Last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday. Today is Trinity Sunday.
It makes sense to move from the day when we remember the giving of the Holy
Spirit to a day when we remember the nature of God – three persons; one
essence. God is one in essence, a perfect unity, but experience God as three
persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I don’t plan to explain the trinity today – that kind of
exploration is useful, but it is best done in another setting, with people who
can see more deeply into such mysteries than I can. Instead, I want to reflect
on the Scriptures that the lectionary gives us to think of Trinity.
Genesis 1 tells of creation, the action of God at the
beginning of everything. “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the deep.”
“And God said, ‘Let there be …, and there was ….’” God: Creator, Spirit, and
Word. John 1 picks up on this creation account and makes clear what this
creative word is: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. … Through him all things were made; without him nothing
was made that has been made.”
Genesis 1: God – Creative Power, Word, and Spirit – present
in the beginning, an eternal three persons, one essence. Matthew 28 refers then
to the same trinity as part of what we call the Great Commission: “Baptizing in
the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Last Sunday, we performed a
baptism as part of our service. You may remember that Pastor Lee used these
words as they poured the water over Katie’s head: “We baptize you in the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
A natural question follows. Why does the lectionary tie the
Great Commission to the creation narrative like this? What’s going on? There
are various possible answers, I suppose, and I want to consider first Genesis 1
and then Matthew 28 to get at least one of them.
Creation
Genesis 1 one has several important themes. One of them is
the way that God brings order into chaos. The first statement about creation is
that the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the
deep. Formless – Empty – Deep: in the Hebrew, tohu va vohu … tehom. These are
words that mean chaos and trouble. The deep is where bad things come from.
Formless emptiness is dangerous. The first readers of Genesis would have expected
trouble.
Then the narrative shifts: “The Spirit of God hovered over
the waters, and God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.” So begins
an ordering of chaos, so that by the end of the chapter all is well ordered and
made ready for the human pair.
A second theme is how good this ordering is. The next
sentence after “there was light” is “God saw that the light was good.” Throughout
the six creative days, this theme repeats: in verse 10, God calls the sea and
dry land good; in verse 13, God calls vegetation in all its forms good; in
verse 18, God calls the sun, moon, and stars good; in verse 21, God calls all
living creatures good; and finally in verse 31, God calls the whole of
creation, ruled over by the man and the woman made in his image, very good. God’s
creation is good – when God orders it and blesses it and rules over it.
A third theme is the place that the man and the woman occupy
in creation. As we saw, God calls creation ruled over by the human couple “very
good”. They are made “in the image and likeness of God.” So, the human pair
were made “like God”. Why does the text add “in the image”. We can see what the
word “image” means here by listening to the Ten Commandments, “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in
heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow
down to them or worship them.” Why not? Because the man and the woman were the
image. The Israelites were not to bow down to any other creature as God’s
image, because they were God’s image.
In short, the human couple in creation
represent God, ruling over the earth in God’s place. What does that mean?
Remember what God did in creating the world. God took a place of chaos and
disorder and made it ordered and good. God brought shalom – wholeness and peace
and good – into creation and then gave the human couple the task of continuing
to bring order and peace.
Fast forward to the present. How have we
done? How well have we brought order and peace into chaos and disorder? Not
very well! Which sets the stage for Matthew 28.
The Great Commission
As with the Creation account, there are many themes we could
consider. The little statement, “but some doubted”, is worth exploring. In the
presence of the risen Lord, some were not sure what this meant or how they
should respond. We can take courage from their confusion. When we feel doubts
and uncertainty, we know we’re in good company, and we know that Jesus does not
abandon us, any more than he abandoned his first followers.
We could also explore the precise nature of the commission –
going; baptizing; teaching. These three words take us deep into the life of the
first church, but they belong in another sermon, not today.
I want instead to note the way that Jesus begins the commission:
“All authority in heaven and on earth is given to me.” Jesus is the Word, the
creative word of God present at the creation of the heavens and the earth. He
holds the authority of the ruler of the universe because he made all that is.
His commission for the disciples, then, is the action of the ruler telling his
representatives what they are to do. Just as God left the human pair at the
beginning of the world as his images to rule over the earth, Jesus leaves the
church as his representatives to bring the good news of the gospel to all
people. That is, we are restoring creation – fixing what’s broken.
Why?
Why would Jesus give the church this task? Why do we need a
new creation? Simply because the old creation has failed. The human race had
the task of ordering creation and bringing about peace and justice throughout
the world. We failed. We continue to fail. Therefore, the church has the task
of bringing all people into the new creation where God reigns in perfect
justice and peace.
This task is not a political task. We are not trying to
create a Christian nation, which would mirror the Old Testament people of God.
When Jesus went to his death, his disciples were ready to fight to protect him.
Jesus stopped them with these words: “My kingdom is not of this world. If it
were, then my servants could fight for me.” (John 18:36) As it is, God’s reign
is not a political realm. Again, in Luke 17, Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is
within you.” This is not a personal abstract spirituality, but rather it
affirms that God’s reign is made visible in the church.
God’s reign is much bigger than the church; it includes the
whole of creation. But we are given the task of making God’s reign visible. We
show what a community of people who have been baptized into the death of Christ
look like. We show what a community of people who “obey everything that Jesus
commands” looks like. We make visible the new creation in which God’s Spirit is
present and active. In short, we are the ones who complete the mandate given to
the first man and woman in Genesis 1 to work at the task of bringing order and
peace and wholeness and goodness into the world. That’s our job. That’s who we
are.
