The Trinity tells us that being others-focused is 1. our reality, and 2. our mission — Matthew 28:16–20

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:16–20

The Trinity tells us that being others-focused is...
1. Our reality
2. Our mission

A man is backpacking alone through a remote desert when he comes across a giant chasm. It stretches as far as he can see in either direction, and the only way across is one rope bridge, clearly pretty old. The man realizes the choice he is about to make. He either has to turn back and not cross the chasm, or he has to bet his life that that bridge will hold him. And so he inspects the bridge. He gets down on his hands and knees and looks and where the bridge is anchored to the cliff. He puts his heavy backpack on the bridge and notes how much it sways. He jounces the ropes to see if the frayed parts will give. And everything seems to be ok. Yet, he’s still scared, he’s shaking really, and so to actually cross the bridge he has the get down on all fours and slowly crawl across, sweating each movement. But, the bridge holds.

The next day, a woman comes along, she’s also backpacking alone. She sees the chasm, sees how wide and deep it is, sees the bridge is the only way across, and walks right over it without a second thought. The bridge holds for her too.

Which person sounds more like you? The person who hears something and likes to painstakingly dig into it make sure it’s true and believable, or the person who hears something and is ready to walk across the bridge no problem?

The gospel reading for Trinity Sunday has raised doubts about God for many people. Jesus says, baptizing them in the name—one name, one being—of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit—three persons. That doesn’t make sense; that bridge wouldn’t hold up to basic kindergarten reasoning. Three and one are not the same. Is there one name that we should baptize in, or three names?

God wants us to trust him no matter what. He wants us to have full confidence in him, even when he tells us something about himself that our human minds can’t wrap our brains around. He is God, after all, so we really shouldn’t expect him to make total sense to us. Yet, he also doesn’t expect us to just make leaps of faith without basis. He provides things we can inspect, truths that we can investigate so that when we look closer, we see that these mind-blowing claims are true.

Today, we’ll see how God reveals this incomprehensible truth of what he is like to us, not because he wants to test us to see how much we’ll blindly trust him, but because he wants to communicate something to us about our reality so that we can confidently step out onto that bridge. And the wonderful thing is, what we believe is so connected to what we do. So when God reveals to us the truth that our reality is others-focused, our mission is others-focused too.

I. Our reality

We are not the only ones who have had doubts about God. We heard in our reading that the disciples had doubts. Jesus had died. And then he rose again. And then he even appeared to them and had them touch his hands and side, the wounds of his death, to show that he had indeed died and had indeed rose. And yet some of them still doubted that he was alive again. How could they possibly doubt?

Because they had brains. A dead person coming back to life isn’t a normal thing. And it was just as challenging to believe back then as it is today. Sometimes we imagine that people back then were more gullible that we are, and so they were more likely to believe so-called tales of God creating the world in a week or God bringing love and peace even when the world isn’t loving or peaceful, or a man being God and coming back to life after death. But this would be historical arrogance on our part. The people back then had brains just like we do, and no, they didn’t take high school biology like we did, but they weren’t dumb. They knew that death was death. And their doubt proves this. Because they had been given every reason to believe that Jesus was alive again but they still doubted because they had very logical brains. They knew that if Jesus rose from the dead, then he must have power over creation. And if he had power over creation, then who is he? He must be God. But that created a problem, because every faithful Jew had learned from childhood that God is one. In a world full of competing gods and religions, the Old Testament was relentless on that point: God is one. So their doubt was not foolish. It came from trying to make sense of something that seemed to stretch everything they knew about God.

We too have logical brains, which are gifts from God, yet we too sometimes struggle with supernatural truths. Exhibit A: the teaching of the Trinity. Scripture tells us that God is One, but it also tells us that God is three persons. Throughout the gospels, Jesus tells us that he and the Father are separate, that Jesus does the Father’s will. And in John 3, we have a clear teaching that the Spirit is autonomous, he does what he pleases. And yet throughout the gospels, Jesus also clearly says that he and the Father are one. And here in our gospel reading, he says that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one being.

And so we sometimes get a little nervous about the teaching of the Trinity. We’re like the man who came across the bridge. We look into it, and try and think through it. Try and reason it out. But friends, God gives us something we can anchor our belief on. And it’s not by explaining the teaching of the Trinity so that it finally makes sense to our limited minds. It’s by showing us how wonderful God being a Trinity is.

Here’s what I mean. There’s a man named Augustine who was a North African man from the fourth century. Many say that Augustin is the greatest theologian to ever live, and one of the reasons for that is what Augustine realized about the Trinity: because God is Triune, being others-focused is not something God started doing or decides to do sometimes. It’s at the core of who he is. Think about it: if God was not three persons, only one, one regular God like the god of Islam or Judaism or Mormonism, he would not have been able to start loving others until he created others. He would not have been able to focus on others until there was something other than himself to focus on. But our God is Triune. Three individual persons in one God, all three have existed from eternity and all three have equal authority as God, yet all three have been others-focused from eternity. The Father is constantly doing what is best for the Son. The Son is always ready to submit to the Father and do his will. The Holy Spirit has always been proceeding from the Father and the Son. They are all equal, yet all three are constantly submitting themselves for the benefit of the two. They are others-focused.

