Sermon for May 31, 2026, The Feast Day of the Visitation and Holy Trinity Sunday

May 31, 2026, Holy Trinity Sunday
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



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

Psalm: Psalm 8

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20





The wonders of technology make it possible for me to be part of the women’s group at the church in Florida where I used to be a member; once a month, we meet by way of Zoom to check in with each other and to have a bit of Bible study. We met the Saturday before Pentecost, and we talked about prayer and which part of the Triune God we talked to when we pray—or do we separate them in that way? I would offer the same question to all of us, as we think about Holy Trinity Sunday. It’s one way of thinking about what it means to have a Triune God.


In the Bible study group, we found out that most of us pray to Jesus and/or God, who we described as Creator or Father. None of us pray to the Holy Spirit. In a way, that’s not a surprise. We’re Lutherans, after all. In my Lutheran Theology class, we studied the foundational documents written by Luther and his fellow reformers. The focus was on Jesus and justification more than God and creation or the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gets no mention at all.


When we look at the readings for today, we see something similar. Look again at what we just heard. In the first reading and the Psalm, we see God the Creator in full force. Not God as judge, not God as rescuer, not God as avenger-- three of the other main ways we see God across time, three of the main ways we see humans relating to God.


In our Gospel reading, we see the second part of the Triune God. We see Jesus at the end of his ministry, Jesus as dispatcher, sending the disciples out to carry on his work. In today’s Gospel reading, we don’t see Jesus as savior in the same way we do during Holy Week and Easter. In today’s reading, we don’t see Jesus as healer and worker of miracles.


The Holy Spirit only gets a brief mention, just part of a sentence in both the second reading and the Gospel. For Holy Trinity Sunday, this seems unfair. Sure, we had a focus on the Holy Spirit last week, but now we seem back to our non-Pentecostal life, all the parts of the Triune God back in their lanes, each responsible for different parts of our spiritual and church lives.


Throughout the centuries, the Church has wrestled with trinitarian theology, with the question about what it means to have God in 3 persons, blessed Trinity, as the hymnist writes it. Were all three there in the beginning? Can they exist separately, apart from one another? Different theologians would give us different answers.


Some theologians might tell us that the answers aren’t important. The important question is how we relate to this Triune God—how we understand the ways that God is at work in the world. This understanding can shape our spiritual practices: how we pray and to whom we pray, for example.


Our Gospel reading is one predominant way that Christians through the centuries have related to God, by going out and making disciples. Through the centuries, that has been interpreted as going to people who haven’t heard about Jesus and convincing them that Jesus walked the earth and died for us and rose again. That model has us converting people and moving on to the next group who hasn’t heard about Jesus.


That model doesn’t seem as useful today. Can there be any people out there who haven’t heard about Jesus? Would our showing up to preach and teach really make a difference?


Perhaps we’ve focused on the wrong verb in today’s Gospel. We’ve focused on the verb “Go”; for today’s world, “Make disciples” is a much more important focus. In the past, we’ve done that by preaching and teaching. But how does the Triune God make disciples?


One clear way is by coming to live with us. Christians focus on Jesus. Jesus comes to earth to show us what it means to be human, how to live our best human lives. From the beginning of the story, even before the birth of Jesus, the Triune God is showing us by example.


May 31, roughly 6 months before Christmas, is the Feast day of the Visitation, a day that commemorates Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, her kinswoman. In Protestant denominations, we hear about this visit in Advent, if we hear it at all. But it provides an interesting note for Trinity Sunday too. It’s an important counterpoint to Pentecost, which often is presented as something that happens to the disciples after they have been commissioned by Jesus.


The story of Mary and Elizabeth reminds us that others are also worthy of commissioning, worthy of doing God’s work in the world—and those people may look very different from those 11 disciples in today’s Gospel. Society and biology told Elizabeth that she was too old for a child; God said it wasn’t too late. Society told Mary that she wasn’t the appropriate choice for a mother of the Messiah; God invited her to ignore that judgment. Women said yes, God said yes, and the history of the world shifted.


It's a great day to celebrate those possibilities. And even if we've been feeling like our time is passed, that it's too late for us, it's great to remember that God doesn't see us that way. If we feel like we're too inexperienced, that we don't know what we're doing, it's great to remember that God doesn't see us that way.


On this Trinity Sunday, let us remember that our God is revealed through community—community between Creator, Redeemer, and Holy Spirit, and community between the Divine and humans. Let us follow God’s example. Let us rejoice in all that is possible when we say yes to God, when we join this community. In a world that rarely celebrates the ways we need each other to thrive, let us make disciples by being a living example of the value of community. So let us go, go about our days, secure in the knowledge that with God, nothing is impossible. With our Triune God, nothing—nothing—is impossible.