Doubting Is the Way

June 7, 2020
First Sunday after Pentecost • Trinity Sunday
Reading: Matthew 28:16-20 (New Revised Standard Version)
Pastor Alexis Waggoner

This passage has come to be known as the “great commission.” But… What’s so great about the “great commission”?? For me, it’s one of the first passages I remember memorizing, and we took it very literally. We were to evangelize and proselytize in the traditional sense. But, this interpretive modality wasn’t always the case. And it’s not the only commission — each gospel has a slightly different one.

And for most of history these commissions were viewed as a charge given to only the disciples: Go and create communities! And here we are! They figured it out, the church was created! So … is it maybe not something we need to worry so much about? I don’t think that’s the case, but — spoiler alert — I also don’t think we have to rely on recent interpretive tradition to help us make sense of these admonitions. 

There’s an interesting little line about doubt in there that can give some new perspective. The verse says, <SLIDE>

“When they saw him, they worshipped him - but some doubted."

It just kinda gets slipped in there. I love it when that happens because it usually means much more can be mined from the text. Here the disciples are, seeing the risen lord. And yes, they’re worshipping. But they’re also doubting. 

Why? 

I have a few ideas. So far, their movement hasn’t gone all that well by the usual standards. And they’re used to the “usual standards”! Rome was a place concerned with spreading their message, and conquering. In a very physical, tangible way. Military might and physical presence was key! Worship certainly existed as a concept, but in that context meant giving honor to political leaders and earthly rulers. 

As we know, the Jesus movement has done none of that. So it’s easy to understand how the disciples might come to this current scene with doubt in their minds. And easy to imagine how, as Jesus talks about authority from heaven and earth, and spreading out across the area, and “conquering” in a very different way … they might have some skepticism. 

Can this band of marginalized folks REALLY do anything to turn these traditional formulas and baked-in expectations around?? 

Can they REALLY create communities in which the full presence and multi-layered manifestations of God are made known? 

What’s Jesus’ response to this sense of doubt and skepticism that he could certainly feel from the disciples?It’s not explanation, not assurances, certainly NOT coddling. 

It is to GO. To do work. To invite people into relationship in the name of the God of relationship — the trinity. In my theology, I don’t think the trinity is the only way of understanding God — as “Father", Son and Spirit — but as a gateway to the many ways God makes godsself known to and through us. Whatever our conceptions of the trinity are, the key is, it is communal. God is experienced in many ways, and we powerfully experience God together. 

It’s this “together” piece that the so-called Great commission really hangs on. Jesus tells the disciples to GO into the world to live and teach the way of Jesus — to create this togetherness, these communities that spread his upside-down way of being: Life in the midst of death; hope in the midst of despair; faith in the midst of doubt.

Where are our doubts? We each of course, have our own. But in this moment I feel like many of them communally are mirrors of the same ancient doubts and fears the disciples faced. 

Doubting that our beliefs will have an impact because our culture is conditioned to worship political leaders

Fear that our actions — even extreme ones — can’t overturn in our nation a desire for worldwide domination and military superiority. 

Fear that people on the margins — black people, people of color, the poor and others obscured by society’s standards — will continue to lose their lives before there is meaningful change

But much like the Jesus in Matthew’s text responds to all these underlying concerns with a call to action, I hear the same call to us today. 

The disciples had their doubts, they had their fears. They did NOT know what they were doing! But they were tasked with going, with figuring it out as they went along. The subsequent communities that arise — and even us today! — are testaments to the fact that did just that, they made the road by walking. They created these sacred communities, reflecting the many manifestations of the divine

What does it mean today for us to face our doubts, and still to go? 

I think it could mean we GO into the streets. We GO outside at 8 for nine minutes. We GO patronize black-owned businesses. Maybe we GO write and talk and teach and use your spheres of influence for change. 

In all these ways we are greeting our fear with divine communal imagination. Not to stamp out our fear, or pretend it doesn’t exist, but to let it move through us, transformed into action as we create new ways of being … being together, being with God.

(c) 2020 Alexis Waggoner
All rights reserved.

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