Matthew 28:16-21
Parting Instructions for a New World
Don’t worry. I am not going to preach about Donald Trump holding up a Bible. I am not going to refer to George Floyd or even to racism. I have done all those things in blogs and social media conversations. Today my mandate is different. I am not a talk show host or a political commentator. Today, my job is to preach the Word, not to give a news summary.
And yet, as always, the gospel and its message is ever so relevant to the realities we encounter in life. It does have much to say for our political issues. But only when it is preached, not when its held up as a prop. It functions more like the Script of a play that it functions as a prop. It calls not to be seen but to be skillfully given life through our acts and words on this stage of life.
I think Jesus’s words in Matthew 28 is especially helpful for people who seeks Jesus’s ways in a confusing and broken world. A leaders’ parting words always carries weight. Jesus here plain and simply stated what He expects of us until He comes again. Not only what He says but how He says it to who and at what time, carries such important directives for the life we are called to live. Let us see what they are…
Gathered, despite … in obedience and anticipation.
There is just so much information in verse 16 that guides us on our journey as fellow disciples. We have here a group of traumatized individuals. They faced great uncertainty, they witnessed betrayal and experienced loss. They were scattered and isolated. A sad bunch up to this point, really. But now they are together again, only 11, despite their loss. They are gathered where Jesus told them to gather. At a mountain, the traditional place of Godly revelation. Both in the Old Testament Story of Israel with Moses receiving divine revelation on the mountain and in the life of Jesus where he gave the sermon on the mount as a special insight shared about God’s Kingdom (and his transfiguration with three disciples present that was also on a mountain.) He is meeting them at a place where they can get insight into His true identity.
There were many places they could have went in stead. It was safer to stay inside as individuals than gathering as a group. It was more convenient to stay inside the city where you had access to the latest stories readily. They choose to be obedient and to gather, in spite of their fears and losses, at a place where they could get insight into who Jesus really is.
If we find ourselves in a similar unpredictable, tumultuous time, shouldn’t we follow suit? For us it might also easier to just “stay out of it” and keep to ourselves. But doing that might be the very thing that makes us miss out on Jesus. Let us seek each other out in every way we can. Let us prioritize to go to the places, the “mountaintops”, where we can be drawn deeper into who Jesus is. What are these places? I guess this is where it gets personal but listening to you and a few people in our neighbourhood, I can think about a few modern day mountaintops:
- Places where people are hurting and lamenting loss. Be attentive to that. Listen, pay attention. It means the world to a person that goes through it and it has a way of drawing you closer to Jesus.
- Nature. Many people reconnected with God during this time by spending more time in nature and appreciating it as God’s creation. Garden, go on hikes, row, cycle, run.
- Libraries. But also, any place where you can learn new things, be exposed to knowledge and experience you haven’t been exposed to before.
- Church buildings. Not only on Sunday but during the week. One thing that happened during this lock down is that some congregants, initially as much for a change of scenery as an intentional act to move closer to God, have found it edifying to blend their daily work program with prayer and chats at church.
What other places can you think of where God works with you, speaks to you and anchor you anew in his identity? Prioritize to get there and gather there and wait for Jesus.
Worship in spite of doubt
So interesting the passage says all worshipped Him, even though some doubted. It is interesting that Matthew should specifically recall the doubt that was still present. One would think that would be a good thing to just keep quiet about, especially in leu of the fact that everybody worshipped. But what he shares carries a crucial message. Jesus don’t need perfection, not even in faith. We all have a gap between our deeply held beliefs and our actual practice. That gap is our doubt but worship is a bridge on which Jesus meets us and carries us over into the right praxis of our faith. After the verse telling us about the doubters worshipping despite their doubt, the next verse tells us Jesus approached them, that He “came near” them. Jesus moves closer to those who worship based on their faith and in spite of their doubt.
You see, here is the deal when it comes to worship. Worship is not the choice we think it is just like breathing really isn’t a conscious choice but a bodily reflex. Like we involuntarily breathe, so we always involuntary and unconsciously worship. And yet, even thou we cannot help breathing; we can focus and direct our breathing with great results. By directing your breathing and focusing on it you can relax, fall asleep easier and enhance your mood. Likewise, we can direct our worship. We can become conscious and aware of who and what we worship. We can move our worship from the idols in our lives back to Jesus. The result is life.
Somebody with bad lung function can benefit even more from mindful breathing than somebody with perfect lung function. We don’t need to have a perfect faith to benefit from intentional worship. As a matter of fact, as doubters we benefit even more from it than people of perfect faith would.
If you encounter Jesus in your life, the proper response is worship. Before it is analysing and reflecting, before it is growing in your faith and before it is serving with your actions. Before all that… you worship with what you have and in spite of your doubt. That is the bridge Jesus meets you on and carries you from into new ways of doing.
