Sermon Notes — May 31, 2026
Matthew 28:16-20 (CEB)
“Trinity Sunday”
May 31, 2026
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
Last week, on Pentecost Sunday, we celebrated God’s pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the disciples in Jerusalem, and on the Sunday after Pentecost, every year, comes Trinity Sunday. You might remember, several weeks ago, Terry preached on Ascension Sunday. And in his sermon he said that God had a plan for Jesus from the beginning to the end, and he outlined this plan:
God came in the flesh as Jesus, Jesus taught and healed and came as the full intention of God for the world, Jesus died, Jesus rose victorious over death, Jesus ascended leaving a core gathering of his followers, and God poured out the Holy Spirit on the believers so that we could be the body of Christ alive in the world. Those six things have happened on our church calendar. And today, Trinity Sunday, is the day set aside for us, the church, to reflect on what all of this means.
I once had a youth intern who was fascinated by the history of the creeds, and she loved to talk about how contentious the creation of these creeds was. Apparently people killed each other over whether the Holy Spirit comes only from God, or whether it comes from both God and Jesus. People who didn’t agree with other people’s explanation of the Trinity were labeled heretics and kicked out of the church. In fact, on further exploration, I found that Trinity Sunday first landed on the church calendar to combat the heresy of Arianism, which holds that Jesus was a creation of God rather than existing eternally with God.
Surely we can just look in the Bible to clear up any confusion, right?
No. There is no doctrine of the Trinity anywhere in scripture. Each year on Trinity Sunday the lectionary offers us a buffet of texts that mention Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all in the same sentence, as though we preachers are supposed to put them all together in a neat little package and use them to explain the Trinity. Just as an example, these are the scriptures that our lectionary gives us for today. There’s Matthew, that Jim just read for us, where Jesus tells the disciples to baptize people in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Another of the texts for today is the last three verses of second Corinthians. Paul is signing off on his letter and he says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” Again, all three in the same sentence! And then of course Genesis 1, the creation story, where God is the creator, and the Spirit hovers over the water, and God uses words to create the world, and later on John the Gospel writer will say that the Word that God used to create the world was Jesus.
Be assured that I am not going to clear any of that up for you this morning. As April was wise to point out to the children, how God can be both one and three at the same time is a holy mystery, much in the same way that how the real presence of Jesus can be in the bread and the juice is a holy mystery. We don’t have to understand it to give our heart to it. And at the same time, there is nothing that says that we have to struggle to try to understand it.
What I hope we can do this morning, though, is to shift our perspective a bit on the Trinity. What if we thought about it not as a doctrine that we need to understand but as a relationship that we are invited into?
Will you pray with me and for me?
In the 15th century a Russian artist named Andrei Rublev painted this icon.
It is called Troitsya, or, Trinity. You might be surprised to know that Rublev intended the icon to depict the three holy visitors who come to Abraham by the Oaks of Mamre – the story from Genesis 18. But from the time of its painting, scholars have seen in it symbols of THE Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are all equal in size, they all hold a rod in their left hands, they all wear blue, the color of divinity, and they all have the same face. They are sitting around a table and there is a cup in the middle. There’s much more to the painting than we’re going to get into today, but it’s pretty fascinating if you want to read more about it on your own.
This is what Henri Nouwen, a Catholic theologian, says this about the icon:
As we place ourselves in front of the icon in prayer, we come to experience a gentle invitation to participate in the intimate conversation that is taking place among the three divine angels and to join them around the table.
Did you notice when you looked at it that there was an empty space for you? The three are not squished together so that we are left out. There’s plenty of room for us to have a seat. Yes, these three are sharing the cup that’s on the table, but they are clearly open to sharing with us as well. What we see in the painting is what scholars call God’s
Divine unselfishness.
The three persons of the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – live in a relationship of divine unselfishness. They share with each other, they defer to each other, they seek the good for each other, but they do not limit their love only to each other. In fact, there is so much love present in this relationship that they delight in sharing it. In sharing it with us. And so there is room at the table. Room for us to be part of this relationship. St. Athanasius, who wrote his own creed, calls this God’s self-giving, and says that self-giving is the primary characteristic of God. And if you really want to dig deep into lots of words that describe the Trinity, have a sit down with the Athanasian creed.
