Right This Minute

This coming Sunday, May 21, Youth Group will be leading our worship services at both 8 and 10:30am, as I’m sure you have heard by now! Sometimes, when people hear that the youth are leading a service, they imagine it will be, perhaps, a simplified and sweet form of worship. I can assure you that these services will be complex, thoughtful, and evocative.

The teenagers of Trinity have written reflections on the scriptures which will reveal to you the depth of their own spiritual perceptions and will challenge you to consider deeply what they have to say. Our youth have written prayers which will put before you their greatest concerns and will bid you to respond with action to their priorities.

Some of the most thoughtful spiritual insights I have ever heard have come from the youth and children of Trinity Church, so  I heartily commend these services to you.

Personally, I am profoundly grateful to all of my colleagues who work with the children and youth here at Trinity: Emily,  Connor, Annie, Kara, Paul, as well as our seminary interns. Everyone interacts with the kids with dignity and respect. The spiritual and personal integrity of every young person is valued. Here, our children and young people are talked to, and talked with, and never talked at, or down to. I know none of us would expect otherwise, but this doesn’t necessarily happen in every congregation. The baptismal vow to “respect the dignity of evey human being” has taken hold in this commuity, and the fruit of this committment it readily visible in the consistently growing Youth Group and the joyfully, increasingly crowded north transept.    

It is a commonplace in christian communities to say that children and teenagers are the future of the church. When I put that idea before our youth and asked them what they thought of that,  they were adamantly happy to point out they are not the church of the future, they are the church of right this minute. 

Of course, they are charming, and energetic, and creatively expressive. These are not naïve limitations; these are essential gifts. When Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them,” Jesus was not urging us to make sure kids are tolerated. Jesus is offering an admonition to recognize that young people have spiritual sensitivities — just as we had when we were young, that must not be overlooked, nor taken for granted, nor go unheard.

It will be a blessing to us all to hear directly from our youth this Sunday.

May the vitality our young people bring to worship invigorate us all with a joyous energy that will lead us all — of all ages, all together — to grow into the full stature of Christ.

See you Sunday! 

Most faithfully,

The Rev. Joanne Epply-Schmidt, Associate Rector

Welcoming Wesley

Dear Beloved of Trinity Church,

It is with great joy that I announce that Wesley Rowell will be joining our staff on July 1.  Wesley will serve as our full-time Lay Pastoral Associate. Wesley’s role will include assistance and support for pastoral care, youth and family ministry, and community engagement.

Wesley is a May 2023 graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, where he is receiving his MDiv, with concentrations in both Black Church Studies, and in Theology, Women & Gender. He was recently awarded the Edward Howell Roberts Scholarship in Preaching.

A Fayetteville, North Carolina native, Wesley moved to Princeton in 2020, after 24 years of living in New York City, where he was a member of Middle Collegiate Church. Raised in the AME Zion Church, and the grandson of a pastor, Wesley was confirmed in 2022, and is currently in the ordination process for the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. Wesley ministered at Middle Church and has interned at our own beloved Trinity Episcopal Church. He also served on the search committee to select the Rev. Dr Jonathan Lee Walton as the new president of Princeton Theological Seminary. 

In NYC and Chicago, Wesley was a professional musician, and has sung in the choirs of St. Thomas Episcopal Church NYC, Grace Episcopal Church NYC, and Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, as well as several regional opera companies throughout the country. Wesley earned a BM from Methodist College in Fayetteville, NC, and was an MM vocal performance major at the University of Illinois.

Wesley’s passion for ministry and deep commitment to Christ can be summarized in his own words, “I’m still astonished by John 1:14 ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.’ Wow.” 

Outside (and perhaps inside) of church, Wesley loves to dance (sometimes badly and always boldly), sing karaoke (where he is viciously competitive), and read (voraciously). He loves all kinds of music, from Bach to Blues to Bartok to Beyonce, and loves the Duke Ellington quote, "there's only two kinds of music; good and bad.”

Wesley's interests in the intersections of race, trauma, justice, gender, families, queerness, Jesus, and the Church led him to Princeton Seminary and Princeton, NJ, and ultimately to Trinity Church Princeton, where he is excited to further his ministry.

Join me, in welcoming Wesley to Trinity!

