THE HOLY TRINITY, 06/11/2017

Sermon on Matthew 28:16-20, by Samuel D. Zumwalt

¹⁶Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. ¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

GO!

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our God is a relational God. Within Himself, God is Father, God is Son, and God is Holy Spirit. As we confess in the Athanasian Creed today, each person of the Holy Trinity is distinct. God is within Himself three, but God is also one God. The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. Each person of the Holy Trinity is equally and fully God, but each is unique and distinct. Within Himself, God is a relational God. It is that God who reveals Himself to us, and through Jesus Christ, it is that God who wants everyone to share in His life and His love.

The terminally hip and the self-consciously cool turn their noses up at the Church’s creeds, especially the Athanasian Creed, precisely because these creeds tell us what it means to be Christian and who it is that Christians believe, teach, and confess.

Our God is a relational God who through the Holy Spirit is calling people into an eternal relationship with Him, but our God sets the terms of that relationship, and our God tells us how we are to address Him. God’s proper name is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The proper pronouns to use with God’s proper name are He, Him, Himself, and His. Unlike English Bible translations since 1953, capitalizing those pronouns is a helpful way to remember God is God and we are not. It is God who, by grace, chooses us. It is God who, by grace, offers us His life and His love – a free gift in Jesus Christ!

Lutheran theologians Forde and Nestingen wrote: “God is a mystery we cannot solve. God reveals Himself to us!” (Free to Be). God always acts first, and we always respond to Him. The question for us today is: “How are you responding to God?”

SOME DOUBTED

Today’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 28:16-20) gives us the ending to Matthew’s Gospel, a discipleship manual for the early Church. It is sometime after Easter Sunday, the day God’s Crucified Son Jesus rose from the dead. Some scholars say that the Ascension has already happened, although Matthew doesn’t tell the story like Luke. Yet, here, at the end of Matthew 28, the Lord Jesus reveals Himself in all His divine majesty to the eleven disciples (minus Judas) one last time. When the eleven see the Risen Lord, they fall down before Him in worship; they adore Him like the Magi once did when Jesus was a baby. Then Matthew adds in verse 17, but some doubted!

Many Christians often puzzle over that saying: “Some doubted.” Did they doubt it was really Jesus? Did they doubt that He was really raised from the dead? Or was it that they were hesitant, because, having abandoned Jesus on the cross, they wondered if Jesus would still want to be in relationship with them? Were they afraid? Matthew doesn’t clear up the mystery or answer our questions. So it is as if Matthew is asking you and me: “Now how are you going to respond to the Lord of heaven and earth?”

Are you going to worship the Crucified and Risen Jesus? Are you going to fall down before Him in awe and wonder? Or will you be one whose response is doubt-full?

SAYING AND HEARING NO

It’s as if we are back in the Garden of Eden again. The Lord God has given us life and offered us the gift of an intimate relationship with Him. But, like the first parents, we respond with “No, I’m going to take the gift of relationship with you and abuse it by being disobedient. I’m responding with: ‘I’d rather have it my way.’”

Crossway Bible Study author Harry Wendt says: “It’s not so much that we break God’s commandments as we break God’s heart.”

With what great love God said “No” to our first parents as He threw them out of the Garden of Eden and even as He sentenced them to death for their disobedience, for God did not want them to live forever broken and forever separated from Him. Indeed already in that moment of judgment, God’s broken heart had already decided to become human with us, that by dying with us and for us He could deliver us from sin, death, and the devil.

So, here at the end of Matthew, God Himself, Emmanuel, is with His disciples. This Lord Jesus has died and has been raised from the dead by His Father, so that those who are baptized with water in the name of this Triune God might be His own and live under Him in His kingdom. There is grace enough for everyone. There is room enough for everyone in God’s heart. But this is not a coercive offer. Just as in the Garden with the first parents, we can still say “No.” Remember how the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 7: “Not everyone who says unto me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven.”

