Matthew 28:16-20

I read an interesting article online yesterday. The title was “Time-Traveling Male Sea Monkeys Make Bad Mates.” Mind you, this was posted on a science and technology website — not a science fiction site — so how could I possibly resist reading that?

It turns out that sea monkey eggs can lay dormant for years before hatching. A British scientist took advantage of that fact by gathering eggs laid in three different eras — 1985, 1996 and 2007 — and performed experiments by breeding sea monkeys with mates from both their own era and other eras.

Those experiments showed that mating with a male from the future turned out to be dangerous for females. The further apart in time the partners were, the more the female’s life span was shortened.

It seems that males are constantly evolving techniques to ensure that their genes are passed on to the next generation and not those of another male. Over time females evolve defenses against these techniques, but when an earlier era female is faced with the more advanced genetic weaponry, it can prove toxic to her. Not that she would have any way of knowing that danger.

Every year, ministers who follow the Revised Common Lectionary are faced with a similar danger — trying to make sense of the concept of the Trinity. We have to try to explain why the Church has traditionally taught that the concept of three equals one is not bad math.

That’s not an idea anyone would choose for themselves, but it’s the one that made the most rational sense to the experience of the earliest Christians. God had appeared to them in three different ways — God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit — and yet it clearly was all the same God. So how do you explain that?

One pastor wrote: “When I teach about the Trinity, I ask the class to imagine a two dimensional, very small person, who can know length and width, but not height; [someone] who would exist in a world like a table top. Now let’s imagine that I want to show myself, as a three-dimensional person to this two-dimensional person. I could press my hand or my face on the table-top world, but I could never fully reveal myself to the two-dimensional world. The two-dimensional person could gain some understanding of who or what I am, but not fully, until he or she enters into a three-dimensional existence.

“That’s how it is with the Trinity. Our experience of God is best explained as God being three persons, but one Being. We don’t understand it, but when we’re describing the Infinite, we probably shouldn’t be surprised by that. In fact, if we could understand God, then God might not be much of a God.”

And that leads us straight into the paradoxical nature of the Trinitarian belief. We talk about it in the first place because that’s how God has revealed himself to us and we want to know God as fully as we can. However, we do so knowing that we can’t fully grasp what it means. So to some degree, it feels like a waste of time.

And yet, if we spend some time wrestling with the concept of the Trinity, we’ll be rewarded with a better understanding of how we’re called to live as Christians. So the struggle is worth all the effort. Because, in the end, the existence of the Trinity is all about relationships.

What do I mean by that? African theologians talk about a concept taken from the Nguni language known as ubuntu. Desmond Tutu describes its meaning in this way: “my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound, in yours [...] a person is a person through other persons.”

He goes on to write, “A person with ubuntu, is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole.”

It was the ubuntu ideal that inspired the reconciliation work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa following the end of apartheid. That was the group which offered amnesty from prosecution for crimes committed under the apartheid laws to anyone who would tell the truth in open court about what they did during those years.

In the words of one observer, this process gave torture victims the opportunity to look their tormenters in the eye and say to them, “What you did to me was a crime because I am a human being and not an animal. And you are responsible for it because you are a human being and not an animal. My humanity is tied up in yours. My humanity is affirmed by my choice today to treat you as a human being, who even now can make the choice not to behave hurtfully. Wounding you and punishing you will not heal me. [So] I forgive you.”

What a wonderful and powerful concept that is! If we are all truly connected with each other in such a total and fundamental way, then the more I honor others, the more honor there is to go around. The more I forgive others, the more forgiveness there is to go around. The more love I show in my life, the more the world is tilted toward love.

That’s how it’s possible to fulfill the 2,700 year old call of Amos to “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” In other words, we’re called to allow ubuntu thinking to make over our hearts and transform our actions, so that the world might be renewed into the likeness of God.