Peace,

The Rev. Paul Jeanes III, Rector

Simul Iustus et Peccator

As I’ve been sick this week, Greta took care of me as only a good dog can. We had hours of snoozes together. And as I write this, just as I was starting to feel much more like myself — just then — she threw up on the bedroom carpet. In our little domestic drama of 11 Mercer Street, we stumbled upon one of the most important doctrinal debates of the Reformation: how good Christian people (and good dogs) still metaphorically throw up on the carpets of our lives. We are saved in Christ, and yet how often do our lives look relatively unchanged? (Quite often.) This is the question of Christian identity as what Luther called simul iustus et peccator — being both a sinner and a saint.

Our friends at Mockingbird Ministries have a nice explainer of the topic:

The Reformers believed that people who believe in Jesus live by faith in him…This does not mean that the Christian life is unconcerned with doing good, only that it is important the good that might be done not cause us to forget the fundamental neediness of the person doing it. In other words, the Christian is someone who needs to be given a fish every day. Luther described this state as being ‘simultaneously justified and sinful at the same time,’ or simul iustus et peccator in the Latin.

So Christians are two things at the same time, both enduringly sinful and completely forgiven and justified by the imputed righteousness of Christ. Their identity is dual. This is not a half-and-half relationship; it is 100% and 100%. Paradoxically, we are fully saved and made righteous in Christ, and at the same time we are still the same old sinner we used to be. A Christian is seen by God as “hidden in Christ” (Colossians 3:2). As the Apostle Paul puts it, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

Luther was a man of tremendously troubled conscience who spent many days as a young monk worrying if he was holy enough to enter into the kingdom of heaven. But he realized that our righteousness in God isn’t based on making it 75 percent towards Christlikeness, or what have you. It isn’t about keeping up a passing average. We rely on what God has done that we can’t do for ourselves, and we forge ahead knowing that every day we need Jesus just as much as we did the day before.

The Rev. Cn. Dr. Kara Slade, Associate Rector

Ensuring the Future

Dear Good People of Trinity,

I want to extend my sincere thanks for your participation in our parish meeting last Sunday. It was informative and truthful, challenging and inspiring, positive and hopeful.  There was a wonderful spirit of true dedication and love for our Church and an evident bond of affection between us, as the people of Trinity.

I am so thankful for our leadership team, staff, and all of you!

“Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitelymore than we can ask or imagine: Glory to God fromgeneration to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesusfor ever and ever. Amen.”

— Ephesians 3:20,21

There are more conversations to have, dreams to articulate, plans to develop, strategies to employ, gaps to close, and work to be done. I am most confident that we are up to the tasks, challenges, and opportunities before us.  We are Trinity Church! Now is our time to do our part to ensure the future of Trinity. Now is the time for us to do what must be done to leave our legacy of love and faithfulness for those who will come after us. 

More to come!  Forward in faith!

In Christ,

The Rev. Paul Jeanes III, Rector

Review slides below for insight into our conversation!

Mind the Gap This Sunday

Parish Meeting on Sunday, April 23 at 9:30am in Pierce-Bishop Hall

Come and See, Go and Tell

Dear Beloved of Trinity Church,

On Palm Sunday, we journey with our Lord Jesus Christ as he enters Jerusalem. We are invited to raise our palms and join the chorus, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" We gather in the upper room for the Last Supper and partake of the bread and wine. We feel the hands of our Lord as he washes our feet. We go with him to the garden with intentions of faithfulness and alertness, but our weary bodies succumb to sleep. Noise and chaos awaken us. Our Lord is being arrested. Dazed, frightened, and confused, we join the crowd as Jesus stands before Pilate. Our hearts pounding and minds racing, the mob shouts, "Crucify him, crucify him!"

And…we … we say nothing, do nothing. We stand frozen in fear and disbelief.

With a crown of thorns and the weight of the cross, Jesus makes his way along the crowded streets with jeers and insults beating upon him. We follow at a distance. He passes by. We look up for just a moment. The Lord looks directly into our eyes. We turn away. Guilt and shame envelops us. Our hearts sink. We weep. Lord, have mercy on me! Too much to bear, we cannot look as he is nailed to the cross, but we hear. We hear the hammer crashing against the nails. We hear the shouts of the crowds and the cries of those crucified. For the Lord was not the only one.

He is lifted high up on the cross with a man to his left and another to his right. They hang there. Beaten and suffering unspeakable pain, they hang.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.

It is finished.

