
Addoliad ar yr Pumed Sul wedi'r Drindod
Yn ystod y tarddiant coronafirws, mae'r Esgob yn darparu deunydd i gefnogi addoliad ar yr aelwyd ar brif wyliau. Mae hyn yn cynnwys trefn o wasanaeth ar gyfer Litwrgi'r Gair, a myfyrdod wedi'i recordio. Mae testun y myfyrdod hefyd ar gael yma.
Darlleniadau
Rhufeiniad 8:1-11
Yn awr, felly, nid yw'r rhai sydd yng Nghrist Iesu dan gollfarn o unrhyw fath. Oherwydd yng Nghrist Iesu y mae cyfraith yr Ysbryd, sy'n rhoi bywyd, wedi dy ryddhauo afael cyfraith pechod a marwolaeth. Yr hyn oedd y tu hwnt i allu'r Gyfraith, yn ei gwendid dan gyfyngiadau'r cnawd, y mae Duw wedi ei gyflawni. Wrth anfon ei Fab ei hun, mewn ffurf debyg i'n cnawd pechadurus ni, i ddelio â phechod,y mae wedi collfarnu pechod yn y cnawd. Gwnaeth hyn er mwyn i ofynion cyfiawn y Gyfraith gael eu cyflawni ynom ni, sy'n byw, nid ar wastad y cnawd, ond ar wastad yr Ysbryd. Oherwydd y sawl sydd â'u bodolaeth ar wastad y cnawd, ar bethau'r cnawd y mae eu bryd; ond y sawl sydd ar wastad yr Ysbryd, ar bethau'r Ysbryd y mae eu bryd. Yn wir, y mae bod â'n bryd ar y cnawd yn farwolaeth, ond y mae bod â'n bryd ar yr Ysbryd yn fywyd a heddwch.
Oherwydd y mae bod â'n bryd ar y cnawd yn elyniaeth tuag at Dduw; nid yw hynny, ac ni all fod, yn ddarostyngiad i Gyfraith Duw. Ni all y sawl sy'n byw ym myd y cnawd foddhau Duw. Ond nid ym myd y cnawd yr ydych chwi, ond yn yr Ysbryd, gan fod Ysbryd Duw yn cartrefu ynoch chwi. Pwy bynnag sydd heb Ysbryd Crist, nid eiddo Crist ydyw. Ond os yw Crist ynoch chwi, y mae'r corff yn farw o achos pechod, ond y mae'r Ysbryd yn fywyd ichwi o achos eich cyfiawnhad. Os yw Ysbryd yr hwn a gyfododd Iesu oddi wrth y meirw yn cartrefu ynoch, bydd yr hwn a gyfododd Grist oddi wrth y meirw yn rhoi bywyd newydd hefyd i'ch cyrff marwol chwi, trwy ei Ysbryd, sy'n ymgartrefu ynoch chwi.
Mathew 13:1-9, 18-23
Y diwrnod hwnnw aeth Iesu allan o'r tŷ ac eisteddodd ar lan y môr. Daeth tyrfaoedd mawr ynghyd ato, nes iddo fynd ac eistedd mewn cwch, ac yr oedd yr holl dyrfa yn sefyll ar y lan. Fe lefarodd lawer wrthynt ar ddamhegion, gan ddweud: “Aeth heuwr allan i hau. Ac wrth iddo hau, syrthiodd peth had ar hyd y llwybr, a daeth yr adar a'i fwyta. Syrthiodd peth arall ar leoedd creigiog, lle na chafodd fawr o bridd, a thyfodd yn gyflym am nad oedd iddo ddyfnder daear. Ond wedi i'r haul godi fe'i llosgwyd, ac am nad oedd iddo wreiddyn fe wywodd. Syrthiodd hadau eraill ymhlith y drain, a thyfodd y drain a'u tagu. A syrthiodd eraill ar dir da a ffrwytho, peth ganwaith cymaint, a pheth drigain, a pheth ddeg ar hugain. Y sawl sydd â chlustiau ganddo, gwrandawed.”
