I.N.I.

a sermon to be preached on Trinity Sunday, 11 June 2017, at Christ Episcopal Church, Accokeek, Maryland, based on the Gospel for the day, St. Matthew 28:16-20

Grace, mercy, and peace be yours in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today, the first Sunday after Pentecost, is the day the Church calls “Trinity Sunday.” It’s actually unique in that it commemorates a doctrine, a truth, a teaching, and not an event. That might make you think this is an odd Sunday; but it should also make you think that the doctrine remembered today is pretty important if it’s focused on this way.

Another interesting thing about the “Trinity” is that the word “Trinity” does not appear in the Bible (but, then, neither do the words “Christmas,” “Good Friday,” or “Easter”). Yet we believe it, teach it, and in all three of the Church’s historic creeds, we confess it. Why is that? It’s because the facts are there in the Bible, even if the vocabulary word is not. Our Gospel text for today is one of the places we meet the Trinity very explicitly.

Here at the very end of St. Matthew’s Gospel, we have the brief passage that is often called “the Great Commission.” Jesus, resurrected from the dead, is about finally to leave his followers and move to the right hand of the Father and send them the Holy Spirit. He has final words to give them, a final charge. He sends them out into the world with a job to do, a mission to carry out. Jesus commissions them. He says to go and make disciples of all nations. He’s a little fuzzy on the details. Or seems to be. But if we spend some time together looking at these verses, then the “how” should come into sharper focus.

So, then, what is this Great Commission? And how did the eleven apostles carry it out? And, importantly, is this Commission relevant to us non-apostles today, and if it is, then what should we be doing as a result, how do we carry it out?

Simply put, the eleven apostles were given the job to “make disciples of all nations.” It’s important, therefore, to understand the word “disciple.” It isn’t all about learning and reciting correct doctrines that line up with the Holy Scripture. Discipleship involves more than that. Much more. New Testament-era disciples — these eleven in particular — had a personal relationship with their master/teacher. In Judaism it was incumbent upon serious students to seek out a rabbi or teacher, and to attach yourself to him. You’d spend time with the teacher studying the Scripture. Then the various interpretations of Scripture. You’d become a follower of that particular tradition, identifying yourself that way.

Not so here. There are (at least) two significant ways in which being a disciple of Jesus is different. First off, Jesus calls His disciples; His disciples don’t just decide one day to get serious about religion and go off looking for a teacher, ending up in this circle around Jesus. Secondly, the attachment here is to the person of Jesus rather than to His doctrine. Jesus is their Lord, not just merely their teacher.

Now, remember that you and I actually follow this New Testament pattern. The Lord has called each one of us before we had any idea of following Him. And our personal attachment is to Jesus as Lord, not just to His teachings (isn’t that why we feel sorry for people who say that they think of Jesus as a fine moral example but don’t see Him as their Savior?). We have a relationship with God, we’re united with Him.

This came about because the first disciples carried out the Great Commission. They became disciple-makers. They called people from all the nations within the Roman Empire, and even from beyond its borders, to relationships with Jesus. Then by passing on the Great Commission to those new disciples the disciple-making was carried on generation after generation until now it truly has circled the globe.

How did they to do that? And how do we continue it? In our text there’s a 2-pronged plan: a) by baptizing them in the name of the triune God; and b) by teaching all nations to observe what Jesus had commanded.

As we start to look at these points I don’t want to ignore the fact that this whole thing is hard for some of us. Notice in this text that it was apparently hard for some of the original disciples, too. In all my years of knowing the Great Commission I believe I’ve always started with verse 18 of Matthew 28. But verse 17 seems important to pause at first: “When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some doubted.” These are the eleven original disciples, Jesus’s closest followers, and when they saw Him on the mountain, they worshiped Him … but some doubted.

Did they doubt that it was really Him? Were they just not sure that the Lord had risen and was there coming to them? It sort of reminds me of when the risen Jesus was on the shore while the disciples were fishing (read it in John 21, the last chapter of that Gospel) and at first they didn’t recognize Him. Here some doubted it was Him. They lacked confidence. They needed to be built up.

So just as with Thomas, Jesus remained close to them, bringing them along. He didn’t set them aside because of their doubts. He doesn’t set us aside because of our doubts. He always remains faithful to His followers. Jesus includes all His followers when He sends out the disciple-makers.

