Proverbs 8.1-4, 22-31; Romans 5.1-5; John 16.12-15

When there was nothing
There was I
Lighting volcanoes
Stretching the sky
Sketching the veins of an acorn leaf
Painting the gloss on the tiger’s teeth

When there was nothing
I was there
Buffing the buffalo
Grooming the bear
Curling the cobra in his coiled-up cave
Rippling the river and frothing the wave

When there was nothing
There was Me
Expanding the girth
Of the Redwood tree
Molding the moon whilst counting the bugs
And no matter if you’re squeamish
But I even made the slug

When there was nothing
Just I AM
Before I’d even offered you
My punctured lamb
I juggled all the planets
Then equipped the frog
With the energetic means
To leap from log to bog

When there was nothing
There was I
When there was nothing
I was there
When there was nothing
There were always Three
Spirit
Son
And Me

That poem by Stewart Henderson reminds us that the Trinity of God has existed long before the doctrine of the Trinity ever existed.

Trinity Sunday is an odd church festival. It’s the only one in the year when we don’t celebrate a specific event, such as Easter or Pentecost, or what a specific person has done, such as we do on saints’ days. It’s a day when we think about who God is, not what God has done.

There is no developed doctrine of the Trinity in the Bible. All three Persons are mentioned, all three Persons play a part, but nowhere is it all neatly explained.

There’s some mystery there about how exactly the three fit together. Trying to explain God is a task that we just cannot really do. God is a mystery. We have passages such as in today’s Gospel where it is made clear that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are connected, but nowhere is there a detailed understanding of how it all works.

We’re not good at mystery. We want everything explained away all the time. But think about this: if you were to try and explain your husband or wife, your mother or father or sister or brother or best friend, you would really struggle to do it. You’d be able to describe a bit what they were like, but would never really be able to explain the essence of what makes them the person they are.

The only way someone else can know what our husband, wife, mother, sister etc is like is for them to experience life with them for themselves.

It’s the same with God. We can describe in part what we know about God, but we can’t explain the mystery. We need to learn to be happy with living with mystery. St Paul said in 1 Corinthians, “Now we see in a mirror darkly, then we shall see face to face, now we know in part, then we will know fully.”

In the same way, as we can only really know a person when we have experienced spending time with them, the Trinity and its mystery can only mean something for those who experience God’s life for themselves.

As we devote more of our lives to God, the mystery will seem clearer, and, in a paradoxical way, it will also become more profound.

At the heart of that mystery is God living in community. God calls us to be part of that community. We are drawn in to the centre of the Godhead through our relationship with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The doctrine of the Trinity took many years to develop, but its starting-point was how people had experienced God. God was one, and yet God was experienced as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. How does this all work?

The important point to be made about the Trinity is that God exists in community. The totality of God requires Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three equal beings, the identity of each only complete when seen in relation to the other two. Even in the Old Testament we see God in three forms - Wisdom, Word and Spirit.

Each person of the Trinity cannot exist alone for without the other two it is not complete. The relationships within the Trinity are often referred to as a dance, something dynamic and ever-changing, not static. And we are called to be part of this dance.

This requires us to reflect on how we view God. A dance is something dynamic and changing, people who live in relationship with one another cannot but grow and develop as a result of their being in relationship.

So does the same happen with God? Is God ever-changing? How does this fit in with our Sunday-school image of God as the one who never changes, the rock? Big questions to ponder.

In a similar way, we who are made in the image of God are not complete unless we live in relationship with God and with each other. Think of Jesus’s teaching - “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbour as yourself.”

We are called to live in community with God and with each other. You cannot be a Christian alone, since the essence of being a Christian is recognising oneself as part of the Body of Christ - a united body, not a pile of disconnected bones.

And at the heart of this is that we are called to live in community with those who are different from us. It’s no accident that St Paul describes the Church as a body made up of different members.

So the question I want us to ask ourselves today is what does this living in community with God and with others mean for us today. What does it mean for the congregation of this church? And what does it mean for our benefice?

And for us as members of the North Buntingford Group (and if you don’t know what that is, come and ask me afterwards), the deanery, the diocese, the Anglican Communion?

Obviously how we relate to some of these communities differs from how we relate to others of them, but we need to recognise that we are members of all these bodies.

