Trinity Sunday Year C
Who Are We and Who Is God? Reflections on Genesis 1
We are about to enter that very long time in the church's year, rather blandly called "ordinary time." I first knew it as "Kingdomtide," but that name seems to fallen out of favor. For me, it is the time of the Christian year when a preacher can focus attention on some continuous texts from one major book of the Hebrew Bible. Year A brings us the vast riches of Genesis.
Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost, offers to us Genesis 1 in Year A. Its partner texts provide Psalm 8 and its reference to our human creation as "little lower than Elohim," which could be translated either "gods" or "God" or traditionally "angels," though there is little support in the language for the latter reading. The New Testament readings are Matthew 28:16-20 and 2 Corinthians 13:11-13 with their straightforward appeals to "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." Hence, I assume the lectionary collectors heard some Trinitarian echoes in Psalm 8, though I admit for me the echoes are faint.
And I further assume that those intrepid lectionary compilers chose Genesis 1 because of the mysterious plurals in the mouth of God in verses 26-28. The earliest Christian commentators on that passage very quickly imagined that God was in fact having a chat with the other two persons of the Trinity when God decided to create you and me. There is in fact nothing especially wrong about such a claim, given that the Christian scriptural lenses tended to discern Jesus and the Spirit lurking under every rock and tree of the older testament.
However, I suggest that the author or authors of Genesis 1 did not have the Trinity in mind when they composed this grand poem. They had far larger fish to fry than that. Genesis 1 is nothing less than the curtain raiser for the entire biblical story, and I do not only mean the first act of the Hebrew Bible. "In the beginning, God . . ." quite literally grounds all of the Bible's story in the divine life and creativity of the one God.
Furthermore, the nature of this God is portrayed in sweeping wonder as one after another, the things and creatures that make up the grand cosmos pour forth from the power of the divine mouth. Merely with the sound of God's voice the world as we know it is revealed in its splendor. The ancient stories of the Near East speak regularly of brutal combat between rival gods as antecedents of the world's creation. There is no combat here in Genesis, rather the divine word alone that bids the world appear.
Trinity Sunday Year C - News
For me, it is the time of the Christian year when a preacher can focus attention on some continuous texts from one major book of the Hebrew Bible. Year A brings us the vast riches of Genesis. Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost,
Benefit Concert: "Jazz, Legends of Tomorrow," featuring pianist Aaron Diehl, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, drummer Lawrence Leathers, and vacalist Charenee Wade Dominick Farinacci & His New York Band. 7 pm Sunday. $25. Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Union Lutheran Church, 4470 Bringle Ferry Road, will celebrate the Feast of the Holy Trinity this Sunday at the 10:30 am service. The Sacrament of Holy Communion will be the focus of the service. Vacation Bible school is June 20-24.
Photo by Marc C. Kollar. On Sunday, June 19, 2011, the Most Reverend Bishop Paul G. Bootkoski, Bishop of Metuchen, celebrated the 10:30 AM Mass for the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity and blessed the new pipe organ and pipe chambers at St. Augustine of
It is rung each Sunday as a call to worship and witness. Trinity Lutheran Church began its 75th year in 1986 with 87 baptized members and 73 confirmed members on the active roll. In 1987, the church united with other congregations to form the
A sermon for Trinity Sunday Year C ...
And that’s what the doctrine of the Trinity can sound like, a riddle. Perhaps a mathematician could talk of three in one adding up but you’ve got me, not Bernard, amateur theologian instead of professional mathematician. But there’s nothing more dense than a theologian trying to define the Holy Trinity. It’s a bit like a philosopher trying to define humour. New Life in the Spirit – L. Sweet (Westminster 1982) p.33f
So I’ll spare you definitions. Instead, I’ll start by suggesting that the trinity is important for a balanced faith. Mrs. Thatcher suggested that ‘There is no such thing as society; only individuals and their families.’
Aristotle said: ‘Whoever has no need of society is either a beast or a god’. And the Greek sort of god he had in mind is precisely the sort of god you end up with if you don’t believe in the Trinity: remote, legalistic, in control.
If we are made in God’s image, the sort of man – and it is usually a man – who believes in this sort of God tends to be rigidly legalistic: lots of rules, not a lot of forgiveness. He’s hard to get to know. Everything has to be on time. He tries to control the environment. He likes to amass possessions. So we get greed, leading to war. That leads to problems because the environment cannot sustain this. All that from an undue emphasis on God the Father.
Christianity was born in a world where kings had absolute power, where life and death hung on the nod of their head. The trinity speaks of shared power, an abolition of hierarchy.
Then there’s the undue emphasis on God the Son. You get believers whose faith is heavily based on the cross, so they go on and on about sin and guilt, being born again, giving your life to Jesus, confessing your sins and being forgiven. But they don’t have much to say about the state of the world we live in, about starvation, pollution, economics, justice. It’s all about securing a place in the next world.
The doctrine of the Trinity affirms that God has a history, that his history interweaves with ours. In a world threatened with meaninglessness, wickedness, pain and death, God is there on the cross, history, passion and suffering are within God.
But you can take that too far and stress God the son’s earthly life, the historical Jesus before the time of the crucifixion. the Christ who spoke out against injustice. So the believer becomes obsessed with politics and social justice: Ban the bomb, Greenpeace, racism, Gay rights, animal rights, not much time for fun, for spirituality. And they tend to frown on those who don’t believe and practice as they do. They’re not very strong on forgiveness.
Trinity Sunday Year C - Bookshelf
Texts for Preaching: Year A
Trinity Sunday The character of God is endlessly urgent in the church, ... (c) the Trinitarian formula is a treasured breakthrough in the church's thinking; ...Preaching the Gospels without blaming the Jews, a lectionary commentary
First Sunday after Pentecost/Year C Trinity Sunday John 16:12-15 Last Sunday's reading dealt with Jesus' farewell conversation with his followers. ...Clip Art for Year C
Ordinary Time — "counted" time — resumes with evening prayer on Pentecost Sunday . But two Sunday feasts, Trinity Sunday and the Solemnity of the Body and ...Preaching Through the Christian Year, Year C
Trinity Sunday Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15 In the early church, this Sunday was observed as the Octave of Whitsun; that is, ...Feasting on the Word: Year C, Vol. 3, Pentecost and Season After Pentecost (Propers 3-16)
... McTyre Carrie N. Mitchell Rodger Y. Nishioka C. Gray Norsworthy Jeff Paschal Bonnie L. ... Proper 12 PS PP Day of Pentecost PS PP, Trinity Sunday PS PP, ...Day-to-day Posts Directory
All About Trinity Sunday | Prayers, History, Customs, FAQ ...
Trinity Sunday Definition and Summary. Trinity Sunday commemorates and honors not an event, ... In 2011, Trinity Sunday falls on June 19 (dates in other years) ...
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