Lectionary Commentaries for May 31, 2026
Holy Trinity

It’s practically obligatory that a commentary on Matthew 28 will note that the formula “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (verse 19) comes from the liturgical practices of the late first century. In other words, the evidence suggests that the gospel author describes baptism in such a way because it was the language some churches were using for performing baptisms at that point in time.

For one thing, no other New Testament writing includes that particular trinitarian expression. It thus appears not to be embedded in the earliest Christian traditions. Paul says something similar, in a benediction and not a baptismal formula, in 2 Corinthians 13:13, but it is not the same as what we find at the end of Matthew (see also Ephesians 4:4–6).¹

Moreover, Paul and the book of Acts indicate that the church originally baptized people in the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5; Romans 6:3; Galatians 3:27). It’s difficult to imagine that Acts and Paul would say what they say if indeed Jesus himself had, from the beginning, given instructions about baptizing in a different (trinitarian) “name.”²

I mention all of that, not because it makes for scintillating preaching, but because it’s a reminder that it took time for the church to learn to speak and confess in a trinitarian way, and even longer for a formal declaration of “the Trinity” to emerge. There’s nothing wrong with that, but noting the gradual process cautions us against trying to find too much precision in the New Testament’s ways of relating (or uniting) Jesus to God and to the church’s experience of Holy Spirit power.

For the task, then, of interpreting Matthew 28:16–20 while celebrating Trinity Sunday, we are wise not to assume that the trinitarian formula of verse 19 is a self-evident definition of God. We can’t move seamlessly from our developed Trinitarianism (capital T) back to scripture. It’s better to explore how this biblical passage makes important claims about who God is in light of the instructions Jesus gives to his followers, including us. It’s the particular narrative context that makes the formula of verse 19 meaningful (and mysterious): a commission from Jesus not simply about how to baptize a person but about what it means to be a Christian disciple.

“Make disciples”

The syntactical heart of Jesus’s commission is the imperative make disciples. If we understand this as “convert people,” we’ve imported a kind of separatism into the early Jesus movement that I don’t see otherwise reflected in Matthew. The verb mathēteuō focuses on teaching, often toward a specific goal of making someone into an adherent or a loyalist, as a particularly devoted pupil. It makes sense to find this verb in this climactic scene of Matthew, for this Gospel dedicates so much attention to Jesus’s teaching activity.

Furthermore, Jesus’s teaching aims to result in obedience. Jesus teaches to shape behavior, not simply to inform (see Matthew 5:19–20; 7:21, 24–27; 21:28–32; 23:2–3). This is made more explicit in this concluding scene, in verse 20, where Jesus’s commission involves “teaching [all nations] to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

Jesus’s commands, throughout Matthew, are situated in his words and deeds. They focus largely on showing mercy, especially to those most in need of it.

Of course, baptizing disciples is about initiating them and yoking them to Jesus (and to the Father and to the Holy Spirit). Even more so, in this scene, Jesus presents baptism as part of the process of adding collaborators and accomplices to a movement that places mercy and compassion at its core. It does that because it follows the lead of the Messiah who, vindicated through his resurrection, possesses “all authority in heaven and on earth” (verse 18). Baptism, according to this passage, calls the baptized to action and promises them divine empowerment for that action.

Trinitarian baptism, according to Matthew

In Matthew, Jesus frequently refers to God as “Father.” He has much less to say about the Holy Spirit, however, and Matthew on the whole includes less about the Spirit than Luke and John do. The Spirit’s main activity in Matthew involves initiating Jesus’s life (1:18–21) and ministry (3:11, 16; 4:1). Now, for one final commissioning of his followers, Jesus wraps himself with his heavenly Parent and Spirit in a single name.

Given the Gospel’s wider focus on teaching and enlisting others into the work of mercy, we can see an implicit confession that all of God—all of God’s ways of being revealed, known, and experienced—demonstrate a divine commitment to extending mercy. The compassion and inclusion on display in Matthew are not a responsibility delegated to the Son. All of God’s power and purpose culminate in concern for those who struggle in life. Reread the Beatitudes (5:1–12) if you’ve forgotten who they are.

