Mathew 28:16-20
Trinity Sunday
16Now 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.”
It’s Trinity Sunday, meaning most good Disciples pastors are scratching their heads. We Disciples aren’t very good Trinitarians. Alexander Campbell believed in God, known to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but he found the doctrines of the Trinity impenetrable nonsense—one God, three persons, etc., and the term didn’t appear in the Bible, so Campbell didn’t have much use for it. And, ever since, we Disciples have been reluctant to embrace the doctrines surrounding the Trinity, even though we acknowledge God to be our Father (and Mother), God the Son in Jesus of Nazareth, and God within us, the Holy Spirit. In more contemporary terms, we acknowledge God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
And so, Trinity Sunday rolls around and we like to dwell on the baptismal formula in Matthew 28, one of only two places in the bible where this idea seems to exist. We baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to acknowledge our understanding of God, and to follow the directive of Christ in this passage.
Or, we play with the language—which I fully intended to do in this sermon—hence the title, “Go ye means Go we.” I put it that way because I still hear the King James Version in my head, like I bet many of you do.
Here, in this passage, is a place where the King Jimmy gives us something we don’t have in the newer translations. The Greek word here for you is plural—most languages distinguish between you singular, as in, “you, Kathy, are doing a great job today,” as opposed to you plural, as in “you, choir, are doing a great job today.”
Elizabethan English had provisions for separating out you singular and you plural. You is singular, ye is plural. And the King James Version gets it right here. Go ye. You, plural. In the South we have a perfectly good way of expressing this—ya’ll. If we were reading this in the Revised Southern version, Jesus would say, “Ya’ll go on out there and round up folks to follow me.”
That’s what I was going to do.
But, funny things happen between the time when I first plan a sermon and the week finally rolls around.
This week, I saw in this passage something new. It is a wonderful brief outline of what being church is all about.
Two Sundays ago, we examined Luke’s version of this story—where Jesus tells the disciples to spread the news—but in a different way. There he gives them the geography—“you will be my witnesses, first in Jerusalem, in a Judea and Samaria, and to ends of the earth.
But, Matthew emphasizes church life in his telling of the story. It is not just about going, and baptizing, but so much more.
The basis for this outline of church life begins from other sources—the rest of Matthew’s Gospel, and the rest of the scriptures. The basis for life in the church is God’s loving grace.
Have I ever told you my theory that everybody is a fundamentalist? It’s true. They may not be classic fundamentalists, how have a list of five fundamentals concerning scripture, the Virgin Birth, Substitutionary Atonement, physical resurrection, and bodily return. Not everyone has that as their list of fundamentals, but we are all fundamentalists at heart.
We just have different lists.
I bet you have a small simple set of beliefs that undergird the rest of your faith, that are foundational, fundamental to whom you are. For some, the Golden rule is part of it. For others, the Ten Commandments. The sermon on the Mount. For some, the doctrine of the Trinity.
Here’s mine.
God’s Loving Grace Is Greater than Anything Anyone Can Imagine. Grace means God Loves You. Period. No matter what.
Grace
Because of that, We Want to Worship God
Because We Know God’s Grace, We Want to Share it With Others.
We want to Learn and Teach God’s will for all and to all.
Remember, Jesus Is Always With Us.
First Christian Church Sermons 
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