Sunday’s Readings: Trinity Sunday

Isaiah 40.12-17,27-31; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13.11-13; Matthew 28.16-20

HERE are three (in fact) questions for this Trinity Sunday Gospel. First, which mountain? Is Jesus directing his disciples to return to the mount of transfiguration, where he had been revealed in his true glory? Or should we, as an alternative, think further back, to the mountain on which he delivered the major body of his teachings (Matthew 5-7)?

The second query follows on from last Sunday: do Jesus’s final words in Matthew’s Gospel constitute an “I’m” saying, and, in the event that they do, is it like those in John? The third query is a very powerful: what precisely does Jesus promise us in v.20?

An answer to the primary query is comparatively easy: there is no such thing as a technique to ensure which mountain Jesus is referring to. Two mountains in Matthew’s Gospel figure as sites of revelation that’s positive (so setting aside 4.8): the mountain of the sermon (5-7) and the mountain of the transfiguration (17). But a case could be made that Matthew’s Gospel is ending because it began — with Jesus as a recent, and greater, Moses. Moses had received the commandments from God on a mountain (called either Sinai or Horeb: Exodus 19.11, Deuteronomy 1.6). So, it is smart for the mountain to which Jesus had directed his disciples (v.16) to be the one from where he acted as a recent Moses, delivering authoritative teaching.

The second query is said to the primary; for each touch on facets of the Jewishness of Jesus. I discovered a few examples in Matthew’s Gospel of Jesus’s making an “I’m” declaration. This passage is one. The other one which jogs my memory of John’s Jesus and his “I’m” sayings is Matthew 14.27, but translations make it hard to identify. The Greek says that Jesus told his terrified disciples: “Have courage; I’m; don’t be afraid.” True, Matthew doesn’t record symbolic “I’m” sayings of Jesus in the identical way, or to the identical extent, as John. But we must always consider that his Judaeophile (or not less than Judaeo-sympathetic) approach give added significance to those “I’m” sayings that (evoking Exodus 3.14) we do find in his writing.

Now for the third query. Unlike the Persons of the Trinity, my three questions will not be co-equal: nothing is more immediately vital to each Christian than the promise that Jesus makes us here. The original text of Mark gives no final words to the resurrected Jesus. The Lucan Jesus is targeted on his promise of the Holy Spirit. John’s Jesus has no farewell speech as such, only a transient command, “You, follow me!” Matthew 28.20, though, guarantees that Jesus himself will probably be with us “all the time”.

But here’s a more literal translation: “Look! I’m with you all of the days until the fulfilment of the age.” I don’t disagree that “to the tip of the age” (NRSV) suggests “for ever”. Time is created by God; so, when the divine purposes are fulfilled, it could not have a reason to exist. That is a level of theological speculation beyond me. No, the focus for me is the strict meaning of what’s translated in NRSV and NIV as “all the time”. Jesus says “all of the days”: and I hope that he means exactly that. On its own, “all the time” is so nebulous as to be emptied of meaning. If something all the time just “is”, we may fail to see it in any respect.

But if Jesus guarantees to be with us “all of the days” (we’d express this as “each day”), then he’s emphasising each individual temporal unit of our existence. The impact of his being with us “all of the days” could be linked to the absence from Matthew’s Gospel of an ascension. He have to be “with us” in another way, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy (7.14), made early within the Gospel (1.23), that he’s “God with us”. Luke makes two references to an ascension (24.51; Acts 1.9), and John make three (3.13, 6.62, 20.17). But here, in Matthew, Jesus’s being mysteriously present and worthy of worship leaves the “how” of his ongoing presence with us beyond our understanding.

So, finally, to the Holy Trinity. One tiny detail in 28.19 reveals the Persons of the Holy Trinity as being each three and one. We are to baptise “within the name” of “Father”, “Son”, and “Holy Spirit”: the Persons are three, however the “name” (not “names”) is one.