A sermon by the Rev. Canon George Maxwell
Corso Eucharist
Some doubted.
Matthew slips that in almost as an aside — the eleven are on the mountain, they see the risen Jesus, they worship him, and some doubted. We tend to rush past it to get to the Great Commission. But it’s worth pausing there. Some doubted. Not the crowd. Not strangers. The eleven. The ones who had been with him from the beginning, who had seen everything, who had just encountered him risen from the dead — and some of them doubted.
I find that oddly consoling. Not because doubt is the destination, but because it tells us something about what Jesus does with it. He doesn’t address it. He doesn’t separate the doubters from the worshipers and send the doubters home. He comes to all of them — all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me — and he gives them all the same commission. Go. Baptize. Teach. And I am with you always.
He doesn’t wait for certainty. He works with what’s there.
That phrase — I am with you always — is the hinge of the whole passage. And on Trinity Sunday, we’re invited to ask: what does that with mean? What kind of presence is Jesus promising?
Paul gives us a clue in that closing benediction, which is so familiar we can stop hearing it: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Three phrases. Three persons. And each one names a different quality of the same divine life moving toward us. Grace. Love. Communion. Not three separate gifts from three separate sources, but one movement of God’s own being — outward, toward us, drawing us in.
The tradition has a word for what’s happening inside that life: perichoresis. The mutual indwelling of the persons of the Trinity — a dance, some have called it, though that word makes some of us nervous. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not three gods cooperating. They are one God whose very being is being with. Presence to one another so complete, so mutual, so full of delight and attention and self-giving, that the three are one — and the one is endlessly, abundantly, generatively three.
And that life — that life — is what Jesus is promising to share with the eleven on the mountain. Not just his company. Not just his memory. Not just his teaching. His own with. The quality of presence that constitutes the inner life of God.
I am with you always. He’s not describing his schedule. He’s describing his nature. To be with us is what he is. It’s what the Trinity is. And the commission — go, baptize, teach — is the invitation to extend that with outward, into the world, into every nation, into every doubter on every mountain.
Notice what baptism is in this passage: baptism in the name — singular — of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. One name. Three persons. To be baptized is to be drawn into that name, into that life, into that communion. It is not primarily about what we believe. It is about where we are placed — inside the divine being with, which is the ground of all existence.
Some doubted. And Jesus came to them anyway. Came to all of them. Gave them all the same word. And promised them — promised us — that the life he was inviting them into was not a program to be managed or a certainty to be achieved, but a presence to be inhabited.
The God of love and peace will be with you. All of you. Even the doubters on the mountain. Even us, here, now, with whatever we carry.
That is what we celebrate today. Not a doctrine about God. A life we have been drawn into — and sent from.
Amen.