“Gwrandewch chwithau felly ar ddameg yr heuwr. Pan fydd unrhyw un yn clywed gair y deyrnas heb ei ddeall, daw'r Un drwg a chipio'r hyn a heuwyd yn ei galon. Dyma'r un sy'n derbyn yr had ar hyd y llwybr. A'r un sy'n derbyn yr had ar leoedd creigiog, dyma'r un sy'n clywed y gair ac yn ei dderbyn ar ei union yn llawen. Ond nid oes ganddo wreiddyn ynddo'i hunan, a thros dro y mae'n para; pan ddaw gorthrymder neu erlid o achos y gair, fe gwymp ar unwaith. Yr un sy'n derbyn yr had ymhlith y drain, dyma'r un sy'n clywed y gair, ond y mae gofal y byd hwn a hudoliaeth golud yn tagu'r gair, ac y mae'n mynd yn ddiffrwyth. A'r un sy'n derbyn yr had ar dir da, dyma'r un sy'n clywed y gair ac yn ei ddeall, ac yn dwyn ffrwyth ac yn rhoi peth ganwaith cymaint, a pheth drigain, a pheth ddeg ar hugain.”
Dyfyniadau o’r Beibl Cymraeg Newydd a’r Beibl Cymraeg Newydd Diwygiedig 2004 hawlfraint Cymdeithas (Brydeinig a Thramor) y Beibl. Cedwir pob hawl.
Testun myfyrdod yr Esgob
Yn awr, felly, nid yw'r rhai sydd yng Nghrist Iesu dan gollfarn o unrhyw fath.
Yn y ffilm ‘Twelve Angry Men’, o 1957 gyda Henry Fonda, mae rheithgor benben â’i gilydd wrth geisio penderfynu a yw gŵr ifanc yn euog o lofruddiaeth ac a ddylai gael ei garcharu am oes. Mae'r ffilm yn trafod, yn eithaf dwys, sut rydyn ni’n cael gwybodaeth a’r argyhoeddiadau, ac weithiau’r rhagfarnau, sy’n gallu cymylu ein barn, a sut y mae un person yn gallu newid meddyliau pobl eraill. Rydyn ni'n cael ein dal cymaint yn y ddrama nes ei bod yn hawdd anghofio bod bywyd rhywun yn y fantol.
Pan ysgrifennodd Sant Paul at y Cristnogion yn Rhufain, roedd yn ceisio egluro beth oedd marwolaeth ac atgyfodiad Iesu’n ei olygu. Roedd yn ceisio dangos bod hynny'n golygu maddau ein gwendidau yn y gorffennol, yn ein helpu i ddygymod â’r presennol a hefyd sicrhau dyfodol gyda Duw mewn tragwyddoldeb. Ac yn yr wythfed bennod hon, mae’n dechrau dod i rai casgliadau. ‘Yn awr, felly’, meddai, ‘nid yw’r rhai sydd yng Nghrist Iesu dan gollfarn o unrhyw fath’. Rhuf 8:1. Efallai wir mai rhywbeth yn debyg i’r llys barn hwnnw oedd ganddo yn ei feddwl wrth ddisgrifio’r dyfarniad. Dyma foment ‘torri’n rhydd o’r carchar’, 'rhyddhau’r carcharorion’ yr roedd Paul wedi bod yn adeiladu ati ers peth amser. Mae'n un o adnodau mwyaf adnabyddus y Beibl ac mae’n werth i ni dreulio ychydig amser gyda hi. Ond cyn i ni wneud hynny, beth am gael golwg ar ddiwedd y bennod:rydyn ni’n cychwyn yma gyda ‘does yna ddim condemniad’ a bydd yn gorffen gyda ‘does yna ddim gwahanu’.Felly, dyma’r foment pan gafwyd trefn ar y gorffennol a lle mae’r dyfodol yn sicr. Dim condemniad, dim gwahanu. Onid yw hynny’n newyddion gorfoleddus?
Felly, at yr adnod. Tri pheth. Yn gyntaf ‘YN AWR, felly ..’ meddai Paul. Mae'n golygu y bu yna broblem ar un adeg oherwydd, erbyn hyn, does yna’r un! Beth sydd wedi gwneud yr ‘YN AWR’ yn bosibl?Y groes a’r atgyfodiad. Mae ynghylch sut y bu Iesu farw a sut yr atgyfododd er mwyn newid pethau rhwng rhwng Duw a’i bobl. Rhywfodd, ymyrrodd marwolaeth ac atgyfodiad Iesu ym mhethau’r byd, newid ei gwrs ac esgor ar fath arall o ddyfodol.
