GREETINGS TO THE HOLY PEOPLE OF GOD,
This Sunday we celebrate Holy Trinity and welcome Pastor Dirk Stadtlander who will preach and lead our worship service. Please extend a warm CTK welcome.
Our doctrine and belief in the Holy Trinity is difficult to explain and we have some different tools to help us like the Apostles' Creed. It is a teaching tool for what Christians believe about God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The creed also serves as a prayer and a way for the community to carry one another in faith. In worship we both confess and proclaim the Apostles’ Creed.
Each article of the creed functions as a job description of one of the three persons of the united Godhead. It is particularly important to note that the third article describes the Spirit's ongoing work of bringing creation out of chaos. What would the church, the community, forgiveness, or resurrection be without the Spirit? Impossible, right? We need the power of the Holy Spirit blowing through us to live in relationships that embody community, forgiveness, and resurrection.
Another tool to help us live with the complexity of the Trinity is music. The hymn "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty!" (ELW 413), when sung to the traditional tune Nicaea, is considered metrically irregular. This means the syllable breakdown for the song cannot be swapped easily (if at all) with other tunes. It also makes it difficult to pair Nicaea with other texts. Perhaps there is something to say about this very familiar hymn tune and the holy Trinity—there are no substitutes for either.
Holy Trinity is a good day to explore the many and various ways God is at work in the world, from the beginning of time through to the present. Look for and share your way of explaining or thinking about the Holy Trinity as we practice communicating with each other so that we can share with our community and the world.
Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,
Pastor Connie Spitzack
