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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
As we heard moments ago in the Gospel Reading appointed for this year’s feast of the Holy Trinity, God the Father gave God the Son all authority in heaven and earth, and God the Son gave God the Holy Spirit to the Eleven disciples turned apostles, sending them with authority to make disciples of all nations, by baptizing them in the Triune Name and by teaching them to observe all that the Son had commanded, and so the Son is always present to the end of the age, even with us. Reflecting on this Gospel Reading today, we realize the Reading is about “The Trinity, Authority, and Us”.
For this Gospel Reading on this First Sunday after Pentecost, the feast of the Holy Trinity, we have jumped back to before the events of Pentecost, to Jesus’s last post-resurrection appearance that St. Matthew, by Divine inspiration, records at the very end of his Gospel account—no Ascension account is recorded there but Jesus’s promise to always be present with His Church, even if in a different way. At a mountain solitude in Galilee, the Eleven see Jesus, and, as the earlier female witnesses had (Matthew 28:9), they worship and so confess with their posture both Who Jesus is and Who He is to them. Jesus apparently comes closer to them and, with the full authority given to Him as the Messiah, sends them to make disciples of all those who do not yet believe, by baptizing them in the Triune Name and by teaching those disciples all Jesus had taught them as disciples, and so Jesus would be present, even with us, all the days to the completion of the age.
The Eleven disciples went to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them by His own authority through those earlier female witnesses (Matthew 28:10). Jesus appeared to them there, and they saw Him as promised, but at least some doubted. With them looking right at the resurrected Jesus, we might not expect them to doubt, but, the Divinely‑inspired record reports such warts and all, although St. Matthew’s account admittedly does not tell us exactly what or why they doubted. Some think the Eleven were confused about what Jesus’s resurrection meant for them and why He had them come to Galilee, both of which sources of confusion Jesus addresses by sending them to make disciples of all nations (Scaer, CTQ [October 1991] 55:248; Winger, Logia VII[2]:43). We know from other Divinely‑inspired writings that, after Pentecost, the disciples‑turned apostles went as they were sent, with a few missteps and disagreements between them along the way.
We are hardly different. We may have our own doubts about what Jesus’s resurrection means for us and why Jesus has given us the vocations we have. As we live together as brothers and sisters in Christ, as the Church in this place, we also have a few missteps and disagreements between us along the way. Like the disciples‑turned apostles, we are sinners by nature and remain sinners even after becoming disciples. Apart from our becoming disciples, our sinful nature and all our actual sins merit both death now in time and torment for eternity in hell, but the Triune God changes that for us. God the Father loved the world, including you and me, by sending God the Son, that whoever, by the power of God the Holy Spirit, believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. The Holy Spirit calls and thereby enables us both to turn in sorrow from our sinful nature and actual sins and to trust God the Father to forgive our sins for the sake of God the Son’s death on the cross for us. When we so repent, then God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sins.
In one way or another, all three appointed Readings this day speak of the three Blessed Persons of the one Holy God. Although His greatness is, as we sang in the Gradual (Psalm 145:3, 5b, 6b), unsearchable, based on such passages of Holy Scripture, the Church confesses, as we did earlier in the Athanasian Creed, one Godhead of Three Persons, each with equal glory and coeternal majesty. None of the three Persons is before or after another in time, and none is greater or less than another. Yet, there are different relationships between the three: the Father begets the Son, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (and the Son). The Son alone was born from the substance of the Virgin Mary in time, still equal to the Father with respect to their shared divinity, and yet less than the Father (and the Holy Spirit) with respect to His humanity. The Son alone meekly and humbly suffered for our salvation, riding into Jerusalem seated on a donkey and hanging outside the city naked on a cross. Still, infinite qualities were given to a finite man: Jesus received all authority in heaven and on earth, most important for the disciples‑turned apostles and for us, is the authority to forgive sins, the power and right to effect that forgiveness (Matthew 9:6; Foerster, TDNT 2:568), which He won for us on the cross. The disciples‑turned apostles made disciples, forgiving sin through Word and Sacrament, and thereby also, bringing forth even from us “the obedience of faith”, in response to what Jesus “commands” (Schrenk, TDNT 2:545).
“All” that Jesus has commanded, in the context of the Gospel Reading, arguably is at least the words read and preached from St. Matthew’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, not only including Holy Baptism—applied also to infants, just as John the Baptizer’s had been applied to them (Matthew 3:5)—but also including individual Holy Absolution (Matthew 16:19; 18:18-20) and Holy Communion (Matthew 26:26-29). The authority to effect the forgiveness of sins was given to more than just Jesus (Matthew 9:8), and Jesus, Who has all such authority and power, certainly can be present in bread with His literal Body and in wine with His literal Blood, in order to forgive us. Ignoring such gifts as God’s Word, Baptism, Absolution, and Communion is a despising of the Gospel, for which, in some sense, there is no solution (Scaer, CLD XI:27‑28). But, when we do not despise these gifts but gladly hear His Word, be baptized and absolved in the Triune Name, and receive His Body and Blood, then we have a right relationship with the Triune God, and in His Church we share in His life.
The ordering of authority within the Trinity radiates out from the Trinity to and for us. The disciples‑turned apostles in turn sent others, for the Lord’s perpetual Presence necessitates such a series of successors (Marquart CLD IX:129). Through pastors today the Holy Spirit not only “makes disciples” of us in the instants of our conversion, but through our pastors the Holy Spirit also continues to teach and shape us as disciples throughout our lives, through ordered authority guiding and directing our life together, if we but let them, not only here in this Sanctuary, but also radiating out to the parking lot, down the streets, and into our homes. There, and wherever our vocations take us, we “witness”, not, as the apostles did, to our Lord’s death and resurrection, but to what the Triune God has done and still does to and for us in His Word and Sacraments, through which He is present with us all the days to the end of this age, keeping us steadfast in this faith, as we prayed in the Collect, and defending us from all adversities, until we, in glorified bodies, are present with Him for the eternity of the age to come. Having reflected on “The Trinity, Authority, and Us”, we realize that, then and there, there are, as we sang in the Introit (Psalm 16:8-11), fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +