June 4, 2023 – Holy Trinity Sunday
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Matthew 28:16-20
From Worship to Wavering
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
“When they saw Jesus, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” (Matthew 28:17)
Today’s gospel reading is the one and only recorded encounter between the risen Jesus and his disciples within the book of Matthew. Jesus first met with some women on Easter morning. He instructed them to tell the disciples to go to Galilee where Jesus would meet with them.
Now the disciples encounter Jesus on a mountain in Galilee. It’s the final scene in Matthew’s gospel. When they see Jesus, risen and alive, Matthew tells us that some of them worship Jesus in awe. But not all of them. Some of them “doubted.”
The word “doubt” isn’t a very accurate translation of the Greek word. The word comes from the verb “distazo.” It literally means “to stand double.” A double stance. You know the feeling. It’s when you stand at a certain spot, but you’re not sure which direction you should head. What’s the next step? You don’t know, and so you just stand there. You freeze. You waver a little bit. You shift your weight back and forth from foot to foot.
That’s what the word implies. This word in our story today is better translated as, to waver, to hesitate, to vacillate, to pause.
The word shows up one other time in the New Testament. It’s also found in Matthew. When Jesus is walking on the water, he calls out Peter to join him. Peter steps out of the boat. But then Peter sees the wind and the waves. He becomes frightened and begins to sink. Jesus catches Peter and he says, “You of little faith, why did you DOUBT?” There it is. Why did you WAVER? Why did you HESITATE? Why did you VACILLATE?
The feeling of the disciples on that mountain is very similar. Jesus, the risen Jesus, the Jesus who once was dead and buried in his tomb, is standing right in front of them! Their eyes are telling them one thing. But the logic in their brain is telling them something very different. “This is impossible!” it says.
Some of the disciples immediately respond with worship and adoration. But others simply freeze up. They’re in shock. They waver.
After all these centuries, after hundreds of generations, I don’t think our response to Jesus’ resurrection has changed in the least. We worship, but we waver. Faith comes riddled with uncertainty.
Matthew includes a subtle detail about the disciples. He mentions their number: there are eleven of them. They are one short of whole. They’re missing Judas. They began as twelve. Twelve, like the tribes of Israel. For Israel, twelve was a number befitting wholeness. That’s what the disciples used to be … but now they’re eleven.
The disciples came to that mountain in a fragmentary state. We as the church of Jesus Christ aren’t perfect. We’ve never been perfect. We’re fragmented, unfinished and imperfect. We don’t possess a superhero resolve. No, our natural state is somewhere on the spectrum between worship and wavering.
These are the disciples whom Jesus met on that mountain in Galilee. And it’s in that imperfect, unpolished state that he gives them a mission and a promise. These two things sustained Jesus’ first disciples, and they have continued to nurture and empower his church throughout the ages.
First, Jesus gives us a mission. Mission generates purpose. Mission establishes direction, it helps us to move from away from wavering into focused purpose.
Jesus tells them: Go! Jesus’ mission leads us outward. He shifts our focus away from ourselves and outward into the vast world God created, redeemed and sustains. Go sends us into ALL the world – not just some of it – all of it. The entire world, in all its rich diversity, to all its people. It directs us not just to the people like us, but also to the ones who come from cultures and settings very different than what we’re accustomed to. Jesus’ mission expands our appreciation of our neighbor.
We go, we go into all of this vast and wonderfully diverse world proclaiming and embodying the love of Christ. And our mission is done in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
On this Holy Trinity Sunday, we understand that our mission and ministry find their source in the divine God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
When we ponder the holy Trinity, we frequently find ourselves somewhere on that spectrum from worship to wavering. We worship as we sing the great hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy.” We’re awestruck by God’s wisdom and glory and power, the God who dwells in splendor and transcendence high above us.
But we waver when we try to wrap our mind around how God can be three persons and still only one God.
Oddly enough, a primary advantage of God’s trinitarian nature is precisely that we CANNOT perceive it all! Consider: if we could, if the full nature of God easily fit within our tiny human imaginations, it would mean that God’s nature is smaller than we are. And is that what we really want? A small, easily parsed god who is completely known and predictable? What good is such a god in the face of complex trails? How can such a small god be of help when we endure the dark night of the soul?
There is no mastery of the Trinity. It never rightly had anything to do with theological analytics. The Trinity, rather, speaks more to our lived experience. We speak of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because God has manifested God’s self to us in these three ways.
• God is the Father: the creator of us and all that is.
• And in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son on high became the brother and friend by our side. Through the Son, all the powers and dynamics that ruptured our relationship with God were healed and overcome.
• And finally, God comes to us as a reviving Spirit, who calls and gathers us into faith, who urges us on and encourages, who is the still, small voice coaxing and directing us into tomorrow.
If we get too bogged down in the weeds by analyzing the mysterious, trinitarian nature of God, we surely become confused and lost. It’s simply impossible to take in and absorb the complete nature and wonder of our God who is so much greater than we are.
But experientially, we move from wavering to worship when:
• We consider the infinite love flowing from the Father who imagined each of us into being,
• As we ponder in awe the mercies of the Son who became flesh and conquered our greatest enemies, sin and death,
• When the Holy Spirit breathes hope and joy in our souls, sustaining and renewing our faith.
When the disciples first saw the risen Jesus, some of them worshiped him, but others wavered. Whoever they were, wherever they found themselves on the spectrum from worship to wavering, Jesus gave them a purpose. He gave them a mission in the name of the triune God.
And then he gave them a promise. He promises his presence with us always.
Worshiping and wavering – they’re part of our limited human condition. It’s not that they’re so much opposites of one another. But together they create the dynamic tension which defines our human reality.
God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, promises to be with us though the worship AND the wavering, through the highs AND the hesitations, through our fervent fait AND our freezing up. God is with us always, to the end of the age.
