“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 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 by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
It’s Trinity Sunday when we celebrate a doctrine of the church. There are designated Sundays for a couple of Christianity’s central doctrines — the Incarnation which we celebrate at Christmas and the Resurrection which we celebrate at Easter — and these are directly related to the life of Jesus. But this is different. It doesn’t come out of Holy Scripture. It comes out of our deep desire to better understand God and all that God is.
There are times when I meet someone new and inevitably the conversation turns to “so, what do you do?” And when I say I’m a priest in the Episcopal church, many times there is a follow-up question: “Episcopal? What’s that?” And in answering, I share many things about us including that we are Trinitarians – that we honor and worship God who is in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. “Ohhh” comes the response. Frankly, the Trinity is sort of a conversation killer. It smacks of “churchiness” which is tragic because the reality of the Trinity is anything but that. The reality of the Trinity is that it is personal, creative, awe-inspiring and empowering.
Reginald Heber was a Bishop of Calcutta during the first part of the19th century. At the time, India was what was referred to as a crown jewel in the British colonies. It was large and populous. So Bishop Heber, because of his deep commitment to mission and reaching out into the world, accepted the call to go to India. He saw a rich mission field in front of him.
And during his short time there, he remained committed to the people. He traveled extensively to care for them. He helped create a Hindustani dictionary. And to make certain that people were welcomed into worship, he baptized and confirmed everyone he could everywhere he went. He observed with great dismay the abuses within the rigid caste system of India and was not shy about addressing those abuses.
But before he was Bishop of Calcutta, though, he was the Vicar of a parish in the western part of England called Shropshire. He was known as a writer and a poet. He collected texts for hymns that were organized around the church year, very much like our hymnal 1982 today is organized. And one of the texts for which he is best known is the text of the hymn we sang for our Processional, “Holy, Holy, Holy” with its text that speaks to the mystery and the magnificence of the Trinity.
If there were a Biblical text that might have deeply inspired Bishop Heber it might have been the text that we hear today from Matthew’s gospel. The work that the disciples must do could not be clearer. Jesus wasn’t speaking in metaphor or telling a parable. It’s crystal clear – baptize everywhere you go, bring them into relationship with God, and teach them everything I taught you.
The concept of the Trinity wasn’t articulated as such until Tertullian coined the word in the early third century. Certainly there were hints before: The fact that God refers to God’s self in our Genesis reading as “we,” not I. There’s Paul’s wonderful closing benediction in his second letter to the Christians in Corinth: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all evermore.” And, of course, Jesus’ Great Commission in the final ending of Matthew’s Gospel that we hear today: “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.”
These are the building blocks from which the historic doctrine of the Trinity was carefully crafted in the fourth and fifth centuries. We assert that there is one God — not three Gods, but one — in three Persons — all of the same God-substance, the God-essence, and all eternal.
There are all sorts of metaphors out there to try to explain the Trinity. You’ve probably heard some of them – the water (which can be liquid, frozen or steam but all still water). Or the clover with its three leaves on one stem. St. Augustine gave us the metaphor of the tree: the root is wood, the trunk is wood and the branches are wood. So they are one wood, one substance but three distinguishable entities. And from it come leaves, fruit, flowers.
Perhaps we can approach this from another angle. What would we understand God to be without one of them? Remember that we baptize just as Jesus instructed – in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. But what if we baptized people only in the name of God the Father? What would we be missing? It would deny the very work of and person of Jesus Christ and the on-going work of the Holy Spirit. It would not be a full picture of who God is. You would be immersed into the fullness of a very powerful and mysterious God but also a detached God – a God who creates but for whom? For what purpose?
What if we baptized people only in the name of Jesus? “I baptize you in the name of Jesus. Amen.” That would miss the person of God the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, the very source of our being and that part of God that is beyond our logic and reason. It would also miss the Holy Spirit, the on-going presence of God with us today to energize and inspire us.
What if we said, “I baptize you in the name of the Holy Spirit.” Well then we’re missing the awesome creativity of God and the redeeming work of Jesus Christ: God with us. God in human flesh. We would miss the part of God who rose from the dead to overcome our sinfulness. Let’s not leave that out!
You cannot go out into the world, according to Jesus without all that, without all of it, without the whole being of God. Even if we don’t understand the mechanics behind it, we can be confident that we are powerful, connected, redeemed and empowered through this three in one God dwelling within us.
And that’s a tremendous gift for those of us who are less interested in the intellectual exercise of the Trinity and more concerned with living our lives. The Trinity is often depicted as a triangle, each person of the Trinity taking one of the sides of equal length. And the center space, where they all overlap is open and ready for us, a place to put ourselves in Holy Presence especially when we are feeling isolated, angry, hopeless, or just plain tired. In this mystery of the Trinity is the palpable reality that there is a God who knows who we are, where we are on our faith journey, and what we need.
In our gospel today, there is one word that stands out, one that sums it all up. It may be the shortest work in the gospel lesson. And it’s “go.” Go! The fact is that we’re not going to solve the problems of the world with a lot of water, by getting everyone wet. That’s not the point of baptism. It’s for us to go! Go out and meet people, go out and tell them what magnificent gifts await them. Give them the chance to see God at work in their lives. Give them the chance to understand what is life-giving and ask questions – discipleship building questions - that we need to reflect on this day:
Do we always allow ourselves to see the glory of God, to see the awe and majesty of God everywhere we look in all the world around us?
Do we stop, do we take note of the ways in which God is acting? And then, are we willing to put aside out own need to solve our problems?
Or when we come to Jesus in the dead of night and to ask, to plead for our needs, are we willing to open ourselves to hearing in a new and different way - God’s Way - to answer those needs? And when those answers don’t seem apparent to us, are we willing to trust that the Holy Spirit will come and will renew us and will fill us and reveal to us God’s answer, the answer that will allow us to get up and try again.
It is that awe, it is that mystery and majesty, that realization of God’s great power and endless love and grace continuing to love us through the difficulties and joys of the world that should take our breath away.
The words that Reginal Heber gave to all of Christianity should be our song and prayer every day: “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God almighty. There is none beside thee, perfect in power, in love and purity.” Amen.