Introduction
Holy Trinity Sunday often tempts the church toward certainty. Every year preachers feel pressure to explain mysteries that ultimately stretch beyond language and articulation. We reach for analogies, theological formulas, and careful doctrinal clarifications trying to speak rightly about God as Parent, Son, and Holy Spirit.
But Matthew’s Gospel does something much more interesting.
The Triune formula appears not in a theological lecture but in the middle of a resurrection appearance filled with tension and uncertainty. And this tension becomes even more fraught in the updated translation of the NRSVUE.
For years, many churches heard Matthew 28:17 translated as: “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted (NRSV).” That translation suggests a division among the disciples. Some believed while others struggled. It allows us to have “good disciples” and “bad disciples.”
But the NRSV Updated Edition shifts the sentence significantly: “When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted.”
Now, doubt is no longer limited to part of the group. The ambiguity and hesitation now belong to the disciples collectively. The same disciples who worship also doubt.
This small translational change opens enormous theological space because it reveals something the church often struggles to articulate. That faith and doubt are rarely opposites. Often they exist together.
Narrative Context: Matthew’s Unfinished Disciples
Matthew’s resurrection account is remarkably brief compared to Luke or John. There are no lengthy resurrection conversations, no ascension scene, and no extended encounters by the sea. Instead, Matthew moves quickly toward this final mountain in Galilee.
Mountains should feel familiar in Matthew by now and oddly (five months into the year) the RCL has already made that clear. Mountains in Matthew are places of revelation, authority, and instruction. Jesus resists evil and temptation on a mountain. Jesus teaches from a mountain. He is transfigured on a mountain. Now, at the conclusion of the Gospel, the disciples return to a mountain one final time to receive their commission.
And yet, after all that has happened, the disciples still appear unfinished.
Even after resurrection, they do not arrive with perfect clarity or unwavering certainty. Matthew’s Gospel has consistently portrayed the disciples as people who misunderstand, fear, fail, and hesitate. They sink in the water. They misunderstand parables. They argue over greatness. They flee during the passion.
And now, standing before the risen Christ himself, they worship and doubt simultaneously.
The resurrection does not suddenly erase human uncertainty. Even at the end of the Gospel, the disciples remain deeply human.
Worship and Doubt Together
The NRSVUE translation forces us to confront a difficult but deeply human reality: worship does not eliminate doubt. In fact, worship often contains doubt.
The disciples see the risen Christ and still hesitate.
That hesitation should not necessarily be heard as outright unbelief. The Greek, ἐδίστασαν, carries shades of wavering, uncertainty, or internal struggle. The disciples are attempting to comprehend something larger than their categories and experiences can fully contain. Resurrection destabilizes ordinary understanding.
But Matthew doesn’t condemn them for this.
Jesus doesn’t rebuke their hesitation before commissioning them. He does not wait for complete confidence before entrusting them with the work of discipleship. Instead, the commission comes precisely in the middle of their uncertainty.
Too often Christians imagine faith as the absence of doubt. We assume mature faith should feel unwavering, confident, and settled. But Matthew presents faith and worship as more complex and honest. Faith may sometimes look like worshiping while still carrying unanswered questions.
And perhaps that is especially fitting for Trinity Sunday. The church gathers to speak about the mystery of God while fully aware that God ultimately exceeds human comprehension. The disciples stand before resurrection reality itself and still struggle to grasp it fully.
Yet worship still happens.
Worship Before Sending
The disciples worship, and then they are sent.
The order is important. Because worship is not presented as an escape from the world but as preparation for reentering it. Before the disciples go out to teach, baptize, and bear witness, they first stand before something larger than themselves. They encounter the risen Christ. They are confronted with mystery, authority, and a reality they cannot fully control or comprehend.
And perhaps that is essential.
The church can certainly do good works without worship. Communities can serve neighbors, advocate for justice, and care for the vulnerable apart from explicitly religious practice. But Matthew seems to suggest there is something uniquely important about worship shaping the church before the church attempts to shape the world.
Because worship reminds disciples that God’s ways are not our ways.
That reminder is critical. Without it, the church can easily confuse its own preferences, politics, fears, or ambitions with the commandments of Christ. We can begin imposing our own vision of power, success, or righteousness onto the world rather than embodying the way Jesus actually taught.
And the way of Jesus is not always intuitive. Loving enemies is not intuitive. Forgiving seventy-seven times is not intuitive. Blessing the poor, welcoming the stranger, serving rather than dominating, and laying down power rather than grasping for it all run against ordinary human instincts.
Which is why worship matters.
In worship, the church is decentered. We are reminded again that we are not God. We are confronted with mystery beyond our comprehension and authority beyond our control. We hear words that challenge our assumptions and expose our self-interest. We are called back to the teachings of Christ again and again because left to ourselves, we so quickly drift toward our own ways instead.
Perhaps that is part of why Matthew places worship before the commission. Before the disciples are sent into the world, they first bow before the risen Christ. Before they speak, they listen. Before they teach, they are humbled by mystery.
And notably, they worship even while they doubt.
The uncertainty of the disciples does not prevent worship. If anything, it may deepen it. Worship becomes the place where disciples are continually reoriented toward the presence and authority of Christ before they return to the complicated work of living faithfully in the world.
Preaching Possibility
A Church That Still Worships Before It Speaks
A possible direction this week is to reflect on what kind of church emerges from this mountain in Matthew.
Because the disciples do not leave this mountain with complete certainty. They leave still wrestling with mystery, still trying to comprehend resurrection, still carrying uncertainty alongside worship. And yet they are sent into the world anyway.
Many churches today feel caught between uncertainty and irrelevance. Congregations wonder whether the church still has a meaningful voice in public life. In a culture saturated with outrage, political division, endless commentary, and competing visions of truth, it can become difficult to imagine what the church uniquely offers anymore.
And perhaps the temptation in moments like this is either silence or control.
Some churches retreat inward, convinced they no longer have anything meaningful to say. Others cling tightly to certainty and attempt to impose themselves upon the world through power, fear, or cultural dominance. But Matthew presents something different. The disciples are not sent because they possess absolute certainty. They are sent because they have first stood before the risen Christ in worship and mystery.
And I think that is more intentional from Matthew than we realize.
The church is most faithful not when it speaks the loudest, but when it continues returning to worship, returning to God, and returning to the commands of Christ, before speaking at all. Because worship continually reminds the church that we are not God. Worship interrupts our instincts toward self-importance and control. Worship calls us back to the teachings of Jesus instead of our own ambitions and anxieties.
Without worship, the church can begin proclaiming its own preferences rather than the commandments of Christ. It can confuse political ideology for discipleship. It can mistake dominance for faithfulness. It can speak with certainty while forgetting mercy, humility, forgiveness, and love of neighbor.
But on this mountain, the disciples first worship and stand in the mystery.
Before they go.
Before they teach.
Before they speak.
Maybe that is the witness the church most needs to recover now. Not a church pretending to possess every answer, but a church humble enough to remain grounded in worship, mystery, repentance, and the continual reorientation toward Christ.
Because the world does not need more communities organized around outrage, fear, and certainty. It already has plenty of those.
What the world may desperately need is a community shaped by worship before our preferred notion of witness. A people willing to confess that God’s ways are higher than our own and therefore we must continually return to Christ again and again lest we mistake our voice for God’s voice.
And still, even with uncertainty present, Jesus sends the disciples.
Perhaps that is the final grace of the passage. The church does not need perfect certainty in order to participate in the work of God. It only needs to keep returning to the mountain, returning to worship, and returning to the One, Emmanuel, who still says, “I am with you always.”
Micah Krey 
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