Sunday School, May 31, 2015 Trinity Sunday B

Sunday School, May 31, 2015  Trinity Sunday B

Theme of the Day: The Holy Trinity

Use the metaphor of translation for understanding God’s Greatness

When we go to another country or when we hear other people speaking languages other than our own, how can we understand what they are saying?

We need a translator or someone who knows both language who can change what is said in another language into our own language.

Imagine God as being foreign because of God’s Greatness.  God is so great that God is in some way foreign unless God can be translated into human language and experience.

Faith in a Great God means that we believe that God is approachable enough to allow God to be translated into human language and experience.

So how is God translated into human language and experience?

We take the greatest things of human experience and since we believe that God is greater than everyone, then God must be the best example of everything great in human experience.

Make signs of the Names and Attributes of God to show how we translate and understand God in human language and experience.  The last three Sign would be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  We understand that being a person is what is greatest about being human.  And  if we are persons, then God must be the greatest Person and so he is known to us in how his Personality is shown to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Holy or Special or Uniquely Greatest

I AM or Highest Being

Infinite: Too big for anyone to measure

All Powerful

Creator

Good

Merciful

Lovingly Kind

Love

Compassionate

Caring

Cares for the Poor

Sustainer: Keeps all things God

Perfect in Greatness

All Containing

Every in Inside of the Boundaries of God’

Salvation and Health

All Knowing

Omnipresent: Everywhere

Wise

With Us

Gracious

Comforter

Advocate: One who prays for us

Strength

Courage

Power

Hope

Father

Son

Holy Spirit

St. John the Divine Episcopal Church

17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037

Family Service with Holy Eucharist

May 31, 2015: Trinity Sunday

Gathering Songs:

Bless the Lord; Holy, Holy, Holy; Father, I Adore You; Our God is an Awesome God

Song: Bless the Lord (Renew! # 114)

Bless the Lord my soul and bless His holy name.  Bless the Lord my soul, he rescues me from death.

Liturgist: Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

People: And blessed be God’s kingdom, now and for ever.  Amen.

Liturgist:  Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.

And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.

Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People: And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

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.

Litany Phrase: Alleluia (chanted)

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Alleluia

O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Alleluia

O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Alleluia

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Alleluia

A reading from the Letter to the Romans

When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ-- if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

Liturgist: Let us read together Canticle 13

Glory to you, Lord God of our fathers; * you are worthy of praise; glory to you.

Glory to you for the radiance of your holy Name; *  we will praise you and highly exalt you for ever.

Glory to you in the splendor of your temple; *  on the throne of your majesty, glory to you.

Glory to you, seated between the Cherubim; * we will praise you and highly exalt you for ever.

Glory to you, beholding the depths; * in the high vault of heaven, glory to you.

Glory to you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; * we will praise you and highly exalt you for ever.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!

For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.

   Thanks be to God!

Liturgist:         The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John

People: Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, `You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?  "Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People: Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon – Father Phil

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.

Since God is so great and we are so small,

We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.

We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.

And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever.  Amen.

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy. (chanted)

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.

For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.

For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.

For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.

For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.

For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

Liturgist:         The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

People:            And also with you.

Song during the preparation of the Altar and the receiving of an offering.

Song: Holy, Holy, Holy (blue hymnal, # 362) vs. 1 and 3

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.

Holy, holy, holy, though the darkness hide thee, though the sinful human eye they glory may not see, only thou art holy: there is none beside thee, perfect in power, in love, and purity.

Doxology

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of heaven.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

Baptism is a celebration of birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.  Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

Children may gather around the altar

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;

You have made us in your image

And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.

And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph

And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat

  the bread and drink the wine, we can  know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as  

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

The Prayer continues with these words

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Sanctify us so that we may love God and our neighbor.

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death and resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ.  May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory

 is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. AMEN.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,

(Children rejoin their parents and take up their instruments)

Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father who art in heaven:  Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant:        Alleluia! Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia!

Words of Administration

Communion Song: Father, I Adore You (Christian Children’s Songbook, # 56)

Father, I adore you, lay my life before you, how I love you.

Jesus….

Spirit…

Post-Communion Prayer

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

    and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Closing Song: Awesome God (Renew! # 245) Sing Three times

Our God is an awesome God, He reigns from heaven above

with wisdom, power and love, our God is an awesome God.

Dismissal:   

Liturgist: Let us go forth in the Name of Christ. 

People: Thanks be to God! 

One Wind, But Many Pipes

Day of Pentecost  B May 24, 2015

Acts 2:1-21  Psalm 104: 25-35,37

Romans 8:22-27  John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Lectionary Link

