Isaiah 40.12-17, 27-end;
2 Corinthians 13.11-end;
Matthew 28.16-20

THE EPILOGUE to Matthew's Gospel contains our Lord's command to baptise "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". The traditional formula testifies to the Early Church's recognition that the one God is made known in more ways than one.

By the same token, more recent Trinitarian formulae - "creator, redeemer, sanctifier" or "life-giver, pain-bearer, love-maker", for example - recognise that there are more ways than one to speak of the mystery of the divine nature. Metaphors for that mystery do not have to reflect and endorse the historic hegemony of men and only men, jealous of that hegemony, who would maintain otherwise.

"Father, Son, and Holy Spirit": so powerfully and memorably does the title impact on us that we may overlook the possibility that it is not Matthew's last word about the mystery of who God is. I have been studying the Greek New Testament for many years, but only now, in preparing these comments, do I notice that Matthew may be saying something more.

"I am with you," says Jesus. He adds "to all eternity", but we stay for the moment with those first four words. Their plain and simple meaning is that Jesus will continue to keep his disciples company. Even though he will seem to have left them, he will be as close to them as ever he was. The first disciples of Jesus found his words to be true. So, to this day, and to their great comfort, have his subsequent followers.

"I am with you." There are just four words in the Greek text, too, though there they are in a different order. "I with you am" is the sequence of the words in Matthew. "I AM", the name revealed at Sinai, is the divine name that the Jesus of John's Gospel makes his own (Exodus 3.14, John 8.58).

Now we have a new name. "I - with you - am," says Jesus. It is as if the name beyond all names, expressive of the inexpressible, is broken open, and the little company of Jesus and his friends brought into its heart. The voice is Matthew's, the theology is John's. "I in them and Thou in me, that they may be perfectly one" (John 17.23).

Such a reading of Jesus's promise could be said to be both contrived and unnecessary. The order of words in Matthew's text is the natural way to say "I am with you." To be sure, there are occasional flights of Johannine language in Matthew's Gospel (Matthew 11.27), but we need not suppose that Matthew has borrowed John's wings here.

It is safe to say that Matthew himself did not intend to say more than he obviously does say. Surely we are making things far too complicated. Is it not enough to know that, as we used to sing: "He walks with me and talks with me along life's narrow way"?

Yes, it is enough to know that he is at our side. In that knowledge, we may make it through today. "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" can wait. But - "only connect" - there is little value in having multiple Gospels if we do not read them synoptically, with all four of them open side by side.

With Matthew and John both before us, we contemplate the possibility that companionship with Christ brings us into a relationship with God that only the language of Trinitarian theology is sufficient to describe. Jesus has said, echoing a voice from a burning bush, "I AM". So what does it imply for the nature of divinity and for our destiny if he goes on to say, "I-WITH-YOU AM"? Has Matthew unwittingly left a door ajar through which we glimpse a glory beyond the horizon of our highest hopes?

Last words are often weighty. The last words of Jesus in Mathew's Gospel speak of his reign, an authority that differs radically from the political and religious regimes it challenges, and to which those regimes must finally yield. His final words speak of the imperative of his coming Kingdom, the demand to cross all boundaries to "make disciples". And he tells us that we need never walk alone.

The last words of someone can be weighty. So, too, can the last words about someone. We notice Matthew's final reference to the disciples. Nothing he has said about them previously in his Gospel is more important. Most translations say that the disciples worshiped Jesus, "but some doubted". That "but" is too strong a rendering of a delicate little Greek particle, and the "some" is imported from nowhere.

It is almost as if our translators are conspiring to keep from us what Matthew actually said. The Greek simply means: "They knelt in worship, though they doubted." "No more we doubt thee," we bellow, but they who knew Jesus best are not joining in.

Even on our knees, we still have our doubts. They are a condition of our discipleship.

Text of readings

Isaiah 40.12-17

12Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure,
and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance?
13Who has directed the spirit of the LORD,
or as his counsellor has instructed him?
14Whom did he consult for his enlightenment,
and who taught him the path of justice?
Who taught him knowledge,
and showed him the way of understanding?
15Even the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are accounted as dust on the scales;
see, he takes up the isles like fine dust.
16Lebanon would not provide fuel enough,
nor are its animals enough for a burnt-offering.
17All the nations are as nothing before him;
they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

27Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
‘My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God’?
28Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
29He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
30Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
31but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

2 Corinthians 13.11-end

11Brothers and sisters, put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. 12Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you.

13The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

Matthew 28.16-20

16The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. 18And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’