Anyone baptized in the name of the Triune God is authorized and sent by God’s full Self to participate in self-giving service. In Matthew 25:31–46 Jesus explains the sacramental quality of caring for those who are disadvantaged. We commune with Jesus himself when welcoming strangers and feeding those who are hungry. Likewise, and perhaps with an even greater accent on theological mystery and intimacy than what Matthew 25:31–46 claims, we find ourselves caught up in the trinitarian fullness of God’s revealed identity when we engage in the mercy at the heart of the kingdom of heaven.

What a promise our Trinitarian (now capital T!) belonging and empowerment make to us, imperfect disciples as we are, who live with doubt in all seasons.³ The more we ponder who God is, in all the divine complexity, beauty, and solidarity that we find in the witness of the saints, the more we are going to find ourselves drawn into a life of obedient love and advocacy for our neighbor.

Trinity Sunday, therefore, is a day to extol mercy.

Notes

1. Matthew’s language appears also in the seventh chapter of the Didache, with reference to baptism, as well as in numerous second-century writings. See a list in R. Alan Culpepper, Matthew: A Commentary, NTL (Westminster John Knox, 2021), 584.
2. Culpepper, Matthew, 584.
3. See verse 17, which I believe the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition translates correctly by describing doubt and worship coinciding.

Genesis 1 narrates God’s magisterial creation of our universe in a grand liturgical style, even as it leaves readers with many interpretive possibilities.

Awe and wonder

I encourage preachers to approach this overly familiar account with a renewed sense of awe and wonder concerning the universe and our place within it. God’s fantastical tour of a truly fearsome creation in Job 38–41 leaves humans feeling small and insignificant, but the first chapter of Genesis proclaims human dominion over God’s good order in its sweeping vision of the cosmos in both space and time. 

Readers should also be humbled by what we do not understand in Genesis 1’s narration. For example, what was God doing before deciding to create our present heavens and earth? Was an infinite God not content with Godself and so risked creating something new and independent? Did God perhaps desire to be in relationship with other beings? And who exactly is this “God” character, so abruptly introduced in 1:1?

Genesis does not address these questions, so later readers strain to fill in these blanks. This interpretive work is at times a playful endeavor for readers with a sense of the poetic, but others may feel some frustration at the text’s ambiguity. Christians often read these verses through the lens of later New Testament and patristic traditions. Rabbinic Jewish tradition also speculates about universes that God created and destroyed prior to Genesis 1:1 and other topics of this chapter, as Louis Ginzberg conveniently summarizes for English readers.¹

At first, chaos

The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition translates, “When God began to create the heavens and the earth” (1:1), which is an improvement over the older New Revised Standard Version’s less precise “In the beginning when God created.” The Hebrew of 1:1 is the beginning of a long temporal clause that describes the chaotic nature of what existed when God first spoke an ordered creation into existence in verse 3. Verse 1 thus ends with a comma rather than a period, according to most modern translators.

Verse 2 describes the “complete chaos” of this pre-creation cosmos as a swirling mixture of matter, water (the Abyss), darkness, and wind, a more terrifying scenario to an ancient reader than our modern understanding of a “void” suggested by the King James Version or the creatio ex nihilo of medieval philosophy.

The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition reads in verse 2, “A wind from God swept over the face of the waters,” but offers options in a footnote: “the spirit of God” or “a mighty wind.” Each of these translations of what is soaring or sweeping over the waters is grammatically correct, since the Hebrew word ruach can in context refer to the movement of air as a wind, breath, or animating “spirit.” Theologians seeking a more definite statement concerning the Holy Spirit may be disappointed, but the imagery is most likely that of chaotic swirling based upon the verb employed. 

Order and structure

Genesis 1 portrays creation without opposition as God merely speaks things into existence: “Let there be light,” et cetera. This sovereign image contrasts with the literary portrayal of the Lord in Genesis 2, who gets his hands dirty molding the first human “from the dust of the ground.” It also contrasts with the common depiction of a warrior god who violently subdues a primordial dragon in ancient Near Eastern creation myths (but note Isaiah 51:9; Psalm 74:13–14; Job 26:12–13). The account in Genesis 1 instead portrays a transcendent deity, “above the fray,” who creates by simply commanding distinction, order, and structure. 