An Objection
Some people think that the world is actually okay and that
we don’t really need this gospel of the kingdom. I have news for you. It’s not
okay. It’s bad. There are places here and there where God’s Spirit is active,
bringing goodness and life, but the truth is we live in a world that is on the
brink of destruction. Chaos and disorder threaten us all around. I don’t need
to go into details; just listen to the news for a week and you will be
sufficiently depressed.
Someone might reply, “The world’s bad, but I’m okay. I don’t
need any help. I can handle what faces me and my family.” Maybe you can. I
admit that I’m doubtful. Life has a way of throwing a curve ball at us. Just
when we think we know what’s happening, it drops out of the strike zone and we
miss the ball completely. Life’s like that.
But even if you can handle what happens to you personally,
can you take care of the climate crisis? Can you end the war in Ukraine? My
daughter-in-law used to work in a school in a deprived neighbourhood; she saw
poverty and its effects up close. Can you fix the poverty that destroys
families and fuels addictive behaviour?
The only way you can really think you’re okay is by drawing
a circle around yourself and keeping all the problems outside. But it doesn’t
work. Sooner or later someone you know, someone you care about, gets caught up
in chaos and pain. Then you remember that it’s our job in the church to bring
order into chaos, to bring peace into conflict, to bring light into darkness.
How Do We Do This?
How do we do this? That’s the question. Some people reduce
the answer to handing out tracts or going door to door with a gospel
presentation. The first church did it another way. They told about the
resurrection over and over again, and they lived out the Great Commission:
Teaching them to obey everything that Jesus commands.
That action – living it out – was critical. Stephen Neill was
a missionary scholar. Here is his description of Christians in the first three
hundred years of the church’s life:
In those days to be a Christian meant something. Doubtless among the pagans there were many who lived upright and even noble lives. Yet all our evidence goes to show that in that decaying world sexual laxity had gone almost to the limits of the possible, and that slavery had brought with it the inevitable accompaniments of cruelty and the cheapening of the value of human life. Christians were taught to regard their bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. The Church did not attempt to forbid or abolish slavery; it drew the sting of it by reminding masters and slaves alike that they had a common Master...and that they were brothers in the faith. (Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions, 1964: 41)
I like that line: “In those days to be a Christian meant
something.” Christians were different – in a good way! I’ve used this example
before, and it’s worth repeating again. A hundred years ago, my ancestors in
Ontario were part of the Brethren in Christ (Tunkers). Morris Sider (I think)
tells how they used to have Love Feasts each year, and before they could take
part in feetwashing and communion, they had to make sure there was no sin in
their lives. Some of them were farmers who had crossed the border and bought
farm equipment in the state of New York. Occasionally, a farmer would realize
he had not paid duty on what he bought, so he went down to the border to
declare the item and pay duty on it. The border guards declared that they never
worried about the plain people (as they called us), because they knew that we
would always come back and pay.
I think that’s really cool! Integrity was baked into their
lives so that the border guards knew they were telling the truth. What would it
look like if the way that God wants the world to be were baked into our lives? It
would take another sermon to explore what that would look like, but I can summarize it by using the terms we heard
in the Creation account: We would be people who bring order into chaos, peace
into conflict, God’s presence into every arena of life.
Drew Strait (NT prof at AMBS) tells a story of defusing
conflict and seeking peace, even in the vitriol that passes for virtual
conversations online. He had written an article on 9/11 and Christian
nationalism, which appeared online. One of the commenters attacked him quite
viciously, and Strait describes his peaceable response – leading to the
commenter deleting his attack from the conversation. Even in the polarization
of contemporary politics, it is possible to build for peace.
Conclusion
Part of the trouble is that we want quick results. We want
to know what we can do so that things are better right away. Remember Neill’s
description of the first church? They made their mark and conquered the Roman
Empire with God’s love, but it took them three hundred years. They were small
groups of people scattered throughout the cities of the Roman Empire. They really
did not look like representatives of the king of the universe, but they were!
We also may not feel like a place filled with God’s power.
Eighty to a hundred or so people, so many of us over 70 years old – and you
think that this is where God reveals God’s reign to the people of the earth? You
bet it is! It’s a long slow process, working night and day. That’s why Jesus
says in the Great Commission, “I am with you always, to the very end of the
age!”
We play our part: maybe actively; maybe quietly; living out
the resurrection of Jesus every day. We pray and we live Saint Francis’ prayer,
bringing about the new creation, the world as God meant it to be:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
Steinbach Mennonite Church
4 June 2023
Sermon
Texts:
Genesis 1:1
to 2:4a
Matthew
28:16 to 20
Focus
Statement:
God gives
us the commission to "make disciples" -- that is, to represent God
recreating the world the way that God wants it to be. We are God's people
inviting everyone around us to join in the new creation.
Thinking
Ahead Question:
What is broken in our world, and how can we fix it?
Digging
Deeper:
1. What is wrong with our world?
2. What can we do about it?
3. How do you feel about the idea that fixing the world may take 300
years?
4. What examples do
you know about of God’s kingdom breaking into our lives? How can we participate
in bringing in the new creation?
