Sermon: Trinity Sunday 2026

Trinity Sunday: Faith, Doubt, and the Mystery of God
Rev. Laura Johnson | North Raleigh United Methodist Church

What if doubt isn't the opposite of faith?

On Trinity Sunday, Rev. Laura Johnson explores one of Christianity's most profound mysteries: the doctrine of the Trinity. Drawing from Matthew 28:16-20, she examines the surprising detail that even as the disciples encountered the risen Jesus, "some doubted."

This sermon challenges common assumptions about doubt and faith. Looking at the original meaning of the biblical word for doubt, Rev. Johnson suggests that doubt is often not disbelief, but the natural human response to encountering realities that are bigger, deeper, and more beautiful than we expected.

Along the way, she guides listeners through the church's historic understanding of the Trinity, exploring how early Christian thinkers wrestled with the mystery of one God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rather than offering easy answers, this message invites us to embrace humility, wonder, and curiosity as we grow in our relationship with God.

Whether you're wrestling with questions, seeking a deeper understanding of Christian theology, or simply longing for a faith that can hold both conviction and mystery, this sermon offers encouragement for the journey.

Scripture: Matthew 28:16-20

North Raleigh United Methodist Church
Raleigh, North Carolina

Learn more about our church and ministries at North Raleigh UMC.

Topics Covered:

• Trinity Sunday
• The doctrine of the Trinity
• Matthew 28 and the Great Commission
• Faith and doubt
• The Nicene Creed
• Church history and theology
• The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
• Christian discipleship
• Spiritual growth and questioning faith

Keywords: Trinity Sunday, Holy Trinity, Matthew 28, Great Commission, faith and doubt, Christian theology, Nicene Creed, United Methodist Church, Methodist sermon, Rev Laura Johnson, North Raleigh UMC, Christian discipleship, Holy Spirit, Father Son Holy Spirit, church history, resurrection, biblical interpretation, Christian faith, Raleigh NC church, Sunday sermon

