Drawn Into the Heart of God

 

May 31, 2026 – The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday

Genesis 1:1-2:4a; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20

© 2026 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

When the eleven disciples saw the risen Jesus, they fell down and worshipped him, but some doubted. Today’s gospel lesson is taken from the very end of Matthew’s gospel account. This is how he concludes his version of the good news, and I think his Holy-Spirit-inspired decision to include the bit about the disciples’ doubts is a powerful witness to the truth that salvation is not a reward for perfect people with perfect faith but a gift of grace to uncertain sinners like me. And I am thankful for that.

Matthew didn’t have to include that part. There are countless details about Jesus’ life and ministry and the disciples’ reaction to them that are left out by each of the gospel writers. Matthew could have wrapped up his version of the gospel by depicting this as a moment of unequivocal triumph—a joyful encounter in which the disciples were reunited with the risen Christ in an expression of unwavering love and devotion. But that’s not how he tells the story. Some of them doubted. When they saw Jesus, all eleven of them fell down and worshipped him, but, at the same time, Matthew wants us to know, some of them were unsure. And that is a gift to us—a gift that helps nurture our faith.

We aren’t completely sure what the disciples were doubting. In Matthew’s gospel account, this is the first moment when any of the eleven met the risen Christ. After Mary Magdalene and the other Mary found the empty tomb, they ran to tell the disciples that Jesus wanted them to head back to Galilee—back to Jesus’s home, back where his ministry started—where he had promised to meet them. In this first moment with the resurrected Jesus, it could be that some of them doubted it was really him. Perhaps they thought they might be dreaming or maybe even seeing a ghost. But I think it’s more likely that their doubts had to do with worshipping Jesus.

As faithful Jewish people, the disciples knew that they were forbidden from bowing down and worshipping anyone or anything except God alone. And yet, when they met the one whom God had raised from the dead, a part of them knew that the right thing to do was to fall down at his feet in worship. By raising him to new life, God had shown Jesus’ followers that Jesus had been given power over sin and death—a power which they knew belonged only to God. And so, without even thinking about it, when they saw the risen Jesus, they worshipped him. But, as their bodies bent toward the ground in adoration, some of them felt a hesitation growing inside of them. “Is this right?” they wondered silently. “Is this God?”

The word translated for us as “doubted” literally means two-stanced—as in stuck standing in two places or positions at once. It’s a word that has less to do with rational hesitation and more to do with divided loyalty. It’s a word that only appears twice in the New Testament—once here and once back in Matthew 14, when, at Peter’s request, Jesus called him to walk out on the water to him. When Peter noticed how strong the wind and the waves were, he began to doubt—his conviction became divided—so he began to sink. If you’re wondering about Doubting Thomas and his refusal to believe in the risen Jesus unless he touched the wounds of the Crucified One for himself, it turns out that the word used to describe Thomas’ perspective isn’t “doubt” but “unbelief.” Thus, “Unbelieving Thomas” would be a better nickname for him. But, in this case, it wasn’t unbelief that the disciples carried in their hearts but a lack of faithful clarity.

I think it’s only natural that, when the disciples met the risen Jesus for the first time, they found themselves caught in between two positions. A part of them recognized the divinity of their risen Lord while another part struggled let go of their commitment to worshipping God alone. And who can blame them? Not Jesus, apparently. So much had happened so quickly and without a full explanation. Only a few days earlier had they learned that their crucified teacher had been brought back to life. How do you go from exclusive and unequivocal monotheism to bowing down at the feet of a back-from-the-dead rabbi whose resurrection may or may not be indicative of divine status?   

