Times and Seasons

On the day that has just passed, as the Church gathered between the joy of Eastertide fulfilled and the turning of its year into Trinity and Ordinary Time, we found ourselves within a single unfolding movement of God’s life among us: received in Easter, poured out in Pentecost, contemplated in Trinity, and carried forward into the ordinary life of the Church.

For fifty days the Church had lived in the joy of resurrection: Christ is risen. Death is defeated. A new creation has begun. And then, on the fiftieth day, Pentecost came, not as a conclusion, but as a breath, as God’s own Spirit being poured out upon the Church so that resurrection life would not remain distant or abstract, but become life within us.

Pentecost was one of those strange and beautiful feast days where wind and fire, languages and fear turning into courage, were all held together. A frightened group of disciples suddenly stepped out into the streets speaking about Jesus with joy and boldness.

And right at the heart of it all was the promise Jesus had made before his death, that he would send another Comforter, another Advocate, another Helper.

The Greek word, parakletos, carries its own depth. Para means alongside. Kletos means called. The Holy Spirit, then, is the one called alongside: alongside the Church, within the Church, strengthening, encouraging, giving courage when courage has run out.

When we hear the word comforter, we tend to think of something soft, something that wraps around us and keeps us safe. But in its older sense, to comfort is to strengthen, to fortify, to put courage back where it has been lost.

The Spirit does not come to leave the Church unchanged, but to give it life for the work to which it is sent.

And that is what the Church saw again at Pentecost. The disciples, once hiding in fear, were transformed. The Spirit did not remove them from the world. The Spirit sent them into it.

As the waters of baptism were prayed over for Emily, the Church was reminded that these waters have never been merely symbolic. From the beginning of Scripture, water is where God brings forth life. Israel passed through the waters of the Red Sea out of slavery into freedom. Jesus himself stepped into the waters of the Jordan before his public ministry began. And now, through these waters, God draws us into the death and resurrection of Christ.

The Spirit is the breath of the risen Christ shared with ordinary people. Baptism is not simply about belonging in a formal sense. It is about receiving life. Receiving the Holy Spirit. Receiving a future shaped by Christ.

And so, as Eastertide drew to its close, the Church was reminded that Christianity is never only about preserving memory or admiring tradition. Every generation must receive the breath of God again. Every disciple must learn again to trust that the Spirit still calls people alongside, to strengthen, to heal, to encourage, to challenge, to send.

Pentecost does not leave the Church where it was. Wherever the Holy Spirit comes, people do not stay the same.

And so, the Church did not move on from Pentecost as though moving away from something complete. Instead, it found itself drawn deeper into the mystery that Pentecost had revealed, into the life of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Trinity Sunday is the day on which the Church pauses to reflect upon doctrine, not as an academic exercise, nor as an abstract puzzle, but as the Church’s attempt to speak truthfully about the God whom it worships.

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis described doctrine as a map. Sacred music helps the Church inhabit that map. Through hymnody, psalmody, and eucharistic worship, we pray to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
All prayer rises to the Father and is offered through Christ. All prayer is animated by the Holy Spirit. This is the pattern of Christian worship.

And it was within that same movement of worship that the Willis organ was rededicated in its centenary year.

For one hundred years it has carried the prayer of this place. It has sustained congregational song, accompanied the liturgy, and given voice to the praise of God through generations who have come and gone. It has known times of confidence and uncertainty, peace and conflict, celebration and grief. And more recently, it has endured even a flood.

Its restoration was not only about preserving an instrument but also about recognising something deeper: that worship itself is always given and received anew.

For sacred music has never been an ornament to worship. It serves worship that is ordered, communal, and sacramental — worship that reflects something of the life of the God who is communion, relationship, and love.

Many voices, many stops, many timbres, as a palette of colour gathered into one act of praise — not in uniformity, but as harmony; not as repetition, but communion.

And perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in what music ultimately produces, which is not sound, but silence.

That silence after the final chord is not emptiness, but fulfilment, the moment in which worship has been leading all along. The place where words and explanations reach their limits and wonder begins.

For the Trinity is not a problem to be solved. It is the name the Church gives to the inexhaustible mystery at the heart of all reality: the mystery into which we are baptised, the mystery in whose image we are made, and the mystery toward which all worship tends. One God in three Persons, united in perfect love and communion.

As the page turned on Trinity Sunday, the Church did not close the mystery behind it; it continued to live within it. The organ, in its own way, became a sign of that life, where many voices are gathered into one offering, and many sounds lifted into one praise.

Eastertide had been fulfilled in Pentecost, Pentecost had opened into Trinity, and Trinity had shaped the beginning of Ordinary Time, not as something less colourful, but as the ongoing life of the same mystery.

And now, as the Church and our Benefice of Bradford on Avon Holy Trinity, Westwood and Wingfield look forward, our attention turns to what is to come. In the week ahead, Bishop Karen will be with us, presiding, preaching, and commissioning three new lay worship leaders for the Benefice.

In that commissioning, the same movement continues: the Holy Spirit will still be calling people alongside, still forming God’s Church, and sending her out for the life of Christ in the world.

What was received at Pentecost is now carried into ministry and mission. What was contemplated in the Holy Trinity is now lived in service. And what was re-dedicated in divine creativity is now expressed in mission.

Our churches move forward, joining in the continuing life of God already given, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

The Reverend Jenny Nelson
Rector of Bradford on Avon Holy Trinity, Wingfield and Westwood, Assistant Rural Dean, Bradford Deanery, Diocese of Salisbury