what do you want to be when you grow up?” and the child looks up, raising his hands in the air, and says, “Alive.”

Where to begin?

In the beginning, 1619. The year the first enslaved children of God came to our shores. It is our country’s original sin, with a four-century legacy of cruelty, bigotry and system-spanning injustices that have continued long after Emancipation; Jim Crow laws, lynchings, housing and employment discrimination, mass incarceration, voter suppression, health care disparities, especially in the context of COVID-19, and name after name after name of Black men and women victims of police brutality.  “I can’t breathe”.

God’s image is broken in pieces.

I keep hearing these words from James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

We need to look in the mirror and see where we have fallen short of the image of God. We need to confront, and be confronted by, the reality that the edifice of white privilege has been built upon the backs of our Black brothers and sisters. We need to repent our country’s blindness to the worth and dignity of Black children of God, and, in the words of the Center for Reconciliation, the sinful pattern of “treating Black lives and Black bodies as criminal, disposable, and outside of the human family. “

The voices of protest and anguish in our streets are calling us to get back in step with the Divine Dance; to remember who and whose we all are.

Not everyone has forgotten. Even among the chaos we see people joining the dance—sometimes literally. In Flint Michigan, the Genesee County Sheriff laid down his baton and helmet and joined the march. At a Newark protest law enforcement officers joined the crowd kneeling in a moment of silence. As the gathering gradually transformed into a community dance party, a police officer joined in. In Minneapolis Ruhel Islam, a Bangladeshi immigrant, heard that his restaurant was on fire in the protests, and said, “Let the buildings burn. Justice needs to be served.” Standing amid the ruins he said, “We can rebuild a building. But we cannot give [George Floyd] back to his family.” And then he and his daughter went to work in the Interfaith Garden that they had planted nearby. Tending to the cilantro and bean plants, he said, “I’m going to plant in the garden and pray for everyone.”

We can remember the Dance. We can march in our holy anger at injustice. We can step forward to learn the name and story of our neighbors. (We may be wearing masks, but that doesn’t stop us from looking people in the eye and seeing the spark of the Divine.) Moving harmoniously, acknowledging each other subject to subject, I to Thou, we can draw the circle wider and wider until all of God’s children are part of the flow of mutual respect, trust, compassion and justice.

“Let us make humankind in our image.”

What does it mean to be made in the image of the Trinitarian God in this shattered time?

It is to hear the invitation to the Dance. It is to know that we have been baptized into a faith that has called us into this moment; to be a community of love and compassion; to be agents of holy listening, truth-telling and reconciliation.

It is to become what we believe.

May we dance in the name of the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love-Sharer, Amen.

If you are not a regular St Martin’s supporter we invite you to

DONATE HERE

Thank you for supporting our ministry during this period of physical distancing