Mission: Begin at the Dismissal
Today is Trinity Sunday, our Feast Day! I hope you all are planning to feast from a safe distance and celebrate the particular body of Christ of which you are a part, Trinity Episcopal Church. If you are a guest, we welcome you to our virtual gathering and celebration!
My name is Alyssa Stebbing and I am the seminarian you all have been praying for every week and I am very grateful for those prayers. There have been times this year when just knowing you pray for me by name during the Prayers of the People has brought great comfort and encouragement. Thank you. Thank you for supporting me in this calling.
Let’s just say that this is not AT ALL how I thought seminary would go. I knew there would be changes, I knew there would be some discomfort, I knew there would be adjustments, but a pandemic? I was not at all prepared for that and spending the majority of my second semester in Zoominary.
Nevertheless, here we are. These times are hard on all of us. Demonstrations around the world decrying racial injustices. COVID-19. Some have lost loved ones, some have been ill, some suffer from the isolation, some are frustrated, some have lost their jobs, some did not graduate in the manner they had hoped for. The list is long. We are suffering. We are suffering from fear, from violence, from injustice. And these fears make us forget who we are, who we belong to and the abundance of gifts in the economy we have in God. These fears separate us and make us afraid of our neighbors.
Our Genesis reading this morning reminds us of the value of our Creation. That all God created, including you and me and our neighbors, no matter their race or religion or where they are from, all of it is GOOD. That God entered into a relationship with humanity out of chaos. In a world that is in chaos, God is where we find order. And as God’s good creation we experience all aspects of darkness and light. New life is always emerging from the cycle of dark and light, sunset and sunrise, the ebb and flow of the tides. Darkness does not go away, it is a part of our life. Human suffering does not go away. Becoming a Christian, does not create a Disney World for us where everything is a fairy tale. But this creation story reminds us that it is from the void, it is from the overshadowing that new life and fresh possibility emerge. Let’s take a look at that possibility.
Look at the icon of the Holy Trinity. It was created by Andrei Rublev in the 15th century. He drew the three messengers whom he depicted as precursors to the Holy Trinity. They are seated around three sides of a square table, with the fourth side opening up to the viewer. The perspective looks skewed but the reason is that the icon is looking at us, not the other way around, and inviting us to sit at the table. We are being invited into the conversation to complete the divine circle. It hangs above this altar, this table that is open to everyone—every one.
Keep this image in your mind as we jump to the Gospel, the closing passage in Matthew, known as the Great Commission. Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
This Great Commission in woven together, inextricably, with all that Jesus taught. Jesus was asked, what is he greatest commandment, the most important teaching? The answer was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the second is like it, Love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” The Great Commission is a continuation of that commandment. Go make disciples of everyone, baptizing them in the name of the Holy Trinity, teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded us. And what has He commanded us? To Love God and equally love our neighbor. This is what we are to go out and live. This is not about converting people, it’s about living out and reflecting Jesus Christ to the world. The early Christians were identified in a tumultuous, violent time of oppression, by their love. Is this how we are identified today? Perhaps how we love our neighbor reveals how much we love our God.
Now, if we’re honest, there are just things Jesus taught that we’re not at all sure we are capable of, or truths that are really hard to build our lives on. You are not alone in this struggle. The first part of our Gospel passage says, “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” Well of course they did! They watched this man get arrested and die and here he is standing in front of them and the whole way of viewing the Almighty powerful Kingdom of God had been turned UPSIDE DOWN! There were no armies that defeated Rome like they had hoped. The Jewish people—and remember they were all Jews, including Jesus—were oppressed, living on their land that was being occupied by an Empire, denied of rights, and Jesus had been unjustly killed as a criminal in one of the most humiliating deaths reserved for the worst offenders. So, yeah, they worshipped Christ, but some doubted.
But, Jesus tells even the doubters to go and baptize, make disciples (teachers) of everyone, and do everything he’d told his followers, Love God, Love your Neighbor. Everything he taught was wrapped up in love. Not Hallmark love, but hard love. Stopping to take care of a man of a different race from a community of sworn enemies who had been beaten and left for dead. That kind of love. Feeding people who are hungry even if you don’t think you have enough for yourself. That kind of love. It is loosening the chains of injustice, breaking the yoke, clothing the naked, giving shelter to the poor, visiting the prisoner, and not turning away from the suffering! Example after example, in parables and in his encounters with the people directly, Jesus said go out from here and teach the people these things. Just teach them—every one and make them teachers, too. And what is the best way to teach important matters? By modeling the behavior. By living it out yourself. So a simple little experiment might be to try this out. Try, even if you doubt, or maybe especially if you doubt and are not really sure how much you love God, just try to love your neighbor. See what happens. See what transforms in you.
You are not promised thanks. You are not promised recognition. There’s no continuing sentence in the Gospel that says, “If you love your neighbor you will reap all kinds of success and everyone will love you back.” Nope. The commandment is simple and clear. Loving God is connected to loving your neighbor. Your love of others will strengthen your love of God. When you see your neighbor is hurting, you help them. We do not turn away from our neighbor. When one has been brutalized and left for dead, we stop and help, even if he or she is not one of our own. When someone is in prison, we are Christ to that person when we visit. When someone is seeking safe shelter, we offer a home. When someone has been murdered, we seek justice. It does not matter who it is. Go teach that, Jesus says. Go live that. THAT is what it means to love me. Not for your own comfort, but for others.
What we are doing then is participating in the work of the Trinity—we are opening that side of the table to welcome everyone to God’s abundance. Not only is this great commission our Gospel text for this Sunday, let’s remember the words we will hear at the end of this service and every service we celebrate together. The Deacon closes us out with, “Let us go forth in the name of Christ.,” or “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” or “Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.” All of those dismissals are a sending out into the world, carrying out the Christ we have just received. It is the continuation of the Divine Service we have shard together. It’s not over. We came here to fill ourselves with God. Now, we depart to do the work Christ asks us to do. We don’t worship God and receive Christ just to go home and wait until we do that all over again. What are our songs for? Just for our enjoyment? What are our prayers for? Our own relief? Why do we read the scriptures together? We don’t keep Christ to ourselves. We come here and offer ourselves—our souls and bodies. Now, we take our souls and bodies together as the Body of Christ back into the world. This isn’t Jesus and me, this is Jesus and us.
So, doubters, strugglers, companions in the way of Jesus, my sisters and my brothers. Don’t forget that you do not do this work alone. Jesus ends the Great Commission with these words, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” You go out bearing Christ in you. You come back having invited others to this table of Christ’s love somehow during your week by living and teaching all he commanded you. Jesus is with you! To the end of the age!
So for these troubled times I will close with words from Steven Charleston, from the Choctaw tribe, retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Alaska, and former dean of Episcopal Divinity School. He gently speaks these words to all of us who follow Jesus:
Now is the moment for which a lifetime of faith has prepared you. All of those years of prayer and study, all of the worship services, all of the time devoted to a community of faith: it all comes down to this, this sorrowful moment when life seems chaotic and the anarchy of fear haunts the thin borders of reason. Your faith has prepared you for this. It has given you the tools you need to respond: to proclaim justice while standing for peace. Long ago the Spirit called you to commit your life to faith. Now you know why. You are a source of strength for those who have lost hope. You are a voice of calm in the midst of chaos. You are a steady light in days of darkness. The time has come to be what you believe.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Magdalena's Musings 