Second Temple Jewish traditions describe a feminine Wisdom working alongside God in these creative acts (see Proverbs 8:22–31; Wisdom 7; Sirach 24). The prologue to the Gospel of John (1:1–5) uses Hellenistic philosophy to interpret this creative act of speech or “word,” logos, as the pre-existent Christ, leading to later Trinitarian formulations.

While God does “create,” bara’, in verse 1 and again in verse 27, most of this account focuses on God’s act of “distinguishing” between or separating things (light from dark, waters from waters, dry from wet, day from night) into a harmonious order.

The divine image

When God proposes, “Let us create humans in our image, according to our likeness” (verse 26), to whom is he speaking? Later Christians may apply a Trinitarian interpretation to this verse (as in verse 2), but ancient Israelites (and Jewish readers through the ages) more probably would have understood an angelic court setting, as in Job 1, Isaiah 6, and 1 Kings 22:19–23.

And what does God’s “image” or “likeness” denote? The words could imply a physical form, spiritual identity, or moral attribute, to name but a few possibilities. What these attributes are and with whom we humans share them remains undefined and a bit mysterious in these verses. It is entertaining to ponder which attributes humans share with God (and the angels; Genesis 6:1–4), as opposed to which attributes we share with the animals (Ecclesiastes 3:18–22). However we answer such questions, the vision of Genesis 1 emphasizes the unique and blessed place of humans in God’s created order as those sharing in divine relationship and authority (see also Psalm 8:3–8). 

In verse 27, the usually terse narration goes out of its way to emphasize that both males and females (and other humans) share equally in embodying the divine image: “So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Blessings abound. 

God then provides a vegetarian diet for all humans and animals in verses 29–30, after having established human dominion over all of God’s very fine creation in verse 28. Note Psalm 104 for an even more ecologically sensitive description of God’s gracious care for both animal and human life. And finally, God provides rest for his creatures with the Sabbath in 2:1–3.

Reflection

How one approaches the question of the Trinity in Genesis 1 reveals much about one’s theology. While Christians may take poetic license with the Hebrew text and imagine God, the Holy Spirit, and Christ as co-creators in one sense or another, we are wise to always show deference and respect to the ancient Israelite context and modern Jewish traditions to avoid the sins and errors of supersessionism in reading our shared scriptures. 

Notes

1. Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 6 vols., trans. H. Szold (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), I:3–8. 

This psalm is a hymn of praise for God’s love and care for humans.¹ God created humanity with free will and gave them responsibility and dignity. Like many songs, the psalm begins and ends with the same phrase: “O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (verses 1 and 9), known as an inclusio, a type of bookend framing the psalm.

God has created the universe to reflect God’s glory, from the sky to the earth to the sea, and God has bestowed God’s image on humans.

Verse 2 does not have an obvious flow within the psalm, but likely refers to God’s power over that which threatens God’s creation. Even from the most vulnerable of humanity, God’s greatness is proclaimed, creating stability.

The psalmist marvels at God’s beauty, revealed through creation, particularly the moon and stars (verse 3), and wonders why such a God would care so deeply for humanity. How could a God capable of creating the sky and the weather also be loving and tender with humankind?

God has honored humanity by giving them responsibility over the earth (verses 5–8). God has trusted humanity to take care of the animals, the food supply, and the environment. Building on sharing in the image of God, and thereby the knowledge of God, humans will shepherd what lives on earth, participating in God’s love and care, which they both receive and offer as part of that image.

Psalm 8 seems to be aware of the unspoken possibility that God could have created humanity without free will, self-awareness, capability, or trusting relationship. Knowing what could have been makes what God did all the more precious. The psalmist treasures God’s creation as the gift that it is, as the gesture of love that it is.

