Matthew 28:16-20 (NIV)
(16) Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.
(17) When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.
(18) Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
(19) Therefore go 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 I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Good morning!
As I begin this morning, I have to ask you if any of you have ever had an experience in life where things just kind of pile up and you begin to see a meaning behind events? I mean, in seemingly common situations, things just take on a deeper meaning, like you have peeled off a layer or two and you begin to see those events at a much deeper level.
These past few weeks, that is exactly what has been happening to me. It is hard to explain, and even harder to analyze, but because of all these things going on in my mind, I feel I have to talk about that this morning, and I hope you will see the connections to the scripture this morning.
Of course, the gospel reading this morning is one of the most important of our faith. The apostles having now received the Holy Spirit are given the Great Commission. They are given direction for how to continue the work even though Jesus is no longer physically with them.
However, today is also Trinity Sunday. This is really the only day when the church focuses on the idea of the Trinity itself. As I prepared for this morning, I thought about how to talk about the Trinity. After all, it may very well be one of the most complex parts of our faith and has been written about by thousands of people throughout the ages. I thought I could find a clear, concise way of explaining the Trinity, but I soon found out, it is more complex than I had even thought. For example, Aristotle wrote probably the most influential treatise on the Trinity. His work covers 15 different volumes and is thousands of pages. Not something you can sit down and read in an afternoon. Many who have tried to understand the Trinity come away from the search with more questions than answers. The best explanation that I could find simply defined the Trinity as a mystery. That, of course, didn’t help, because I already knew it was a mystery. Who knows, maybe that is the whole point. One explanation that I liked compared the trinity to mathematics. We tend to think of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as individual entities, which they are. So mathematically you can assume 1 + 1 + 1=3. However, that doesn’t really help, because in this case the math doesn’t work. The Trinity is not three different entities. I saw one explanation say that it is more like multiplication. 1 X 1 X 1= 1. That is a little better, but breaking something like our understanding of God into equations seems to simplify God in a way that seems disrespectful.
The trinity speaks to our own understanding of how we conceive of God. Therefore, it would stand to reason that any explanation that belittles that conception is too small, too simple to be used in our own minds to conceive of something that in reality is beyond comprehension. Kind of the same idea of how the Jewish people in biblical times refused to say the name of God. The idea was that saying the name of God would limit God, therefore contradicting the idea that God is limitless. Have I confused any of you yet? Let me step back a second and come at this from a different angle. Any understanding we have of anything has to come from our experience. So, the question then becomes, can we experience God in a way that helps us to grasp the idea of the Trinity better? In reality, that is an individual question. But over these past couple of weeks, I have had some experiences that have helped me gain a deeper appreciation for this concept. My hope is that the experiences I am going to speak of will help some of you as well.
Last week, as many of you know, Pastor Judy, Lynda and myself attended Annual Conference at Messiah College. This was my first experience of the full Annual Conference. It was amazing and wonderful and extremely boring all at the same time. But there were a few moments that I doubt I will ever forget. On Thursday night, there was a service honoring all the retiring pastors from the conference. Some of you may be aware that Pastor Bob Wallace of Calvary is retiring. I was sitting and watching each retiree go up on the stage to receive recognition for their years of service. Seeing Pastor Bob and his wife up on stage affected me more than I had expected. I think the main reason was that in some way, I don’t think I would be here this morning if it wasn’t for Pastor Bob. While we were looking for a church, I had written off the Methodist Church because I grew up in it and I wanted the church that Eimy and I joined to be one that would be neutral. But one day Eimy decided we should go and just attend a Methodist service and see what happened. After the service, Eimy was convinced that Calvary was the church we should join. Pastor Bob was a big part of that. Calvary welcomed us with open arms and provided a place for us to grow in faith with our kids in a way that filled us with a positive attitude about the importance of faith in our family life.
As I began to feel my calling to ministry anew, Pastor Bob provided support both for myself as well as for Eimy. I remember the first Mother’s Day after we started attending Calvary. Rose Ann, pastor Bob’s wife, knew that Eimy and I didn’t have any family around here. She called up Eimy and asked her to attend the Mother/Daughter Banquet with her. This meant a lot to us. And this is just one example. Needless to say, seeing Pastor Bob and Rose Ann on stage, receiving recognition was an emotional moment for me as it meant that they were no longer going to be around here, but also because to me it represented the first time I knew for sure that I had a calling and began actively pursuing it.
The next day, I sat and listened to Adam Hamilton speak. This was also important because Rev. Hamilton engages church members in a way that truly speaks to the message of the Gospel, at least in my mind. With all the problems that churches face today, Rev. Hamilton understands that we must work together in a way that brings everyone up. He understands that unless we do this, the Methodist Church will not be around for my grandchildren. It simply will have gone the way of the dinosaurs. Not because of a flawed message, but because of a change in how we, as a church, function in our communities.
