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Good morning and welcome.

I am the Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of St Mary’s Cathedral here in the West End of Glasgow.

We are a diverse congregation from all over the world.

In the last few days we’ve had people worship in this building who come from all around the city but from further afield too: from Scotland’s far flung islands, from Wales, Sweden, Spain, Korea, England, Nigeria, Germany, Ghana, India and China.

We rejoice in being a diverse and inclusive community and we rejoice that each of us is made in the image and likeness of God.

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Our first hymn asks how we can sing the majesty of God?

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OPENING HYMN: HOW SHALL I SING THAT MAJESTY (Tune:Ìý Coe Fen)ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý

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KELVIN

Our deacon for this service is the Rev Dr Maggie McTernan.

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MAGGIE

This is a congregation that likes keeping its festivals and today we are keeping the Feast of the Holy Trinity. A celebration that delights and revels in the fact that we cannot easily explain how God is, who God is and what God is like. In keeping this festival though we acknowledge that we have known love through our encounter with God, whom we’ve met as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Our celebrant this morning is the Rev Canon Oliver Brewer-Lennon.

OLIVER

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ

ALL: Amen

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OLIVER ÌýCollect for purity

OLIVER: Almighty God,
ALL: to whom all hearts are open, all desires known,
and from whom no secrets are hidden:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,

and worthily magnify your holy name: through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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MAGGIE

God is love and we are God’s children.

There is no room for fear in love.

We love because God loved us first.

Let us confess our sins in penitence and faith.

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God our Father…

ALL: we confess to you and to our fellow members in the body of Christ that we have sinned in thought, word and deed, and in what we have failed to do. We are truly sorry. Forgive us our sins, and deliver us from the power of evil. For the sake of your Son who died for us, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

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OLIVER

God, who is both power and love, forgive you and free you from your sins, heal and strengthen you by the Holy Spirit and raise you to new life in Jesus Christ our Lord. ALL: Amen.

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GLORIA: Glory be to God in heavenÌý (Alexander Crawford) Tune:Ìý Abbot’s Leigh

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OLIVER – COLLECT

Father, we praise you:
through your Word and Holy Spirit you created all things.
You reveal your salvation in all the world by sending to us Jesus Christ,
the Word made flesh.
Through your Holy Spirit you give us a share in your life and love.
Fill us with the vision of your glory,
that we may always serve and praise you, Father, Son

and Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
ALL: AmenÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý

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PSALM 8: O Lord our LordÌý (John L Bell) Tune: Tramps and Hawkers

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MAGGIE Gospel reading – John 16.12-16ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý

MAGGIE:Ìý Alleluia! Alleluia! Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John.

ALL: Glory to Christ our Saviour.

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MAGGIE: Jesus said, ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

Give thanks to the Lord for his glorious Gospel.

ALL: Praise to Christ our Lord.

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KELVIN – SERMON

In the name of God who loves us and loves us and loves us. Amen.

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During the long months of lockdown that Glasgow lived through during the time since the pandemic began, encouraged by the injunctions to get out for an hour a day for exercise, I started walking up to the local canal where a fabulous urban nature reserve had recently been inaugurated.

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Whilst all the city was still below me, I often found myself gazing out beyond the streets and the buildings towards the hills and the mountains.

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The bold claim of Christianity is that the same God whose creative force led to the mountains and the hills, the seas and the skies, is interested, passionately interested in every human soul. Even interested, no, especially interested in those who are isolated and those who need to know love most.

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The vastness of the created order is too much for most of us to comprehend. But the intimacy of God being as near to us as our latest breath is too much for others to get their heads around too.

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It is out of such paradoxes that Christian doctrine is made.

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Trinity Sunday is a day when paradoxes dance before our eyes. Today is the day for rejoicing in a doctrine that can’t be neatly explained away. We proclaim we believe in one God. And we encounter God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

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There’s no point in me pretending that I can explain the mystery of the doctrine of the trinity in a few hundred words in a radio sermon. If anyone was clever enough to do that they would have done it long ago.

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The God whom we know is there to be worshipped and adored and loved.

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And that love doesn’t just flow in one direction. For the bible tells us often that God delights in all that is made and seems to love us with a passion.

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And also tells us that we are made in the image and likeness of God.

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We are made in the image and likeness of God the Father.

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Capable of creating. Capable of nurturing. Capable of loving. Capable of caring.

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We are made in the image and likeness of God the Son; sharing his physicality and called to be Christlike to others with whom we share this earth.

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And we are made in the image and likeness of God the Holy Spirit. Called to exercise wisdom, creativity and holy common sense.

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The God whom we know as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the God of power, love and justice.

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As a Christian, I believe that human beings are called to exercise their own power for good, to love those who need loving and to pursue the paths that lead to justice.

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Last weekend, many in the United Kingdom were celebrating the Queen’s Jubilee on the same weekend that the church celebrates Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit. Celebrating an extraordinary life of service right at the same moment as remembering the Spirit of God being poured out upon human beings.

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Those who read the Hebrew Scriptures know that the very idea of Jubilee is a religious one. It is a very particular way of celebrating something special by pursuing those paths that lead to justice.

Rejoicing in something by doing good, by freeing slaves and prisoners, by forgiving debts and putting right things that needed to be sorted out.

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This week will be the fifth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower disaster. Just one of countless situations where we encounter people crying out for justice.

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There’s little evidence that any society has every fully practised the idea of Jubilee spoken of in the scriptures where the days are always counting down to a time when wrongs will be put right.

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But it is still worth asking what a jubilee of the heart would be like.

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Where rejoicing, and putting right all the wrongs of this world go hand in hand.