The inclusio of the psalm begins with “O LORD, our Sovereign,” pairing celebration with acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty and leadership over humanity. Yes, humanity has been created with resplendence, and yes, God trusts humanity to rule the earth. This freedom, however, is a responsibility rooted in worship of God in which right living is an expression of God’s love. Prostration and joy partner hand in hand.

Reading this psalm in the midst of daily mass shootings, multiple wars, ever-complexifying global pandemic, and looming climate crisis does not sit well. Humanity seems to have become apathetic to all that God has given and abandoned its responsibility to care for the earth. Humanity has lost sight of the splendor with which God made them. What God made to reflect God’s majesty has become a horror scene. We have turned on each other. We have turned on our planet. We have turned on God.

• What does it mean that the darling coos of our children were meant to manifest safety, and yet they are being shot in their classrooms?
• What does it mean that we were meant to find the tenderness of God in the beauty of our planet, and yet we are destroying it and all its creatures with our greed for more and more resources?
• What does it mean that God entrusted the animals to our care, and yet many of them haven’t survived because of our neglect or, worse, our abuse?
• What does it mean that we were created in the image of God? Out of all that God could have chosen to love, what does it mean that God loves humankind?

Proclamation from this psalm invites deep reflection of these questions, remembering God’s design for humankind in Genesis: “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’” (Genesis 1:27–28).

We are the bearers of God’s image, blessed by God, and called to care for the earth. How do we live in faithfulness in this moment? How do we address climate crisis as God’s hands and feet in the world? How do we engage in our food chain and address access to food as those God has commissioned to care for all that live on earth? Are we sure God is still confident in our ability to fulfill this calling?

When we survey the heavens and the earth, what do we see? Who are we to that which we see, and what is it to us? How does God’s creation reveal God’s self to us? How does God’s creation reveal God’s love for us?

And how do the answers to those questions challenge us to transform the way we live in our present contexts? How can we more faithfully bear the image of God in the way we care for one another? How can we more faithfully bear the image of God in the way we care for the earth and its living things? How does recognizing the tenderness of God’s love for us in that which we see invite us to new ways of living and relating?

Finally, what does “dominion” really mean? Does it mean control over the earth, with authority to use the earth however we desire? Does it mean stewardship so that the living things on the earth may flourish? Or does it mean something else entirely? How have we conflated dominion with entitlement such that we have confused the gospel with our own intentions, and blamed our behavior on God?

What would it look like to see God’s creation—all of it—with wonder and let it transform us?

Notes

1. Commentary previously published on this website for June 12, 2022.

The greetings at the very end of Paul’s letters are not usually where our attention focuses, but the seemingly miscellaneous collection of sentiments expressed at the conclusion of 2 Corinthians has powerfully shaped Christian worship down through the centuries. Yet what appears miscellaneous turns out to be much less so.

The blessing of 13:13, now habitually used as a fitting way to send congregations out at the completion of worship to be God’s people in the world, speaks powerfully of how believers experience God and salvation. And in various, admittedly unsystematic ways, the preceding instructions for how Paul’s readers are to live together in community (13:11–12) reflect this experience of who God is and what God has done to save them.

In 13:13 itself, as Paul deftly sketches different aspects of the experience of God and salvation that he and the Corinthians share, he includes the actions and gifts of the Lord Jesus Christ, of God, and of the Holy Spirit. Even if a fully developed doctrine of the Trinity, and a fully developed trinitarian formula (Father, Son, Spirit), still lies in the future, Paul here unself-consciously speaks of experiencing God in a threefold way. The three are differentiated but in a manner that emphasizes the unity of their saving actions:

