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“Therefore”
Psalm 8; Matthew 28:16-20
Rev. Nancy Hutchison Enderle
Oakland-Cambridge Presbyterian Church, Cambridge, WI
Trinity Sunday - 1st Sunday after Pentecost
May 18, 2008
When Sandy asked me to preach for this Sunday, I sensed
she felt some reluctance to leave the pulpit. She said, “I guess it’ll be
good to have a vacation, but I really hate that I’m missing two of my
favorite Sundays: Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. My first reaction was that
it was a great indicator of a positive pastoral relationship that she didn’t
want to miss celebrating these Sundays with you… and my second was an
unspoken one…Trinity Sunday is one of your favorite Sundays?
I would venture to say that if we took a poll, asking you
to name some of your favorite Sundays, chances are good that most of you might
leave Trinity Sunday off your list. Let’s be honest, there are many more
festive days that stir up good memories of past celebrations: The anticipation
of the four Sundays in Advent, Christmas Eve, Palm Sunday, Easter, and I’d even
add Pentecost. But Trinity Sunday? You’ll have to ask her when she returns why
it is one of her top choices – but as for me…I have got to admit… it’s not one
I’ve ever given much heed.
On the Christian calendar, Trinity Sunday is the only
Sunday in the year dedicated to a doctrine. All the lectionary readings for the
day in all three cycles speak of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit; God in
three expressions, manifestations.
It is our uniquely Christian idea that our God is known by
and comes to us in three ways. Not three Gods, but one. It helps to know that
the word “person” comes from “persona” – which was used to refer to the masks an
actor wore in a Greek drama. One actor could play three parts. One God comes
to us in three ways. God in ‘three personas.’
Most of us understand God as Creator –God the Father. A
poll of Presbyterians taken a few years ago revealed that 94 percent of those
surveyed were likely to imagine God as father. 13% were likely to think of God
as mother. Both, of course, are legitimate biblical images. The prophet Isaiah
identifies God with a mother who cannot forget her nursing child (Isaiah
49:15). In Luke, God is likened to the father who welcomes home the prodigal
son, no questions asked.
And most Christians understand that God came into human
history in Jesus Christ – God the Son. The Spirit –God the Holy Spirit –is a
little tricky. I recently came across a lovely definition of the Spirit from
Scholar and Theologian Walter Bruggeman; he said that the Spirit is the “wind of
God. And that it is blowing. It may come as a breeze and warm you. It may
come as a sudden gust and ruffle you. It may be a storm that blows you to a new
place. Whatever it is, pay attention.” I think we’ve all encountered those
aspects of God at work through the Spirit in our lives. The Sprit is the
presence of God, the energizing, empowering, sometimes comforting, sometimes
challenging and irritating presence of God in the midst of human life.
Western Christianity, particularly Reformed/Presbyterian
Christianity, has been inclined to turn God into a concept, an intellectual
thesis. When we talk about God, we do so in carefully worded discourse, in
books of theology and creeds. It is our specialty. But I was particularly
encouraged by the description of Trinity Sunday that I found in the Handbook of
the Christian Year – A resource guide complied by academics who train
theologians and church professionals. Though typically a bit stuffy or dry,
they had this to say about Trinity Sunday:
“On Trinity Sunday we celebrate the mystery of God’s being as Holy Trinity.
Often the emphasis of this day has been placed on the Trinity as an abstract
concept, idea, or doctrine - an intellectual emphasis that tends to produce
sermons and liturgies which attempt to interpret or explain this doctrine to
those who find it confusing or incredible. Whatever the pastoral
justification for this approach… it seems generally more in keeping with the
character of the worship and of the Christian year to treat Trinity Sunday
as a day in which we praise and adore the infinite complexity and
unfathomable mystery to which we point when we speak of the Holy Trinity.”
Okay, so maybe it is a bit stuffy and heady to describe God
as infinitely complex and an unfathomable mystery – but I think what the
Handbook is saying is that it is not the task of Trinity Sunday to understand
the concept of God – to put God once and for all in a box – a comprehensible
product that makes good sense to our way of thinking – rather, the Handbook
prescribes an important shift from the study or exposition of an idea or
concept, to the experience of knowing and praising God. It is A CRITICAL shift;
a necessary one – NOT JUST FOR TRINITY SUNDAY, BUT AS A BLUEPRINT FOR OUR LIVES
IN FAITH.
Getting this point right is important; THE STAKES ARE
HIGH. For I believe with all my heart that WE ARE A PEOPLE, NOT IN NEED OF
IDEAS; NOT IN SEARCH OF information ABOUT God– but rather the desire to be known
BY God.
How do we set that course? How do we move from thought to
application?From discourse to discipleship? We get some of our answers from
Holy Scripture. Our Gospel lesson for this morning answers our question with a
pronouncement: ‘therefore. Go into the world making disciples of the nations,
and baptizing believers in the name of the father, son and Holy Ghost.” These
verses in Matthew are among the last words the evangelist wrote. They follow
the drama, fear, confusion and devastation of the crucifixion. On the days
after Jesus’ crucifixion his friends are hiding in a locked room somewhere in
Jerusalem. They have reason to be afraid. There’s no guarantee that the same
people who engineered Jesus’ arrest and mock trial and execution won’t now turn
their attention to them, his followers, and once and for all put an end to this
dangerous foolishness emanating from Galilee. So they’re hiding out.
