The Scottish theologian Thomas F. Torrance has called the Trinity ‘the fundamental grammar of God’. The phrase reminds me that the Trinity is not just the way we talk about God. The Trinity is the way God is.

The one God is a community, composed of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the classic words of the Scriptures and creeds. The one God is a community of love – the Lover, the Beloved and the Love itself that they share (as described by Jurgen Moltmann). And the love that this divine community is within itself … is a love that overflows from itself, known by human beings like us in divine acts of creation, salvation and inspiration.

Last Sunday we explored how the first act of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was the creation of the Church, the drawing of women and men into community by which they could grow into the divine community that is God. This Sunday we will explore how the love that binds Christians together is by definition a love that also overflows, from the church into the lives of neighbours and nations.  The scriptural text for the sermon will be a passage that invokes all three ‘persons’ of the Trinity and describes the commission to mission – the Risen Lord saying to his friends ‘As the Father sent me, so I send you’, then breathing upon them the Holy Spirit (John 20:19-23).

We will be singing great hymns like ‘Thou whose almighty word’, ‘O Spirit of the living God’ and ‘Glory be to God the Father/Son/Spirit’, and the choir anthem will be Tchaikovsky’s ‘Cherubic Hymn’ with the well-known words ‘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’.

If you are in the area this Sunday, please join us. We would warmly welcome you. There is a nursery for infants and a programme for children during the service. There is ample free parking in the public surface lot just behind the church off Queen Street and on neighbouring streets (time of day restrictions are not enforced on Sundays).

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