Matthew 28:16-20 Trinity Sunday May 31, 2026
When God created the universe,
God didn’t intend for any of it to
be alone.
The water, the land, the stars,
the trees,
the animals, the sea creatures,
and finally the people.
God created us to be together
and to work together.
The people need the plants and the
animals,
the animals need the people and
the plants,
the plants need the people and the
animals,
we all need the air and the water.
You
can call it an ecosystem, or natural dependence.
Or we can even call it community.
Interwoven lives and existence.
This is Trinity Sunday.
this is the day we celebrate the God who is three and yet
one.
Separate and co-equal and eternal in majesty
Lots
of sermons on Trinity Sunday are spent
with pastors and others trying to explain the Trinity
using apples, or ice and water, ice cream, clovers, or
triangles,
and using sleep-inducing words like ”modalism” or “Partialism”
But
we should always remember and celebrate
what is underlying the doctrine of
the Trinity,
which is that relationship
is at the heart of God’s being.
Interwoven codependence was
present in creation of the universe,
and even before that, it’s at the
very heart of God.
God is a Trinity. God is three and
God is one, together.
God does not ever work alone.
God is, in God’s self, a community.
The
word community is one of those
words that can have a couple of meanings
The differences are subtle, but they’re different.
When
we hear community,
we might think of neighborhoods or cities,
people in schools, or churches.
They use the word a lot in the news I’ve noticed.
They call a place a community just because
there are people who spend a lot of time in the same place.
And the dictionary does say that community is
a
group of people living in the same area,
or
having the same interests.
But
it’s more than that, isn’t it?
Just because something is called a community
doesn’t mean that it’s a Community.
Just like Home with a Capital H.
We’re talking about Community with a capital C.
Community
with a capital C brings along
images of more than just people who live
on the same street or share an interest.
It brings images of people who support,
and of love one another.
Who treat each other as equals.
It talks of shared respect, shared work,
being mutually accountable to one another
and helping each other.
Having love for one another that includes others.
People who are not all related to one another
that treat each other like family.
There
is a lot of talk about Community these days.
Mostly , I think, people are talking about it so much
because we feel that it’s slipping away
Over time, Community with a capital C has become scarce.
We don’t easily form Communities here in the US
we don’t rely on them, we don’t seem to need it.
So for many people, Communities don’t even exist.
Lots
of things have taken away our Communities
There’s technology which is giving us wider spread
communities
but without human contact or responsibility.
We’re also more self-sufficient than we have been in the
past –
when we’re more financially secure,
we don’t have to rely on others.
We can buy what we need ourselves.
And
I think we spend a lot of our lives now
living in protection mode, there is a level of
paranoia that we seem to be living with,
and so we spend a lot of energy protecting what we have:
our families, our time, our privacy, our feelings, our
things,
and with the need to protect everything so much,
it’s hard to let
other people into our lives.
In some ways it’s easier not to be part of a
Community of any kind.
To just be responsible for yourself and your business.
It’s just simpler to be alone with family, a few friends.
But as much as people are avoiding Communities
with a Capital C, so many people long for it and wish they
it.
Older people reminisce about it.
Younger people read about it and ask about it.
They see it in movies and on TV,
and they want to belong it.
People long for Community with a capital C.
That’s
because God created everything to be in Community.
In everything we see and experience we know it.
We are drawn back to the community
at the heart of God.
The
doctrine of the Trinity tells us that
God is three in one.
All equally important parts who work together
Not just a couple but three.
A table for three, where more can always join.
It tells us that the nature of God is Community
– with a capital C.
To
be part of a Community is our natural state,
to be in relationships that stretch beyond family and
selected few friends - is in our DNA, it’s part of us.
The
world would love us to live for ourselves,
and just our small family units
because we’re more manageable that way.
The market would love for us to surround
ourselves with things instead of people.
The devil would love us to be in separate silos
to not trust or rely on anyone else.
But Community is part of God,
and therefore Community is part of us.
In
the Gospel reading for today,
we hear Jesus’ last words in Matthew.
On Easter morning, Jesus told the women
to tell the disciples to meet him in Galilee.
The disciples find him there on a mountain and he gives them
these instructions, “make
disciples of all nations.”
Now
some have taken this command
that to mean that we should convert every person
to our culture and our religion – by force if necessary.
And sometimes it’s hard to look at this scripture any other
way.
But that’s just another example of how humans
have taken Jesus words and made them into
a threat instead of a work of love.
Jesus
says, “Go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of that
sacred Community,
the Trinity”. Gather
people that are different than you,
people that you don’t know, people of all different colors
that speak different languages, people who have different
cultures and lifestyles, gather a diverse group of people,
and make yourself a Community.
Gather
around the worship of Jesus.
Learn to love one another and care for one another.
Become sisters and brothers with one another.
Individual parts, but one body.
Co-dependent and Co-equal in majesty.
Go and make Community in my name:
Father Son and Holy Spirit
Creator, redeemer, and sustainer
God eternal, God in flesh, God in inspiration.
God in us, God for us, God through us.
However you want to say it,
We were created by a God that works in relationship.
We worship a God that works in relationship.
An equal relationship.
Sharing the pain, the glory the sorrow, and the joy equally.
The work of any one rests on the other two.
Any one would be less without the other.
God the Trinity.
And
the Community in the Trinity,
that is the Community we imitate.
That is what churches are:
Not hothouses to grow theologians in,
not a place where people send their children
to so that they can learn morals.
Not a place of facts, but a place of celebration.
A place where we all go to learn how to live together
using the teachings of Jesus.
A place of Community, with a capital C,
imitating the God that we worship.
And
Jesus said where two or three are gathered in my name --
Where there is an effort to form this love
across bloodlines, beyond family,
across cultures and languages, across our differences,
Then we will know that God
– the community in one –
will be there with us always till the end of the age.
