Agape Meal after Easter Vigil

Holy Saturday, April 6, 2023
after the 7pm Easter Vigil
in Pierce-Bishop

Trinity will be holding an agape meal, a time of fellowship and celebration, in Pierce-Bishop Hall following the 7pm Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday, April 6.

The agape meal is a tradition that dates back to the early church. Our feast will be a time to break bread in community, to reflect on the joy of Easter, the sacrificial and triumphal love of Jesus, and to strengthen the bonds among us, especially after the darkness of the preceding days.

Volunteers are needed!

We will need some volunteers to help set up and clean up, before and after the event. Please email Carol Thomas at carolbrooksthomas@gmail.com for more information and to sign up to help.

VCNJ presents ‘Fields of Gold’ on May 13

Saturday, May 13, 2023 at 4pm
at Trinity Church

Under the direction of Dr. David A. McConnell, our upcoming concert features songs of love, romance, and the promise of spring from a range of modern composers including Sting, Dolly Parton, and Carly Simon. In this concert, VCNJ also concludes their rendition of Folk Songs of the Four Seasons by Ralph Vaughn Williams with the spring and summer sections of the work. 

The texts speak of sky, fields, stars, meadows, birds, rivers, light, merriment, spring, and love.

Rob Long, a singer with the chorale, finds the music in the concert to be

“[B]oth uplifting and sometimes unexpected. Like when a friend gives you a great hug that you didn’t know you needed.”

Adult: $20
Child/Student: $10

For additional information, questions, or concerns please email this event’s coordinator Linda Silber at lindafsilber@gmail.com.

Did You Know?

Did you know that your contributions to Trinity Church may be eligible to be matched through your employer's charitable giving program? Many employers now rely on technology platforms to support their charitable giving efforts. One of these providers, Benevity, includes Trinity Church in its catalog of eligible charitable groups. Hundreds of employers use the Benevity platform, including Billtrust, which is headquartered in Lawrenceville. Last December, Tom Scott used the Benevity platform while employed at Billtrust to match a contribution to Trinity Church. Benevity then sent the matching gift in early February and it was processed by Lily Leonard, our Finance Officer. It helps if you alert Lily by email (leonardl@trinityprinceton.org) after you initiate any matching gift so that she can watch for the payment. If you have any questions about matching gifts or if your employer's platform does not yet include us as an eligible organization, please contact Tom Scott, Vestry member, at tomascott@comcast.net.  We'd like to ensure that the major charitable giving platforms permit matching gifts to Trinity Church. 

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

Last Saturday’s Stations of Reparations

Dear Friends,

This past Saturday the Stations of Reparations Liturgy was held at St Peter's Chruch in Freehold. Working with my colleagues of the History sub-committee of the Reparations Commission to create and present this service is among the most rewarding experiences of my justice amd anti-racism ministry undertakings.   Stories from five parishes in our Diocese were featured in this liturgy. There are many more stories of parish history with enslavement and racism to tell, and I believe this was an important (if small) step in our Reparations work.

Please take a moment to look at the video below — the prayers are moving, the music is beautiful, the stories are compelling, and this history needs to be known. 

The Rev. Joanne Epply-Schmidt, Associate 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.