Isaiah 40.12-17,27-31; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13.11-13; Matthew 28.16-20

HERE are three (of course) questions for this Trinity Sunday Gospel. First, which mountain? Is Jesus directing his disciples to return to the mount of transfiguration, where he had been revealed in his true glory? Or should we, instead, think further back, to the mountain on which he delivered the main body of his teachings (Matthew 5-7)?

The second question follows on from last Sunday: do Jesus’s final words in Matthew’s Gospel constitute an “I am” saying, and, if they do, is it like those in John? The third question is the most important: what precisely does Jesus promise us in v.20?

An answer to the first question is relatively easy: there is no way to be sure which mountain Jesus is referring to. Two mountains in Matthew’s Gospel figure as sites of revelation that is positive (so setting aside 4.8): the mountain of the sermon (5-7) and the mountain of the transfiguration (17). But a case can be made that Matthew’s Gospel is ending as it began — with Jesus as a new, and greater, Moses. Moses had received the commandments from God on a mountain (called either Sinai or Horeb: Exodus 19.11, Deuteronomy 1.6). So, it makes sense for the mountain to which Jesus had directed his disciples (v.16) to be the one from where he acted as a new Moses, delivering authoritative teaching.

The second question is related to the first; for both touch on aspects of the Jewishness of Jesus. I found a couple of examples in Matthew’s Gospel of Jesus’s making an “I am” declaration. This passage is one. The other one that reminds me of John’s Jesus and his “I am” sayings is Matthew 14.27, but translations make it hard to spot. The Greek says that Jesus told his terrified disciples: “Have courage; I am; do not be afraid.” True, Matthew does not record symbolic “I am” sayings of Jesus in the same way, or to the same extent, as John. But we should consider that his Judaeophile (or at least Judaeo-sympathetic) approach give added significance to those “I am” sayings that (evoking Exodus 3.14) we do find in his writing.

Now for the third question. Unlike the Persons of the Trinity, my three questions are not co-equal: nothing is more immediately important to every Christian than the promise that Jesus makes us here. The original text of Mark gives no final words to the resurrected Jesus. The Lucan Jesus is focused on his promise of the Holy Spirit. John’s Jesus has no farewell speech as such, only a brief command, “You, follow me!” Matthew 28.20, though, promises that Jesus himself will be with us “always”.

But here is a more literal translation: “Look! I am with you all the days until the fulfilment of the age.” I do not disagree that “to the end of the age” (NRSV) suggests “for ever”. Time is created by God; so, when the divine purposes are fulfilled, it may no longer have a reason to exist. That is a level of theological speculation beyond me. No, the point of interest for me is the strict meaning of what is translated in NRSV and NIV as “always”. Jesus says “all the days”: and I hope that he means exactly that. On its own, “always” is so nebulous as to be emptied of meaning. If something always just “is”, we may fail to notice it at all.

But if Jesus promises to be with us “all the days” (we might express this as “every single day”), then he is emphasising each individual temporal unit of our existence. The impact of his being with us “all the days” can be linked to the absence from Matthew’s Gospel of an ascension. He must be “with us” in some other way, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy (7.14), made early in the Gospel (1.23), that he is “God with us”. Luke makes two references to an ascension (24.51; Acts 1.9), and John make three (3.13, 6.62, 20.17). But here, in Matthew, Jesus’s being mysteriously present and worthy of worship leaves the “how” of his ongoing presence with us beyond our understanding.

So, finally, to the Holy Trinity. One tiny detail in 28.19 reveals the Persons of the Holy Trinity as being both three and one. We are to baptise “in the name” of “Father”, “Son”, and “Holy Spirit”: the Persons are three, but the “name” (not “names”) is one.