The truth of the Trinity tells us that our God and the universe he has created has this as its bedrock reality: love. Others’ needs before mine. God created our universe why, not because he was lacking love, but so that he could love even more. So that he could have more people to care about before himself. It’s interesting to compare other religions’ ideas about what God must be like to this. Many other ancient religions tell a much different story, they say that the world was created as a by-product of a power struggle between different gods. So the world was created from power, and they thought gaining power was the bedrock reality of their world. Eastern religions still today say something else: that matter is bad and we need to escape it to the spiritual world, and so escape becomes the bedrock reality of their world. Not Christianity. God has been loving from eternity, and he created all the universe and you so that he could put even more people before himself.

Which means: living an others-focused life is not just a nice thing to do. Loving your family and friends and neighbors is not just a good way to live. It’s at the core of our existence. When you chase after power, whether it’s power through influence or money or what have you, whenever you chase after power, you’re living against the grain of the universe. You’re not living as you were created to live. You’re combatting the God who created you. Or, if you chase after escape, just trying to forget about all the problems in your life or numb yourself to the evil in your world, you’re living against the grain of the universe. God made you to look around at the people in your life and ask: “How can I help them? How can I serve them? What can I do to bring them closer to God?”

And when we understand this, it helps us set aside our doubt. Because the story of the God of Christianity gives us confirmation that our world is others-focused. We see this most clearly in the crucifixion of Jesus. God the Father sent Jesus to the cross because he knew that Jesus’ death would be what was best for Jesus as it would mean billions of people could enjoy his love in heaven forever. The Holy Spirit helped him get there, as he helped Jesus overcome temptation to remain perfect as he lived on this earth. The Father and the Spirit were others-focused. And Jesus, of course, the Son who took the penalty, there’s no greater picture of being others-focused than that. The cross presents the Trinity’s love for each other, and it proves the Trinity’s love for you. Love, focusing more on others than yourself, is the reality of the world the Trinity created for us.

 II. Our mission

And our mission as believers in the Trinity springs from this reality. Because we are certain of what we believe and how wonderful it is, that affects our actions. Other religions throughout history have been to each their own. The Persians had their gods and the Egyptians had their gods, but neither were trying to convert the others. Their gods weren’t better than the others, they didn’t offer any better reality or mission. Yet, from the book of Genesis, we see God’s people preaching about the true God, and ever since Christianity has been the first religion to say, you gotta tell your friends about this. Why? Because Christianity teaches the reality of the universe is so wonderful that you want to tell others. That God has been others-focused since before the beginning, that when we are others-focused we are living according to our truest nature. Think of what the world would look like if everyone lived this way! We want to go and make disciples of all nations because the reality of who our God is is so amazing.

And so the reality of the Trinity makes our mission simple. First, go, and second, make disciples. Go and tell others that the best way to live is not to try and get more power over others or try to escape from others but to lovingly submit oneself to this others-focused reality. First, we have to go. There is movement inherent in our mission. We can’t just sit and wait for others to knock on our apartment door and say, “hi, what do you think about God?” When we go out into the world and meet people, people like us, people different from us—all nations, right, all ethnicities—we’re going. We live others-focused lives with these people, we enjoy good times with them, we help them through hard times. And then when we get the chance to tell them about how much the Trinity loves them, we make disciples. We tell them about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit who loved them from eternity.

But here again, doubt might’ve entered our minds in a different way. Because we hear these words, that we—you and me—our mission is to go out there and get more people from all different ethnicities to believe in the Trinity, and we think: woah. That’s a tall task. What if they say no? What if they think we’re backwards? We start to be like the man approaching the bridge in a sinful way, not just being careful or methodical but overanalyzing. What if they have some argument back that’s better than mine? What if I end up stumbling over my words? Someone else, someone who knows more, someone who’s more outgoing, someone who’s not as sinful, they should go, but not us.

Jesus is a step ahead of you, he knew you were going to have those doubts. And so he follows up giving you your mission with one of his biggest promises: and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. Friends, when the thoughts start to creep into your head that make you doubt whether you are the one that God wants to go and make disciples, kick those thoughts out as quickly as possible with Jesus’ promise. He is with you! God is with you! The Holy Spirit is in you! There is no one better equipped to go and make disciples than you.

How can we still doubt our ability to carry out this mission? Sometimes I know that I fall into thinking that everyone who doesn’t go to church has a PhD in The Reasons Christianity is Wrong and Bad. The vast majority don’t. And yes, some people have things against God. Some have real wounds, some have serious questions, some have been taught a distorted picture of God. What a wonderful opportunity to tell them who God really is, that he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, inherently loving, that even when he created the world and humans brought sin into it, he only showed more love by sending his Son and his Holy Spirit. When someone starts to understand that truth about reality, that changes them. They not only want to believe it to be true, they become confident it in, and they start to be able to live the others-focused life that God intended for them. So friends, when you are tempted to doubt either the reality of the Trinity or the mission he has given you, when you are hesitant to cross the bridge, to put your life in the hands of God, remember this: the reality of God does not depend on how prone to doubting you are. Is it true and it will hold. And so you can cross with confidence, you can believe in your Triune God and you can go and show him to others, because your mission is built on your reality, the reality that God is love and his love has come to you.