The answer is with the help of the Holy Spirit. It takes the Holy Spirit working in and through the community of faith to bring into unity the disciples’ understanding of who Jesus was and the truth of the divine nature he possessed. They were right to bow down at Jesus’ feet in worship because he was the incarnate Son of God. And they were right to feel uncertain about that because the faithful understanding of who Jesus was had not yet been fully propagated within them by the Holy Spirit. And we should notice that their hesitation—their doubt—didn’t stop Jesus from commissioning them to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Our faith in God is something that God produces within us. God is the one that makes our faith happen. Now, that’s a radical thing for me to say, so I’ll say it again: our faith in God doesn’t come from us; it is a gift that God gives us. Just like the eleven disciples, we cannot fully believe in God—we cannot be singularly stanced—unless God, through the Holy Spirit, works in us and brings us to faith. That’s because God is not something we can find or understand or comprehend on our own terms. God is not a truth to be learned or a knowledge to be studied. For us to know anything at all about God, God must reveal Godself to us, and God does that by drawing us up, along with the rest of the community of faith, into the divine life. When we participate in the very life of God through the Holy Spirit that lives in us, we experience the truth that is God in order that we might be fully conformed to that truth in a way that we call faith.

Now, after twenty-one Trinity Sundays in ordained ministry, I have learned that no one ever came to salvation because they heard a good, careful, orthodox exploration of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. But I’ve also discovered that no one ever came to salvation without experiencing the fullness of the triune God. That’s because salvation is not merely what happens to us when we die. That’s a part of it for sure, but it’s so much more than that. Salvation is God rescuing us from our mortality, from sickness, poverty, isolation, and death, from sin, struggle, and everything that threatens us, from everything that stands in the way of our perfection. And that doesn’t happen when we reach the pearly gates. It happens when we become one with God—the God who created us in God’s image and who redeemed us by taking on our flesh and blood and who sustains us and empowers us by living within us and drawing us up into the life of God.

We become one with God in Holy Baptism. And we become one with God in Holy Communion. And we become one with God in wordless prayer and in ecstatic utterances of praise and in the songs of our hearts when the Holy Spirit takes over. We become one with God when we gather in worship and Jesus is present with us and his presence brings us into the heart of God. That’s where we receive the gift of faith. Faith is that clarity and unity of heart and mind that comes to us and fills us when we experience oneness with God, and that oneness is the inseparable, indivisible work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

When the eleven disciples saw the risen Lord, they worshipped him, but some doubted. Those doubts were not an obstacle to their faith, but, as they grew in faith, those doubts—that dividedness within them—gave way to unity. It is through worship and prayer that we are drawn into the heart of God, and it is by dwelling within the heart of God that we receive the gift of faith. The disciples remind us that we don’t have to be perfect or have perfect faith in order to be drawn into the divine life. It is God, whose love draws us into Godself, that makes us perfect. It is God who gives us perfect faith. 

Are We There Yet?

 

May 17, 2026 – The 7th Sunday of Easter, Year A

Acts 1:6-14; 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11; John 17:1-11

© 2026 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

Are we there yet? Summer is almost upon us, and, for many of us, that means lots of time in the car with young children. Are we there yet? Those words have unique power to annoy any parent who is just doing their best to get their family to the beach or to the lake or to grandma’s house. Are we there yet? That question reflects more than the impatience of the petitioner. It is born of immaturity—the conceptual inability or, perhaps, willful refusal to accept that the journey will take as long as it will take and that there is no amount of wanting to get there faster that will, in fact, make the journey go by any faster. 

Are we there yet? Parents don’t hear that question as much as they used to. When I was a child, I didn’t have a smart phone or a game console or a portable DVD player to anesthetize my restlessness. My parents had to be creative, which, in turn, helped me learn how to be creative. I can’t tell you how many times we counted cars or played the alphabet game or I-spy or twenty questions. We sang songs until I was old enough to know that singing songs in the car wasn’t cool. With nothing else to do and bored out of our minds, we picked a fight with our parents and asked repeatedly—Are we there yet?—until we discerned that the likelihood of parental violence outweighed the tedium of the journey, so, for at least a few minutes, we rode in silence.