Even as the eleven saw the Risen Lord and fell down to worship Him, some doubted. We can still say “No” to God. And if we persist in saying “No” to God, our Father will, at last, sadly say: “OK, your will be done. Have it your way...if you must!”

SHARING GOD’S LIFE AND LOVE

Throughout Matthew’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus told His disciples they were only to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. God’s mission was first and foremost for His chosen people, the Jews. Yes, the Lord Jesus came into contact with Gentiles occasionally and even marveled at the faith of some. But first of all God in human flesh came seeking His own people descended from Abraham and Sarah. God is always faithful even when His people have responded with “No” to God. So God in Christ still wants to gather His scattered sheep, the children of Abraham and Sarah.

Here at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, the mission reverts to the very words God spoke to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 12: “By you I will bless all the ethnic groups in the world.” God’s Son Jesus is God’s fulfillment of His promise to Abraham and Sarah. Through His mother Mary, the Lord Jesus is biologically a descendent of Abraham and Sarah (through Joseph He is legally Son of David). Through God’s Son Jesus, God the Father has kept His promise to bless all nations through Abraham and Sarah’s offspring. This becomes clear as the Lord Jesus tells His disciples: “Going (as you are going along in life), make disciples of all ethnic groups by baptizing them with water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” In and through Jesus, all the nations of the earth will be blessed!

God’s life and God’s love are not offered only to Jews. Just as God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share life and love eternally, so now the Triune God wants everyone to get in on that life and that love. How are you going to respond to God’s saving work? Will you be baptized and bring children to be baptized? Will you fall down before Him in worship? Will you doubt? Will you hesitate and not follow Jesus? Will you stop following and learning from Him? Will you invite others to share God’s life and God’s love? Who among us, having gladly received such life and love, will not want everyone to have what God in Christ has given us through no effort or merit of our own?

How can we not hasten to God’s house to hear His Word and to receive Him in Host and Cup? How could we respond to such wondrous love by refusing to listen, by refusing to follow, by refusing to invite others to be drawn into the Triune God’s life?

HE IS ALWAYS PRESENT

When you are in love, you can’t wait to be with your beloved. Even the least romantic guy counts the minutes until he can be with the one he loves. Even the most career-minded woman, even the most driven girl, cannot stop thinking about the one who has captured her heart.

When the Holy Spirit has called you to faith, it’s very much like that. When you get that God has always loved you and always treasured you more than His own life, it changes you. You can go through any crisis. You can go throw the pits of hell. You can do what you never thought possible when you get it that God has promised in Jesus Christ to be your God, and He will never leave you even when you doubt and run away!

Martin Luther suffered with bouts of deep depression (self-medicating with alcohol was no help, as some similarly afflicted Lutherans and their pastors should remember). He lived most of his adult life under an imperial death penalty and under papal excommunication. His beloved little girl died in childhood. He felt the great burden of having the souls of so many looking to him for guidance and the truth. He constantly lived in the tension between arguing with bad medieval Roman practice and bad theology and practice of other reformers. Through all of that, through every temptation and assault of the devil, Luther would say: “But I am baptized. I am God’s child. Christ Jesus has died and risen that I may be His!” Luther was constantly in prayer, constantly in the Word of God, and constantly racing to the altar to receive the Lord Jesus’ Body and Blood.

Do you wonder where the Lord Jesus is? Do you wonder if the Father cares about this world and you? Do you wonder if the Holy Spirit is really working? Come to the services of God’s house. Yes, open your ears to God’s Word. Yes, hurl your prayers against the darkness. Yes, race to the altar to lift your empty hands. For here God Himself is truly present. Here God Himself is calling: “Share my life. Share my love.”

If you aren’t baptized, what are waiting for? If you are baptized, offer yourself as a living sacrifice of thanks and praise to the Triune God who has given you life and love. And, as you are going along in life, tell other beggars where to get the Bread of Life!

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Samuel D. Zumwalt
Wilmington, North Carolina USA
E-Mail: szumwalt@bellsouth.net www.societyholytrinity.org

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