Go Into the World in the Name of the Triune God—Lectionary Reflection for Trinity Sunday, Year A (Matthew 28)
Matthew 28:16-20 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. 18 And 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 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
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Having
celebrated Pentecost, that harvest day, on which the Spirit blew new life into
the church, empowering them to fulfill Jesus’ command to take the good news to
the end of the earth (Acts 1-2), on this Trinity Sunday we hear another version
of that commission to take the good news to the ends of the earth. This time,
we hear a word from the Gospel of Matthew. The eleven remaining disciples
gather with Jesus in Galilee on a mountaintop. These final verses of Matthew
remind us that the Gospels tell the story of Jesus’ departure very differently
(Mark doesn’t even have a true Easter story let alone a version of the
ascension). The choice of Matthew 28 for a Trinity Sunday reading is due to the
baptismal formula that is as close to a clear trinitarian formula as we will
find in the Bible.
This is
a brief passage, but it is pregnant with information about who we are as
followers of Jesus and what Jesus wants us to be doing because we are his
followers. We’ll get to the commission and the baptismal formula in just a
moment. Before we get there, I would like to reflect for a moment on the
liturgical context for this reading. That context being Trinity Sunday. While
it is true that the word trinity is not found in the New Testament, and that
there is not a clearly laid out trinitarian doctrine present in Scripture,
there are plenty of hints. Though it took several centuries before what we
might call the classical Nicaean doctrine of the Trinity emerged, it quickly
became clear that what we read in the New Testament required a broadening of
the definition of the nature of God. While even today there are differences in
approach, the majority of Christian faith traditions affirm a Trinitarian
understanding of God. That is true even for non-creedal churches such as the
one I am a member of. We might not have a firmly laid out doctrine of the
Trinity, but in our membership in organizations such as the World Council of
Churches, we have affirmed the doctrine as representing our stance on things (I
take this up in my brief book The Triune Nature of God).
The
doctrine of the Trinity emerged as the early Christian community sought to
reconcile its origins in Judaism, which affirmed the oneness of God with the
growing belief in the divinity of Jesus and of the Holy Spirit. As they sought
to bridge these two concerns—God’s oneness and the divinity of Jesus and the
Holy Spirit—various theologies emerged. As Veli-Matti Karkkainen, notes, they
sought to thread the needle between two extremes:
Having gradually affirmed the deity of both Son and Spirit, the major challenge to Christian theology was to negotiate between two extremes: tritheism, the belief in Father, Son, and Spirit as “separate gods,” on the one hand, and modalism, the idea of lack of personal distinctions in the one Godhead, on the other hand. Modalism, which may take more than one form, insists on the unity of the Godhead to the point where the names Father, Son, and Spirit are just that—names. They denote various manifestations or modes of being of the one and same Godhead. [Karkkainen, Veli-Matti; Christian Understandings of the Trinity (p. 33). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition].
So, on this Sunday we have the opportunity to contemplate
the doctrine of the Trinity and as such the nature of God.
This
particular Sunday invites our contemplation of God who is by nature Triune, but
it also has missional implications as well as eschatological ones. The final
word in Matthew’s gospel is a call for his followers to go and make disciples
of the nations (Gk. ta ethnē), which we can read as a call to
bring into the fold the Gentile world. We call this the Great Commission
because it speaks in terms of a major expansion of the work of God in the
world. While expanding the circle to include all the nations and their people
might seem impossible at first sight, let us remember who is speaking. It is
Jesus and he’s already risen from the dead! While there is this missional
imperative—go make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, there is also the eschatological dimension in the promise on
Jesus’ part to be with them always, even to the end of the age.
This church
that Matthew speaks of here may have started as a small, insignificant
Jewish sect whose founder had been executed by the Romans, essentially because the
authorities (religious and political) perceived him to be a terrorist or at
least someone who the authorities believed posed a challenge to Roman rule, but
in time it would penetrate almost every corner of the earth. We can look
back two thousand years and see how it developed, matured, and made some
unfortunate alliances with imperial powers. Still, through it all the gospel
remained present even though Jesus’ message has at times gotten lost amid other
messages that at times stand at odds with the Gospel (things like nationalism).
As daunting as the task might have looked, this passage reminds us that ours is
not a stationary faith. We are commanded to go out into the world. As we
go forth the people we’re called to make disciples of are not limited to one ethnic
or national grouping. The message is clear—everybody is welcome to become a
disciple through baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—joining
up as Jesus’ disciples should lead to the transformation of our lives. In other
words, to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit should
make a difference in our behavior!
Now, returning
to the liturgical context for a moment, the creators of the Revised Common
Lectionary did not choose the passage either for its sacramental values
(baptism) or its missional values (Go make disciples), but because it offers
the clearest Trinitarian formula in Scripture. While we can see this formula as
being Trinitarian, the author of the Gospel (Matthew) did not have a developed
Trinitarian theology. Nevertheless, reading it theologically allows us to
ponder its implications for our understanding of the nature of God. While
this passage might have a precise formula that Christians have made use of
through the centuries as foundational to baptismal practice, it is not the only
passage that offers possibilities of Trinitarian interpretation. Thus, in time
early Christians began to connect the dots and an understanding of God emerged
that has stood at the center of Christian confession.
I have
left the eschatological dimension for last. The commission is to go into the
world, making disciples of the nations, baptizing them as noted above in the
name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The closing word, the eschatological
word, is a reminder that as we go forth into the world we don’t go alone.
Pentecost Sunday offered Luke’s take, suggesting in the Book of Acts, that the
church has been filled with the Holy Spirit. Matthew doesn’t have a Pentecost
message, but he does offer us a promise that accomplishes much the same thing.
Here in the final verse of Matthew, Jesus tells the disciples that he would be
with them until the end of the age. The First Nations Version, which is
a paraphrastic translation that reflects Native American sensibilities, offers
this translation of verse 20 that opens up new meaning for us: “‘Never forget,’
he said as he began to rise up into the spirit-world above. “I will
always be with you, your invisible guide, walking beside you, until the
new age has fully come’” (Mt. 28:20 First Nations Version). Here is the
good news for Trinity Sunday. Jesus promises that as we go out into the world,
serving as witnesses to this good news, making disciples of the nations, we’re
not alone. God is present and active. As the reading from Genesis 1:1-2:4a,
reminds us, this is the God who creates and recreates. This is the God who
redeems and sustains creation. It is this God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who
will be with us until the new age begins.
As the
old missionary hymn reminds us: “We’ve a story to tell to the nations.” I’m not
sure what to make of the call to turn the hearts of the nation to the right,
but it is “a story of truth and mercy, a story of peace and light.” (H. Earnest
Nichol, 1906). And we do so in the name of God who is known to us as triune. Or
as Ruth Duck offers in the final verse of her hymn “Womb of Life, and Source of
Being”:
Mother,
Brother, holy Partner; Father, Spirit, Only Son:
We would praise your name forever, one in three and
three in one.
We would share your life, your passion, share your word of world made new,
ever singing, ever praising, one with all, and one
with you.
[Ruth Duck, GIA Publications 1992]
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