But rather than a lot of words to study or a doctrine to understand, The Trinity is a relationship that we are invited to experience. When we can see that we too are welcome into this relationship, we begin to grasp the Trinity. The divine unselfishness of God. God’s character of self-giving.
What Jesus says in Matthew shows us a concrete way to invite other people into that relationship with God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This story takes place after Jesus’s resurrection. Matthew’s version of the Easter story might sound familiar, since it was the text we used just a few weeks ago. Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” come to see the tomb, and then an angel appears and rolls away the stone in front of the tomb. And both the angel and Jesus tell the two women to tell the other disciples that Jesus will meet them in Galilee. And today’s text is what happens when Jesus meets the disciples in Galilee.
He gives them a lot to do. He tells them to go, to make disciples, to baptize, and to teach towards obedience. The best parallel I know to this collection of actions that Jesus gives these disciples is an internship. I’m a long way from my last internship, but what is an internship, really, except standing next to an expert and doing what they do until you do it yourself? This is what Jesus is sending his disciples to do. To create relationships with other people in order to show them how to do what Jesus does.
Making disciples is the first part of the relationship, but it doesn’t stop there. Jesus then invites the disciples to baptize. Baptism is the way we invite others into the expansive life of God – Father and Son and Holy Spirit. We don’t baptize people into a doctrine or a theory. We baptize into a unique way of life.
The sacrament of baptism is a lot of things. It is a sign of God’s grace present in our lives before we are even aware of it. It is a sign of God’s power to take away our sin. It is a reminder of Jesus’s death and resurrection.
It is an initiation into a relationship. It is an initiation into a relationship with Christ’s holy church, and it is an invitation into the relationship that we all share with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Baptism makes us part of the grand story of creation and salvation and sanctification. It makes us part of the story of the church that God entrusts with the Holy Spirit’s power to be Christ’s body in the world. Baptism brings us into a story that is bigger than any of our individual stories. Baptism is a sign of God’s self-giving love – God’s delight in sharing life with us.
In the list of things that Jesus gives the disciples to do, teaching is at the end. I don’t think that’s because teaching is the least important thing that Jesus is giving them to do. In fact, this is the only place in the gospels that Jesus tells the disciples to teach. He is always sending them out to heal and to share, but never teach – until now. That’s how important teaching is.
But the order of actions that Jesus gives the disciples reminds them – and us – that the relationship comes first. It’s the relationship – not the teaching, necessarily – that draws people to Jesus.
I have said this on several occasions in the past, but one of the things that I find so unique and wonderful about this congregation is the opportunities that we give our neighbors to serve others. When folks that we don’t know come to the door and want to help fill backpacks or pack rice and beans, or fill shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child, we don’t make them come to Bible Study or listen to us talk about Jesus for half an hour first. We don’t teach them a creed or the Lord’s Prayer. We just say, Come stand next to me and I’ll show you what to do. We don’t even have to tell people that they’re doing Jesus-y things. We just have to invite them in. What we’re inviting them to is an even greater relationship with the God whose character is self-giving love.
My first year of seminary I fell in love. I fell in love with learning – again. I’ve loved learning all my life, but the flame of love had all but died after four years of undergrad. I needed a new spark. And seminary was it. Every class I took was my new favorite, and every semester I’d finish a class and proclaim to my dad, “I’m going to stay and get my PhD in that.” I want to be a student forever. He indulged me but would sometimes say, “Eventually you’re going to want to get out of the classroom and see if you can actually do anything.” And he was right. By year three I was ready to be finished and to go see if I could actually do something.
Sometimes I’m embarrassed by the number of things I’ve forgotten since seminary. Sometimes I’m embarrassed by the number of things I’ve forgotten since last week. But being in relationship with God’s people – with you, with my clergy colleagues – brings back the important stuff. The good stuff. It’s the relationships that help us remember who God is and what God is like. It’s the relationships that remind us of God’s character of self-giving love. It’s the relationships that help us remember God’s delight in us and God’s divine unselfishness. It’s the relationships that remind us that God is always making room for us and welcoming us in.
And that’s what’s really important about Trinity Sunday. God welcomes us.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit – three in one, one in three – always making room for you and me to. Amen.