Trinity Sunday can seem a bit dry after the excitement of Pentecost but it helps us to explore how we live out the gift of the Spirit which invites us into deeper union with both God and one another.  Our first reading assures us of our relationship with God whilst the gospel reading focuses on what this means for our relationship with others.

Isaiah 40:12-17, 27-31 describes a God who is both transcendent, unknowable and unlike us:

“who has measured the waters of the sea in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span”. 

A God who is more powerful and greater than any human power:

 “all nations are as nothing to him”.

Yet also a God who is intimate and personal, who knows our ways and our fears, who longs to care for us: strengthening the weary and raising up the powerless.

In Matthew 28:16-20 Jesus opens this relationship with God to all humanity: we, who are now bearers of the Spirit, are sent into unite “all nations” bringing them into communion with both God and one another:

 “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

We are no longer mere guests at God’s table, we are also hosts who welcome those God sends.

Pentecost marks the start of something radically new in the story of our salvation and so both of our readings echo the story of the very beginning:

Acts 2:1-21 echoes the Spirit moving over the waters of creation “and suddenly there came … the rush of a violent wind.”

Whilst in  John 20:19-23, Jesus breathes on the disciples in an echo of God breathing life into the very first creatures of dust and earth.

In general though, human beings are fearful of change.  Change involves letting go and moving into the unknown.  Soo it is not surprising that our readings also both speak of fear and bewilderment: In John the disciples are huddled behind locked doors because they are afraid. In Acts 2:1-21 the arrival of the Holy Spirit is something sudden and violent.

Yet the readings have something else in common, each begins with the disciples gathered together.  Whether they are experiencing fear, bewilderment or joy, they are experiencing it as a community.  

God continues to offer us new beginnings, the Spirit is constantly at work bringing fresh order out of the disorder of our lives and our world.  Whether we find these new beginnings thrilling or terrifying, the important thing is that we explore them together, for it is together that we are sent out to take the gifts of the Spirit to a world in need to renewal.

In the time after the Resurrection and before the Ascension our Gospel readings this year focus on Jesus reassuring the disciples: where will they find God without him? how will they know which way to follow? Today, in John 14:15-21, Jesus again explains that God is present there in and among them; that were there is community, dwelling together in love, there God will be also.  Paul echoes this in Acts 17:22-31 as he stands in the public square before the statues of every God: “God does not live in shrines made by human hands” for “in him we live and move and have our being.”  Paul’s message is universal, we all bear God’s imprint, for “he made all nations” and we are all his offspring. Where we see the works of love offered to all, there we see God.    

The work of love has no limits but we do. Jesus calls us not rely on own strength but to be drawn into closer relationship with one another and God, so that the gift of love may be shared among us.  As we grow into beloved community, able to both give and receive, we find ourselves resourced for the work God gives us.   

This Sunday also marks the beginning of Christian Aid Week.  This year the focus is on families who are being helped to grow their own food in a crowded informal settlement outside Nairobi. Supporting Christian Aid is one way in which we can share God's love in practical action to help our neighbours in deprived parts of God's world.

It is all very well Jesus telling us (as he does in John 14:1-10) not to be troubled or afraid but our lives are full of doubt and uncertainty and we all struggle knowing which way to go.  So we can sympathise with Philip who longs for certainty, for something concrete, when he begs Jesus to just “show us the father”. 

Jesus is exasperated: “have I been with you all this time and still you do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the father.”  Do you still not get it?  No! we don’t.  We look for something outside of ourselves when all the time God is revealing Godself within us and within each other.

God, faith, the meaning of life, all of this can only be found by living it.  Jesus goes on: “if you do not believe [because of me] then believe me because of the works themselves”.  Are our actions and choices, our communities and relationships, bearing fruit? Where can we see human flourishing? What is leading to justice, peace, healing and love? For wherever we see these things there we will find God.

Jesus asks us not to seek certainty but instead to trust, to trust that God chose us and through us will do “greater works than these”.  When our hearts our troubled and our way is not clear, let us look to whatever is true, honourable, just and pure … and the God of peace will be with us.   