Finally, I was able to see those who were to become ordained. I was able to witness one of the retiring pastors wash the feet of a young pastor who was to be ordained. I watched as she passed the ceremonial staff to him, reflecting the continuity of the church, the continuity of our communal mission, the continuity of the work which Christ has set before us.
Even though quite a bit of the conference was boring, in reality is served to encourage, motivate and impassion those who attended.
So that was one of the experiences I wanted to talk about. The next happened just yesterday. My mother decided recently that she was going to retire at the end of this school year, which was just last week. As it turned out, my brother was on the east coast for business and last week was also his 30th birthday. Since he was going to be on the east coast, he and I had were planning a surprise retirement party. We had made quite a few arrangements when things suddenly got more confusing. My mother called me last week and said that she was going to have a surprise birthday party for my brother, on the same day that we had been planning her party. She had already invited a whole bunch of people and made arrangements for a cake and all that stuff. In addition, my brother’s partner graduated from graduate school with his masters. My mother decided that we could make it a combined birthday and graduation party. She secretly flew my brother’s partner in from California. She invited his parents who live in Scranton and invited a number of his friends as well. I then realized that we were going to have three parties simultaneously, and besides myself and my mom’s closest friend, no one knew there were going to be three parties. I didn’t know how in the world this was going to work out. But in the end, it did. Somehow, despite my family’s infamous inability to keep a secret, miraculously, no one knew that there were going to be three separate parties at the exact same time, in the exact same place, with three separate guest lists.
I bring this up because my family, especially my brother and me, are not well known for our ability to work together. I love my brother, but we are polar opposites and we have always fought more than functioned together.
As I spent the day with my family, it hit me that we were acting, surprise, surprise, like a family. My brother was playing with Ian and Mia so lovingly, that I couldn’t believe it. He is not an overly affectionate person, and he has always been awkward with kids. But not yesterday. It was like he suddenly became the best uncle in the world. And For Ian and Mia, he was. It was also not lost on me, that this is father’s day weekend, the second father’s day since my own father passed away. I could feel yesterday his presence in the interactions between Ian and Mia and my brother and his partner. I just knew that this is how my father wanted us to be. To be a family, that despite our differences, we loved one another first. The rest is just details.
So between the annual conference and the party yesterday, I began to see the continuity of life. The past, where I have come from. The present, what I have learned, how I live, how I interact with those around me. The future, of my ministry, of my children, of my brother, sister and mother. It was one of those times when I could see, for a split second, God at work in my life, in the lives of those I love.
This morning, we try to understand the Trinity. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. There are many explanations to help us understand this complex idea. Yesterday, though, it was all so very clear. Love. The love of God. The love of Christ. The love of a father. The love of a son. The love of family. The love of friends. When we feel that love, we can begin to glimpse the love of the Trinity.
But there is more. And this is when it gets really simple. The last lines of the Gospel of Matthew.
(19) Therefore go 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 I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Notice, Matthew doesn’t tell us to go to the nations and convert all people. Matthew doesn’t tell us to go to the nation and build churches, or increase attendance. Jesus, in Matthew, could have instructed us to do these things. But he didn’t. He told us to make disciples. That is our task. That is the most important task. These are, in essence, the final words of Christ to us. Make disciples. Therefore, in everything we do, in every conversation we have, in every interaction with other people that we have, if we are not thinking of making disciples, we are not doing our job. Every decision made here at church. Every dollar we give. Every hour we volunteer. Every person we greet in here, on the street, on the phone. Making disciples has to be the focus. Anything less is our failure to fulfill this final command of Christ.
If we are concentrating on who we ask to come into our church. If we are concentrating on what type of hymns we sing on Sunday mornings. If we are concentrating on the fears we have around us. If we are doing any of these things, we are not fulfilling that instruction. We are God’s people. We are loved by God, by Christ. We have the promise of the Holy Spirit itself, to the end of the age. The presence of the Holy Spirit, the presence of Christ, the presence of God all around us, in us, in those next to us, in the words we speak, in the actions we take, in the lives that intersect our own. That is the meaning of the Trinity, that God is everywhere, all the time. If we can’t see that and act on it, then we aren’t the Church that Christ instructs us to be.
On this Trinity Sunday. On this Father’s Day. In this very moment of time, Thank God for being with us, giving us strength, guidance, protection and most of all, love so deep and so profound that we can never truly grasp it. That, my friends, is why we are here.
