from Rev Wes Hampton

Dear Friends,

We know the stories we associate with Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and most other occasions in the Church’s calendar.  If I asked you to suggest a passage from the bible to go with any one of them, you would have no difficulty.  If we turn to Aldersgate Sunday or the feast of a saint or Harvest Festival, we should probably have an idea of where to begin.  Today, however, is Trinity Sunday, and any attempt to pick a reading that explains this way of understanding the nature of God will not be successful.  Yes, there are verses that speak of God in a three-fold manner, but on their own none of them tells us why we refer to God in this way, or how we have come to do so.

Trinity Sunday invites us, therefore, not to turn to one individual passage, but to see how people experienced God throughout its pages.  Jesus’ disciples learnt from childhood that there is only one God who created the world, but their experience of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit led them to new understandings.  Over the years, the implications of these experiences have been considered, and have sparked debate and creed.

All sorts of ways of speaking about God were designated as heresy in the Early Church because their attempt to explain God avoided one problem by creating another.  Many analogies commonly used today to express the Trinity fall into one or more of the problems identified hundreds of years ago.  So, should we play safe, and just not speak about God at all?

Of course not!  The God who has communicated with his creation throughout history, who shared human life at a point in time, and who empowers his people in the present, is here for all people, and has given us the task of making him known.  Perhaps we need to have the courage to share what God is like for us.  So, how do you see God?

Wes

from Chris Rooke-Matthews

While I was working in a school for children with a variety of special needs, one of the frequent conversations was to encourage the pupils to continue to try their best, and not give up when the first response to a difficult task was ‘I can’t do that!’  The alternative was to encourage by helping them not to give up, but to change this to ‘I can’t do that yet!’

In a previous reflection, over a year ago, I wrote about the Covenant prayer, saying: I wonder what I will be asked to do or forgo in the coming year?

Little did I know then that I would face health issues that prevented me from driving, affected both health and stamina, and limited my ability to take part in activities that I had previously enjoyed and looked forward to.

However, looking back, although my options are at times limited, I have enjoyed the blessings of spending time with family and friends, and continuing to share special moments with others.

Perhaps the message I have been given is: Think positively, looking for opportunities opening up in spite of setbacks, and continue to change your thoughts from I can’t do that, to I can’t do that yet!

from Rev Wes Hampton

Dear Friends,

King Charles has opened the new session of parliament, amid all the accompanying ceremony and pageantry.  While the words of the King’s Speech and the observance of tradition all give the impression that His Majesty is in charge, we all know that what has been delivered is really the government’s plan for the coming months, and that the king is required to read what is given to him.

All this comes just a week after the elections to local councils, and in Scotland and Wales to the national parliaments.  In such elections, we are in collective charge, as we decide who should be given the privilege and responsibility of representing us.  In contrast to all the ‘pomp and circumstance’ of the state opening of parliament, others have to bend to our will expressed in the silence of the voting booth.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus invited people to decide who should be in charge, as he announced “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  The first Christians proclaimed as a statement of faith “Jesus is Lord!”  By implication, they were shouting that Caesar is not Lord.  We may very rarely feel that we need to stand up for our faith by defying the temporal authorities today, but we do need to know where our allegiance lies.

Most importantly, Christ’s resurrection demonstrates that Death is not in charge, and that the powers that lead to hopelessness are inferior to those that lead to life as life is meant to be.  As we wait in the period between Christ’s Ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we recall the power that enabled, and enables, Christ’s followers to show the world that the reign of which Jesus spoke is a reality in our lives.

In this season of Easter, when we ask “Who is in charge?” it is enough to reply “Alleluia, Christ is risen: he is risen indeed, Alleluia!”

Wes

from John Williams

I do like Isaiah chapter 40.  In the 6^th Century BC, God’s people were in exile in Babylon and the prophet Isaiah was trying to encourage them and prepare them to return to their own land.  They were in the midst of a pagan culture, maybe even tempted to worship foreign gods as idols.  Maybe they had even forgotten who their God was.  In this chapter the prophet was giving them a message of hope.  (Can you read the words “Comfort ye my people” without the music of Handel’s Messiah running through your head?)  His message was based on his realisation of God’s power and greatness.  Supremely for Isaiah their god was the Incomparable God.  Isaiah reminds the people of this by describing their God.

He was the Lord of creation and so much greater than nature in all of its wonder and immensity.  He was supreme among the nations and in control of powerful rulers.  He was a God who was able to work through history – how relevant this thought is today with all the upheavals in the Middle East.  He even commanded the comings and goings of the stars themselves and even knew how many stars there were and called each one by name!

This was their God and this is our God.  Isaiah ends the chapter by reminding them, and us, that for all his greatness and power, God is not remote.  He helps us all, whether we are rising to the heights or plodding along in our everyday lives.  And we, 2600 years later, have more; for we have seen God in Jesus Christ; who is risen and is alive today, helping us wherever we are and whatever situation we are in.

John Williams