Now What?

Matthew 28: 16-20, page 34
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. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Sermon
Our scripture lesson, in verse 17, tells us that “when they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” The gospel of John tells us the same thing but uses Thomas to do it. We know that some doubted because the disciple Thomas is brave enough to say it out loud. But Matthew skips that story and just tells us that some doubted, as though knowing what they’re thinking were so simple a thing.
In reality, this is a challenging thing, to know what someone is thinking, to know that the disciples doubted even though they were right there looking at their risen Lord face to face. To even guess at someone’s thoughts you have to know where to look, and still sometimes you’re wrong. I stand up here and try to read your faces to gage whether or not what I’m saying makes any sense, but in reality, how can I be so bold to assume it’s what I’m saying that inspires that thoughtful look on your face? Knowing someone’s thoughts is easier said than done, because a lot of the time people aren’t comfortable speaking their mind.
They are, however, in one section of our paper. Sam Kennedy, newspaper man and long-time church member, told me one time that he tells all local politicians that the most important part of the Daily Herald for them is Sound Off – where readers call in to give anonymous comments on anything they want. It’s a rare gift to a politician, to peer into the minds of his or her constituents. I imagine, though, that it’s hard for them to believe that it’s what goes on there, not what goes on in Washington that matters most.
It can be easier to believe that what matters – what’s important – is what comes down from on high. The information that you have to be someone special to hear, the knowledge that you need a graduate degree to understand.
We live in a culture obsessed with climbing the ladder. Not only do we want to know what’s happening on the upper echelons of society, we want to get up there ourselves, and even we religious people are tempted to use big words to express ourselves even if we don’t fully understand what they mean.
Which leads me to the matter at hand. Today is Trinity Sunday, and if ever there were a day celebrating something you need a graduate degree to understand, this is it.
The leaders in the Restoration Movement that swept the country and resulted in the Church of Christ believed that most problems in the Church stemmed from such highbrow theology, and in an effort to bring religion back down to the level of the people, called Christians back to scripture and claimed that if all Christians would just read their Bible they would come to the same basic conclusions and there would be no need for fancy theological doctrine that only the professors in their ivy league towers could understand.
But what do you do, then, with the Trinity?
You can’t expect anyone to just read the Bible and come up with it. Certainly Church History has not been the story of people reading their Bibles and coming to the same basic conclusion on the matter – the first great division, that between the Western, or Roman Catholic Church based in Rome and the Eastern, or Orthodox Church based in Constantinople, was founded in a debate over Trinitarian Doctrine.
But today, rather than fight about it, convicted on the righteousness of our own assumptions, we are more likely to wonder: why does it matter?
While it may have been fodder for discussion, then debate, and finally division more than 1,000 years ago, today 21st Century Christians may wonder what the big deal was – as though a doctrine of the Trinity were a relic of another age relegated to that shelf that film for cameras, phones with land lines, and print newspapers are on their way to. Last week I read that between the year 2000 and 2010 print newspapers saw a revenue decline of 35.9 percent, and I didn’t need to wonder why as I read this report on thefiscaltimes.com
The paper matters here in Columbia however. Tuesday’s paper reported on people who matter to us – no not President Obama, resignations from the House, or any of the Republican Presidential hopefuls. Tuesday’s paper reported on Elijah Hedrick, Tucker Scott, Jillian Baxter, and the other young members of our church who made their school’s honor roles. Might not be news to USA Today or even the Tennessean, but it’s certainly news to us – and here’s the point.
Our world today is not so different than it was when all that fighting over the Trinity was going on. There were still people who seemed to matter and people who didn’t. When it came to power, knowledge, and business it was what happened at the top that mattered most. Our society operates under the same model – ascend into heaven ourselves, build up a Tower of Babel built on celebrity, beauty, and fame – as though worth were distributed through camera flashes.
But once those flashes stop, they leave empty shells where once there were people. So we call out to God. Because where human attempts at climbing the corporate ladder into the highest heaven leave us empty, we are filled by the God who came down to us.
In the Trinity is the truth, that to know God, to be deemed worthy, we need not ascend to the highest heavens – the realm of people who matter. Because God, still being God and not a prophet or a messenger or an angel, was born to a mother just as you were, was raised as a child just as you were, stumbled through adolescence just as you will, are right now, or already did, and struggled to learn what it means to be a faithful adult just as you have or will. That was God then, learning to walk. That was God, falling, and then calling for his mother. That was God, looking up to his father. That was God, learning what it means to be you by becoming just like you.
In the Trinity we see and know that God is known three ways – known in the way that all great religions know their God, as the heavenly being who created all that we know and gave us the holy breath of life. But also as the Son, the one who took human form and gave his life for us that we might know just how deep God’s love for us is. And we also know God now as the sustaining Spirit who dwells in us all, not just filling us with life, but making our life holy. God with us even to the end of the age.
You can’t expect that the disciples had really thought all that through, however. The debate over what the Trinity means and even the word Trinity itself was not used until long after they had all died. Still Christ sends them out unto the world, to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Some had doubts our lesson reads, but still Christ sent them out.
And maybe you have doubts too – not knowing enough, not understanding enough, not feeling as though you can adequately articulate the meaning of your faith.
Sometimes that’s life. Don Piggens told me the other day about his training in water purification through Living Waters for the World – a ministry of the Presbyterian Church that provides clean drinking water to people in places like Haiti, Ghana, El Salvador, and Guatemala. “How am I going to remember all this stuff?” Don asked his trainer. It’s a good question – a lot can go wrong with those things. There are filters, finding electricity to power them, all kinds of things can go bad – but, “Don’t” the trainer said, “Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out.”
I imagine Don felt like one of those disciples, imagining everything that could go wrong, wanting to stay a little longer before being sent out and actually having to get to the work of ministry, not believing that he would be able to figure it out or that he was ready.
I imagine that those disciples knew they had more to learn and had no idea just how much power was in their own simple story – I was a fisherman, and my sense of worth was tied up in how many fish I brought to shore at the end of the day. I was tired at the end of a long day of casting my nets, and ready to quit when he walked up and challenged me to throw my nets one last time – the nets came in so full they nearly burst. To think that God cares for the hopeless fisherman.
There’s more power in this story than they know, just as there’s more power in your story than you know. You have all come to the water and been claimed by our God, three in one and one in three, baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Every time I say those words my heart fills up with the power in that claim – that you, you are not who you are in the eyes of the world. The Creator of the Heavens and Earth has called you by name, the Son laid down his very life that you might live, and the Spirit is here still, filling your lungs with the breath of life. How could you ever doubt, how could you ever doubt your worth, knowing that God is with you always, even to the end of the age?
Amen.