Go…to all nations…and make the people my disciples
When it comes to this part, I think it is important to note what Jesus did not say here. He did not say, make people believe at all costs because rebirth is the work of the Spirit, not of man. He also did not say, stay in your ivory tower and shame or advertise people into coming to you. He did not say go to those you feel most comfortable and familiar with. He said go…to all the nations. I think we need to zoom in on three key concepts here: To go, to “all the the nations” and to make disciples. Let’s start with the last one first…
So how is discipling more than just imparting knowledge on people? In the time of Jesus, when a student was invited to become a follower of the Rabbi, he was essentially invited to share in the Rabbi’s life, not only his teachings. Their learning process now went into the relational and intimate dimension. Doctrine and teaching intermingled and went into conversation with the daily realities of life. To disciple means to move relationally closer and to share context, the good and the bad. It is a way that engages the heart as much as the mind. It is one where your example speaks as loudly as your words. The important thing here is that we are commanded to make people the disciples of Jesus, not of us. The only way to do that is to follow, seek and obey Jesus ourselves and to open up our lives so that people can witness how the truths of Jesus looks in the reality of our lives. Not only when we succeed and do well but also in the way it comforts us and picks us up to try again when we fail. To disciple people is just another form of the age-old commandment to love God with all our heart and our neighbours as ourselves.
Jesus elaborates on what it means by saying we should teach and baptize. The best teaching is teaching that happens in a relational context. Baptism was the initiation ritual of the church, the act whereby a person was welcomed into the community of faith. We should still baptize. But baptism is a once off event, whereas the posture behind it, the hospitality and inviting behind it, can be an everyday practice. By practising hospitality, by building relationship, by inviting people in to share life with us, we disciple.
Then, the “all nations part”. Firstly, for an individual to go to all the nations, even in the time of Jesus was logistically impossible. Jesus gave this commandment to a collective, his disciples and his church. Secondly, in our time a lot looks different than from the time of Jesus. We don’t only have nations, we have cultures and sub-cultures, nations as well as tribes. Nations aren’t as geographically restricted as they used to be. In Canada, in this very street, there are many nations present. But the sentiment behind going to all nations remains virtuous. Going out to all nations means you don’t see people that are different from you as threat but as a gift. A gift that increases your depth of understanding of God and his grace. A gift that frees you from the prison your own self interest has become. Up until the age of 12 I was raised in apartheid South Africa where the only contact I had with non-Afrikaans speaking people were our domestic help at home. I grew up with the notion that we are kept segregated to protect us. Later I realized that by keeping us from the wonderful diverse variety of people God thought up, we were robbed rather than protected, scarred rather than saved. Today I thank God that I indeed managed to become somebody that goes out to all the nations. My life is so much richer.
Then the “go”. We tend to view this command in terms of the destination, the place where to God is sending us. “God, where do you want me to go?”. When I was young, I fantasized about this exotic destination God will send me to (come to think of it except for the cold Canada is kind of an exotic destination!). But we should see the command to go not in terms of the destination but in terms of the origin. To understand us as the people being sent, is to understand that our real home is not in the world in its current from. That we originated with God in heaven and that we will be reunited with him in a new heaven and earth. That means wherever I go, even when I go to the people in the town I grew up in, I represent where I really come from and the Owner of that residence. Sometimes going to a whole new place makes it easier to live in awareness of us coming from elsewhere. But even when we stay put, we need to remind ourselves that by the notion of being children of God, we are sent. We come from elsewhere. We are “resident Aliens” as Stanley Hauwerwas puts it. We have the interests of a heavenly Kingdom on our hearts and minds that is yet to be embraced fully by the places where we find ourselves in in the here and the now.
This will help us with what so many people struggle with. The fact that they don’t feel quite at home anywhere. With the fact that most of us feel that we don’t quite fit perfectly anywhere. We are sometimes rejected and opposed, sometimes tolerated, sometimes even welcomed but we never quite feel at home. It’s ok. It happens to people who are sent from elsewhere. It should serve as a reminder that we are sent. It could also protect us from having unrealistic expectations of places and people. We can make many things better by preaching and demonstrating the gospel and we should, but Jesus can and will make all things new. Everything is not up to us.
Close
All the commandments Jesus gave his disciples as parting words in Matthew 28, stands under the message of all authority given to Him. This fact, that He has all authority carried the hope that they would be able to do what He commanded them to do.
What does it mean when we say Jesus has authority? Authority, is where we get the word “author” from. What is an author? Well, a writer is someone that can write. But an author is one who cannot only write but can write a good story. Jesus tells his disciples that God the Author of Life gave Him the stamp of approval to author life. To be the writer of this world’s story and to be the writer of my story and of your story. When we acknowledge Jesus’s authority, this is what we do: we acknowledge Him as the author our life story.
And when we allow Jesus to do this, we eventually look back on a life with a lot of verbs in them that our author loves to write into his good stories. Those verbs are the very ingredients of a good story. The verbs are:
Gather: People that meet and collaborate with each other in spite of their fears and in anticipation that God can do great things through his church
Worship: People that worship as a response to the faith they have been given and in spite of the doubt that they are still struggling with.
Go: People that live from an understanding of their godly origin and destination that engages fearlessly with even the most broken realities in our world.
Disciple: People who open their lives, follow Jesus with all their power and trust Him to pick them up when the fall and fail.
And look at you. By God’s grace these verbs have become a refrain in your own life story already. Jesus authors your life. We are in for a happy ending. Our identity is not determined by how good or successful we are, neither by finding our “true selves” or in attaining what we want to be. It is not rooted in who we are but in Whose we are. We are Jesus’s. It’s a gift. Receive it and praise the Lord for it!
Amen