In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: Trinity Sunday 2026 (Matthew 28:16-20)

May 31, 2026, Trinity Sunday, Year A, Season after Pentecost

Matthew 28:16-20, Genesis 1:1-2:3, Psalm 150, 2 Corinthians 13:5-14

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you on this Trinity Sunday.

Today is Trinity Sunday, the first Sunday after Pentecost and the first Sunday of the Season after Pentecost — also known as the Season after Trinity. It is one of the seven Principal Feasts of the Anglican liturgical year, which tells us something important before we even open a Bible: the Church considers the worship of the Triune God to be among the highest acts of her corporate life. Not just a doctrine to be defended, but a feast to be celebrated. A mystery not to be solved but to be adored.

Trinity Sunday is unique among the Principal Feasts. Every other feast commemorates a specific event in the history of salvation — the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost — and for those events we give profound thanks. They are the mighty acts of God by which we are rescued. But Trinity Sunday does something different. It turns our attention from what God has done in history to who God eternally is. Not only his acts, but his being. Not only what he accomplished, but who he is that he could accomplish it. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: one God, three Persons, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.

We have just come through eight Sundays of giving thanks for what that Triune God has done. The Father sent the Son. The Son lived, died, rose, and ascended. The Spirit fell like wind and fire on the Day of Pentecost. Trinity Sunday gathers all of that gratitude and asks us to go one step further — to look past the acts to the one who performed them, and to worship him for who he is, not only for what he has done. We have been receiving his gifts all season. Today we behold the giver.

Our Old Testament reading is Genesis 1:1 through 2:3: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:1–2, ESV)

The Spirit of God hovering over the waters. That image has been with us all Easter season — the same Spirit who breathed new creation life into a locked room on Easter evening, who fell like wind and fire at Pentecost, is here at the very beginning, before the first word of creation is spoken, brooding over the void.

And John 1 tells us what else was present: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:1–3, ESV) The Word — the Son — was there. Before the light was named, before the waters were separated, before the dry land appeared, before any creature drew breath: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

This is why Trinity Sunday comes after Pentecost and not before it. We had to give thanks for what the Triune God did — had to receive the Son sent, the resurrection accomplished, the Spirit poured out — before we could properly stand back and say: this is who God is. The God of the new creation is the same God who hovered over the waters of the first creation. The breath that filled a locked room on Easter evening is the same breath that brooded over the deep before the world began.

The Church has always known this from Scripture — but in the early centuries it had to fight to say it clearly, and the fight was not academic. In the fourth century, a popular teacher named Arius began teaching that the Son was not fully God — that he was the greatest of all created beings, made by the Father before all things, but still a creature. There was, Arius said, a time when the Son was not. It spread like wildfire because it sounds almost right. Almost. But almost right about the Son means almost right about salvation, and a God who is almost fully God cannot bear the full weight of the world’s sin.

The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD was convened to answer Arianism, and the Nicene Creed is the result. When we recite the words “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father” — every phrase is a surgical response to a specific Arian claim. The creed is not poetry composed in a quiet room. It is a battle document. A bishop named Athanasius spent his career defending it, exiled five times by emperors who wanted him to compromise. His phrase entered history: Athanasius contra mundum — Athanasius against the world. He held because he understood what was at stake: if the Son is a creature, the cross is a creature’s work, and no creature can bridge the gap between a holy God and sinful humanity. Only the one who is fully God and fully man can do that. The Council of Constantinople in 381 completed the work by affirming the full divinity of the Holy Spirit — giving us the Nicene Creed we recite today, the same creed confessed by every Christian church in every nation for over sixteen hundred years.

When we say those words this morning, we are not reciting a museum piece. We are standing with Athanasius, receiving a gift bought at great cost and handed to us across the centuries. The God into whose name we were baptized is fully God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and what he accomplished for us is therefore fully sufficient.

Our Gospel reading is Matthew 28:16–20. It is the final scene of Matthew’s Gospel — eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee, meeting the risen Christ one last time before the Ascension.

Notice what Matthew tells us in verse 17: “when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.” (Matthew 28:17, ESV) Some doubted. This is remarkable, and Matthew does not apologize for it. These are people who have seen the empty tomb, who have met the risen Christ, and some of them are still not sure. Worship and doubt in the same sentence, on the same mountain. I find this encouraging. We do not need to have resolved every question about the Trinity before we can kneel. We confess what has been revealed. We bow before what we cannot fully comprehend. That is enough. That is exactly what Trinity Sunday asks of us.

In verse 18, Jesus speaks: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” (Matthew 28:18, ESV) The enthroned king at the right hand of the Father, who as Paul tells us in Romans 8:34 is even now interceding for us. All authority — not some authority over spiritual matters while earthly affairs belong to other powers. All of it. Given to the risen, ascended Son.

And then verse 19 — the verse that carries the whole weight of Trinity Sunday in a single sentence: “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.” (Matthew 28:19, ESV)

Notice: one name. Not three names. Baptizing them in the name — singular — of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Three Persons, one name. The whole doctrine of the Trinity is compressed into that grammatical decision. One God. Three Persons. Not three gods. Not one God wearing three masks in succession. One God in three Persons, so intimately one that they share a single name into which the whole world is invited to be baptized. This is exactly what Nicaea was protecting. This is why Athanasius held.

Every baptism in the Christian Church since that mountain in Galilee has been a Trinitarian act. When water is poured and the name is spoken — Father, Son, Holy Spirit — the person being baptized is being brought into the life of the Triune God. Not merely into a religion. Not merely into a moral framework. Into the very communion of love that has existed between the Father and the Son from before the foundation of the world, carried to us by the Spirit.

