I can guess what many of you are thinking. It’s Trinity Sunday, and in this reading, we’ve heard about disciples being baptised in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And in our act of worship, we’ve had another reading, which ended with reference to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. So you may have deduced from all of this that you’re getting another mind-bending annual sermon on the Trinity.
But no. I have preached about the basic meaning of the Trinity before. Years ago, I even preached a whole sermon series about the Trinity. I’m not sure what I would say this year that is different, if my aim were to explain the Trinity.
The scholar Ian Paul observed that this is the one Sunday of the year when preachers tend to depart from expounding the Bible readings for the day to preach on a theological idea, albeit one that is so important it distinguishes Christianity from all other faiths.
However, I am going to take up the challenge to expound the Gospel reading. Sure, it mentions the Trinity, but the focus of the passage is Jesus. We’re singing hymns about the Trinity today, but we’re concentrating on Jesus and his greatness.
Firstly, let’s focus on faith in Jesus:
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.
Matthew doesn’t give us any of the resurrection appearances. It may well be that he was running out of space on the scroll on which he was writing his Gospel, and so he had to compress things at the end.
But he tells us this story after both the women have found the empty tomb and believed, and the soldiers have chosen money and silence rather than faith. It’s a choice that comes before many of us when we meet with the risen Lord and the claims he makes on our lives.
There is even a split among the disciples here: some worshipped, but some doubted. Jesus doesn’t banish the doubters but reveals more of himself and lets them stay in the company of those who do believe, so that they may come to a point of surrender and faith.
The other day, I read the story of a Muslim man who had read the Gospels and been persuaded that what Jesus offered was far better than Islam. Realising the danger, his family quickly sorted out the prospects of an arranged marriage to a beautiful young woman, and a job in a prestigious company in a lucrative profession. All this he could have, if he just continued to recite that there was no god but Allah and that Muhammad was his prophet.
But he could not deny what Jesus offered. He declined the marriage and the job offer and went with Jesus. He took up his cross as he followed him and his family rejected him.
If Jesus is risen from the dead, then it makes all the difference in the world. This man knew that.
And this challenge is for us. What does it mean for us truly to put our faith in the risen Lord and worship him? What has it cost us? Are there things we have given up or even lost by virtue of trusting him? Have we recognised him as our risen Lord, or is our faith a hobby? Have we been glad to welcome him for all the comforting things such as the way this reading ends – ‘And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age’ – whilst being reluctant to bow the knee in worship? Do we recognise that such worship is more than singing a few hymns we like but is in fact an act of homage?
So – what does our faith in the risen Jesus look like? What does it involve? Have we paid a cost by choosing him against other attractions in the world?
Secondly, let’s focus on the identity of Jesus:
Here, I’m putting together a few things in the reading. ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’ tells us something about his status. So does including him as ‘the Son’ in the baptismal formula of ‘Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’: Jews would have seen a reference to the Father and to God’s Spirit as identifying divinity, so putting Jesus in among that also tells us about Jesus’ identity. Finally, what sort of being could say he was with his disciples to the end of the age?
I suggest that if you add up all these things, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Jesus is claiming divine status for himself. He is more than a rabbi. He is more than a prophet. He is the Son of God, a title which in Jewish thought does not make him junior to the Father but equal with him.
What does this mean for us? Well, for a start this immediately plugs back into what we were thinking about in the first point. Jesus’ divine status is the very reason that we have faith in him and worship him. We bow down, give homage, and profess loyalty to the Son of God. It makes sense that all authority is his, and therefore our calling is to follow what he says.
This is why Tom Wright said that the message of the Resurrection is not, ‘Jesus is raised from the dead and so we can go to heaven.’ Instead, it is, ‘Jesus is raised from the dead and we have a job of work to do.’
For the Resurrection and then the Ascension mean that first of all, God the Father has vindicated everything Jesus did and said in his mission before his crucifixion. He has underlined it. He has affirmed it. There is a big tick beside all of it. And secondly, given that the Son of God is now reigning at the Father’s right hand until every enemy is put under his feet, we join in the project of aligning with his will. As we do that, we express our membership of his coming kingdom now. The job of work we have to do because Jesus is raised and exalted is to co-operate with the Holy Spirit in the will of God. We build for his kingdom by being his junior partners in the great task of making all things new. We do this, because of who Jesus is. He is the Son of God, back from the dead to reign.
Do we truly believe this is who Jesus is? If we do, then let us stop to consider this question: what are we doing to participate in his kingdom project of making all things new? Where are we involved in the renewal of people and of this world? Can we answer that? If not, then let us pray until we have an answer. And when we have the answer, let’s start putting it into practice.
Thirdly and finally, let’s focus on the mission of Jesus:
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising 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.
There are a lot of verbs in that sentence. But one of them is the main verb, and it isn’t obvious in most English translations. You might think it’s the first verb, ‘go,’ but you’d be wrong. More literally, we would translate it as ‘going.’
No: the main verb is ‘make disciples.’ We make disciples by going, baptising, and teaching.
What is a disciple? As I said at the Lindford Bible Study on Thursday night, a helpful replacement word for disciple might be ‘apprentice.’ An apprentice is someone who learns, but who specifically learns on the job.
Therefore, we are not merely called to persuade people to believe in God and in Jesus. We are called to persuade people to become apprentices of Jesus.
To do that, we need to go. It will not happen if we stay within the comforting walls of the church family. We need to go where people are. Jesus didn’t merely teach and heal in the synagogue. He did that, but he also went out into the fields to where people lived and worked. It is why we need to find our place of service in the world as well as in the church. For that is where we shall look to be witnesses to Jesus in our words and our deeds.
We shall also need to baptise. We must rid ourselves of sentimental ideas that baptism is wetting the baby’s head, or little more than a rite of passage, or something that must be done if that child is to be able to have a church wedding when they grow up. Baptism is when we initiate someone into the ways of Jesus and plunge them into that life. Baptism is a revolutionary new beginning in an apprenticeship with Jesus.
And we shall need to teach – but not abstract theory. Remember, Jesus said we are to teach people to obey everything he has commanded. When you hear it like that, the idea of the apprentice makes sense. This is less about teaching people to memorise the maps on the inside covers of their Bible. It is more about learning the ways of Jesus on the job, in everyday life. You do not need to be an academic theologian to teach discipleship. You just need to be able to model for someone how to live the Christian life.
I wonder what would happen if we remodelled our church life according to this commandment of Jesus. I think we would have fewer church meetings, because we were busy in the world shining the light of Jesus there. Our main non-Sunday meetings would be those that supported us in that task.
I wonder also how many would or could be released into that ministry of showing newer disciples what it means in real-life practical terms what it means to follow Jesus. We need to identify and empower those who can teach by example. Although actually, that should be all of us to a greater or lesser extent.
Conclusion
So – you were expecting the Trinity and you got Jesus. Maybe to talk just about him is less intellectually challenging, but it is still very challenging for our life and our faith.
Has our faith in him cost us? Do we bow before him as Son of God and participate in his kingdom plans to renew all things? Do we put disciple-making as a major priority in our lives and in the church?
These are true tests of our faith in our risen and ascended Lord.
Big Circumstance 