(Incidentally - and this is an aside - please do read the diocesan newsletter See Round. Each month we pay for copies - at the end of every month, sadly I put about 80 per cent of them in the recycling - unread. It’s a chance to discover what our bishops think is important, what other parishes around the diocese are doing, and what the diocese itself is focusing on at any particular time.)

As I was reflecting on the Trinity, I was struck by how our benefice is a little like the Trinity - we are three in one, and one in three. Now I know this analogy is a limited, as all analogies are, and doesn’t take account of Buckland church or the smaller communities, but if we concentrate on our three main centres of worship, I hope you get what I mean.

And yet, our unity is somewhat lacking. We’re good at being three, but not so good at being one. Unsurprisingly people find their main identity within their own village community and feel that they belong most to their own village church. But we have been called to live in the community of the benefice.

That means welcoming those from other parishes into our churches for services and at other times. That means being willing to travel to another church for worship, if there is no worship in your own church one Sunday, and looking out for people who don’t have their own transport and might like a lift. That means supporting one another’s fund-raising events, and perhaps in the future, doing specific things together as a benefice.

Some people are good at doing this already, but some obviously find it much harder. I’m reflecting hard at the moment about how we can be more united, what we can do to ensure that we become good at being one as well as three. So, if you’ve any good ideas, let me know.

I think more than anything being one means getting to know people from the other churches and treating them as friends, for if we can’t do that, then we will never be in community with one another. It means recognising that we are the Body of Christ together in our villages. Once we see people from the other villages as friends, then doing things together won’t seem so difficult.

If we live in community, the Trinity of Barkway, Barley and Reed churches, then we will be reflecting the life of God, who exists in community, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Romans 5.1-5; John 16.12-15

Today is Trinity Sunday. Unlike most festival days in the church, Trinity Sunday doesn’t celebrate something that happened; it’s not remembering an event. It’s a day when we remember not what someone has done, not what God has done, but a day when we think about what God is like.

In a few moments I will baptise Hector, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That is what we mean by the Trinity - the fact that God, though One, is also Three.

It’s a difficult concept to get our heads around, and through the ages, people have come up with many different ideas for explaining what we mean - the shamrock, which has three parts but is one leaf; water which has three different forms - steam, liquid and ice - but they are the same thing; a triangle, which is only a triangle, if it has three corners and sides.

But when it comes down to it, all these illustrations are incomplete. And it’s not really surprising that this is so. The doctrine of the Trinity is less an explanation of God - that’s something we as humans are never really going to be able to do - and more a description of what we know about God that is true.

Think about this: if you were to try and explain your husband or wife, your mother or father or sister or brother or best friend, you would really struggle to do it. You’d be able to describe a bit what they were like, but would never really be able to explain the essence of what makes them the person they are.

The only way someone else can know what our husband, wife, mother, sister etc is like is for them to experience life with them for themselves.

It’s the same with God. We can describe in part what we know about God, but we can’t explain the mystery. We need to learn to be happy with living with mystery. St Paul said in the first letter to the Corinthians, “Now we see in a mirror darkly, then we shall see face to face, now we know in part, then we will know fully.”

In the same way, as we can only really know a person when we have experienced spending time with them, the Trinity and its mystery can only mean something for those who experience God’s life for themselves.

As we devote more of our lives to God, the mystery will seem clearer, and, in a paradoxical way, it will also become more profound.

At the heart of that mystery is God living in community. God calls us to be part of that community. We are drawn in to the centre of the Godhead through our relationship with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We are drawn into that community by the love of God. That love of God that we are acknowledging today in Hector’s baptism.

Of course, he is too young to say for himself that he wants to be a Christian, so what we are acknowledging today is that God accepts him, even now, when he can’t really return that acceptance.

God’s love for us is not determined by our response. However we respond God will keep loving us. Of course, God desires that we come to love him too, but at the heart of baptism is the sense that God’s love is not dependent on our response.

Hector’s parents and godparents are making promises on his behalf that he will, we hope and pray, make for himself when he is older.

But we as a church are also doing something. A few moments ago, we declared that we would welcome Hector into our midst and uphold him in his new life in Christ.

Just as God lives in community, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we too are called to live in community. We are made in God’s image, the Bible tells us. That means that we are called not to live alone, but to live in community. Part of baptism is welcoming Hector into this community.