I remember performing a baptism years ago. A young woman — someone who had come to faith out of a background of genuine brokenness, someone for whom the journey to that font had been long and costly. When I poured the water and spoke the name, she wept. She stood there in the font and wept.

What I was witnessing, I think, was the moment a person realizes they have not merely agreed to a set of beliefs — they have been brought into a relationship established before they existed, by a God who is, in his very nature, love. The Trinity is not primarily a doctrinal puzzle. It is the description of the God into whose life every baptized person has been brought. The Father loved the Son. The Son loved the Father. The Spirit carries that love outward, and in baptism we are included in it.

Psalm 150 is the last psalm in the Psalter — one hundred and fifty psalms of lament, praise, confession, petition, and wonder — and it ends here: “Let everything that has breath praise the LORD!” (Psalm 150:6, ESV) Not “let those who have understood the Trinity praise the LORD.” Everything that has breath. The doctrine of the Trinity does not end in argument. It ends in praise. And on Trinity Sunday we sing the song that has never stopped being sung. Isaiah heard it in the temple: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3, ESV) John heard it again on Patmos, echoing across the throne room of heaven: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Revelation 4:8, ESV) The same song, centuries apart, from the same heavenly court — and John’s version adds what Isaiah’s implies: the one being praised is the eternal God, who was and is and is to come. The Church drew on both when it placed the Sanctus at the heart of the Eucharist, so that every Sunday at this Table we join a chorus that was already in progress before the world began. Trinity Sunday is the day we step back and ask: whose song is this, and why are we singing it? We add our voices not because we have earned the right, but because the God who is praised in that chorus made us, redeemed us, and filled us with his Spirit so that we could take our place in it.

Paul wrote the closing of 2 Corinthians to a troubled, divided church, and this is how he ends it, in verse 14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (2 Corinthians 13:14, ESV) Three gifts, three Persons, one benediction — and a picture of what the Church is called to be. The Trinity is not only a doctrine to confess. It is the pattern we are called to inhabit. God is, in his very being, relational — Father, Son, and Spirit in an eternal communion of love and self-giving. When we forgive the person who has wronged us, we are reflecting the grace of the Son. When we welcome the stranger or sit with someone who is suffering, we are reflecting the love of the Father. When we stay together through disagreement rather than splitting off, we are reflecting the fellowship of the Spirit. Paul wrote that to Corinth. It is no less true for Hiawassee.

Back to Matthew 28. The commission closes in verse 20 with a promise that carries everything: “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20, ESV) The same presence that spoke Mary’s name in a garden, that breathed peace into a locked room, that opened the Scriptures on an Emmaus road, that abided with the branches on the vine, that fell like wind and fire at Pentecost — always. To the end of the age. We are not sent alone. We carry the presence of the one who holds all authority in heaven and on earth.

This is where we stand today. We have been brought through the Easter season, through Pentecost, to this mountain in Galilee. And now on Trinity Sunday we look at the one who did all of this and we are told his name. The name into which we were baptized. The name that has been running through this entire season from a garden on Easter morning to the streets of Jerusalem on Pentecost. Father. Son. Holy Spirit.

As we step into the Season after Trinity, three truths to stand on.

First: we worship a God we cannot fully explain, and that is as it should be. The disciples on the mountain worshipped and doubted in the same moment, and Matthew does not correct them for it. We do not need to resolve every question before we can kneel. The way into understanding is not to think harder before we worship — it is to worship, and to let the worship form us. Say the Creed this week not as a recitation but as a prayer. Kneel at the Sanctus on Sunday and let the words of the seraphim and the four living creatures become your own. Close your evening with the words Paul gave the Corinthians: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14, ESV) — and mean it. These small acts of worship precede and shape comprehension in ways that argument never can.

Second: we were baptized into a relationship, not a religion, and that relationship holds even when we cannot feel it. There will be a moment this week — perhaps already this morning — when prayer feels like speaking into a void, when God feels distant or silent or simply absent. In that moment, remember whose name was spoken over you at your baptism. The Father who loved the Son from before the world began has not withdrawn that love from you. The Son who ascended is at the right hand of the Father right now, interceding for you by name — the same name he spoke to Mary Magdalene in a garden. The Spirit who fell at Pentecost is the Spirit who prays in you when you cannot find words. You are not alone in the void. You are held in the name.

Third: the Great Commission is not a program — it is a sending, and it begins where we are. The world around us does not need a lecture on the Trinity. It needs to encounter the Triune God in people who are living from his name outward. That happens in ordinary places: the conversation at the hardware store where someone mentions they are struggling and we do not change the subject. The neighbor whose spouse just died and who needs someone to sit with them in the rubble. The grandchild who asks why we go to church and receives not a rehearsed answer but a testimony — come and hear what he has done for my soul. We are sent with all the authority of the risen Son, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with the promise that we do not go alone. That is the commission. We received it at our baptism. It has not been rescinded.

The collect for Trinity Sunday gathers it all: “Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory.”

Bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory. That is where the Christian life is heading — not to a comfortable retirement from the journey, not to the resolution of all our theological questions, but to the face of the Triune God himself. The thing Isaiah saw in the temple and John saw on Patmos when the living creatures cried holy, holy, holy — and the thing Paul was gesturing toward when he wrote of the grace of the Son, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit.

We are not yet there. We are still on the mountain, still the people who worship and doubt in the same moment. But we carry the name. Athanasius held for it. The Church has confessed it for sixteen centuries. We go in the authority of the one who holds all things. And we go with the promise that has never once been broken: I am with you always, to the end of the age.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.