MIT sociologist Shelly Turkle says that children need to be bored or else they will grow up lacking the ability to form meaningful relationships with other people. Until we can sit and be comfortable with ourselves—and just ourselves—we won’t develop the skills necessary to engage another person in deep and mutual exchange. Are we there yet? We need to grow up asking that question and being disappointed with the answer in order to learn that all the stuff in this life that really matters—like friendship and romance and triumph and flourishing—are more than a click away. They require patience and perseverance and vulnerability and mutuality—attributes that only develop over time. 

Are we there yet? Children aren’t the only ones who ask that question, though they may be the only ones who use those particular words. Adults ask their own version all the time because, in truth, when we’re stuck in the back seat and unaware of how long we’ll be there, we’re no better at waiting than our children or grandchildren. When will my boss take me seriously? How much longer can I hold this marriage together? When will God finally take me so that I can be reunited with my beloved? There’s no map or GPS for that kind of waiting. We wish we could snap our fingers or click a button or tap a screen and make the interminable waiting stop, but part of what it means to journey through this life is to wait and wait without the ability to do anything about it.

Are we there yet? That’s the question the disciples asked Jesus right before he was taken up into heaven, though it sounded more like, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel.” They wanted to know if the waiting is over—if the time when God’s people would be in control of their own security and prosperity had arrived. The disciples had experienced the agony of waiting—waiting in despair after Jesus had been crucified. They knew what it meant to suffer without hope. But now they had known the power of the resurrection. God had brought their rabbi back from the dead. Jesus had been given authority over heaven and earth, over life and death, and the disciples wanted to know if this was the time when he would use that authority to establish God’s kingdom here on the earth. 

“Is this the time?” they asked, confident that their master would rule all the kingdoms of the earth with righteousness and justice—that he had the power to subdue the enemies of God’s people and give his followers the peace and security they had always dreamed of. Are we there yet? Are we finished? Can we celebrate? Is this what we’ve been waiting for?

“It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority,” Jesus said to his disciples. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Jesus was raised from the dead in triumph, and he was exalted into the heavens to rule over the cosmos, but the power he promised to send his disciples was not the power of our journey’s completion but the power to wait for its completion in hope. 

Jesus sends us the Holy Spirit to make us his witnesses—witnesses to his triumph and witnesses to his promise. And we bear witness to him whenever wait with hope. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we know that God has won the victory over sin and death. Because he has been exalted to the heavenly places, we know that there is no longer any separation or barrier between God’s presence and our struggles. Because God abides with us in the Holy Spirit, even our most tortuous and aggrieved waiting is imbued with hope, and hope is what sustains us as we wait for his promised return, and waiting in hope is how we bear witness to him in the power of the Spirit. 

That does not make the waiting easy, nor does it make the pain of waiting go away. As Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “For in this [earthly] tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling” (2 Cor. 5:2). Sometimes we groan or whine or complain from the backseat because we cannot see how far we have to go, but just because this waiting is long and hard and painful doesn’t mean that we give up on waiting for God. 

If we allow our struggle to be overcome by impatience or restlessness, we cannot bear witness to the one for whom we wait or the Spirit that abides within us while we wait. If we reject outright the holiness of waiting for that which is beyond our control—if we instead prioritize the manufacture of our own security and prosperity over the stark vulnerability of waiting for the one who was crucified for the sake of the world—we lose hope and the faith that is within us. As Michael Gorman wrote, “Hope can be understood as…the future tense of faith.” Believing in Jesus—putting our trust in God’s promises—means nothing if we are unwilling to endure the long and hope-filled wait for his return.

Are we there yet? No, we are not. And the hardest part is that we do not know how long it will be before Jesus comes and draws us and all things to their perfection. All we can do is wait and wait with the hope that the Holy Spirit nurtures inside us—the hope that fills this community whenever we gather together in prayer. We are the recipients of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has sent that Spirit to sustain us and comfort us and lead us to bear witness to Jesus Christ—to show others about his victory and his promise—his triumph over the forces of evil and his promise to come and set all things right. And you are a part of that witness every time you let hope shine through the hardship of waiting. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Are we there yet? No, not yet, but, by God’s grace, we will be soon.