Roeddwn i’n trafod trafferthion yr oedd ffrind i mi’n ei gael gyda’i iechyd dro’n ôl.Roedd yn benderfynol nad â’i at y meddyg. ‘Bob tro y bydda i’n mynd yno' meddai ‘rwy’n cael newyddion drwg, â i ddim yno eto'!Efallai nad yw mor wahanol â hynny i lawer ohonom ni. Ond y pwynt yw fod ymyrraeth Duw’n mynnu ein sylw. Os yw Duw wedi dod yn agos, wedi camu i’r byd hwn mewn ffordd newydd, allwn ni ddim cymryd arnom nad yw wedi digwydd na nad yw'n bwysig. Mae’n HOLL bwysig.
Yn ail, dim condemniad. Mae hwn yn air grymus. Mae ‘condemnio' yn cario cymaint o bwysau. Efallai ein bod ni’n dychmygu carcharor yn cael ei arwain i’w gell: wedi’i gondemnio am ei droseddau. Neu efallai rywbeth mwy goddrychol: rydyn ni’n teimlo ein bod wedi’n condemnio am ein bod ni’n gwybod ein bod wedi gwneud rhywbeth o’i le. Gallai Paul fod yn golygu’r ddau, ond mae’r pwyslais ar y cyntaf. Rydych yn gweld nad newid y ffordd rydym ni’n edrych ar Dduw yn unig y mae’r groes a’r atgyfodiad (er ei fod wedi gwneud hynny, wrth gwrs). Pan fu Iesu farw, roedd yn ymestyn i’r tywyllwch ac yn ein canfod ni. Yn ei atgyfodiad, daeth â ni gydag ef allan o’r bedd i fyw yn ei oleuni.
Ac, fel mae’r ‘dim condemniad' yn dweud wrthym, er ein bod ar un adeg wedi’n gwahanu oddi wrth Dduw gyda chosbedigaeth pechod uwch ein pennau, daeth Iesu i ryddhau ei garcharorion. Nid oedd yn anwybyddu pechod, ond yn cael gwared ohono. Yn nhrydedd bennill fy hoff emyn Saesneg, o bell, mae’r geiriau canlynol:
There, for us and our redemption,
see him all his life-blood pour!
There he wins our full salvation,
dies that we may die no more;
then, arising, lives for ever,
reigning where he was before.
Pan ddaw Cristnogion i weld nad oes yna gosb i’w thalu, fod dyledion wedi’u diddymu, does yna ddim yn aros ar ôl ond derbyn yr hyn sy’n cael ei roi’n rhad, mae’n trawsnewid popeth. Ond, rydyn ni wedi dod i gredu, ai sylweddoli’n sydyn ar amrant neu'n raddol dros amser, bod y gwirionedd gogoneddus yn sefyll:nid yw Duw’n ein condemnio ni a hynny oherwydd y groes a’r atgyfodiad.
Ac yn olaf, ‘yng Nghrist Iesu’. Mae darn olaf y bennill mor bwysig. Mae'n dweud wrthym ni nad gwneud rhywbeth 'allan yna' yn unig y mae Duw. Mae’r hyn mae wedi’i wneud yn sefyll yn gadarn ac yn gafael yn dynn yn yn ddaear. Dyma pryd rydym ni’n camu i’r darlun, lle mae’r groes a’r atgyfodiad yn cyffwrdd â'n bywydau ni. Mae hyn i gyd yn emyn fawr Wesley, onid ydyw?
‘My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose went forth and followed thee’.Pan fydd y llawenydd o wybod fod pechodau wedi’u maddau a bod gennym ni ddaear gadarn Cariad na fydd byth yn gollwng gafael, yna gallai rhywbeth fel yr emyn hwn brocio’r tu mewn i ni. Efallai i chi deimlo fel hyn wrth dderbyn y Cymun Bebdigaidd, wrth ganu emyn fawr neu wrth weddio Gweddi'r Arglwydd. Roeddech yn deall y foment honno am beth oedd Paul yn sôn. Neu efallai eich bod chi wedi bod yn pendroni ers tro beth yw ystyr hyn i gyd, ond byth yn teimlo fod y cyfan yn gwneud llawer iawn o synnwyr i chi.
‘Yn awr, felly, nid yw’r rhai sydd yng Nghrist Iesu dan gollfarn o unrhyw fath’. Adnod wych yn llawn gobaith o’r Beibl. Ryw’n mynd i weddïo trosom fod hyn yn rhywbeth y byddwn ni heddiw yn ei ddeall ac yn cael profiad ohono, heddiw ac yn ystod yr wythnos i ddod. Gallwch wneud y weddi hon eich gweddi chi.
