So it’s Trinity Sunday this morning, that great day of the church year which the people who created the liturgical calendar set aside, in their great wisdom, to celebrate a complex theological concept which theologians have been arguing about for millennia. As you may be able to tell from that opening sentence, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Trinity Sunday. I love it, because I’m the pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church, this is our day! There’s something wonderfully symmetrical in preaching on the trinity at churches named trinity. But, then the flip side, it’s, as I stated earlier, a complex theological concept which theologians have been arguing about for millennia. And nothing says really boring sermon like trying to explain complex theological concepts. Dr. Karoline Lewis, who’s blog I often read in my sermon prep, described trying to explain the trinity as attempting “to domesticate wonder, to clarify awe, to tame transcendence.” She concluded: “Any sermon that tries to explain the Trinity will likely end up as interesting as the proverbial watching paint dry.” All this to say, we’ll get to the Trinity, I promise we will. We are, after all, Trinity Lutheran Church. But before we get there, I’ll spare you the risk of a paint drying sermon, and let’s start with the Gospel.
Our Gospel reading for today is Jesus’ final words to his disciples in Matthew’s Gospel, often called the Great Commission. A commission is an instruction or direction for a group of people. This is a rarity for Jesus, he actually told his disciples exactly what they were to do. If you like direction, here it is. Jesus said: “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, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” That’s it; it’s that simple. The job Jesus left us with after his resurrection, make disciples, baptize, and teach. That’s the job, are we doing it?
It seems simple, but of course, we know it’s not. First off, what does it mean to make disciples? What does Jesus want us to do here? And then, the bigger question, how? How are we to make disciples? At the council retreat yesterday, we were reading our church constitution, and one of the jobs of the council, per our constitution, is to encourage all members of our congregation to witness. Which prompted the question, we’re Lutheran, do we witness?
There’s a lot of loaded words that get thrown around in our culture these days around making disciples. Witness is one, but also evangelism, or evangelical. If you want to make disciples, you need to witness to them, or you might say you need to do some evangelizing. Which immediately, for me at least, brings up images of knocking on doors, or chasing people with Bibles, or the folks standing on the corner at the Cereal Festival yesterday passing out really terrifying tracks about how God is going to be really mad if you do certain things. The word “evangelical” has even entered our political conversation, we heard candidates trying to appeal to the “evangelical voters.” But hey, we are part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. We’re evangelical Lutherans. So what does the word evangelical mean? Well, here’s your fun Greek lesson for the day. Evangelical comes from the Greek word evagelion, which means good news. Evangelion often gets translated as Gospel, but in the simplest, least church-coded language, it literally means good news. So when I said this morning’s reading came from the Gospel according to Matthew, that means this is Matthew’s version of the good news of Jesus. When we say we’re part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, that means we’re claiming we are the Good News Lutheran Church in America. We are Lutherans with Good News to share to the world. It’s a good name for us. Think about all the good news we have to share. We believe that the love of God, which we call grace, is a gift, that there’s nothing we have to do to earn it, and nothing we can ever do to lose it. We believe that that grace, that love of God, transforms us. We believe that even though we are grace-filled transformed people, we still can screw up sometimes, and when we do screw up, God forgives us completely and entirely. And because we believe we have been transformed by this love, we believe that we live out that love by caring for our neighbors, both near and far. Lutheran-affiliated agencies are the largest providers of social services in the world. In the world. We’re only halfway through the year, and look at the map over there, look at all the places where Lutherans are caring for and serving our neighbors. Just in Michigan, just in our little synod, at synod assembly we learned about how Living Water Ministries, our summer camping program, is gaining a reputation for being one of the best at doing anti-racism work. Our environmental justice group, which our own Laurie Swanson is a part of, is doing all sorts of cool things to bring awareness about the need to care for God’s creation. Pastor Erick, who was the interim pastor here before I came, partnered with Linn Kraft from St. Peter to lead a hunger bike ride to raise money for ELCA World Hunger. This is good news worth sharing! And, it’s good news that maybe feels a little bit easier to share then “let me chase you with this Bible and tell you about what you need to believe.” When I first meet people and tell them I’m a pastor, I can get some weird responses initially. Honestly, it usually seems like the person is scanning through the conversation to make sure they haven’t accidentally cussed in front of me. But once I start telling them about all the cool stuff we do, about the ways in which our belief that the unconditional, saving, transforming love of God calls us to live out our faith in all of these amazing ways, oftentimes the response changes from apprehension to excitement. Because that’s the thing about sharing good news, it’s contagious.
Sharing good news is I think what Jesus meant when he told the disciples to make more disciples. I really do think it is just that simple. And I think it has to be that simple, because of what happened right before. Let’s listen to the beginning of Matthew again: “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. [Pause] And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples.” Did you catch that? They saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted, and then Jesus said to all of them, Go make disciples. Jesus didn’t say Go make disciples to the ones who worshiped and didn’t doubt, he didn’t correct the doubters, or explain himself again, or try and set anyone straight. He said to the whole mess of disciples, worshipers and doubters alike, go make disciples. Go share the good news. Go baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and go teach them to obey everything that I have commanded you.
Which gets us, believe it or not, back to Trinity Sunday, and this wonderful, awe-inspiring, transcendent complex theological concept which theologians have been arguing about for millennia, and after which our congregation was named. Because if we run with this idea that since Jesus gave the great commission to all of the disciples, without any kind of proof of loyalty or even a test of understanding, I think it gives us permission to lay aside the complexity of trying to explain or understand the trinity and just focus on the good news of it. And Dr. Karoline Lewis, who, if you remember back to the beginning of the sermon, is the one who cautioned that trying to explain the trinity is as boring as watching paint dry, summed up the good news of the trinity as simply the second half of the last verse of Matthew’s gospel, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The Trinity, Dr. Lewis wrote, “asserts God with us. The Trinity affirms God’s presence. The Trinity avows that no matter what and in whatever circumstances God will be there.” The Trinity, this inexplainable relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that makes them one God, and yet three things, three parts who somehow always hare, and always have been, one, since the beginning, to the end of the age, and beyond. That thing, that relationship, that we cannot quite get words around, affirms for us this same promise that Jesus made, that also is hard to get words around, that Jesus, though we can no longer see and touch him, is with us, always, to the end of the age. And in fact, I think the fact that we cannot put words around it is freeing in its own way. There’s a Jewish wedding tradition that you break a glass during the ceremony in order to get the first mistake out of the way, so you can get over the idea of a perfect marriage and start living. And I think the Trinity is like that. Since we cannot explain the inexplainable, we don’t have to worry about not saying anything until we can say it perfectly, because there is no perfect way to say it. I don’t know about you, but for me, that really helps to take the pressure off.
When we worship, when we doubt, when we doubt our worship and worship our doubt, all authority in heaven and on earth is with Jesus, and he is with us in making disciples, in baptizing, and in teaching. So go out, share the good news. Jesus is with you, Jesus is in you, in this wonderful, awe-inspiring, transcendent, and confusing way, and will be, always, to the end of the age. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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