It’s Good Shepherd Sunday: this year’s gospel, John 10:1-10, focuses, not just on the sheep and the shepherds but on the sheep fold and, in particular, the gate to the fold.   We are used to hearing the sheep and shepherd stories: we understand that God promises to care for us as a shepherd cares for her flock and that we are also called to be shepherds of God’s people, caring for others. When Jesus calls himself the sheep gate, though, things get trickier. Gates open both ways: they open and close, they allow for the sheep to go in and go out.  The church has often been a closed a gate, keeping out those who might harm the sheep, keeping the sheep safe.  But the gate in this morning’s reading seems to be open continually, allowing the sheep in and out.  Although we are called to be both sheep and shepherds, I’m not sure that we are called to be the gate; this is God’s job, not ours.  God is the one who gets to decide who comes in, not us, as the reading from Acts 2:42-47, reminds us: “everyday the Lord added to their number”.  Our job is to embrace all whom God sends whomever they may be.      

The life of the risen Christ takes root in us slowly. In our readings today we hear how it impacted those who first heard it. In Acts, 2:14a, 36-41, there is sorrow and regret. Peter explains that what

is required is the desire to change, to repent, to turn around and be prepared to start again. Yet there is something that must come before this: In Luke 24:13-35, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, must first voice their disappointment, their crushed hopes “we had hoped”, they say “that he was the one to redeem Israel”. It only when they can let go of their own hopes that they are ready to receive the altogether larger, all encompassing hope that Jesus offers them, not just for their own people, but for all God’s children.

Jesus has done his job and now the task of living the resurrection is handed over to us. We are not expected to do this on our own: both of today’s readings focus on the gift of the Holy Spirit that the risen Christ sends us. For Peter, Acts 2:14a, 22-32, this is a dramatic and powerful gift: he recalls the prophet Joel promising that the spirit will be poured out on all people: old and young, men and women, slave and free. This gift allows us to dream new dreams and envisage a new future for all god’s people. For the disciples, gathered together in fear after Christ’s death, John 20:19-31, the receipt of this gift is an altogether more gentle affair. Christ breathes the spirit on them. It begins with assuring us that we are forgiven; that the worst we can do does not have to be the last word; that even places of despair and hopelessness can be places of redemption and renewal.

Family Workshop at 10am when we make hot cross buns together and build the Easter Garden.

Stations of the Cross at 12 noon when we follow Christ’s journey to the cross. 

Today we have two stories of resurrection. Both foreshadow “The Resurrection” but they are really concerned about what resurrection means for us. 

In Ezekiel 37:1-14, the dry bones represent “whole house of Israel”, a community which is not literally dead but spiritually dead: “they say, “Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost”.   

This despair and loss of trust in both God and the future is also what the disciples feel when Lazarus dies in John 11:1-45.  “Lord it has been four days” they cry.  Three days represent hope, over three days means all hope is lost. 

Here again, resurrection: hope, belief in and a vision for the future is something received and lived out in community.  Just as God breathes life into the whole of the house of Israel, Lazarus can only be raised to new life by the community working together to “unbind him and set him free”. 

In contrast to all of the other resurrection stories in Scripture, Lazarus is given a choice; Christ calls to him and he must choose whether to respond or to remain in the tomb. 

In a time when trust and hope are being eroded we are given the same choice.  Will we risk leaving the safe isolation of the tomb and put ourselves into God’s hands but also into each other’s, so that, together, we might live out the hope of the resurrection?

On Mothering Sunday, we give thanks for our Mother the church; we celebrate those who have mothered us; and we also reflect on our calling to mother those in need.  

To help us we are offered either the story of Moses or the story of Samuel.  In each story there is a child in need of mothering but the stories also reflect on how taking on the job of mothering is a necessary part of our growth in faith and discipleship.  Mothering is hard work but it is also a gift. 

In 1 Samuel 1:20-28, Hannah (who is desperate to be a mother) hands her child over to Eli to raise.  It is Eli who needs the lessons that motherhood can teach.  Eli has done an appalling job at parenting both his own children and God’s people but here he is given another chance to learn and grow as Samuel learns and grows. 

In the gospel, John 19:25-27, Jesus gives his mother, Mary, the task of mothering the church, a family defined not by blood or birth but by love.  This is also our task: and, in the sometimes hard, sometimes frustrating work of creating, nurturing and loving, we discover that our understanding, mercy and compassion are expanded and that we are transformed more and more into the likeness of Christ.