It is almost impossible for us to envision such a scene. Impossible for us to see ourselves as participants in such a scene. Yet, this Sunday, Palm Sunday, we are invited to live, breathe, hear, and feel it. We are invited to experience the reality of our Lord's betrayal and passion.

I urge you to join us for worship and to open your eyes and ears, your mind and body, your heart and soul to experience the fullness of the chaos and pain of our world as manifest in an angry mob, but also to experience the expansive healing love and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amidthe worst the world has to offer, Christ embodies unquestionable, unconquerable, undeniable love. The profound truth of John 1:5 is realized, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."

Come, come and see, come and hear, come and experience the Good of New of Jesus, and then, dear ones, go and tell. Go and tell the world the glorious life-giving message of Holy Week; the darkness did not, cannot, and will not ever overcome the light of love made known to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Peace to all,

The Rev. Paul Jeanes III, Rector

Of Thunder of Spring

This Sunday is one of those marvelous pivots of the church year. We’ve come almost to the end of Lent proper, and we start to look towards the momentous events of Holy Week.  In about a week’s time, we will sing Hosanna and hear the passion of our Lord being read. To riff a little on T.S. Eliot’s words in The Waste Land, we are in that space:

Before the torch-light red on sweaty faces
Before the frosty silence in the gardens
Before the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

Great things, terrible things, world changing things, are about to happen.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that don't want to look at death. It's hard to face the reality of the cross in our religious lives. I know that I would much rather stay on the mountain peaks, in any place where I am not pierced to the core by horror and sorrow, where I am not faced with the reality of the human condition - quite especially my own. And yet here we are.

Here we are, standing at the pivot between the sign of the Easter to come that we hear on Sunday in the story of Lazarus, and the darkness of Holy Week that we walk through first. Christ is the one who in that darkness is raised up as the hope of the world.  He is the rejected one, the one who will travel down into the shadows of the dead, the one who will walk in the company of the dead and the lost and yet will not be destroyed.  He is the one who takes death within himself, the one who offers new life and hope.  

“I am about to do a new thing,” he says.

Just wait.

Yours in Christ,

The Rev. Cn. Dr. Kara Slade, Associate Rector

P.S., Consider this also my yearly reminder to make attending Holy Week services a priority. The liturgies of the great three days — Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil — are the very best of our tradition, and the story these services tell is life-changing and life-giving.

P.P.S., on a more personal note, I recently recorded a podcast on Karl Barth and you can listen to it on my publisher Wipf & Stock’s website at the link below.

Literal Bread, Daily Bread, True Bread

“Gracious Father, whose blessed son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: evermore give us this bread, that He may live in us, and we and Him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.”

— Collect for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

What does it mean for us to name Christ as the true bread which gives life to the world? Three thoughts come to mind: Literal bread, daily bread, and the broken bread of the Eucharist.

Consider literal bread: There are places in our community, our country, our planet where the Lord’s promise to be bread needs to be taken in the most literal way. Any lack of  availability of bread for the hungry is a sign, a signal, a plea for justice in the allocation of resources in our world. We can help, or we can hinder. Do we use resources well? Wastefully? Selfishly? Sparingly? Responsibly? Do we nourish the world we live in, or do we run the risk of contributing towards its impoverishment? Are we “consumers” of the world’s bread?  Or might we be those are who share liberally from the abundance that we have?

Consider daily bread: Remember the manna in the wilderness? The people of Israel were charged to gather only as much as they needed for one day. To hoard God's gift was to watch it rot.  It was simply daily bread. There is so much that nourishes spiritual and physical life that must happen daily. Bread. Exercise. Prayer. Sleep. Scripture study. Community. It is the dailiness of such commitment that is the bread of life.

Consider the bread of  the Eucharist: In that upper room on the evening that we now call Maundy Thursday, Jesus bound himself once and for all to all his disciples by the simple symbol of bread — literal bread, daily bread. Now we are invited to take, eat, embrace, embody, the true bread that gives life to the world. What an exrtraordianry promise in ordinary bread.  

The paradox is this: Only when we receive this true bread within us can we live in the Lord who exceeds us. The presence of Christ in us, among us, around us, and beyond us — this is the bread’s purpose. Breaking the bread reveals its power, for its power is in being shared. Come to the table and take your part, be a portion of the True Bread that gives life to a hungry world.

Amen.