Prior to these verses in Matthew the writer details that
the women who experienced the empty tomb are describing their experience… then
our text starts with the phrase,’ that some disciples still doubted’. It was
not a pretty scene to be sure. But the writer of the Gospel isn’t trying to put
a spin on this, there are no positive talking points here – just the raw truth:
some of them still doubted. Right into this mayhem and uncertainty, Jesus
enters delivering his last instructions, and they begin with a ‘therefore.’
You’ve seen me now you’ve witnessed the drama of redemption and the gift of
salvation, therefore…go!
Therefore implies a shift, from doubt to response, from
idea to practice, it is where the rubber hits the road. Therefore we praise and
adore God who comes to us as three manifestations of love. And therefore we ‘go
about the business of being disciples, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit.”
I encountered an interesting analysis of the Greek verbs
and usage in this passage. The text is referred to as “the Great Commission”
and typically serves as an exhortation to evangelize the world. In his book,
“Traveling Together: A guide for Disciple Forming Congregations” Jeffery D.
Jones, an American Baptist Pastor notes that it would be more accurate
translate the passage, “As you are going into the world, disciple all people.”
Our English translation isn’t all that smooth because we generally don’t use the
word “disciple” as a verb. But he contends it is the key very here. More
prominent than “go” or “make”. This moves the reader from “making disciples”
to “being disciples, doing the work of discipleship ourselves – following
Christ.” With this in mind, then our response is to enter into a disciple
relationship with Christ. Like the first hearers of those words, it is an
invitation to follow; it’s a job description. Coming at the very end of the
Gospel story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, the challenging proposal is
introduced that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not just a theological
assertion or aesthetic experience. It’s a practice, behavior, life lived.
Theologian Alan Richardson wrote helpfully: “According to
the Bible, our knowledge of God is not like our knowledge of electrons or square
roots: we know truth about God only by doing it, not by talking or reasoning
about it, just as we know love only by loving. Truth in the Biblical sense is
something to be practiced.”
There are, I learned this week, 1,035 “therefores” in the
Bible. Someone said, only partially in jest, that the most important word in
the Bible is “therefore.” Biblical faith from beginning to end is a synthesis
of mind, heart and body: ideas and concepts and propositions, and the devotion
of the heart in prayer and meditation and personal spirituality, and practice,
the life lived, the action taken, as some put it so eloquently, “walkin’ the
walk, not just talkin’ the talk.”
We learn from history that the early Christian church from
its inception had been characterized by the public demonstration of concern and
compassion for the needy, its care and shelter of the marginalized and its
inclusion of the outcasts. Christians startled the world of the first century
by picking up abandoned babies and caring for them and by providing for orphans
and widows. It was the truth of their thinking, and the truth of their being
that conveyed the good news of the Gospel.
They lived into the “therefore” of these concluding verses
of Matthew. And they did so, not out of some internal sense of motivation, some
drive to do good, but because the living Lord stood in there midst and asked
them to. And perhaps just as important if not more so, he concluded by saving
the best for last: “And lo, I am with you always, even until the end.”
This work was not a job after all, it was a response to
grace. They were given gifts and those gifts made it possible for them to
introduce and sustain this new way of living their truth.
These same resources are offered and the same challenge is
posed to us today. We are promised the living presence of God- the Son. And we
are empowered by the powerful presence of God the Spirit. Perhaps you receive
this message in the midst of mayhem and chaos every bit as startling as those
early believers experienced hiding out in Jerusalem. You may be well acquainted
with profound fears. Perhaps you wait for test results, medical or academic,
that will possibly define your immediate or your long-term future. Perhaps you
are filled with sadness; your hopes are dashed, dreams left UN attained. That’s
just the kind of mayhem into which these promises of God who creates and
sustains and redeems us comes; powerfully, quietly, warmly, abruptly, tenderly.
The challenge before each of us this morning is to ask,
what is OUR therefore? How do we respond to the Gospel story, to the God who is
made known to us as creator, savior and sustainer. What will be our therefore?
Will it be a major life change…a move, change of career? Over the years I have
been a pastor, I have witness people who have said, “I believe, there fore I
will serve those less fortunate”, and they left everything familiar in pursuit
of a different life. However our ‘therefore’s may be less dramatic: there fore
I will spend my money with others needs in mind; therefore I will remain calm in
times of trouble; therefore I will challenge injustice and bigotry wherever I
encounter it: in systems of government, the halls of my office place, the jokes
that are told to me. OR perhaps, ‘therefore’ I will seek community when I am
uncertain and doubting; therefore I will be patient and tolerant in the face of
struggle, therefore I will forgive that person who doesn’t really deserve it.
THEREFORE. Let us live as believers who find ourselves
shaped by the unfathomable mystery of God – w ho comes to us as the Creator, our
Father/Mother who watches over us – the Son, who promises, to be with us always,
and the Spirit who stirs in our midst and draws us to live out our truth. AMEN
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