  What is the difference between noise and music?  And you are thinking, "Well, Phil your chanting is noise and Pavarotti made music."  Okay point taken.
  Everything sounding at once is what we call cacophony or bad sound or noise.  And yet even organized noise has narrative purpose.  As when one is trying to shoo racoons from one's yard at night or when the audience applauds at a musical performance or as they cheer or boo at an athletic contest.
  Today we welcome to our parish the gift of a pipe organ and it is the perfect gift on the perfect day, the Day of Pentecost.  A pipe organ is like having a band and an orchestra within the various cabinets which house the pipes.
  The Day of Pentecost is the Day of the Holy Spirit and this day is also the birth of the church.  What started with Jesus of Nazareth within the Judaism of Palestine became the church which began to reach throughout the world and the early Christian expositors had to account for the widespread success of the message of Jesus to people of every language.  In the Hebrew Scriptures the polyglot peoples of the world were explained as a curse of God to wreak havoc on the people of Babel who had been united with one language to overthrow God.  The story of Babel is that ancient explanation for many languages; God punished and scattered people into many language groups.
  But the Day of Pentecost is a revisiting of the story of Babel.  It is a day of shouting "viva la difference."  Long live diversity.  But now diversity is not interpreted as a curse.  The Day of Pentecost is a day of a new understanding of the true universality of God and the ability to translate God into the experience and language of each and every person.  God should be the most relevant and the most accessible Being to everyone.
  What has happened in the history of humanity is that groups of people take the blessing of God and how that blessing has come to them and then they pretend that they can make God accessible only through their own religious regulations and practices.  And this can leave many people feeling as though the Great and accessible God is not available to them.  The way in which religion is often practiced seems to be about building barriers around God creating lots of hoops for people to jump through to tell them how they can have something which they already have, namely God's loving presence.
  We celebrate today the gift of a pipe organ and a pipe organ is perhaps a most perfect metaphor for the Feast of Pentecost.
  A pipe organ is driven by moving air.  It is generated by a blower.  The pressurized air in the chests of an organ allows each pipe to blow like a whistle.  Each whistles has a different length and shape and air release spaces which form the unique sound of each pipe.  In a pipe organ there is one source of air but there are many resulting sounds which come from that air.  And when the sounds are blended and arranged they can create the aesthetic event of music.
  The Holy Spirit is the creative Breath and Wind of God's omnipresence.  The ancients observed that Breath is the sign of human life.  Breath cannot be seen but the effects can be known in the life of a person.  The ancients also observed the great external breath of the world, the presence of Wind.  Wind can erode and shape and propel ships.  Wind is a force of nature and it is not seen but its effects are unavoidable.  So in the ancient creation story we are told that the Spirit of God moved over the void and created and animated and gave life.  But this great Wind and Breath differentiated itself into the vast diversity which was known in creation.
  The great Spirit of God's unseen presence has been known by people in many ways.  The biblical tradition is a history of how people have come to acknowledge how God's Spirit has become evident to them in their time and place.
  What happened in the aftermath of Jesus Christ is that an understanding of God became perpetuated as one who could be translated as the Good News of love, justice and forgiveness into the language of each and every person.
  In the metaphor of the pipe organ, it as if God is the composer of a great and wonderful and endless piece of music.  And Jesus is God playing this music with the pipe organ of creation, and the Holy Spirit is the one wind and energy which sounds through all of the diverse pipes with incredible beauty because of the blending and juxtaposition of all of the different sounds.
  In this pipe organ metaphor, it would seem as though the pipes of the organ are just dead lifeless things.  But sometimes a pipe can seem to have a mind of its own.  A pipe organ cipher is when a pipe makes a squeaky sound and it is stuck on that squeaky sound and stands out as such. This is not fun for an organist become the organist has to locate the pipe to get it unstuck.
  In this metaphor, you and I as individual pipes in this great creative music effort of God, have freedom to shape our experience so that the life of God can sound through us in beautiful ways, sometimes as soloists and sometimes in harmony.  In our prayer and our worship we are trying to adjust our lives to the flow of God's Spirit through us so that we can do beautiful things for God in the ministry of love and justice to which we are called.
  On this Day of Pentecost I need to remember that I am not the only pipe in God's pipe organ.  A single pipe would be just one note and pitch and it would be like a boring whistle.  The Day of Pentecost is a day of celebrating the oneness of God's Spirit in the diversity of expression through all people.  A basic sound of each person comes through language and language is the basic proof that people were made to be together.  The fact that the one Spirit can make Jesus Christ known in all of the languages is proof of God's accessibility and we celebrate God's accessibility through diversity today.
  Good music comes through the blending of diversity.  The little switches on the pipe organ are called stops.  These stops blend together various divisions of pipes to create all of the different styles of music which can be used to present a musical composition.  You have heard phrase, "Pulling out all of the stops?"  This is when an organist literally has all of the pipe divisions playing and if all pipes were playing at once it is quite a cacophonous rumble. In our lives we need to know how and when to "pipe down."  We need to observe rests in music and we need to observe rests in our lives as a way of allowing others to know that they have a welcome place in the music which God is trying to create with all of us.
  Today we celebrate the presence of God as Holy Spirit in our world.  God as Holy Spirit is the sustaining breath of life.  And let us remember that one of our most important functions in life is to be available to the Holy Spirit to be a place of prayer.  A pipe in a pipe organ is full of life when blown air is forced through it.  Prayer through us is one of the chief works of the Holy Spirit.
  St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans writes that the Spirit is deep within us praying through us with deep groans.  Sometimes we can misinterpret the deep groans of our lives as depression or as sad moods.  Have you ever considered the deep groans of your life as the Spirit of God praying through you?
  So the Spirit of God can come in ecstatic joy but Spirit of God can be known in deep groans of intercession.  And these groans represent the identity which God takes with the deep deep suffering present in a world so full of the freedom of the diversity of so many things happening together at the same time.
  Each pipe has a place within a pipe organ.  You and I and everyone else has a place within the great pipe organ of God.  Let us on this Day of Pentecost endeavor to make ourselves available to God's Spirit to express the specific ministry which God gives to us.  Let us appreciate the diversity of the other pipes within the great pipe organ of God's family.  And let us learn to be played by God with God's composition as played by the divine organist, Jesus Christ.  Amen.