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For the hope of faithful people is of a world put right. Where the lonely heart is comforted and that which is unjust is righted. Where the lost are found and the tears are wiped from every eye. Where those who are displaced by human cruelty find a loving welcome home.

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We are made in the image and likeness of a God who has planted in us that dream of a world sorted out. Where integrity is the watchword in public life and in every area of life, and the harms and hurts of life are replaced by comfort and healing. Where the hungry will be fed and where each individual can flourish and rejoice in being the person that God made them to be.

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God the Father empowers us to take our part in making this reality come to pass.

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For God is love.

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God the Son was born into this very same world and reminds us that God is with us, always.

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For God is love.

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God the Holy Spirit touches our hearts and our minds and will inspire us to join with God in making all things new.

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For God is love.

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For whoever we are today, wherever we are today and in whatever circumstances we are in today, God loves us and loves us and loves us…in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen

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MAGGIE, OLIVER, CONGREGATION- Intercessions

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MAGGIE: Living God glorious in majesty and might,

you know us all by name.

help us to pray this day.

Lord in your mercy,

ALL: Hear our prayer.

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MAGGIE: Father of all, you made us and love us,

Help us to nurture, care and protect our world, a beautiful garden in which you have placed us.

Lord in your mercy,

ALL: Hear our prayer.

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MAGGIE: Christ Jesus, you illuminated our world with love and showed us what God looked like with a human face. Hear us as we pray for all who need love most this day.

For the sick and the sad, the sorrowing and the bereaved.

Lord in your mercy,

ALL: Hear our prayer.

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MAGGIE: Holy Spirit, you light up our hearts and inspire human beings to create great beauty and to work for justice and peace in our broken world.

Hear us as we pray alongside those who watch and wait and work for justice including all who remember those who died in the Grenfell Tower disaster 5 years ago.

Lord in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

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OLIVER
God of the universe,
you came to a particular time and place
that we could know you in every place and at all times
hear us as we pray for peaceful streets, peaceful homes and peaceful hearts.

For we pray in the company of the saints of the ages and of all who yearn for peace,
in the power of your Spirit and in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen

EUCHARISTIC PRAYER

OLIVER & CHOIR –Sursum Corda – Sung
The Lord be with you.
ALL: And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
ALL: We lift them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
All: It is right to give our thanks and praise.

OLIVER and Choir – Preface: Music arranged by Frikki Walker.

Worship and praise belong to you, Father, in every place and at all times. All power is yours. You created the heavens and established the earth; you sustain in being all that is. In Christ your Son our life and yours are brought together in a wonderful exchange. He made his home among us that we might for ever dwell in you.

Through your Holy Spirit you call us to new birth in a creation restored by love. As children of your redeeming purpose who worship the mystery of your Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we offer you our praise, with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven, singing the hymn of your unending glory:

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Sanctus & Benedictus:Ìý David Thorne

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might,
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest

Blessed is he who comes, in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna in the highest

OLIVER
Glory and thanksgiving be to you, most loving Father, for the gift of your Son born in human flesh. He is the Word existing beyond time, both source and final purpose, bringing to wholeness all that is made.

Obedient to your will he died upon the Cross. By your power you raised him from the dead. He broke the bonds of evil and set your people free to be his Body in the world.

On the night when he was given up to death, knowing that his hour had come, having loved his own, he loved them to the end.

At supper with his disciples he took bread and offered you thanks.

He broke the bread, and gave it to them, saying: 'Take, eat. This is my Body: it is broken for you.'

After supper, he took the cup, he offered you thanks, and gave it to them saying: 'Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new covenant; it is poured out for you, and for all, that sins may be forgiven. Do this in remembrance of me.'

OLIVER & CONGREGATION
ALL:Ìý We now obey your Son's command.
We recall his blessed passion and death, his glorious resurrection and ascension; and we look for the coming of his Kingdom.
Made one with him, we offer you these gifts and with them ourselves, a single, holy, living sacrifice.

OLIVER
Hear us, most merciful Father, and send your Holy Spirit upon us and upon this bread and this wine, that, overshadowed by your Spirit’s life-giving power, they may be the Body and Blood of your Son, and we may be kindled with the fire of your love and renewed for the service of your Kingdom.

OLIVER AND CONGREGATION

ALL:Ìý Help us, who are baptised into the fellowship of Christ's Body
to live and work to your praise and glory;
may we grow together in unity and love
until at last, in your new creation,
we enter into our heritage
in the company of the Virgin Mary, the apostles and prophets,
and of all your beloved children living and departed.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, with whom, and in whom, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honour and glory be to you, Lord of all ages, world without end.Ìý Amen.

OLIVER – breaking of bread
The living bread is broken for the life of the world. Lord, unite us in this sign.

MAGGIE & CONGREGATION: LORD'S PRAYER
MAGGIE: As our Saviour has taught us, so we pray:

ALL:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,Ìý your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Do not bring us to the time of trial
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours,
now and forever. Amen.

OLIVER - INVITATION TO COMMUNION
The God who made us, who loves us and inspires us, invites us all to the Feast.

OLIVER – COMMUNION
The Body of Christ given for you.Ìý Amen.
The Blood of Christ shed for you.Ìý Amen.

Anthem: Hymn to the Trinity – John Kitchen

OLIVER
God the Holy Trinity make you strong in faith and love, defend you on every side, and guide you in truth and peace; and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.

KELVIN
For our closing hymn, we join our voices with all the powers of heaven to sing God’s praises. In ‘supernal anthems’ we sing the praises of the Holy Trinity.

Hymn: Ye watchers and ye holy ones (Tune: Lasst uns erfreuen)

MAGGIE
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
All:Ìý In the name of Christ.Ìý Amen

ORGAN VOLUNTARYÌý– JS Bach Prelude and Fugue in C BWV 547