Holy Trinity | Göttinger Predigten im Internet

Holy Trinity Sunday – 7 June 2020 | Sermon on Matthew 28:16-20 | by Hubert Beck |

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version

THINKING AND SPEAKING IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY TRINITARIAN TERMS

THE QUESTION

One wonders what went through the minds of the eleven disciples on that mountain in Galilee as they saw and heard the things of which we are told in these final words of the Gospel According to St. Matthew.

On the one hand, there was no question about who they saw there, what was said there, or the quite obvious finality of the earthly sojourn of Jesus of Nazareth. Not any of them would have reported anything other than what we read here.

Yet each of them must have felt and / or experienced a number of unique things as they stood there, for each had his own memory of what had taken place in the months and years through which Jesus had interacted with him. James and John each seem to have had some particularly intimate times with Jesus. Peter was, without question, very close to Jesus. The rest? We have no information whatever on the relationship Jesus had with some of the others, but each must have had his own moments with Jesus that would remain with him until his dying day.

We catch something of a glimpse of these various ways the disciples were responding to what was happening on that mount of departure from the way Matthew wrote, “When they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.” On the one hand, to “worship him” most certainly suggests that some had either become or were becoming aware of the full “otherness” of this man to the point of finding the presence of God in and through him while, on the other hand, some were still quite unsure of just exactly had taken place in the time they had spent with him so they doubted.

Whether, however, those who worshipped him or those who doubted reacted to his presence at this final meeting with him, the question we posed earlier remains a valid question: What was going on in the minds and hearts of those who were with him when he spoke the words we read as his final ones before ascending into heaven?

That, of course, is the question that has haunted all who have ever since that time confessed Jesus to be Lord. Should one fully and totally worship him or should one be content to live with doubts about who he really was, what he did, and how one should receive the accounts of his life, suffering and death. Depending on how one answers, the words Jesus is said to have spoken on the basis of one’s answer as Matthew gives them to us must be evaluated.

The disciples had to do so – and we must do so also on a daily basis. If one believes him to be one who is to be worshiped, one’s life will be directed in one way – and if one does nothing other than doubt him, one’s life will be affected in quite another way! That question lies imbedded within the text under consideration.

THE QUESTION WITHIN THE QUESTION

The Trinitarian name of God does not appear anyplace in the four Gospels other than in these last verses of Matthew’s Gospel. For that reason a second question surfaces within the first question: What must have passed through the minds of these men when Jesus instructed them to “baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”? They had never before this been given the command to baptize those who responded positively to the proclamation that the kingdom of God was at hand – not even as a companion act to the authority given them over all demons and the curing of diseases. (Luke 9:1, 2)

So his command to baptize in itself was a new word for their ears and their mission, but adding the words “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” as a baptismal formula – a name they had never before (at least to our knowledge) heard from his lips – must have astonished them beyond imagination as they were given their newly named mission to baptize to the point of incredulity. What were they to make of all this? They certainly knew that Jesus commonly addressed God as his “Father” and on the evening before his crucifixion he spent a considerable amount of time promising them that he would send the Spirit upon them (e,g. John 14:15, 25 ff.) to continue that which he had begun. (See Acts 1:1 as an extension of that promise.) But he had never before addressed them in words like these. So what had they understood or what had passed through their minds upon hearing these words?

We do not know how to answer our own question, of course. What we do know, however, is that for a period of time baptizing “in the name of Jesus” seems to have been enough for them initially. (see Acts 8:16 and Acts 10:48). Within a short time, however, baptizing “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” became the accepted formula for baptism.

We have, therefore, inherited through these, Jesus’ parting words, this name of God as the way to identify him who is to be called into our lives through our we baptism. We pour water in and with that name, joining that name to the name of the one being baptized. In doing so, the baptized person is linked to Jesus, the one “who died to sin” but who was also “raised from the dead by the glory of the Father.” In this manner his name and work becomes our name and work so that “we too might walk in newness of life,” thus “considering ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Romans 6:1-11

That is how and why, through the development of the church through the ages of its history, joined to the witness of the communion of saints who have delivered these words and this faith to us into our present day, we consider this to be the name of the God who made himself known in Jesus Christ as our God whom we are to worship and adore. The “question within the question” thus becomes the “faith of the holy catholic Church” in that way.

Not all questions remain questions. Sometimes they become “insights within insights.”

Another question is raised at this point, however.

WHAT INSIGHT OF WORTH DO WE GAIN THROUGH ALL THIS?

When we name God in this particular way we are able to both speak to and profess WHO GOD IS and, at the same time address the question of HOW HE INFLUENCES OUR LIVES IN SUCH A CRUCIAL WAY.

It would be easy to just fall back onto the language of our catechism when we ask or say such things – and that would be to go over old stuff as though that would be enough – and it would, indeed, be enough in itself, for it holds the ancient truths in a very clear and concentrated way.

