Trinity Sunday
We have just listened to a very familiar text from Matthew 28:16–20 as we reflect on God as Trinity, following on the Day of Pentecost. It is the great climax to Matthew’s Gospel laying out Jesus’ invitation, plans, direction and reassurance until the end, but it’s so familiar we often miss how radical it is. It is known as the Great Commission and it is a counter-imperial announcement from the margins of occupied land, spoken to a powerless community which still includes the doubters. It is not simply a call to institutional church expansion.
Against the backdrop of the Roman Empire, this is an unmistakeable declaration of allegiance to a different Lord.
The five verses of our Gospel text are powerful, subversive and contradict the might and authority of the Roman empire, and provide a stark, clear contrast to today’s empires as well. The resurrected Jesus is speaking to his disciples, who, Matthew tells us plainly, are not all convinced about Jesus’ resurrection, as ‘some doubted’ (Matt. 28:17). They doubted what was happening was real; but they were also actively wondering and watching Jesus, probably they could not believe their eyes. They worshipped him, falling at his feet in awe and wonder. These remaining 11 disciples had received Jesus’ message from the first Apostle to the Apostles, Mary Magdalene and the other women whom Jesus had instructed to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, as it was there they would see him (Matt. 28:10). His first statement is a declaration of God’s presence, as he says:
‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’, says Jesus (28:18).
This is revolutionary, subversive, radical and challenging. Caesar was the acknowledged supreme power in the world, only Caesar could claim such authority. It was Caesar who determined life or death in the Empire. The Emperor claimed to be a God on earth. Roman citizens included Caesar in their prayers and worshipped him to demonstrate their loyalty to the Roman empire. But even Caesar did not claim to have power over life after death. The worst the empire could do had been done to Jesus and he had risen again, he was alive, and had proved beyond doubt, earthly powers had no hold over him!
God instead gave all power and authority to Jesus, in all of God’s creation, in heaven and on earth. Let us not forget this truth as we hear and see claims being made around our world today of power, of control over life and death. As Christians let us not be frightened of these claims as we know they are false. We are called to live as resurrection people.
Jesus sends his disciples to grow disciples and baptise them in the name of the Triune God, God as Father, as Son and as Holy Spirit. This invitation resounds around the world as it has been doing for the last 2,000 years. But it is important to remember this has been horribly misused by earthly empires.
It has been weaponised, providing an excuse for colonisation, oppression, greed for wealth and resources, and power over nations and peoples. It has been appallingly misused and grotesquely applied by empires and the church across centuries and this is still happening today. It is part of the current justification for Russian aggression in Ukraine; its application is growing in volume and violence in the USA: and has long been used by the British empire in places and times where the church has been colonised as a vehicle for white nationalism, patriarchy and supremacy.
So let us make sure we hear this invitation from Jesus very clearly and differently. This invitation to be a disciple is wrapped up in Jesus’ commandment to obey his teaching. We must remember, his teaching includes the commandment to love one another, to provide release for captives, freedom from oppression, help for the vulnerable and relief from financial debt and insecurity. It is a sharp reminder for social and economic justice in all places and nations, which are an integral part of God’s call to discipleship, to service and to live in God’s kingdom. Anything else is deceitful and wrong.
However, I’m not sure this understanding and teaching is part of any Empires’ teachings throughout history, or today, except where it brings smoother colonial conquest. Making disciples of people around the world who are struggling with corruption, greed, fear and violence, in places where they might encounter a follower of Jesus, must have seemed unimaginably difficult and perhaps, even impossible for those few frightened, doubting men, listening to Jesus in Galilee, on the margins of the great Empire of Rome. This was an Empire in which the state sanctioned death of a wandering teacher, preacher and healer called Jesus, had passed with barely a ripple of acknowledgement from any of the authorities. Galilee was not a centre of power. Galilee was on the margins of society, and Jesus was talking to people who lived and died in these margins about going throughout the world. This beginning was earth-shatteringly small and insignificant, and is world shatteringly extraordinary as a message which has reached across the world 2,000 years later.
We are invited into the complexity and simplicity of a relationship with God whom we worship, a Triune God whose power is beyond anything as the Creator of all things, both visible and invisible, personal, intimate and cosmic. It is through Christ, God’s Son, by whom all things are reconciled to God in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Triune God brings us always back into relationship with God through the Son, in the eternal sacred dance of love, faith and hope, transformed by the grace of God’s Spirit.
It is also worth remembering Jesus does not wait for certainty in the disciples replies, as they were full of doubt, in this moment of revelation and joy. But we are reassured:
Remember, I am with you always, to the end…’ (Matt. 28:20)
Let us, like the first disciples, although uncertain and doubting, yet we are worshipping and joyful, fearful and anxious, questioning and faithful, loving and hopeful. We approach God with trust knowing in God all things hold together.
The Lord be with you.