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The First Sunday after Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, May 22
Sermon on Matthew 28:16-20 by Hubert Beck

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What’s In A Name?

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (NIV)

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There is more information stored in a name than most people realize.

Take your name, e.g. Your surname is a short-hand way to tell about a whole family of people. If you “unpack” that name you find all kinds of history – men and women who have been successful and others who have hardly scraped through life; those who lived long and those who died young; some highly educated and others barely educated at all; people who have suffered greatly as they struggled through life and others whose lives were filled with relative ease. They and others like them all “hide” in the background of your life, and your family name, once discovered in all its fullness carries stories that perhaps even you are not aware of. That is at least in part why women do not wish to give up their family name, preferring to join it to the family into which they are marrying, thus melding two family backgrounds into one. All this lies in that family name!

Meanwhile your given name narrows that history down considerably. All the history of your family is now “funneled” through your own experiences, your own education, your own efforts resulting in varying degrees of successes and failures. You are unique among all those who bear your family name even while you bear all the history of that name within your uniqueness.

Names are filled with stories and identities and experiences and aspirations of every sort.

God’s Name, Too, Tells Much About Him

Because names tell so much about the one named, it is, therefore, important to consider how God names himself. And you will note that it is God who names himself . . . not we who first name God. It is he who emerges out of the shadows of the pre-history of Genesis 1-11 and calls Abraham to father a special people who will call on him as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is he who reveals his name to Moses when Moses vacillates before God, asking him to clearly identify himself to those enslaved in Egypt. I AM WHO I AM – JAHWEH -- that is God’s name. Isaiah recognizes him as The King, The Lord Almighty, when confronted by him in the great throne room. He differentiates himself from all the surrounding gods by what he does as the God of Israel. He is the Lord of hosts, the God above all gods.

Then comes this one named Jesus who insists that God is known through and in him. The name of God is narrowed down – “funneled” through him, as it were. It is he who speaks in today’s Gospel, commanding his disciples to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Here, and here only, in the entire New Testament is God thus specifically named. And yet throughout the New Testament we hear of this God who reveals himself as the Father who sends the Son, the Son who obediently obeys the Father and comes, the Son who sends the Spirit to instruct and counsel and guide God’s people into all truth. In the discourse at the Last Supper as John records it this interplay between Father and Son and Holy Spirit becomes a complex but fascinating inter-acting way of speaking about the God who is revealed in Jesus of Nazareth. “I and the Father are one,” he says in one breath, and hardly another breath away he says, “The Father is greater than I.” Jesus says that it is important that he, the Son, go away so that the Spirit can enlarge and elaborate on what all has happened in the work of the Son that is now finished . . . although not yet completed. It is for the church, led by the Spirit interpreting the Son’s work as that which has reconciled all creation to the Father from whom it had been alienated in sin, to complete his work.

“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Jesus says. It is a new name that is as old as the original creation of which we hear in the First Lesson -- although there it was a name in the shadows, so to speak. Christian understanding has long recognized that the God who created the heavens and the earth, bringing it into being by the word of his command (the same Word that was “made flesh” according to John) and then bringing order out of the chaotic formless void through the Spirit of God hovering over this shapeless emptiness of darkness and matter is the God who is named by Jesus as “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” As old as creation – and as new as our baptismal waters – the name of God permeates the entire history of the world. This Lord leads and guides that which was created: promising, chiding, defending, judging, redeeming, protecting, haunting every shadow at every point of history but showing and revealing himself in a particular way through the history of Israel and through this man in whom and through whom all his promises and redeeming actions are funneled until we stand with him and the disciples in this closing scene of Matthew’s Gospel.

Now as we stand together on this mountain we have seen in this Jesus that which God wants us to know about him and his relationship to humankind. He has shown us the very depths of his heart through his Son, whose suffering and dying became the surrogate suffering and dying of this broken world. In him and through him all that sin brought into the world has been de-fanged, so to speak, as it poured out its poisonous venom on this man Jesus as he, God’s beloved, hung on the cross.

“Can God not stop all the horrors that surround us?” is a common cry of our day. “Can he not intervene in history and put a stop to the terror that so pervades all the annals of human misery? Can he not step into the midst of the agony of this world and with the same word that first created the world also halt the dogged trail of anguish that marks the footsteps of all who have gone before and all who surround us today with tears of despair and hopelessness?” So go the questions that rage within us mortals.

Do we not ask the same thing of this man innocently dying on the cross? Do we not want to ask the Father to halt the misery we see there? There were those who stood under the cross who dared to advocate that. “Come down from the cross and save yourself,” they cried . . . but in derision, not in faith. “He saved others, but he can’t save himself. Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Thus did they taunt him. And why do we not taunt the Father for standing idly by, watching his Son sink into such wretchedness? Surely any good Father, were he mighty enough to create and sustain an entire cosmos in all of its existence, should be able to do such a simple thing as to release this one who is called his Son from this cross. What is pulling a few nails compared to governing the immensity of the universe? Why does his all-powerful Father not come to his aid?

Would you not do so? Would you not do anything you could to save your son in such a pitiful and abject moment as this? Surely you would, would you not?

But the Father in heaven remains seemingly unmoved, even when his Son cries out in the horror of the moment, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Yet this same man dares to say with his dying breath, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” What a strange scene this is!

Can it possibly be understood by mere human rationality? Does not every fiber of our natural body and mind react vehemently to and rebel at seeing this injustice as we see this innocent man hanging on this cross just as we cry out against all the other apparent injustices of the world? It is this man whom we see dying who said less than twenty-four hours earlier, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” That is why we cannot understand this and other apparent acts of divine injustice . . . because, as children of this world, none of this “makes sense” – whether it be the injustice of this cross or the agonies of the world of every age and place.

