Matthew 28:16-20 | Göttinger Predigten im Internet

Holy Trinity Sunday | June 4, 2023 | Mt 28:16-20 | Paula Murray |

¹⁶The 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. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

If you were to look at this morning’s Gospel reading from Matthew 28 before you came to church this morning, you might feel just like you felt that Sunday you forgot it was Daylight Savings Time and people were streaming out of the church doors as you were trying to enter them. Way too many of your brothers and sisters in Christ had a bit of fun at your expense that day and since. Matthew’s Gospel ends with the story of the ascension of Jesus Christ and His return to the Father, and because we observed Ascension Day over two weeks ago we seem to be going backwards this Sunday, not forward as one might expect, especially given this is Trinity Sunday.

Thematically, there is a certain amount of sense to the way Matthew brings his Gospel to a close, in part because he does not really bring it to a close at all. Once we get past a certain age, most of us figure out that most endings really just signal a new beginning. This is high school and college graduation time, and, as almost always happens at these events there are many tears shed as an end comes to school careers and, often, the relationships built up over the years of shared classes and sports. Days later, or maybe weeks later, a new phase of life begins and new relationships are created and built up at work, trade school, or college. The end of one’s k-12 life signals the beginning of adulthood. Of course, there does come that end which, if it were not for Jesus Christ, would signal a true and everlasting end, that being death. But even here, for those who believe in God’s saving grace through Jesus Christ our Lord, there is a new beginning, and that beginning has no ending to it.

That new beginning has no end to it because it is part and parcel of a relationship which is itself eternal. Matthew’s Gospel begins with a genealogy, but unlike the kind of genealogy you might build on ancestry.com, that genealogy is less about Jesus’ progenitors, His ancestors, and more about the work of the Holy Spirit throughout creation’s history, a work that is so interrelated with the work of the Father and His Son that we cannot in any real or truthful way differentiate between them. You might meet me at the door after worship this morning and say, “But Pastor, the Father is the Creator and the Son is the Redeemer and the Spirit is the Sanctifier,” and you would be right. But it was also the Spirit Who separated the waters at the beginning, and all creation itself came into being through the Son. The Father is of one being with the Son, yet it was the Spirit through Whom Jesus was conceived and born of the Virgin Mary. When Jesus was baptized, the four Gospels sing with pretty much one voice including, for once, the Gospel of John. At Jesus’ baptism, an event which we “see” in the first three Gospels, but only hear in the fourth by way of John’s description of his experience of it, the Spirit descends upon Jesus as He arises from the Jordon’s waters, and God claims Jesus as His Son. Again, John describes the Voice of He Who sent him to baptize Jesus and we understand from the description that it is the Father Who speaks. “And John bore witness: ‘I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on Him. I myself did not know Him, but He Who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on Whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is He Who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and bore witness that this is the Son of God.’”

This is the truth to which we ourselves bear witness this very morning, that Jesus is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, three Persons in one God, through Whom all creation came into being and will be redeemed, a purpose fully shared in all its many aspects by the Father and the Holy Spirit. Three Persons, yet one God, co-equal, co-eternal, a communion of being and love that is perfect, holy, and unending. A communion of love so generous that all that is in both heaven and earth exists because that perfect, holy, and unending love determined to share love with us, who are not perfect, not holy, and not eternal.

We share then in the love of the one God in three Persons, the very same love shared in their communion, though our communion will never be holy, perfect, and eternal, not, anyway, until Christ returns, and all that exists is reconciled to the Father, through His Son, in the Spirit. Returning to the day’s Gospel lesson, we see the imperfect nature of our communion demonstrated by the very crew gathered upon the mountain to see Jesus off, as it were. Here they are, eleven men who followed Jesus, aids to His ministry, apostles in training, minus Judas who betrayed Jesus to the authorities of this earth. Eleven men, who also, though in smaller ways, betrayed their Lord and Savior, eleven men standing on a mountain top pointing to the heavens, wondering what was to happen next. Eleven men, stand ins for all of the rest of us, who heard Him preach and teach, who saw Him heal the deaf and blind and raise the dead, who saw and touched His resurrected body, and yet were of two minds concerning what it all meant. That is what distazo, the word translated as “doubt” means, of two minds, or two positions. They worshiped Him upon that mountain, yet were of two minds, caught between heaven and earth, between what they had seen and heard following Jesus and the whispers of lies that deny even the possibility that the abyss between earth and heaven is overcome in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.

Jesus, knowing that, said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. That’s verse 18, and Jesus is claiming God’s mantle as His own. He through Whom creation was made claims the authority to give the men standing on that mountain and all others in communion with Himself the ministry that is theirs. The ascension of Jesus is the end of His earthly presence on earth. No longer will He walk the dusty roads of Galilee and Judea with the disciples and the crowds following Him, that has come to an end. But His disciples will, their ministry is beginning. They will go far beyond Judea and the Galilee, literally to the ends of the earth if we include all who come after them. They will make more disciples for Jesus, baptizing them not only in His name but also in the name of the Father and the Son. They will teach them to live their lives in accord with God’s commandments, including the commandment to love the Lord God with “all their heart and all their soul and all their minds” and their neighbors like themselves (Matthew 22:37-40), and He Who is in eternal, loving communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit, will also be in eternal, loving communion with us.