Through the community of Christians is one important way that Hector will be able to experience life with God for himself. When we welcome him we must ensure that the words we say are not empty words, but that they are carried through in action. We all have a responsibility to help Hector come to know what it is to experience the life of God for himself.

We can do this through our prayers for him, through welcoming him as part of our worshipping community, through supporting his parents Jo and Ali as they bring him up, in helping them to teach him about what it means to be loved by God and to be part of a worshipping community.

And we can support Hector and each other by celebrating together today what it means for each one of us to be loved by God as God’s precious children. That is at the heart of the Gospel message, and that is something truly worth celebrating, for it gives worth and value to each one of us, in this world and in the world to come.

Sunday 3rd June - Trinity Sunday
9.00 a.m. Parish Communion, St Mary’s, Reed
10.30 a.m. Parish Communion with baptism of Hector Wallace and Junior Church, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley
6.00 p.m. BCP Evensong, St Mary Magdalene, Barkway

Monday 4th June
8.15 a.m. Morning Prayer, St Mary Magdalene, Barkway
7.45 p.m. Barkway VCC, Manor Farm

Tuesday 5th June
No Morning Prayer

Wednesday 6th June
8.15 a.m Morning Prayer, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley

Thursday 7th June
No Morning Prayer
8.00 p.m. Friends of Barkway Church committee meeting, The Old Post Office, Barkway

Friday 8th June
 
Saturday 9th June
9.00 a.m Morning Prayer, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley

Sunday 10th June - Trinity 1
10.30 a.m. United Benefice Sung Eucharist, St Mary Magdalene, Barkway, with the Revd Canon Michael Sansom
7.30 p.m. Simply Reeds, Concert at St Mary’s, Reed, in aid of church funds

Monday 11th June
No Morning Prayer
7.00 p.m. Barley Church Times study group, The Manor

Tuesday 12th June
No Morning Prayer

Wednesday 13th June
8.15 a.m Morning Prayer, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley

Thursday 14th June
8.15 a.m. Morning Prayer, St Mary’s, Reed

Friday 15th June

Saturdaay 16th June
9.00 a.m Morning Prayer, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley
11.00 a.m. Baptism of Charlie King, St Mary’s, Reed

Sunday 17th June - Trinity 2/Father’s Day
9.00 a.m. Parish Communion, St Mary Magdalene, Barkway
10.30 a.m. Parish Communion, St Mary’s, Reed
2.00 p.m. Friends of Barkway Church Open Gardens (until 6.00 p.m.)
5.00 p.m. All-age worship for Father’s Day, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley

THE COMING MONTH
(Morning Prayer usually takes place each day: Monday and Tuesday in Barkway; Wednesday and Saturday in Barley and Thursday in Reed)

Monday 18th June
7.30 p.m. Barley PCC mission sub-group meeting, Willetts, Barley

Wednesday 20th June
8.00 p.m. Deanery Chapter, St Mary’s Aspenden
8.00 p.m. North Buntingford Prayer Group, High Bank, Reed

Thursday 21st June
5.00 p.m. Wedding Rehearsal, St Mary’s, Reed

Saturday 23rd June
3.00 p.m. Marriage of John Newman and Penny Baxter, St Mary’s, Reed

Sunday 24th June - Trinity 3
9.00 a.m. Parish Communion, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley
10.30 a.m. Parish Communion with baptism of Mitchell Winkworth and Junior Church,St Mary Magdalene, Barkway
2.30 p.m. Burma Star service, St Mary Magdalene, Barkway

Monday 25th June
8.00 p.m. Deanery Synod

Thursday 28th June
Evening Diocesan Stewardship Adviser to Barkway

Saturday 30th June
1.30 p.m. Blessing of Marriage, James Rounds and Laura Hadwin, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley

Sunday 1st July - Trinity 4
9.00 a.m. Parish Communion (said), St Mary’s, Reed
10.30 a.m. Parish Communion and Juniopr Church, St Margaret of Antioch, Barley
3.00 p.m. Baptism of Harper Rand, St Mary’s, Reed
6.00 p.m. BCP Evensong, St Mary Magdalene, Barkway

Monday 2nd July
8.00 p.m. Barkway VA First School Governors’ meeting

Wednesday 4th July
10.30 a.m. Holy Communion,, Margaret House
7.30 p.m. Barley VC First School Governors’ meeting