Worship Guide May 30, 2021 | 10:00 AM Trinity Sunday PREPARING
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Worship Guide May 30, 2021 | 10:00 AM Trinity Sunday PREPARING FOR GOD’S WORD PRELUDE Paul Campbell CHIMING OF THE HOUR This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it! LIFE OF THE CHURCH Rev. David Jones Outreach Summer Lunch Program Begins this Tuesday! Outreach Ministry is working with Bridging the Gap and Coweta School System to help feed the children of Coweta County this summer. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 10:00 am -12:30 pm, volunteers will meet at the Barrow Hall entrance, travel as a group to the support school, pick up prepared food then to distribute in the assigned area. Each day of service, we will need 3-4 people who can assist with distribution. Go to link https://bit.ly/3uqsVPS to sign up to help! See Melanie Smith or Tyler Brock for details. Church Workdays | June 4 & 5 | 9:00 am Help wanted! The playground equipment needs staining, there is some pressure washing to be done and the Salbide-side church windows need scraping and repainting. Tools and lunch provided. Please contact John McGee to volunteer. Covid Restrictions Lifted Beginning June 6 We are happy to announce that beginning June 6, masks will be optional for in person worship. We will preregistration for worship attendance will cease, as will contact tracing and assigned seating for worship. Thanksgiving God blesses us generously and from this abundance, we respond by giving in appreciation to the mission and operation of the church. Over the past year, NPC has relied upon the direction of the Reopening Task Force to guide our efforts to continue worshipping. They have been faithful in their work and for that, we have remained connected and present in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. We thank the Task Force for their work to keep Newnan Presbyterian Church healthy, vibrant, and engaging. OPENING PRAYER HYMN 1 Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty!, vv. 1 & 2 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! 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. CALL TO CONFESSION Let us confess our sins to the One who gives life eternally. PRAYER OF CONFESSION Holy God, we know that you are always there to lead us, yet we somehow lose our way and fall back into fear. We confess that we have stumbled, and we recognize our need for you to lift us up and help us start again. Forgive us our failings, restore us to strength, and reconcile us with you, ourselves, and each other, through the power of Christ and the gift of your Spirit… We keep a moment of silence for personal confession. ASSURANCE OF PARDON. Sisters and brothers, hear the good news: We did not receive the spirit of slavery, but rather the spirit of adoption. Your guilt has departed; your sin is blotted out, for you are God’s beloved children—forgiven, loved, and free. Thanks be to God! RECEIVING THE PEACE Scripture begins with the story of our God, the creator, who wove the earth and all life into being. In the New Testament, God’s eternally begotten son, Jesus, walked alongside humanity and taught faithful living. In the time of the early church, God’s Spirit called leaders and led them into the world to spread peace. Scripture proclaims the community of the three-in-one God and how the love of the Holy Three washed over the world. Transformed by that love, let us show signs of peace with all those we encounter. May the peace of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit be with you! And also with you. GLORIA 616, Our God Is an Awesome God, sing twice Our God is an awesome God who reigns from heaven above with wisdom, power, and love; our God is an awesome God! TIME FOR YOUNG DISCIPLES Gwyn Kozma LISTENING TO GOD’S WORD PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION Come, Holy Spirit, giver of life; breathe into us that we may hear a word of truth this day. Draw us into communion, enable us to love, conspire to make us one with you for the world you so deeply love. Amen. GOSPEL READING | John 3:1-17 | Nicodemus Visits Jesus Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. 2 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.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” 4 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?” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ 8 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.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? 11 “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. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 “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. 17 “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. SERMON Jesus Saves Today is Trinity Sunday. Each year on the Sunday following Pentecost, we celebrate the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity says that God is three distinct persons within one unique nature. God the Creator, God the Redeemer, and God the Sustainer are three “who’s” all within the same “what.” The unique persons of God are identified by their roles in our faith, yet all three distinctions are still of the same substance. On an interesting historical note, St. Nicholas - the very same inspiration for Santa Claus slapped Arius at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE over just how the Trinity doctrine worked. Arius believed that the three persons of the Trinity were of different substances from another, while jolly old St. Nick represented the majority view. Arius was expelled from the council and labeled a heretic, and St. Nick went on to legendary sleigh riding status. A very famous phrase emerged from this encounter with which you may be familiar - “One iota of difference.” Iota is a Greek letter, and it is the difference that separated St. Nick from Arius. The word homoousius in Greek means the same substance, while homoiousius means a different substance. That word basically caused a fistfight that resulted in you and me and most of Western Christianity worshiping God as the Holy Trinity. I tell you all of that because I think it’s interesting. But honestly, the vital thing to take away about Trinity Sunday is that we understand God differently based on how God is portrayed in the New Testament. And as the founders of our belief system worked to make sense of what they were reading, the Holy Trinity was their best (and yet still limited) attempt at explaining how God works. Any explanation, of course, falls short of the true nature of God, which, not being God, we will never be fully able to comprehend. Comprehension is a historically tricky thing for faithful people. Whether you are trying to explain the Holy Trinity, or understand why bad things might happen to good people, or in the case of our friend Nicodemus, what is Jesus trying to teach us about God? Whatever we - as people of faith - are seeking to know, that knowledge of God, of eternity, of good and evil - it all seems just outside of our intellectual grasp. Perhaps this is why St. Nick punched Arius - because he was so frustrated trying to understand why they were really arguing. Nicodemus comes to visit Jesus at night because he is compelled to understand what Jesus is trying to do. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s gospel, Jesus overturns the tables in the temple in the same week he is arrested and crucified. In John’s gospel, however, it happens in chapter 2, just before this story with Nicodemus.