TrinityB18.   Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40.

Moses explains to the people how wondrous is their God, caring for them and looking after them like no other god.  “This is why you must now know, and fix in your heart, that the Lord is God in the heavens above and on earth below, and that there is no other.”  He deserves your obedience to him and will reward you greatly, if you act as a people who belong to him.

Matthew 28:16-20.  “They worshiped (him) but they doubted.”  The doubt, I believe, was that they were unsure of what was to follow, after Jesus was to leave them, and that made them uneasy.  Jesus said, “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, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.   And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”  I believe that Jesus, in announcing to them that he has received all power was saying that he is God and that what he was commanding them to do comes from him out of his authority as God and as the almighty God in his infinite power he will be with them without fail until the end of time in all the church’s work of making “disciples of all nations.”  Jesus commands that they are to baptize in the name of the Triune God.  The clarity of this statement makes it clear that God sees himself as three Persons but one God.  In saying this, Jesus reveals, beyond what is given in the Old Testament, that the One God is, not only love, but a relationship of infinite love so giving of each Person to the other that the three become one.  The three persons of the Trinity are so infinitely given to each other in love that they are not three gods but one God.  This mystery can be so disturbing for many but we, who are human, finite or so limited in comparison to what is infinite, divine or without human limitations, are incapable of fully grasping, taking ahold of, comprehending or understanding the limitless, almighty God.  It would be like trying to fit the whole ocean into a tiny cup.

Psalm 33:4-5, 6, 9, 18-19 20, 22.   “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made.”  “He commanded, and it stood forth.”  He is so almighty that with just a word the whole universe, the whole natural world is created by him.  Nevertheless he deeply cares for us who are so insignificant.  He “is our help and our shield.  May your kindness, O Lord, be upon us who have put our hope in you.”

Romans 8:14-17.  “The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” The Holy Spirit joins himself to our spirit to proclaim that, as God is love and bound together as one by love, we are taken into God’s family because we are loved. All of the saints in heaven are God’s family able to call God, our Father, and one another, our brothers and sisters. In following Jesus to heaven, we must follow him, accepting our crosses of submission to his Will and dying to our own will, as we go with him to the resurrection.  We are heirs to both his death and resurrection.