Let It Be a Mystery

Matthew 28:16-20

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” 

I think the very best thing we can do with Trinity Sunday is to simply be honest.  The doctrine of the Trinity is our completely inadequate, very human attempt to describe the fully indescribable.  It is a mystery.  That may annoy some people but I like it.  I like that I can’t figure God out completely.  If I could, what kind of God would that be?  I need an indescribably large and powerful God.  Not one I can wrap my mind around!  I need that kind of God because my problems are often way more than I can wrap my mind around and I need a God that can say, “Let it be fixed” and have it be fixed, and the fix be good. 

The other reason I am happy NOT being able to wrap my mind around God is because that puts me in the company with the disciples in this story.  They had NO idea what was going on.  The text says some disciples believed and some doubted, but the original Greek says that they ALL believed and they ALL doubted... ALL at the same time.  

That’s me!  Believing and doubting all at the same time.  I totally trust that God will care of me and then still worry if things will be OK.  I don’t “Let Go and Let God” as they say…  I Let Go… and then Snatch Back!  You know, so I can keep worrying about it.  In other words I believe and doubt all at the same time, just like the disciples.  Their faith was imperfect.  My faith is imperfect.  What we understand about God is also… imperfect.  But… and here’s the interesting part, it was those imperfect disciples that Jesus asked to go out and do ministry anyway.  

Right there on that hill, Jesus sees the disciples believing and doubting all at the same time.  Doesn’t care.  Just sends them out!  Go out and baptize people!  Which translates to go out and show people they are loved by God without limit and without condition!  Go out and teach them what I commanded.  In other words, teach them to live backwards in this world.  The world says “work first, then get rewarded.”  God says, “You are blessed up front.”  Then, after that you can choose to respond to God’s love by loving your neighbor the same way God first loved you but there are no take-backsies if you don’t.  That’s our call to ministry.  Receive God’s unconditional love up front and then use that love to change the world for our neighbors for the better, all the while believing and doubting and tripping and stumbling over a life’s worth of baggage every step of the way. 

And here we are yet again, hearing from Jesus one more time that faith isn’t a head thing, but a hands and feet thing.  Loving the world into a better place, just as God loved the world, not just up there in the Divine noodle, but so that the world came into being!  That’s what we are called to be doing too and God knows we’re just as likely to get it perfect as we are to understand the Trinity!

But God is calling us to get going even in the midst of all our imperfections.  To use the brain, hands, feet, skills, voice, talent, sense of humor and whatever else we have on hand today… right now… right here and just use what we’ve got to try and be a little bit more like Christ to our neighbor than we were able to be yesterday.  Nothing in particular we need to wear to do that.  No particular place to do that either.  In whatever clothes you’re wearing and in whatever place you find yourself, just do the smallest of somethings for that someone else you find along the way.  Do that today.  Do another little thing tomorrow.  The rest of us will do that too and then together, Jesus tells us, all those little things, mushed together in some mysterious indescribable Trinitarian way… will begin to change the world.  

We will never be able to wrap our minds around God with the doctrine of the Trinity or with anything else for that matter.  But the doctrine of the Trinity and this lesson do give us some important clues about God.  God, it seems, is all about making unbreakable relationships with all of creation.  You and I and all of creation are bound up in God’s love as tightly as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are bound together.  Nothing can undo that love.  Nothing can unbind that love.  Nothing we feel, nothing we think, and nothing we could ever do can unbind us from God’s love for us.  God in Christ is, and will always be, with each and every one of us forever... in our faith and in our doubts, in our brightest of times, in the times we show our backside, and in those horribly dark and hopeless times...  God’s infinite and unconditional love, Christ’s eternal life giving presence and the life changing power of the Holy Spirit is with us always... right to the end of the age.  Amen.