In faith, hope and love
Trinity Sunday | Matthew 28:16-20
We are being transported to that crazy time immediately after the Resurrection. Mary has been to the empty tomb. She has told the disciples where they are to go.
A mountain, like the site of the Sermon and the Transfiguration. A place of holiness and teaching. Where we commune with the divine.
She tells them and they go.
Is it fair to say they believe her? In a sense, yes. They do show up, after all.
They gather there and Jesus joins them. And they worship him.
But some doubted.
That’s a curious thing to say, isn’t it? For people who took a leap to climb a mountain on a hunch. Not what we associate with doubt.
But this says a lot about our understanding of doubt. The container we put doubt into and the container we put the people who doubt into.
The original Greek is vague here. It may actually be more likely to suggest that they doubted. In the same way we speak of a group in general terms. Not that most believed and some doubted, but that they worshiped and they doubted.
Did they all doubt? Not necessarily. And more importantly, it doesn’t matter! Because they worshiped and doubted. Both. Together. Like a team. Or a family.
Individualizing doubt erodes the community and makes a mockery of belief. For belief can only exist with doubt.
Togetherness
This is a concept we’ve struggled with as a people for some time. The concept of being something together. Not as individuals only. But as a thing as one.
We even see this struggle in our favorite reference for this sort of togetherness: the family.
Frequently we define “family”, not as the unit, but as the blood relationships. That I am father to two children and husband to one spouse. Rather than to speak of the Downs family. That we attend to a moment: worshiping and doubting.
No, we’d rather atomize and individualize our experience. Count the doubters. Identify them. Clarify.
And also protect the freedom of the individual. To worship or to doubt (always one or the other—we refuse to acknowledge both).
But here is a moment in which all are one. They come there. They worship. And doubt.
And Jesus is there with them.
Not because of worship and not in spite of doubt. There is no causal relationship. That’s what they did. As disciples. And what Jesus does. As Messiah. Rabbi. Son of God. Son of Humanity. These identities.
Son of Humanity
That’s an interesting bit to remember today, isn’t it? Jesus is referred to as the second person of the Trinity: the Son. Son of the Father. A person, descendent, individual.
And he is famously the Son of God. A designation often given to the powerful. Like Caesar.
Jesus also calls himself the Son of Humanity (né Son of Man), of all. Not of Joseph and Mary, a nuclear family. The whole human family. Our son. Our baby boy. We followed and scapegoated. We worshiped and we doubted.
Our son came back to us. And commanded us to serve. To teach others.
Our mission: as disciples. Make disciples.
Jesus appears to his students and says to them: be teachers.
How do we hear this message?
How deeply do we embrace our calling to be teachers? With fear? Excitement? Maybe both?
Maybe we feel like my Mom did when she got a call from a teacher friend years ago. They needed an art teacher at the alternative school, and she thought my Mom would be perfect.
My mom, on the other hand, didn’t feel perfect. She hadn’t studied education or art in years. She couldn’t see it.
But she was called to this work and excelled at it. And it awakened the dormant artist within her. And within her students.
The Struggle
In the church, we use strange words which obscure the command from Jesus to learn and teach. We pretend like these are things for children only.
And we pretend that we are to do this learning on our own, individually, like good little Christians. And not as a people, together, one.
We ignore the command to teach and invite others to be students. That this is fundamental to our relationships. Learning and teaching. Offering and sharing. Being of service to each other.
Each of us is brought here for a reason. To not just be an each. That we be a we. And we have a voice. We teach a world starving for love what that can look like. We give words to the dreams of the world. And we say Yes, you are loved. Are worthy of love. And you have people to love.
That is a great image of the Trinity.
Our one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One by relationship. Three by different vocations.
And this one Sunday of the year we acknowledge that God is a “they”. Neither gendered nor singular. They are the epitome of relationship. Of defining their very existence as relationship.
That God cannot be individualized or separated. That our American ideal of rugged individualism is itself a crime against nature. For our existence is community. That existence itself is communal. It is unnatural to separate ourselves. It is imprecise to focus on the individual to the exclusion of society.
God is he and she. Both and neither. They. Community. Three dancing partners together. Always loving. Always in communion.
And they are always in relationship with us.
Communing moment-by-moment. Inspiring, enriching, dreaming, compelling us to be in divine partnership. To commune fully in love. And Faith. And hope.
This is our existence. Our nature.
Learning to love. Teaching love. Sharing love. All of it. Always. And yearning, worshiping, and doubting. All of it.
We bring our whole human selves. Our muddled family relations and religious backgrounds. Our stilted histories and obsession with certainty and perfect understanding. And especially our commitment to individualism.
All of these imperfect, imprecise desires we have for fixing ourselves. Mixed up with the joys and gratitude and courage.
We bring all of it with us as we gather on our own mountaintops, hopeful and skeptical, together. Learning and teaching, gathering and sharing. And we find in our communing, that we are truly only ever one.
One with God in faith, hope, and love.