Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

 The readings for Sunday, June 4, 2023:

First Reading: Genesis 1:1--2:4a

Psalm: Psalm 8

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20


This Sunday is Holy Trinity Sunday, one of those festival Sundays that seem a bit baffling, at first (like Christ the King Sunday, which comes at the end of the liturgical year). We understand the significance of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. But what exactly do we celebrate on Holy Trinity Sunday?

At first reading, the Gospel doesn't seem to help. And Jesus certainly didn't spend any time indoctrinating his disciples on these matters which would later split the church. He alludes to the Triune God: we see him pray to God and he tells the disciples that he will send a Comforter. But he spends far more time instructing the disciples on how they should treat the poor and destitute, about their relationship to the larger culture, about their role in creating the Kingdom in the here and now.

You get a much better understanding of the Trinity by reading all the lessons together (thanks to my campus pastor from days of old, Jan Setzler, who pointed this out in his church's newsletter over a decade ago). These aren't unfamiliar aspects: God as creator of the world, God as lover of humans, Christ who came to create community, the Holy Spirit who moves and breathes within us and enables us to create community.

Notice that we have a God who lives in community, both with the various aspects of God (Creator, Savior, Spirit) and with us. It's an image that baffles our rational minds. It's akin to contemplating the infinity of space. Our brains aren't large enough or we don't know how to use them in that way.

But maybe it's not helpful to spend time trying to understand these matters with our intellects.  Maybe we should focus on what the Triune God does, not what the Triune God is.

The God that we see in our Scriptures is a God of action. We see God creating in any number of arenas. We are called to do the same. This is not a God who saves us so that we can flip through TV channels. Our God is a God who became incarnate to show us how to be people of action: Go. Make disciples. Teach. Baptize. Keep the commandments. We do this by loving each other and God. We love not just by experiencing an emotion. Love moves us to action.

And that action doesn't have to have the boldness of those first, male disciples. They went very far when Jesus said to them "Go and make disciples."  But many of us don't need to travel more than a mile or two before we will find someone who needs us, someone we need, someone with whom we could form community.

How do we do that?  Here again, we can find many possibilities in our stories about our creator and our savior and our Holy Spirit Comforter:  rescuing captives out of bondage, teaching, eating meals together in a variety of ways, fishing, healing, going on retreat, praying, having conversations with both the popular people and the outcast, sharing resources, cleaning up messes, telling truth to power, on and on I could go.

We live in a time when the world offers us so many opportunities to act in the way that God acts.  How can we love our neighbor?  There are so many ways to do that.  Theologian Frederick Buechner reminds us in his book Wishful Thinking: "The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." Jesus promises to meet us there.