© 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.