St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes, Vicar
Trinity Sunday/Year A: Matthew 28:16-20
June 4, 2023
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Today I awake and God is before me…Today I arise and Christ is beside me…Today I affirm the Spirit within me…Today I enjoy the Trinity round me…above and beneath, before and behind; the Maker, the Son, the Spirit together…[call] me to life and call me…friend.” These are the words from the hymn, “Today I awake,” by John Bell.[1] While praying the Morning office using the online resource Mission of St. Clare, one can click on the play button to hear the hymns being sung. Although I had sung this hymn before, on this site, as I sang it, I thought, “Ooh, this would be great for Trinity Sunday.”
If you haven’t figured it out yet, today is Trinity Sunday. This is the Sunday when the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, gets some serious air time. All across our churches preachers will share many images in an attempt to make sense of the doctrine that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are one—this strange formula of 1+1+1=1. The good news is that the triune God is not a formula to be analyzed. God is an active being, eternally in relationship with God’s self, for the sole purpose of pouring out God’s self in Trinitarian ways. Through these three unified ways of being, God’s unchanging self is revealed to humankind. If we try to analyze the divine mystery of God’s being we miss the point that we really need to get: that God’s eternal self-giving invites all of humankind—you and me—into God’s divine dance of equality and mutuality.
In our Gospel passage in the final chapter in Matthew, we find the remaining 11 disciples on a mountain in Galilee anticipating that they would see Jesus. They are there because Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, to whom the risen Jesus first appeared on two occasions, faithfully delivered Jesus’ message to them that they were to go to Galilee where they would see him (28:10).
The mountain imagery is prominent in Matthew because it represents a sacred place for God’s revelation. In this passage, God the Son, Jesus, revealed to the disciples two things. First, Jesus revealed his divine and earthly kingship, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (v. 18).
Second, Jesus revealed his expectation for the particular function of his disciples in the world. The disciples, then, had a role to play in helping to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth, just as Jesus’ 21st century disciples have 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,” said Jesus (v.19). The Greek word for nations is ethnos, from whence the word ethnicity is derived. Understanding that Matthew’s gospel was written for a Jewish community, the work to be done was to move beyond the Jewish nation to invite the Gentiles—people of all kinds from all places—to be formed, in community, for the work of kingdom building. The commission invites the disciples to not only expand the community of believers, but to diversify that expansive community in the name of the One who is perfect unity in diversity.
As Christ followers, our faith acts as a lens through which we view the world. Broken relationship is sin. This lens helps us to identify conflicts that continue to divide and fracture human relationships. Contrary to what we are taught, conflict resolution is not a head problem to be analyzed, and there is no formula to reconcile brokenness. Humanity’s challenges with loving our neighbors as ourselves are heart problems—broken-heart problems to be specific. Love, Trinitarian style, requires courageous and vulnerable movement from the head to the heart and a commitment to stay there in the brokenness in order to heal.
Moving about the world with the lens of faith, rooted in the compassion and love that Christ has for us, our spiritual discipline is to be the midwife in God’s powerful healing of souls as we companion people on their own spiritual journeys from the head to the heart. You and I are called to witness the pain of broken-heartedness, in ourselves and in others, and to help bring about wholeness through the love of Christ.
As I think about brokenness and wholeness, I am reminded of the ancient Japanese art of kintsugi. Kintsugi is the process of joining the broken pieces of a damaged object, usually a vessel, together with amalgam mixed with powdered gold. The restored piece is comprised of the salvageable pieces and the filled-in cracks of gold, (the kintsugi), shine prominently, from the new creation, reminding all who encounter the object that what was once broken has been restored through the “golden joinery.”[2] This ancient art form strikes me as a wonderful image for Jesus’ great commission, “Go…and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”.
Jesus invited the disciples to allow God to used them to restore the salvageable pieces of humanity and this broken world, not through earthly golden joinery, but by the divine, unifying joinery of the holy Trinity. Through this divine joinery we might more fully embody, the ideal community to which God has called His Church—a Trinitarian community that exists to bring about justice, love and equality in the world. Through our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, we are taken up into this dynamic dance of the triune God’s self-revelation to humankind—this divine joinery.
As we are invited to show up as willing, albeit, pieced-together and imperfect, spirit-filled vessels in this world, let us show up in whatever way Jesus invites God’s faithful, armed with Jesus’ assurance of the one true God’s presence, “I am with you, always.”
Today we enjoy the Trinity round us…above and beneath, before and behind; the Maker, the Son, the Spirit together. Together they form the model for the life of the Church, reflecting, from the beginning, the eternal unity in diversity that God intends for all of creation. May it be so. Amen.
[1] Bell, John. “Today I Awake,” Morning Prayer (missionstclare.com), accessed May 23, 2023.
[2] Lee, Lelanda. “Mending Our Brokenness.” http://whatacupoftea.blogspot.com/2012/06/mending-our-brokenness.html, accessed on June 2, 2023.
