Looking back looking around looking ahead

Trinity Sunday
St Paul’s Church, Ipswich
15 June 2025

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A year ago—at least a year ago in church calendar terms—on this special festival day, I was taking my first service at St Thomas’ Church, having only begun as your locum priest a few Sundays earlier.

It was my fourth Sunday in the parish.

As I reflected with the folk at St Thomas’ Church on the significance of the Trinity, I explored the idea that this uniquely Christian understanding of God also offers us a model for a unified ministry that encompassed both our churches, while celebrating difference and maintaining diversity.

At one point I said:

I think our understanding of God as Trinity offers a model for ways we can work together.

We believe that Father, Son and Spirit exist in, with and for each other.

It seems to me that this is the understanding that has to be at the basis of our shared future together, for surely our future is a shared one.

Well, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since that Sunday last year.

Look at us now.

Within a few weeks of that sermon, the Parish Council at St Thomas’ Church took a bold decision to request they join with St Paul’s Church and form a new ministry unit together here in the heart of Ipswich.

I take no credit for that decision and do not think my Trinity Sunday sermon last year was a game-changer, but looking back I am struck with how everything came together so well in those middle months of last year.

Twelve months later we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of our new parish priest, and we look forward to his leadership as we explore what being one parish with two churches means for us.

We look back, we look around and we look forward.

Our lives as people of faith seem to have many trinitarian dimensions.

That triple perspective is also seen as we bring a young child for Baptism this morning.

Looking back

We look back with fresh insight to understand how the past has shaped who we are and where we are now.

The legacy of the past may be a mixed bag. Some stuff we delight to recall. Other moments we would love to forget. Old wounds may not yet have healed. Challenges and opportunities. 

Each time we gather for worship we look back and name our need for forgiveness, healing and transformation.

We are not obsessed by guilt. We simply have our eyes wide-open about the need to grow, heal and transform.

We turn to Christ, as we shall say in the Baptism service shortly.

Looking around

We also celebrate the grace and the fresh beginnings represented by the present moment. This is never more so than when we hold a new child in our arms.

We cannot go back to the past and we cannot stay in the present, but while we are here we can treasure this moment; a moment of grace.

As we baptise Oliver this morning, we share a moment of grace.

Like all of us, Oliver is loved by God. We may not be able to see that in our lives, but we can see it in the innocence of a child.

Oliver is loved by God simply because he is Oliver.

Not for what he does, what he thinks or what he believes.

Simply for who he is.

And that is also true for each of us.

Just as we are, we are loved unconditionally by God.

In this moment, as we baptise Oliver, we catch a glimpse of that unconditional love that surrounds each of us and all of us every moment.

Looking ahead

Even here in this moment we are looking ahead.

We are making promises to be there for Oliver and for each other in the years ahead.

No matter what the past may have been like for any of us, and no matter how we understand this present moment of grace, we all want Oliver to grow up knowing that he is loved by family, friends and God.

Today here in this church we promise to do whatever it takes to ensure that Oliver knows that he is loved.

It is sometimes said that it takes a village to raise a child.

Villages are hard to find in our sprawling suburbs and fast-moving world, but St Paul’s Church is Oliver’s village.

We are here for him, for his parents and his godparents, and for his wider family.

As we all live into the mystery of God who defies our best attempts to find the right words, we shall find that we are in, with and for each other.

We are one.

We are diverse.

We are loved.