Today is, according to the church calendar, Trinity Sunday. Up to this point, since the beginning of the church year, we’ve walked through the seasons of Advent, Epiphany, Lent, and Easter, each of which focuses our attention on Jesus. Then last Sunday we celebrated Pentecost, which reminds us that God sent the Holy Spirit like a mighty wind to fill God’s people with power to take the good news of Jesus to the ends of the earth. This morning we bring the story of God’s presence in the world to a climax as we celebrate Trinity Sunday.
It’s on Trinity Sunday that we ponder the full nature of God, whom we know as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. One God in three persons, Blessed Trinity.
Although Psalm 8, which we’ve heard read this morning, doesn’t speak of the Trinity, it does proclaim God’s sovereignty and majesty. When we recited the Apostle’s Creed, we affirmed our belief, or even better, our trust, in God the Father, the Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth. We professed our trust in Jesus, God’s only Son, who is our Lord, who lived, died, and rose again to sit at the right hand of the Father. We professed our belief in the Holy Spirit. While the Apostles’ Creed doesn’t say much about the Holy Spirit, the Nicene Creed invites us to confess the Spirit to be the Lord and giver of life. Therefore, the Holy Spirit, together with the Father and the Son, is to be worshiped and glorified. That is what we are doing this morning. We’re worshiping and glorifying the one God who is known to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Gospel reading from Matthew takes us to a mountaintop in Galilee where the risen Christ has gathered his followers for one last conversation, or so it would seem. In Matthew’s story of Jesus’ resurrection, Mary Magdalene along with another Mary, went to the tomb on Easter morning. When they arrived at the tomb, an angel appeared to them and gave them a message for the rest of Jesus’ disciples. According to the angel, the disciples were to go to Galilee where Jesus would meet them. Then, as they headed back home, Jesus appeared to the two women and gave them the same instructions (Mt. 28:1-10).
Now in fulfillment of those instructions, Jesus meets up with the disciples on a mountain top in Galilee. When they were all together, Jesus gave them a commission. He told them to “go . . . and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Mt. 28:19). When Jesus told them to make disciples, he was talking about more than making converts. He was talking about helping the people of the earth enter into a life-changing relationship with God. Paul talked about being clothed with Christ in baptism, so that “there is no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:27-29). To be in Christ is to be heirs of a promise made by God to Abraham, so that through the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, all the nations would be blessed (Gen. 12:1-3). This is, according to Jesus, our calling. We are called to be bearers of God’s blessings to the world.
After Jesus gives them this commission that is embodied through baptism, he promises that he will be with them until the end of the age. While the Gospel of John and Luke-Acts picture Jesus departing from his followers, promising to be with them through the gift of the Holy Spirit, in Matthew, Jesus promises to be with them always. It might not be bodily, but he’s not sending them off into the world alone.
When Jesus makes this promise to be with them until the end of the age, we hear an echo of a word given in the beginning of the Gospel. If we go back to the beginning of Matthew, after the genealogy, Matthew tells us that an angel appeared to Joseph to reassure him after he discovers that Mary is pregnant. The angel tells Joseph to take Mary as his wife and to name the child Emmanuel, which means “God is with Us” (Mt. 1:18-24). As he concludes his message, Matthew assures us, the reader, that Emmanuel, “God Is With Us” will remain with us till the end of the age. With that the Gospel of Matthew comes to a close. As for us, Matthew leaves us with a story to tell to the nations.
When we dive deeper into these final verses from Matthew 28, we discover that the disciples still aren’t sure what to make of Jesus. In Matthew’s version they’ve heard the testimony of the two Marys, but Jesus’ remaining disciples still hadn’t experienced the presence of the risen Jesus. So, when Jesus appears to this group of disciples on the mountain top, they worshiped Jesus, but some continued to have their doubts. It’s still possible for us to have our doubts and worship Jesus. The best way to think of this is to use the formula of faith seeking understanding. For most of us, we profess a form of faith in God before we fully understand what that means. In fact, seeking understanding of the things of God is a lifelong process.
When it comes to worshiping Jesus, we might say that the seeds of our Christian confession that God is to be understood as Trinity gets planted in this act of worship. The disciples might not fully understand everything about Jesus’ identity, but they knew that as Jews they weren’t to worship anyone or thing other than God. Nevertheless, here they are worshiping Jesus. So, despite their doubts and confusion, they knew something was different about him that warranted their worship. Now it will take several centuries for this doctrine to get fully developed, but we can see the foundation of this doctrine in passages like Matthew 28. So, as Tom Long puts it: “Probably all Matthew knows at this point is Christians must speak devoutly of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that such talk will not violate the Jewish insistence upon belief in the one True God” [Feasting on the Word, p. 47].
With this confession in mind, we hear Jesus declare that God had given him “all authority in heaven and on earth.” It’s on the basis of this authority that Jesus commissions the disciples to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
Now the question is, what does this commission ask of us? What does this call to make disciples of the nations require of us? I’ll answer that question in this way. Jesus has given us a job. That job involves sharing a story about Jesus. When we tell this story of Jesus, we say something about God. The story we tell in both word and deed, is a story of love. It’s a story about creation and redemption. It’s a story of grace and forgiveness. You might say that this is a story of God’s gift of salvation that mends broken relationships with God and with one another. This is the covenant of blessing that I spoke of earlier, a covenant of blessings made by God with Abraham and Sarah. It is a covenant we enter into through baptism into the one God we confess to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This is our calling, as followers of Jesus. The good news is that as we go forth, making disciples, we go out knowing that we’re not alone. We go with this promise of Jesus in mind: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (vs. 20). This is good news worthy of sharing with the nations. Yes, in Jesus God is with us always until the end of the age. We go forth this morning, with a story to tell to the nations, carrying with us this benediction from Paul on our hearts, using the version of the closing verse of 2 Corinthians from The Message:
“14 The amazing grace of the Master, Jesus Christ, the extravagant love of God, the intimate friendship of the Holy Spirit, be with all of you.” (2 Cor. 13:14 The Message)
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA)
Trinity Sunday
June 4, 2023
Image attribution: Rublev, Andreĭ, Saint, -approximately 1430. Hospitality of Abraham, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58465 [retrieved June 3, 2023]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Angelsatmamre-trinity-rublev-1410.jpg.
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