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Mystified on the Mountain |
Matthew 28: 16-20
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© John Ewing Roberts |
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THE DAY Last year on Trinity Sunday, Marylynn and I were away (even preachers, maybe especially preachers, need an occasional get away weekend) with our son and daughter-in-law. We naturally on Saturday had a family discussion as to where to go to church. Just as I was mentioning that the next day would be Trinity Sunday, we drove by a tiny church, Trinity Episcopal Church. This led to a discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity (I love my family, but sometimes we are a little weird, although our discussion probably fell within the Deuteronomic mandate on talking over things spiritual with your children as you go along the way.[1] ) I confessed to having some trouble with the doctrine of the Trinity. Who really understands it? Who can explain it when Trinity Sunday rolls around? I admitted that when I try to read the heavy duty theologians on the Trinity, I glaze over quickly. The word "Trinity" does not appear in the Bible; Trinity Sunday has only been in the church year for 600 years. We can thank Pope John XXII in the 1300's for that. The next day we did go to church but not to Trinity Episcopal. You can understand why I enjoy the story of the man who boasted that he only went to church once a year, not on Christmas, not on Easter, but on Trinity Sunday because he enjoyed laughing at the minister's bumbling confusion over the doctrine of the Trinity.[2] Still we should not give up on the doctrine of the Trinity, but like Jacob, wrestle till we're blessed even at the risk of injury. After all, we are baptized "in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" and married "in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit," and twice in every service we sing about it, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost...." "praise him above ye heavenly hosts, praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost." We do well to work on the concept. RELATING TO THE CHARACTER OF GOD Trinity Sunday is about the character of God and how we relate to God, a time to reflect on what we know of God and "our mumbling attempts to formulate and articulate what we know." It is a dangerous Sunday. "One danger is to imagine that we do not know about God at all, as though nothing has been disclosed. The other danger is to imagine that we have the inscrutable character of God fully captured and domesticated in our familiar formulations."[3] Most of you know the standard analogies for trying to understand how we relate to our God who loves us enough to relate to us in triune fashion. We say the one God in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit is like two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, H2O, can be water, ice or steam, one substance in three different forms. Or we use a more personal model, the relational model. One woman can be at least three different persons, a mother, a wife and daughter all at once (which is why the woman is often tired!) One theologian explained the Trinity as a way to get at the way we experience God. Take the case of Simon Peter. He grew up in a Jewish home and experienced the Creator God as his heavenly Father. Then he met and followed a man from Nazareth named Jesus and out of that close relationship cried out, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!"[4] After Jesus was executed by the Romans and raised from the dead by God the Father, Peter discovered the presence and power of the God he experienced in Jesus to be active and at work right now - God the Holy Spirit. To Peter the Trinity was no puzzling theological triangle in need of analogies. God in three persons was the way he experienced the one and same God.[5] I like best what Frederick Buechner wrote; I suggested in the bulletin that you read before the service begins: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mean that the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, and the mystery within us are all the same mystery. This the Trinity is a way of saying something about us and the way we experience God.[6] The formula of the Trinity, of God in three persons, is a "treasured breakthrough in the church's thinking...but, in the end,...it is...our embrace of God's gracious majesty that counts in our life." God is "both disclosed and profoundly inaccessible."[7] TRAPDOORS EN ROUTE TO THE MOUNTAIN One scholar wrote, "Beware! Matthew has built this text with linguistic trapdoors, mirrored walls, and secret passageways..."[8] For example, we instinctively want to read twelve disciples, like "the seven seas" or the "four winds," but it's "the eleven disciples" here. Hmmm, better be careful, better pay attention - it's Jesus talking but through the filter of the tricky fellow Matthew! Another trapdoor opens when we hit "and some doubted." More later on that. One of those overlooked passageways comes in that deceptively innocent looking word "all" which appears four times: all authority, all the world, all peoples, all ways... hmmm, I think Jesus is into "all," a pretty inclusive, welcoming, embracing kind of person.[9] All of God for all nations! Then there's that mountain. What mountain? Where is it? Why no directions? How can one find it and slap shrine over it, build a nice little shop to sell t-shirts saying, "I've been to the mountain!" Pay attention to the topography - we are mystified on a mountain. The disciples have been on mountains with Jesus before - for example, the mountain of the sermon in Matthew 5-7, the mountain of the transfiguration in Matthew 17. Mountains are the perfect place for, well, uh, "a mountain top experience." Mountains are nature's high points, connecting earth and God, the realms of humans and God, the sacred meeting place for earthly and cosmic events, the place of exertion and danger, the place removed for daily existence, the sites inaccessible to the timid and overly cautious, the place where you get the ultimate overview, the really big picture.[10] Isaiah understood: It shall happen in the latter days that the mountain of Yahweh's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come and say: "Come, let us go up to Yahweh's mountain, to the house of Jacob's God."