Finding security in the inspired life
Trinity Sunday | Matthew 28:16-20
We’ve got a tall order today. We read about creation and the Great Commission so there’s purpose and evangelism to discuss. It’s Trinity Sunday, so we’ve got to talk about theology while avoiding heresy. And we’re celebrating graduations. That is a lot to cover in a short amount of time.
But I want to start with the most controversial part in this morning’s gospel. Ready? You’re welcome to follow along. Here’s how we might read the opening verses:
The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him and doubted.
They worshiped and doubted. But you aren’t going to find this phrasing in any translation because scholars are chicken. There are two obvious reasons for this.
- King James. Every translation uses that one as a primary source, so they are essentially defaulting to a tradition of centuries of avoidance.
- The Faith/Doubt binary. There also is a tradition of making the presence of doubt disqualifying of faith. So they try to minimize its impact.
Minimizing the impact of doubt is costly, however, as limiting it to some of the disciples prevents us from seeing ourselves in the moment with grace.
Not doubt exactly…
The implication of this phrasing, “worshiped him and doubted” isn’t that the disciples worshiped Jesus without faith! The challenge may be the word translated as doubt itself. This one appears one other time in scriptures and that is when Peter sees Jesus, starts walking out on the water to him, and then starts to sink. Like, the dude is doing it, literally walking on water, but he starts to wonder what’s next, like, how do I get there from here, and even, where is there? What’s the endgame? It’s like the dog who actually catches the car, like what do I do with this thing I can’t fit in my mouth?
Do we see that this isn’t what we think of with doubt? But it is something we all experience: a sense of too many uncomfortable choices.
Matthew’s gospel doesn’t have an upper room appearance, so this is it, the primary Easter appearance and all they have going into it is what Mary has told them and now they’re looking at Jesus and don’t know what to do, so they drop down and start to worship and are like, now what? This wasn’t on the family calendar for today.
And Jesus gives them the response that has launched a thousand missionary ships: go proclaim the good news. They’re confused and he says Teach people what I taught you. It’s a beautiful response because it’s simple.
It also isn’t a command so much as a sending to do what Jesus has already commanded, which, if we remember, starts with loving God and loving neighbor as yourself.
So this is what they might do with themselves now that everything has changed. Love and teach and share and do and just be the light of Christ in the world.
Now, the Trinity
That’s also a pretty solid set-up for us today, I suppose. To start with love and doing the things we’re called to do and then seeing where we go from there.
Even more so when we start picking at Christian theology.
Today is known as Trinity Sunday. It’s one of our seven principal feasts. Which is probably the church’s way of saying it is really that important that we all get this thing down.
It is also joked about in seminary as the day in the liturgical year when the most heresy is preached. Because every well-meaning preacher needs to come up with a simple way of describing the Trinity and can’t do it without falling into heresy, whether it be a three-leaf clover (that’s partialism) or how god can be in three forms, like water, ice, and steam (that’s modalism). Every attempt leads to heresy.
And Trinity Sunday is just as infamous for being the day rectors will make student interns and associates preach so they don’t have to. Convenient!
The fact that the church struggles to do right by the Trinity on Trinity Sunday, that we actually can’t make the great mystery at the heart of the cosmos easy to understand is something I actually find deeply reassuring. Because most of the time I’m like those disciples, worshiping and doubting and confused by what we’re supposed to be doing in this world we’re in.
And unlike everything around us, which wants to sum things up and make it all certain and simple, Jesus seems to be telling us to do the stuff and be the people. Don’t worry so much about the doctrinal definitions.
More Than Logic
Defining the Trinity is a big part of the problem. As much as we try to pin it down, the more the things we attempt to describe become a problem. If God splits in three, then God isn’t one. If God changes into different forms, then God ceases to be any one form. It doesn’t work if we want to keep God eternal.
This, however, is more of a logic problem than it is a factual one. This is because we’re trying to make the source of all creation, the ground of all being into an old man with a beard showing up as a young man and a dove. This is really just an obsession with the physical and it limits our ability to understand the world. It’s like being a mathematician and limiting yourself to whole, positive, rational numbers. It makes things easier, but it really limits the kinds of equations you can come up with! And more to the point: why do this at all? Humans came up with Pi, for instance, because it expressed something real and beyond those other, artificial limits. It explained what couldn’t be explained without expanding our vision.
Now, also, don’t get it twisted. The point of all this is not to pretend like we can’t say anything is true! It is to say that so many of our impulses limit our ability to articulate what’s real. It’s like comparing the Springfield in The Simpsons to Springfield, Illinois, only to realize that there are seventeen cities, three unincorporated municipalities, and two neighborhoods with the name Springfield in the United States. And the show could be about any of them. And, in a sense, it is about all of them.
Love at Every Level
My favorite vision of the Trinity comes from Andrei Rublev, whose depiction in tempera paint reflects God as community, as three persons at a table eating together. One is in the foreground, and they appear to point to one another. It is, what Richard Rohr calls a “Divine Dance” of three as one and one as three, in perpetual relationship to and with each other.
This vision feels particularly important, not just because it holds the western obsession with specificity at arm’s length, but because it reflects the common character as existing within God as we are called to have with God and one another. It is, then, a way of saying to our community and to one another, that God’s nature reflects the Great Commandment: to love and to love all.
This is what we do as Christians and as children and parents, as churches and as families: we love and we embody God’s love in everything at every level. And we see God present there, at every level. God’s love infuses it all.
It is beautiful and elegant and confounding and so beyond our comprehension. Isn’t it awesome?
Life as Relationship
Let us then hold these images gently, of Jesus appearing to the disciples and reminding them of who they are and of this kinetic divine dance of and with and within the Trinity, and consider what we might offer each other and our graduates.
Isn’t it all about relationship? With the love of the God who is love? Is this not both beginning and end and everything in-between? This is the graduation speech, when their mentor, who they love says You already know what to do! Go for it!
And a few of us are feeling that acutely today—that confidence Jesus has in his disciples that they’re ready to move on—and yet we’re still scared. It feels like we’ve been eating a combo meal with a senioritis impossible burger and frightened fries for a couple of months now and now that we’re done eating, we’re finally planning inside ourselves for what’s next.
And maybe the answer is as simple as Jesus seems to make it. That we know what to do. Love like we’ve been taught. Easier said than done maybe. Or maybe precisely that easy.
This is the grace, the joy, the hope, the love, all swirled, all gathered like a home, like a community. As simple and complex as a neighborhood, as the streets we live on, as a home with people we love, as the people who will miss you and pray for you and look forward to seeing you again.
It is joy. It is grace. It is love to share and to be. To always be. As one.