• The grace of Christ could be a shorthand way of referring to salvation in general, since grace is characteristic of every part of it. However, that it is followed here by the love of God, which is what Paul says propelled Jesus to die for us “while we were yet still sinners” (Romans 5:8), makes it also possible that it refers more specifically to the underserved favor received by human beings through Christ’s saving death (Romans 5:15).
• This grace is incongruous; in other words, the human beings who receive it do not do so because of any form of worthiness that they possess but only because of divine mercy. It expresses in action the truth that God “loved us from before the foundation of the world and redeemed us solely because He loved us.”¹
• The third phrase, “the communion of the Holy Spirit,” has prompted much discussion as to whether Paul means the communion created by the Holy Spirit and enjoyed among believers or communion with the Holy Spirit. The former seems more likely on grammatical grounds (and keeps the three phrases parallel to each other).
• Yet the debate is in danger of missing a more fundamental point. The communion created by the Spirit—in other words, the life of the church—is the body of Christ. As such, this communion with fellow believers can also never be other than our communion with God (see Romans 8:9–11). The Spirit is the bond that unites those who believe not only with each other but also with God.

That this union exists is key to what comes next, for Paul asks that all three (grace, love, and communion) be present with all the Corinthians. If it is correct that the grace of Christ and the love of God refer especially to their expression in Christ’s saving death, then Paul is speaking of that past event as present now with the Corinthians. Because they are united with their resurrected Lord through the bond of the Spirit, the same grace and love expressed in Christ’s self-giving at the cross are at work now in the life of the church.

The work of the cross is over in the sense that it has been perfectly accomplished, but far from confining it to the past, that completion makes its power an ongoing presence. This presence communicates the forgiveness of sins. It also calls the church to live a common life centered on the subversive phenomenon of a crucified Messiah whose life, death, and resurrection embody that incongruous divine grace that disregards all merely human notions of worth and status (see 1 Corinthians 1:18–31).

The contents of 13:11–12 have preemptively illustrated different aspects of what the life of the church will look like if the grace, love, and communion spoken of in 13:13 are present. In 13:11 Paul offers five imperatives:

• The first literally means “rejoice,” but this became a standard salutation in ancient letters equivalent simply to the English “farewell.” It is translated as such in the main text of New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, but comparison with a similar construction in Philippians 3:1 suggests that Paul is in fact telling the Corinthians to rejoice in what God has done for them in Christ.
• The second instruction literally means “be restored,” or, as the NRSVue has it, “put things in order,” presumably urging the Corinthians to heed Paul’s advice concerning difficulties in the church.
• In the process, they are also to “be encouraged” or “encourage one another.” The NRSVue translation “listen to my appeal” is interpretative, presumably discerning encouragement to be what will result for the Corinthians if they engage in such careful listening to the apostle’s advice.
• As these contrasting translation options suggest, Paul’s second instruction (“put things in order”) and third instruction (“listen to my appeal”) could be mandating something active, or they could be mandating the Corinthians to allow something to happen to them (as in the alternative translations “be restored” or “be encouraged”). It is a mistake to become too focused on the distinction since whatever the Corinthians do will be empowered by the Triune God, and whatever they do when so empowered will further deepen their communion with God. The overcoming of sin means that the old zero-sum game where more of God is less of them and vice versa has been abolished.
• Without any tension, Paul can allow his fourth and fifth instructions to express what are necessary qualities in the life of the community if God is to be present among them. If the Corinthians “agree with one another” (literally, “think the same thing”) and “live in peace,” then the God of love and peace will be with them. The love of God expressed in Christ’s death results in peace with God for those who believe in him (Romans 5:1), and this peace with God structures the life of the community so that peace reigns there also.

Finally, at 13:12, Paul tells the Corinthians to “greet one another with a holy kiss.” They also are here sent greetings through Paul from all the saints. By the mid-second century, a holy kiss like this one became part of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. It was a kiss of peace, signifying that those sharing it regarded each other as part of the same family. The holiness of the kiss should not be understood merely in a negative sense (in other words, not a lustful kiss) but also as a recognition of what God has done in binding together those who share it as a family set apart by God to embody the good news of Jesus in its common life.

A similar significance lies in the greeting Paul announces from “all the saints” (literally, “all the holy ones”). The Corinthians are not set apart by God by themselves but are also united as a single family with believers in every place. The church is both local and universal.

Notes

1. John Calvin, The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians and the Epistles to Timothy, Titus and Philemon, trans. T. A. Smail, ed. D. W. and T. F. Torrance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 177.