Worship on the Fifth Sunday after Trinity
During the coronavirus outbreak, the Bishop is providing material to support worship at home on the major festivals. This includes an order of service for a Liturgy of the Word, and a recorded meditation. The text of the meditation is also available here.
Readings
Romans 8:1-11
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!”
“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
From The New Revised Standard Version (Anglicized Edition), copyright 1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
The text of the Bishop's meditation
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
‘Twelve Angry Men’ is a film starring Henry Fonda from 1957 in which a jury wrestles with whether they think a young man is guilty of murder and should be sent down for life. It explores, with some intensity, the way we assess information, the convictions and sometimes prejudices we bring to any issue and also how one person is capable of changing the minds of others. We get so caught up in the drama that its easy to forget someone’s life is at stake in this drama.
When St Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome he was trying to explain to them what the death and resurrection of Jesus meant. He tried to show it entailed God resolving our past shortcomings, helping us to deal with the present and securing too a future with God into eternity. And in this 8th chapter he starts to draw out some conclusions: ‘There is therefore’ he says, ‘now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’. Rom 8:1. He may well have had that courtroom or something similar in mind when he described the verdict. This is God’s great ‘get out of jail’, ‘release the prisoners’ moment to which Paul has been building for some time. It’s one of the best known Bible verses and worth our while spending time with it. But even before we do that, cast an eye ahead to the end of the chapter: we start here with ‘there is no condemnation’ and will end it with ‘there is no separation’. So we have that moment when that past is sorted and where the future is secured. No condemnation, no separation. Isn’t that joyful good news?
So to the verse. Three things. Firstly, ‘there is therefore NOW’, Paul says. It means that once there was a problem because it’s only now that there isn’t! What has made this ‘NOW’ possible? It’s the cross and resurrection. It’s how Jesus died and was raised in order to effect a change between God and people. Somehow the dying and rising of Jesus intervened in the affairs of this world changing its course and opening up a different kind of future.
I spoke to a friend many moons ago about a health issue he was facing. He was insistent he would not go to the doctor. ‘Whenever I go there’, he said, ‘I always get bad news, I’ve decided against it’! He might not be so different from many of us. But the point is that God’s intervention demands our attention. If God has drawn near, stepped into this world in a new way, we cannot pretend it hasn’t happened or isn’t important. It is ALL important.
Secondly, no condemnation. This is a powerful word. To ‘condemn’ carries so much weight. We might picture a prisoner being sent down: condemned for their crimes. Or perhaps something more subjective: we feel condemned because we know we’ve done something wrong. Paul’s meaning might include both but the emphasis is on the first sense. You see the cross and resurrection have not simply changed the way we look at God (although they have done this of course). When Jesus died, he stretched out into the darkness and found us. In his resurrection he brought us with him out from the grave to live in his light.
And so the ‘no condemnation’ tells us that whereas we were once separated from God with the penalty of sin hanging over us, Jesus came to set the prisoners free. He did not ignore sin but rather removed it. My favourite hymn of all has these words in verse 3:
There, for us and our redemption,
see him all his life-blood pour!
There he wins our full salvation,
dies that we may die no more;
then, arising, lives for ever,
reigning where he was before.
When Christians come to see there is no penalty to be paid, that the debt is cancelled, there is nothing left to do save receive what is freely given, it transforms everything. However we have come to believe, whether once in a moment of realization or gradually over time, this wonderful truth stands: God does not condemn us because of the cross and resurrection.
And lastly ‘in Christ Jesus’. This last bit of the verse is so important. It tells us that God hasn’t simply done something ‘out there’. There is real traction on the ground. It’s the point where we step into the picture, where the cross and resurrection touch our lives. Wesley’s great hymn has all of this doesn’t it?
‘My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose went forth and followed thee’. When the joy of knowing sins forgiven and the solid ground of Love which will not let me go, is ours, then something like that hymn might stir within us. Perhaps you’ve felt this when you have received Holy Communion or sung a great hymn or prayed the Lord’s Prayer? You’ve known in that moment when Paul was talking about. Or maybe you’ve wondered what it’s all about, grasping at God but never feeling that everything quite made sense?
‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’ A wonderful promising verse from the Bible. I’m going to pray for us now that today this is something we might all know and experience today and in the week ahead. You can make this prayer your own.