It is the Spirit’s work that keeps us from crying out to this man, “Come down!” For we know that were he to come down, the very judgment upon this wayward world would come down with him and fall upon us. Does this “make sense?” Of course not! It is purely an article of faith . . . but it is a faith that is born of eyes that are opened by the Spirit of truth who comes at the bidding of this man on the cross. How well he knows that none of this “makes sense.” Therefore he must open the eyes of our heart to see into and through and beyond all this. He must walk with those who are on the way to Emmaus, opening the scripture to us and causing our hearts to burn within us. He must depart from us so that the Spirit, whom the Father sends at the bidding of this Son, may seize hold of us, giving us an understanding that can only be called faith, for it grabs hold of us and embraces us with a sense of powerful truth that turns our eyes away from those things with which the world would seduce us in order to lay hold on things far more important – things grounded in eternity..

For this man, marked with the wounds in his hands and his feet and the spear-mark in his side was not held in the tomb just as we are not held by the dark world that would become our grave. He has risen, as he said he would, and he stands on this hillside with these disciples, assuring them that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” It was “given to him,” mark you! It is his from eternity as the Son of God, yet it is “given to him” as this man whose body is now entirely and eternally riveted to the divine Son of the Father standing before these eleven. The Father has fully received that which the Son has done in his life, suffering and death . . . has raised him from the dead as full assurance of that acceptance . . . and now receives him back into the heavens (for this scene is surely Matthew’s ascension scene!) where he will exercise his authority over all creation now and forever! Wherever his people go, they can be sure that “he will be with them always, to the very end of the age.”

What’s in a name? All this – and more – much more – is “packed into” the name of God as the name is given here in this last appearance of Jesus before his ascension: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The very essence of God is wrapped up in this name as it is revealed to us by the Son in this, his parting gift to us.

The Church’s Task – To Take The Name of God Into All the World

His parting gift, however, is also attached to a task, a mission, a charge: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them . . . and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” The power in this name is to be transmitted across the space and time of this earth so that all space and time might be transcended by him who transcends all space and time. “I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” That is to say, “I send you as the visible representatives of myself, who am now returning to my originating place, now carrying with me the body that suffered, died and was raised again in that act of reconciling all creation to the Father from whom it had become estranged. Go and tell this to the world, for this is the Good News that will change the world. Wash it with this Good News so that, bathed in that Good News carried in the name of him from whom I came and to whom I go in order to send the renewing Spirit, it can rejoice and be glad, renewed and restored. Go and wash it with this name, telling it that which I have told you!”

So they went . . . and the world listened. But in a world of many gods this talk about Father, Son and Spirit seemed confusing – as though there were three gods – or at least three different manifestations of God. So those who went and those who followed were forced to think about these words with which they were to baptize, making it clear that these names were all the name of one God. Creeds affirming this were gradually brought into being . . . not all at once, but piecemeal at first and then confirmed and refined by the larger church until the confession could be made that “whoever will be saved shall, above all else, hold the catholic faith . . . and the catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in three persons and three persons in one God, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.” The Father as Creator was affirmed; the Son as Redeemer was affirmed; the Spirit as Faith-bringer and Life-changer was affirmed. And yet each participated part and parcel in that which the other did. An eternal undivided fellowship within which each was separate while all were one. Not unlike a red-hot poker in which redness is present, although not all pokers are nor all heat are red; hotness is present although not all pokers or redness are hot; while at the same time the poker remains a poker even though it is not necessarily in itself red or hot. All inhere within one another in a solid unity. So it is with this one God who has revealed himself in three persons.

Thus did the church gradually learn to speak and confess. This was the word that was carried into all the world, defining within the name of God him who is present and acting in, with and under that name. Did this language “explain” God? Did it “corner” God by using this name which Jesus speaks in our text, telling his disciples to carry it to the ends of the earth? By no means! St. Augustine is reputed to have said that the concept of this word “Trinity” was a little better than saying nothing when one had to say something. Because we must speak of God, we must use words naming God even though the God of whom we speak is beyond human language and beyond human comprehension. We dare to speak of him thus, however, for he has spoken of himself in this way.

This is the distinguishing language of the holy catholic church. It establishes an understanding of who God is and what God has done through the use of a particular name. It is the name we honor today on the one solitary “church calendar day” devoted to a teaching of the church and not an action of God such as we remember at Christmas or Pentecost. This day is set aside to remind us once again that we as the people who have been baptized into this name are a unique people. As St. Peter wrote, “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God.” This day is set aside to remind us that we worship a God who has not reveled in his glory, but has joined himself to our sins and weaknesses in such a way that we might be restored to him who has made us.

St. Paul says, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing. . . “ So we, seeing God “from the inside,” as it were, through the name with which he has named himself, are to understand our place in life as servants even as Christ, “taking the very nature of a servant . . . humbled himself and became obedient to death.” So are we, washed in the waters in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to find our place in life as those who bear this name into all the world as servants of God and therefore also servants of those around us.

This is what it means to know the name of God and to bear it into the world. It will not be borne without suffering, for we are servants of the suffering one. But even if we bear it in a suffering unto death, we do so because “he is with us always, to the very end of the age.” So we bear it with the same authority by which he “to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given” embraces us.

“When they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted,” Matthew tells us. Linguists tell us that this word “doubt” is not the doubt of unbelief, but of a lesser faith than others. Is it not so among us also? Is this not an encouragement, however? This passage is not finally about us and the strength of our faith. It is about Jesus and the strength of his authority. “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.” That is, “Take this name and through it show and tell the world what God is like!

Hubert Beck, Retired Pastor
hbeck@austin.rr.com

 


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