The plan, then, is for the Lord’s disciples to go out and make more disciples, to invite more and more people from more and more nations to be in relationship with God. Jesus gives the disciples this two-sided method for doing this: baptizing and teaching. He mentions baptizing first — the creation by God of a living heart-relationship with us sinners — and He mentions teaching in the next breath as the way this relationship is also a head-relationship. Understand that these two work together, like a double thread or a twisted pair of copper wires or both the long sides of a ladder. One without the other won’t work. It takes both.

Our 2-pronged Commission begins with baptizing the nations in the name of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “In the name of” means that the sacrament unites us with God. “In the name of” means we are committed to Him. “In the name of” means that our names are written down in the Book of Life as people who are His. People baptized in the name of the Father have God as their Father. People baptized in the name of the Son receive all the benefits of the Son’s redeeming act. People baptized in the name of the Spirit receive the life-giving and life-sustaining power and presence of the Spirit in their lives. That’s not just what happened back in New Testament times. That’s us!

And Jesus continues the Great Commission with the other necessary piece: “teaching them to obey all things I have commanded you.” So being Christians isn’t just an emotional connection with our Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier; there is a ‘knowledge component’ to it (to use some current jargon). It’s important then to know just what He commanded. We were reminded of His new command a few weeks ago, remember? On Maundy Thursday, after Jesus first gave us His body and blood in the Last Supper, He told his disciples: “A new commandment I give unto you, That you love one another; as I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35) We can say that the core, the center, and the focus of what Jesus commanded us is “love.” And so we need to teach others.

Carrying out the Great Commission is not just for the first eleven apostles. It’s not just for saints and missionaries from history. It isn’t merely for singular heroes of the faith. Carrying out the Great Commission is for all of us.

Which can seem to present a problem.

What if I don’t have a vocation, a calling, to be a priest or bishop who baptizes? What if I am carrying out godly obligations in my family and my job and can’t see my way to dropping it all in order to go to the ends of the earth? What if I’m one of those who sees Jesus on the mountain and doubts? What if I don’t have much self-confidence when it comes to teaching others?

Well, Jesus has thought of us, too. Look at the very last sentence in Matthew’s Gospel: “Surely I will be with you always, to the very end of the age.” Voila! There’s your answer! Jesus is with us. He gives us the confidence to carry out His Commission. And about those times we don’t feel so confident? He’s with us anyway! He’s always with us. He fills in our gaps, smooths over our rough spots, makes us whole.

We who are baptized, remember, are living in the name of God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. He takes up everything we do in love and everything we are, because they are His. God uses these things for His purposes. It doesn’t matter whether we’re baking cookies or teaching children or building a house or preaching or tending a garden or writing letters and emails … whatever we do, we do in the Lord. So it extends His kingdom and plays a part in making disciples.

The Great Commission is part of Jesus’s farewell to His disciples. But He isn’t the only one saying goodbye today: Saint Paul does, too. Paul’s words in our Epistle are a brief goodbye to his friends in the Greek city called Corinth. He knows he is close to death and won’t have a chance to see them again or write them again, so with his parting words Paul tells them to “be of one mind, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with” them. Paul, of course, devoted years to carrying out the Great Commission as maybe the most important of the earliest missionaries (at least we know the most about his work due to the New Testament). Paul also knows what Jesus commanded His followers to do: to love one another. So Paul knows what’s important. When it comes down to the last words he writes to the Corinthians, do you see what it’s about? It’s about love. It’s about living in peace. It’s about finding the unity we have in the faith. To Saint Paul that seems to be how baptized Christians live out their relationship with God.

Every one of us here today has our own relationship with the triune God. On Trinity Sunday we, as the Church, spend a little time pondering just who this Trinity is. He is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, three separate and distinct persons, yet — as mysterious as it is — only one, single, undivided God. We know it and believe it because our source of information about God, the Bible, describes God this way.

God in Jesus gives each of us Christians a share in His own great work. So our Christian lives make contributions to the carrying out of that Great Commission. Most of us, truth be told, make small contributions. Maybe they’re also silent contributions or hidden ones, such that only God in Heaven knows about. If that’s the case for you, then fine; the way that you take part in Jesus’s Great Commission is by being one of the millions of followers who make u[ the mass of the Church. If you’re a hero of the faith they they’re going to write about in years to come, that’s great too. The point is that each of us have a part to play in following the original disciples by carrying out the Great Commission. We’re baptized in the name of the one true God. We’ve been taught. So in response we live sacramentally and we teach by our every word and action.

Focusing our every fiber on Jesus, we are disciple-makers. Amen

And the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen

S.D.G.

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