June 5, 2009
Sunday Scripture
The Most Holy Trinity
BY FATHER DONALD DILGER
It is the final scene in the Gospel of Matthew. The disciples had been commanded by the angel at the tomb to leave Jerusalem and meet Jesus in Galilee. Today’s gospel describes this meeting. They meet on a mountain — the favored place in the Bible for a meeting with the divine and for a revelation. Matthew notes not only that they worshipped Jesus but that “some of them doubted.” Doubt never seems far away, not from the immediate disciples of Jesus nor from us. In this instance Jesus does not take notice of their doubts as he did with Thomas and on other occasions in the gospels.
Matthew often had Moses in mind in describing Jesus’ actions and words. In this final scene Matthew turns instead to the Son of man vision in Daniel 7. There “one like a son of man” that is, a human being, appears with the clouds of heaven and “was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples and nations, and languages should serve him . . .” Thus Matthew ascribes the following words to Jesus on the mountain (with the clouds?) in Galilee, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Already in the first century this Trinitarian expression became the Christian formula for bestowing baptism. The explicit reference to the Trinity is the reason why this gospel reading was chosen for the feast of the Most Holy Trinity.
Like much of the New Testament revelation, the revelation of God as Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity is not revealed in the Old Testament. The foundations for this revelation are however already present in the Old Testament. God is already called “Father” and it is inappropriate to change this to “Parent” in the name of inclusive language. For example, Psalm 89:26 says of God, “My Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.” Both Isaiah 63:16; 64:8 (740-680 B.C.) and Jeremiah 3:4, 3:19 (626-580 B.C.) speak of God as Father of Israel. In Jeremiah 3:19 God complains about Israel through the prophet, “And I thought you would call me, ‘My Father.’”
Beyond the above references to God as Father with the implication that to be a father one has to have a child, Israel is referred to as son of God in Exodus 4:22-23, “Israel is my firstborn son.” The Pharaoh of Egypt through Moses the Lord says, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” Also Hosea 11:1 in reference to the Exodus, “I have called my son out of Egypt.” Of the Davidic Kings of Israel we read in Psalm 2, “I have set my king on Zion (Jerusalem), my holy hill. I will tell of the decree of the Lord . . ., ‘You are my son. Today I have begotten you.’” In the oracle of Nathan the prophet to David, 2 Samuel 7:14, he says of kings descenced from David, “I will be his father and he shall be my son.” In the evolution of Scripture from Old to New Testament, both passages are applied to Jesus in the New Testament.
The Spirit of God is widely spoken of in the Old Testament. It begins at the beginning, “The earth was without form and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the surface of the waters,” Genesis 1:2. In the Old Testament God frequently speaks and acts through the Spirit of God. The prophets too are said to speak through the Spirit of God, for example, “the Lord of hosts (spoke) through his Spirit by the former prophets,” Zechariah 7:12. With this Old Testament preparation and foundation comes the fullness of revelation of the Holy Trinity in today’s gospel, “. . . baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Although there is nothing in this reading which foreshadows a revelation of the Holy Trinity, the reading was chosen as an echo not of a Trinitarian theme, but a different theme from today’s gospel, “. . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Moses says in this reading, “You must keep his statutes and his commandments with which I instruct you this day, that you may prosper, etc.” We are reminded that as Roman Catholic Christians we not only have the privilege of baptism, but we also have obligations. A social structure is held together by its rules. The same holds for the Church. When the members neither know nor keep the rules, they and the structure suffer. The commands of Jesus and Moses “to observe the commandments with which they are instructed” recalls the obligatoin of homilists and other instructors of religion to thoroughly ground their charges, in “observing all that I have commanded you.”
Paul reminds us of the Spirit of God which we carry within ourselves, the same Spirit that allows Jesus to call God “Abba.” This was the familiar term of children for their father. We too, says Paul, may now call god “Abba.” We become not only daughters and sons of God, our Father, but we now have the right of inheritance, “joint heirs with Christ.”