Transcript

0:00

Thank you, Krista. So today in the life of the church calendar, it is Trinity Sunday. So it's the day that we pause and revisit the puzzling reality of God as Trinity. And so before I read our gospel reading for today, I want to offer a couple of disclaimers before we talk about Trinity. So the first is that we must remember that human language is limited. Anytime we talk about God in any serious manner, we always run into language barriers. Our human languages are not big enough to encompass the reality of God. So I'm going to do my best to help us understand the Trinity today, but please remember that everything I can I say can only describe God up to a point, because language only gets us so far. Which leads us to the second disclaimer, and that's this God will never be fully defined or understood by any human at any time, in any place. That's because our ability to understand all of God and all of God's fullness is kind of like a gnat's ability to understand the fullness of being human, right? Our brains just cannot do this. And so today I will share what the smartest theologians have helped us understand about Trinity over the last two millennia. But if anybody ever tells you that their knowledge of God is perfect and without error, my advice to you is to run. Because if anybody thinks they've figured God out in all perfection, that means in their arrogance they have made a God in their own image. God is always, will always be, fully beyond our grasp. And that is true for myself. So as we approach this topic of Trinity with great fear and trembling, let me read to you. Our gospel reading comes from Matthew chapter 28, verses 16 to 20. Here we find the very end of Matthew's gospel. Jesus has resurrected from the dead, and he's now appearing before his disciples. Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, All authority 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, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age. This is the word of God for us, the people of God. Let us pray. O Lord, open our hearts and minds as we read and ponder your scriptures today, that your Holy Spirit might speak to us, that we might know you more fully and worship you more completely. In Christ's name. Amen. So the resurrected Jesus in all of his glory stood before the disciples on the mountaintop, and the impossible had been made possible. Their Lord, who had died, was now alive. They could touch him, they could see him, they could hear his voice. How could this be? So they fell on their knees and worshiped the Matthew tells us some doubted. What an odd and puzzling detail for Matthew to include here as he recorded Jesus' triumphal moment. Why would Matthew record this weakness of the disciples in the midst of Jesus' glory? And how could they doubt, anyways? Jesus was standing right there in front of them. Perhaps one way to puzzle through this conundrum is to examine the meaning of the word doubt. Our modern dictionaries define doubt as lacking confidence or belief in something. But that's not what doubt always meant. It's not what it means in Matthew's gospel. Now, if you've ever wondered how nerdy I am, you're about to find out. Because I have a new favorite book, and my family makes fun of me for this, but I love my new dictionary of etymology. It's the best bedtime reading. It's a book that tells you the root of every English word, where it comes from, why we have it. That sounds so fun, right, people? Okay. Well, um, the English word for doubt comes from the Latin dubitare, which means to hesitate, to waver in opinion. That's very different from lacking confidence or belief in something, to hesitate, to waver in opinion. Perhaps as the disciples stood gobsmacked before the risen Lord, they hesitated. Perhaps they wavered in their opinions of what is real and what isn't. And can we blame them? After all, Jesus had died and now he was alive. Reality was upended. That's not how life and death generally work. And so they doubted, meaning they hesitated and fully accepting this new reality of resurrection because it was unthinkably good. Too good to be real. It reminds me of Kevin on November 2nd, 2016. Now, what you need to know is that Kevin grew up in Chicago. He had been a Cubs fan his whole life. Growing up, every year, he hoped that his team might win the World Series, but every year his little boy's heart was just crushed. So he began to expect disappointment. He grew to believe that the Cubs would lose every year as predictably as death and taxes. So we sat on the couch on November 2nd, 2016, watching the seventh game of the World Series between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians, and a lot was on the line for Kevin. It had been 108 years since the Cubs had won the World Series. That's a long time to cheer for a team that never wins. So the game went really well. It tied in the ninth inning, so it had to go into extra innings, but then it started to downpour. So they had to pause the game for 17 long, eternal minutes. Poor Kevin had to wait to see what was gonna happen. Would the Cubs blow it in the 10th inning? But then, miraculously, the game went on. The Cubs got the go-ahead run in the first half of the 10th. And then as Cleveland got up to bat in the second half, we watched as the Cubs got out after out. And then the third baseman made this clean, easy throw to get the third out and win the game. And I kid you not, our house was dead silent. Like you could hear a pin drop. And I looked at Kevin and he was staring at the TV in pure disbelief. Like his mouth was open. I mean, gobsmacked is the best way you could describe this. Like he wasn't sure if he was dreaming. So I jumped up, I started cheering, and he finally caught up with me, and then he couldn't sleep because he was just, you know, so amazed that the team that had lost all the time had finally won. To doubt meant to hesitate or waver in opinion. And that's exactly what Kevin did when the Cubs finally won the World Series. His brain had to rewire and reorient itself according to this new, unexpected reality that the Cubs could actually win. This is the kind of doubt I think the disciples felt as they saw the risen Jesus. Their brains could not comprehend what they were seeing, how the resurrection was possible. Was this all a dream? And then Jesus said something to them that would become the root of a lot more doubt among his followers when he commanded them to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Now we're familiar with this name of the Trinity, and it has been a part of Christian worship ever since Jesus issued this command. But it took centuries of debate and scriptural interpretation to understand what exactly Jesus meant when he used this very particular unique phrase. Just as Jesus was giving this to his disciples, he was giving them kind of the keys to understand the fullness of God more readily. But the process of getting to that understanding took a lot of doubt, took a lot of hesitation, a lot of wavering and opinion before the doctrine of the Trinity was finally settled upon. Now it's clear that the earliest Christians had a notion of Trinitarian theology. They did baptize in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but it took a couple centuries of intense debate to work out exactly how God can be three and one. And the issue is that we are a monotheistic faith, meaning we believe there is only one true God. And Jesus preached this as did his Jewish ancestors. And so the earliest Christians had to wrestle with what does it mean to be monotheistic, one true God, but also having this language of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Answering that question is what led to the doctrine of the Trinity. And for us to truly dig into this doctrine, it's helpful to read through the Nicene Creed. So what I'd like for you to do is open up your hymnals to page 880. It's helpful to have this in front of you as we ponder these great mysteries. And while you turn to page 880, let me tell you about the Nicene Creed. It was composed in the year 325. 