And what is that likeness? It’s that of the Triune God in whose essential nature we find community and respect and such effervescent love that that love burst forth out of the Trinity like a well-shaken bottle of champagne, and was formed into the dazzling variety of creation that is our world and ourselves. We were designed in God’s image to be creatures whose ultimate purpose is to live in community and share self-giving love with one another — following the model of the Trinity.

Jewish theologian Martin Buber said it this way: “You know always in your heart that you need God more than everything; but do you not know that God needs you — in the fullness of His eternity needs you? How would humanity be, how would you be, if God did not need humanity, did not need you? You need God, in order to be — and God needs you, for the very meaning of your life. [...] There is divine meaning in the life of the world, of human persons, of you and me.”

That’s not exactly the way many people understand God. Instead, they see God as someone waiting to pounce on their slightest slip-up — someone they have to constantly appease. An episode of the old TV series “All in the Family” demonstrated that kind of idea.

Archie Bunker was sitting at the dinner table with his family and he insisted that everyone, including his agnostic son-in-law Mike, “thank God for this food which comes from him.” Mike refused and made a joke about it to which Archie angrily replied, “This here is a Christian God-fearin’ home, and when you’re sittin’ at this table you’re gonna be just as afraid of God as the rest of us!” Unfortunately, that’s not a completely uncommon attitude toward God, but it totally misunderstands the ubuntu nature of the Trinity.

The Trinity shows us that the very essence of God is self-giving love, a love that treats all people as being worthy of love and respect, even when we sin and rebel against God. God’s love is so unshakeable that it looks past the surface of our actions to see and embrace our inner persons. And that’s where our passage from Matthew comes in.

If you take the entire 28th chapter of that gospel as a whole, it becomes clear that Matthew is using the chapter to contrast two different kinds of community. In the section just before our gospel lesson today, Matthew talks about the official community — the Roman soldiers, the priests and elders, and the governor.

When the resurrected Jesus leaves his tomb in spite of the guards placed around it by Pilate, the priests and elders cook up a story to explain his disappearance and they bribe the guards to back up their story. This is a community focused on greed and lies.

In contrast to that is the community established by Jesus. They meet with him on a mountain in Galilee. But it’s no longer the twelve disciples since Judas has committed suicide. So Jesus’ community has suffered both loss and betrayal. However, even in their brokenness, the new community obeys Jesus’ command to meet him in Galilee.

In the beginning of that chapter, the risen Jesus had already met with two women in the cemetery, so it’s a little odd that he wants to meet with his disciples some one hundred miles away. But one scholar (John Petty) believes the reason for that is that Galilee is where Jesus did most of his teaching and performed most of his miracles.

Therefore, Jesus telling the disciples to meet him in Galilee is a way of saying, “[…] if you want to meet the risen Lord Jesus, then live the Jesus life. […] Live the Sermon On The Mount [... In so doing,] That’s when and where you’ll meet him.”

Friday night, Delight and I went to a performance downtown by a magician whom I consider to be the greatest sleight of hand artist in the world, John Carney. It was an excellent show filled with lots of humor and outstanding magic.

In his hands, solid objects suddenly appeared or melted away at will. We watched the impossible being performed effortlessly. It was absolutely wonderful entertainment. But behind that effortless performance lay decades of hard work and dedication to tiny details — all of which made it seem as if he were able to bend the very laws of nature to his will.

We live in a hugely individualistic culture that puts a premium on competition and pitting one person — or one group — against another. As a result, it will take a similar level of hard work and dedication for you and me to look beyond our own culture to see the ubuntu connections that underline all of life and draw us together with all people.

But when we do see — and live — those connections, we will find ourselves living the very life of the Trinity.

As Sarah Dylan Breuer writes, “Love is the image in which we were created. Let us confess our faith in the Trinity — the God who is fully, mysteriously, and eternally the Creator, the Redeemer, the Sustainer — and confess it not just in the Creed but with our lives, with our passion, with our offering of ourselves to God for the sake of all whom God loves.” Amen.

(Comments to Jim at jmccrea@galenalink.com.)