[11] But something a bit different from Isaiah is going on here - Jesus' Commission does not wait for the nations to be attracted to the mountain of the house of the Lord; he bids us go to the nations and boldly assures us that his presence is wherever in the world we may be as we obey him. Hereafter, we are to understand that a mountain top experience can happen anytime, anyplace where human and divine intersect, where transformation and power connect with worship and doubt. THE DISCIPLES Here on the mountain at the end of Matthew's gospel it is easy to identify with the disciples. They worship Jesus, but their worship is mingled with doubt. If you want "proof" of the authority of the scriptures, I suggest you find it in such an obviously authentic passage as this where this is no whitewashing of the disciples. Even though their risen Lord appears, we hear that some doubting is going on. We understand this mixed response, we people of faith and worship who ourselves have our uncertainties and questions. "The Eleven wavered between adoration and indecision, between prayer and puzzlement."[12] They were mystified on the mountain. But note well, Jesus does not exclude those who have questions. "In fact, it is precisely to those followers, who are worshipping and doubting, that the Great Commission is given."[13] THE GREAT COMMISSIONER The One giving the Great Commission (what we call Matthew 28: 19-20), the Great Commissioner, has authority, a word evoking the idea of power. The disciples have from him the potency to carry out the Commission. Our uncertainties and weaknesses neither limit nor jeopardize his power. He has the authority to empower us to do what he wants us to do. Their Commission and ours differs from that of the early days of Jesus' earthly ministry when the Gospel was not for Gentiles and Samaritans but only for "the lost sheep of the house of Israel."[14] From now on they and we are to go to the nations, the gyim.[15] The Great Commission bids us to baptize "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," the reason this text appears on Trinity Sunday. The rich and beautiful symbolism of baptism marks us as belonging to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a special way of relating to God, a God who empowers us even when we are mystified, a God who expects us to learn to obey - "teaching them to observe whatsoever I have commanded you..." The Great Commissioner promises his presence as we respond to the Great Commission, "and lo, I am with you always...." When Matthew began his gospel we learned that Jesus' name is Emmanuel, God with us.[16] Now we hear at the end of the story that Jesus will indeed be with us, in mystification and in obedience, in darkness and in light, in doubt and in faith. If these words, "in mystification and in obedience, in darkness and in light, in doubt and in faith," remind you with wedding vows, "in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, for richer for poorer," you've got it right! Baptism is the public ceremony of union with Jesus as Lord, our vow in the presence of God and witnesses to be his "in mystification and in obedience, in darkness and in light, in doubt and in faith." FAITH LOOKING FORWARD One of the many surprises in our text is Jesus' undivided attention to the future. So much has happened, but Jesus makes no comment on the past: his arrest, his trial, his execution, his resurrection, Judas' betrayal, Judas' suicide, Peter's denial. From now on they and we are to obey a faith for the future, faith looking forward, "a forward looking, saving hope to galvanize our days." "O God, of every time and place, Prevail among us too; Within the city that we love, Its promise to renew. Our people move with downcast eyes, Tight, sullen and afraid; Surprise us with thy joy divine, For we would be remade. Grant us, O God, who labor where Within this throbbing maze, A forward looking, saving hope to galvanize our days. Like Christ, who loved Jerusalem, and wept its sins to mourn, Make just our laws and pure our hearts; So shall we be reborn."[17] CONCLUSION So what does it all mean? It means that God in Christ empowers the eleven disciples, that incomplete number which we are to complete - you and I are number 12, replacements for that ultimate drop out - you and I are to go and make disciples, getting our strength from someone we can trust to be with us always, even to Y2K and beyond. It means that God calls people who are mystified and confused, not necessarily qualified. God calls people who show up, - people reading to listen, - people who have a forward looking, saving hope to galvanize their days, - people who for the sake of knowing the rush of the presence and power of God will take a chance and invite someone at work or at school to "come and see" what God is doing at their church and in our lives, - a not particularly powerful people who worship a holy God who transforms and empowers us so that something of his character is a part of our lives, - a people who are not particularly holy but who can sing "Holy, holy, holy, God in three persons, blessed Trinity," because the mystery beyond us, the mystery among us, and the mystery within us are all the same mystery, and God in three persons is continually transforming, renewing, empowering, commissioning and accompanying us. Woodbrook Baptist Church (Formerly Eutaw Place Baptist Church) Baltimore, Maryland Notes: [1] Deuteronomy 6: 7 [2] Janice Hearn, "No Longer at a Distance," Lectionary Homiletics, Davis B. Howell, editor, May 1999, Vol. X, No. 6, p. 36 [3] Walter Brueggemann et al, Texts for Preaching - A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV - Year A [Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press] 1995, p. 337 [4] Matthew 16: 16 [5] Robert McAfee Brown, The Bible Speaks to You [Philadelphia: Westminster Press] 1955, pp. 69-71 [6] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC [New York: Harper & Row] 1973, p. 93 [7] Ibid. [8] Thomas G. Long, Proclamation 4, Series A- Pentecost 1, [Minneapolis: Fortress Press] 1989, p. 14 [9] Virgil B. Howard, Proclamation 3 - Series A, Pentecost 1 [Philadelphia: Fortress Press] 1987, p. 18 [10] K. C. Hanson, Proclamation 6, Series A - Pentecost 1 [Minneapolis: Fortress Press] 1996, p. 21 [11] Isaiah 2: 2-3 [12] Brueggemann, op. cit., p. 344 [13] Ibid. [14] Matthew 10: 6 [15] Ibid. [16] Matthew 1: 23 [17] Ernest T. Campbell, "O God of Every Time and Place," Baptist Hymnal, William J. Reynolds, editor, [Nashville: Convention Press] 1975, No. 320 |