Yesterday’s gospel concludes with Jesus saying to his friends: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…and remember I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
In his commentary on this passage, Dr. Matt Skinner talks about this language of baptizing people in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in the context both a commission of how to baptize people, and of understanding what it means to be a Christian disciple.
Each time we renew our baptismal covenant, we remember who we are: followers of Jesus, and then baptized in the name of the Triune God, with the promise that God will be with us. In our covenant, we vow to live into that call of being Church from our earliest days, as recorded in the book of Acts: to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers.”
To enter into the Trinity is to enter into holy mystery. The three-in-one, one-in-three nature of our God defies explanation, even as our minds hope to comprehend. As we consider yesterday’s celebration of Trinity Sunday, I pray that we will continue to hear the words of Jesus, turn our faces toward all the nations that he has loved since the beginning, and enter again into that mystery of faith, trusting that indeed he is with us always, even to the end of the age.