300 bishops and church leaders gathered together, they were called together and tasked with putting together the basic elements of Christianity onto paper. Hence the Nicene Creed. And if you notice, it's written in Trinitarian format. Each section proclaims our belief in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And it begins with that saying, we believe in one God. That's the beginning place of our understanding of Trinity, God's oneness. The theologian who helped us best understand God's oneness was a man named Athanasius. I love Athanasius for several reasons. One of them is that he was a shorty like me. He was stubborn, he was wickedly smart, he was an ancient Greek theologian who attended the Council of Nicaea that put together the document in front of you. And what he said was that God is homoousia. That's the Greek word he used. And it does not have a direct English translation, but the best we can come up with is God is one essence or one substance. The idea is that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all made up of the essence that is divinity. Everything else in the world is created by God. Humans, nature, atoms, molecules, the vast expanse of the universe, all of it is created. But God, on the other hand, is the only uncreated being. And Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all made up of this unique, uncreated, divine essence. And so, as Trinitarian people, we believe in one God, one essence. And this one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So this is where the Trinitarian theology gets a bit mystifying. What exactly are these three members of the Trinity? How do they relate with one another? Well, three other ancient theologians helped us make sense of this puzzle. Their names were Gregory, Gregory, and Basil, usually called the Cappadocian fathers, and they came to the conclusion that God is one Usia, one essence, but God is three persons. But when we use the word persons, it's not the same word that they used. When we think of persons, and you put three persons in a room, each of those persons has different thoughts, different will, different desires. Not so with the three persons of the Trinity. They are distinct entities within the divine essence, but they share the same mind and the same will. So let me pause and say that if you're experiencing doubt right now in the form of hesitation or wavering opinion, you're not alone. These are deep and mind-boggling mysteries that remind us of how finite and small we are compared to the infinite complexity that is God. This is why the Nicene Creed helps us make sense of this mystery. It begins with that phrase: we believe in one God, the Father the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth of all that is seen and unseen. The Father is the starting point. The first person named in the Trinity is called Father because that's what Jesus called God. So following Jesus' example, we call the Maker, the Creator of all that is, both seen and unseen, the Father. Likewise, we call the second person of the Trinity the Son of God because that's what Scripture calls Jesus. But this raises some theological questions, right? How can Jesus be both God and the Son of God? Athanasius again helps us. He was famous for arguing with a man named Arius who insisted that because Jesus is named as God's son, that means that he must have been created by God at some point in time. But Athanasius said, no, no, no. The Son cannot be created because then he would not share God's divine, uncreated essence. Instead, Athanasius insisted that the Son has eternally existed alongside the Father. And Athanasius used the term begotten to describe how the Son was not created by God, but rather still came from God and shares God's divine essence. And so if you look at the second stanza of the Nicene Creed, it begins like this. It'll sound familiar to you. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father. God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made. This makes Jesus' birth all that more mind-boggling. Because when Jesus took on human flesh and came to us as a person, what that means is the eternal son of God who had existed forever, chose to leave behind his eternal heavenly residence, to reside here for a while, a place without indoor plumbing. He was still the Son of God, still the second person of the Trinity, but he chose to become a human, to suffer, to die all for our sake. The depth of this love is one of the great mysteries of our faith. So, what about the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity? How does the Spirit fit into this picture? Well, this is where those Cappadocian fathers, Gregory Gregory and Basil, help us yet again. They insisted that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Think about a ray of light proceeding from the Son and warming the earth. So if you look at the third stanza of the Nicene Creed, it'll sound familiar. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified. The Holy Spirit is just as divine as the Father and the Son, just as eternal, because the Spirit shares that usia, that essence. And the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son forever, throughout eternity, to be God's activity in the world, present in the lives of believers everywhere. And so it is that the doctrine of Trinity helps us understand the work of God because this relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one that is pure love. You read in scriptures that God is love, and that's what it means. This Trinity is love. And so this love of God begins in the Father, proceeds through the Son, is completed in the Holy Spirit. It's like a dance of three people holding hands and moving together in a circle, moving as one. Now, of course, none of this deep Trinitarian theology was on the disciples' minds as they gathered around Jesus on the mountaintop. They were still reeling from the reality of resurrection. They worshiped with awe and joy, and they doubted. We return to that word, yet again, doubt. Why did Matthew include this unflattering detail dampening this moment of glory? Another nerdy thing I like to do is look up Bible Greek dictionaries. They're really fun, people. They tell us every biblical Greek word, its root, its meaning, all of its uses throughout Scripture. I promise you it's fun. Look it up. Did you know that the word for doubt that Matthew uses here in chapter 28 is distaso, and it means the same thing as the Latin word for doubt. It means to waver, to hesitate, to be of two minds, to be uncertain. So when the disciples doubted before it resurrected Jesus, it wasn't that they had a lack of faith. That's how we often define doubt, right? It's not believing in God, but that's not what doubt means in the Bible. Doubt is used to describe the natural process we humans go through when we encounter the disorienting mysteries of faith. Hesitancy, doubt, being gobsmacked like Kevin at the Cubs victory. This is all a part of discipleship when we encounter the mysteries of God because they confound us, they mess with our sense of reality. The mysteries of God challenge us to reconsider what we thought we knew. And what I've noticed in my pastoral ministry is that more and more people in our world are longing for certainty. They want clear black and white answers, telling them exactly who God is and exactly how God works, with no room for gray. And so when they experience doubt in the biblical sense, when the mysterious ways of God challenge their interpretations of scripture or their understanding of themselves or others, it's scary to them. It's uncomfortable to be gobsmacked. Often people respond to this discomfort by just retreating back into their certainty because the black and the white that they've always known feels safer. But on this Trinity Sunday, let me remind you that Matthew included the disciples' doubt in this story of glory for a reason. It's because doubt is not a sin, it's not a sign of weak faith. Rather, doubt is a sign that you are encountering God's mysteries and your brain is trying to catch up. So when you feel that doubt, that hesitation, that wavering of what's real and what's not real, don't retreat into the safety of certainty because you're uncomfortable with the questions. When we do that, that's how our faith becomes stagnant. When we refuse to doubt, to wrestle with our questions, we get stuck in a rut and our relationship with God stalls. Matthew wanted us to know that the disciples doubted in the biblical sense of the word because we will too. Whenever we encounter the mysteries of the faith, like the Trinity, we will inevitably waver at some point, hesitate to accept a reality that is so far beyond our own. But we must wrestle with these deep mysteries. We must lean into the questions because that is how we grow. That is how we understand more of God's hearts and God's ways because God meets us in the questions. And God doesn't always give us the answers, but God teaches us to be more comfortable in our questions. One of the things I've noticed throughout my years of ministry is that whenever somebody poses an impossibly complex question about God, it's often the most mature Christian in the room who's comfortable saying, you know, I just don't know. That's a mystery of faith. Because God is bigger than we understand, and we're all better Christians when we can stand gobsmacked before God's immense glory and be comfortable with the questions because it means that we are standing in awe. So on this Trinity Sunday, I invite you to decide to be the kind of Christian who can embrace your doubts before a loving and understanding God and know that God will always be bigger and better than we can imagine. In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.