But let us try another way to speak of what insights this Trinitarian language brings to our minds and lives. The following was the way a theologian steeped in musical language and idiom put it:

Let us say that the Father is represented by the middle C on a keyboard. When one strikes that key it creates a sound that echoes throughout the room in which the keyboard resides. It isn’t a sound limited in any way other than its own “world” (the room in which the keyboard is situated). It is, however, heard everywhere in the same timbre and in every corner of the space within which it exists. It “fills the space,” so to speak.

Now one strikes the E above it while the sound of the C continues unabated. The sound of the E is equally present throughout the room where the C is sounding. It neither cancels out the sound of the C nor is it diminished by the C as it continues to reverberate throughout the room. They, in fact, complement each other and, sounded together, make a pleasing sound in the room – both at the same time and yet each in its own way.

A third key is struck – the G above the E and C. Musicians call it a “chord,” but for our purposes here we shall simply say that it “melds” into the combined sounds of the E and C to enhance the overall resonance. None of them reduces either or both of the other tones. They simply sound in consonance with each, but each, at the same time enriches the other sounds of E and C, creating a still more full timbre. To take one of them from the other will not destroy the beauty although it will diminish its beauty. Maintaining them all in harmony with the other, however, is to experiences a far greater sense of beauty and fullness – as though the three were actually one or, to put it another way, as though the one sound has three different dimensions, each enriching the other.

SO WHAT? YOU ASK!

WHAT DOES ALL THIS HAVE TO DO WITH US –

WITH GOD –

WITH THE TRINITY?

Is it too much of a stretch to use this as a way of speaking about the Trinity? If the disciples were bamfoozled by the way Jesus talked about God, this surely doesn’t seem to clarify much for us, either, does it? We are left, like the disciples were, with a sense that talking about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as one God in three persons is just too much for our poor little minds to wrap themselves around.

Yet the Trinity is something like the chord/s we have been describing when you get down to it. The disciples didn’t have much to go on when it came to understanding what Jesus was talking about, but they had to employ whatever was at their disposal to get even a very small grasp over the course of time concerning that which they heard for the first time from Jesus lips. They used images, thoughts, ideas, etc., in efforts at speaking about this baptismal formulaic name in clearer terms over the course of time. So we shouldn’t be faulted for trying to do so in our own way and in our own time.

With a bit of patient reflection, then, try to use what was said earlier in order to sense what the holy catholic Church is confessing about God and saying to us when it uses the name of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit — the name by which we call God into our midst when we gather in his name for worship, for a baptism, and / or for any or other similar prayers and rites of the church as the people of God.

The Father alone is glorious and worthy of all praise, for from him all created things have come and by him all created things maintain their own unity. The problem with such an analogy, however, is that “the stuff” we call “sin” has cast a discordant note into this beauty, tarnishing and staining and blemishing it to the point that it is totally discolored and dirty beyond its originally created beauty. It is literally “falling apart” under the stress and strain that is put upon it by the futile efforts of people everywhere to restore what has been lost.

The Father, therefore, sends the “Restorer,” his Son, who was there with him from the beginning and who, therefore, knows what it was, what it should be, and what it could be again. He is known by a multitude of names and his work is portrayed in a number of ways by those attempting to renovate and put the broken world back together again into a semblance of what it clearly had been.

This Son, fully aware of what it had been and what it should be, sets about the “Restoration Project” using, of all things some nails and some wood in order to re-establish that which his Father had sent him to do. The world, however, thinking it knows better than the Carpenter who is at work putting things together again in a right fashion, neither understands what is happening nor does it much care, for it is so set in its own ways and its misdirected visions that it needs a “new eye,” a “corrected vision,” a “newborn direction and yearning,” an “altered resolution” to accomplish that which the Son was working so hard to restore – a Holy Spirit, if you will, working in full coordination with the Father’s will and the Son’s efforts at creating a “new heaven and a new earth.”

There in a nutshell, is the essence of the one whom we identify as the Holy Trinity in his fully and completely harmonic selfhood doing that which only such a Trinity can either fathom or accomplish. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit all work toward the same end while each performs in his own way that which is necessary for the completion of the task.

It is only one possibility out of many, many others to “explain” or “illustrate” or “describe” what we mean when we speak of the Holy Trinity or how we understand the Holy Trinity to work within us, around us, and / or in our behalf. Could the disciples, hearing the name Father, Son and Holy Spirit for the first time on this so-called “mountain” in Galilee have envisioned what Jesus either meant or commissioned them to do? Hardly!

But we in our day are called forth alongside those disciples of old to carry forth that commission in our own way and with the means that are placed at our disposal – means so simple as water, bread, wine, and a word hovering over and filling each of them.

Hopefully we can catch a glimpse here of that to which Christ called his church in those final moments of his earthly stay recorded by St. Matthew. May this be one way by which we can envision that to which Jesus called his church to do as he stood on that mount giving his final instructions to those first bearers of the Saving Gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord.

In his name whom we know as Father, + Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.
Hubert Beck

An ordained minister of the Word

Retired

hbeck@austin.rr.com