Oh holy one, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts bring a blessing to us and glory to you. Amen.
Today is the first Sunday after Pentecost. Susie talked about it in her children’s sermon, the day that we celebrate God’s gift of the Holy Spirit to Jesus followers. Last Sunday in the sermon from our associate conference minister, Reverend Chad Tanaka Pac, we were reminded of that story from the book of Acts, the sound of rushing wind where Jesus’ friends had gathered in the upper room, the tongues of fire on each other’s heads. People visiting Jerusalem that day, and there were a lot of people visiting Jerusalem that day because it was a big religious holiday. They were able to hear the disciples words in their own native tongues. And Peter’s speech that day recalled the words of ancient prophet poets who imagined a day so filled with God’s spirit that the young ones would prophesy and see visions and the old ones would dream dreams of God’s justice and peace. But then what? The helper, the pariclete, the spirit that Jesus had promised had come and empowered them to do what? What were the disciples to do with this promise and this power? What was the charge from Jesus to them? The lectionary text for this Sunday from the book of Matthew is one of the texts that the Christian church has used for 2,000 years as its marching orders, so to speak, of what the followers of Jesus were indeed called to do. Here again, some of the words from the 28th chapter of the book of Matthew. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. Now, this particular text has been known for a very long time as the great commission. This is what Jesus commissioned his followers to do. The Gospel of Mark has a very similar passage which may sound a little more familiar to us in the King James. Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. These verses have long been at the heart of evangelical Protestant Christianity. The word evangelical, which was introduced into English not long after the Protestant Reformation, is from a Greek word that means to bring good news. Evangelicals have built have a belief system that compels them to bring good news and win souls to Christ. Now, I’m not an evangelical, but I was raised in that tradition. I understand the passion behind it. I believe that the vast majority of evangelicals work hard at introducing Jesus to their friends, their family, even the whole world are operating from a place of love and concern for others as they work to spread the good news of Jesus.
But we all know that people have been turned off by the church, left the church entirely because of that evangelical fervor that has sometimes sometimes carried with it simply bad theology. And they’ve been told that some part of their being is unacceptable to the church and to God. people who are divorced, who are part of the LGBT community, women who want to be leaders, single parents, divorced folks, or whole litany of other less than realities of our human beings of our of our being human have often felt that sting of unacceptance. Others have been told that they can’t really be Christian because they do not believe this or that or conform to this or that part of a lifestyle.
My sister is four years older than me and she’s been divorced since her mid30s. She tells me that she has never entirely felt welcome at any of the churches that she has attended in the town where she lives. She is among those that has left the church because of just plain bad theology and that some conservative churches espouse. Now the great commission has been at the heart of the Christian min missionary movement. We have seen that throughout Western Christian history, Europeans and Euroamericans have gone all over the globe converting people to their version of Christianity. And sadly, all too often, these versions of Christianity have gone hand in hand with colonialism and the attempt to impose new cultural views onto the people who were being converted. The introduction of common western diseases like the measles wiped out thousands of wouldbe converts. And so and so many missionaries literally brought death to the indigenous people to whom they had sought to bring life. Sadly, our history is even more grim than that. progression progressive Christian leader, speaker, and author Brian McLaren wrote a book about 10 years ago that some of you may have read. It’s called The Great Spiritual Migration, and it examines the movement of folks out of conservative and mainline Christian churches into that I’m spiritual but not religious place. In it are some very disturbing examples of how notions of Christian mission became notions of Christian exceptionalism and that wrecked horror in many parts of the world. Let me read just a bit from McLaren’s book where he’s talking about the in the Christian invasion of the American continents some 500 years ago. A papal proclamation of 1455 empowered the Christian kings of Europe to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Muslims and pagans whatsoever and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them. And to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dupdoms, countries, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit. This statement serves as the basis for what is commonly called the of discovery, the teaching that whatever Christians discover, they can take and use as they wish. McLaren goes on to lay out in the rest of the chapter how the doctrine of discovery led to unspeakable violence in the name of Christianity. He also draws a straight line from the doctrine of discovery to what he calls the doctrine of white Christian privilege. And I would extend that line to the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States. Now because of this unfortunate history, because of our personal experiences, some of some of us of exclusion and otherness.
And because we know that we live in a pluralistic world with many and various expressions of faithful living, a lot of us are just was not certain what to do with today’s text. When I mentioned to a clergy colleague that I was preaching on the great commission, he sort of gritted his teeth and shuddered and said, but you know, I think this passage is redeemable. I think that we can explore it and find ways that these few verses which have so [snorts] plagued our Christian history. I think that they can be truly lifeaffffirming and motivating for us today as perhaps they have not been before. And I want to try by looking at the action words, the verbs in the text. Now I invite us to think about, understand, perhaps affirm if this is what you are comfortable with that the gospel that Jesus taught is not about what doctrine we believe. He never spoke in doctrinal language. The Christianity, the way of living that Jesus taught is about how we live. Christianity is about our now life, not our afterlife. To borrow a phrase from McLaren, the heart of Christianity is not what we have in our heads, but that led by our hearts, we live in the right way with one another. Christianity is about caring and kindness. Christianity is about love for the other. Christianity is about action. So, what are the action words in today’s text? Go, make, baptize, and teach. So, let’s take a quick look at each one of those verbs and see what it is Jesus really asked his followers to do. Go. Now, I hear that as don’t just sit around. Don’t be passive. Don’t not engage with the world around you. Go out, be aware, be involved with the concerns and cares of the day. Don’t isolate yourselves. Don’t let us stick our heads in the sand and ignore the needs of the world. Go. Jesus said, “Being part of a nice, comfortable, and minimal community is sweet, as we all experience every Sunday. But there is something more that we are also called to do, to be. For some of us, this word from Jesus may mean that we are called to move geographically beyond where we are. For others of us, it may mean that we are called to move beyond our culture. For some of us, it simply means to move outside of our comfort zones to touch the world that God so loves. I also think that we can hear in that word go a call to be intentional. Whether we go physically or emotionally, we are called to put ourselves out there in the world as ambassadors of God’s love, modeling God’s extravagant welcome. We are called to be available to those whom we meet who those who God puts in our path as living expressions of God’s goodness and grace. Make is the next action word. But make what? Make disciples. To be a disciple is to be a pupil, a follower. This call in Matthew invites people into a path that points to God as a way of life with God as our articulated by Jesus. Making disciples does not mean to beat people over the head and tell them what they have to believe and that they’re going to go to hell if they don’t. Making disciples means inviting people into an exploration of a deeper truth that God is love and we become true followers, true disciples when we too express and manifest God’s love for all of creation.
Next is baptize. I love this one, but I’m a real church person. Baptism is a sacrament of the church, a visible sign of an invisible grace. Baptism is the ritual through which we name, claim, and embrace our community. Baptism is the entry point into Christian fellowship and into a covenanted group of people who promise to be there for one another. The community is a big part of my theology. I think that the wonder of community is what enabled Christianity to flourish in its infancy. The world was a rugged place and a violent place in first century Palestine under the Roman Empire. The young Christian communities literally saved one another’s lives. Being part of a Christian community meant that you wouldn’t go hungry and your family would be cared for. In my thinking, bapti baptism was not is not a big doctrinal or the theologically correct undertaking. It’s simply a gateway to a lifesaving, covenantal, sacramental, meaning gracefilled communal life. That was huge in the rugged realities of the first century. and it’s just as big today.
The last action word is teach. The text reads, “Teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Now, that sounds ownorous and kind of impossible until we really reflect on what it is that Jesus commanded over and over and over. Jesus teaching to his disciples was love. What’s the most important commandment? To love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and all your mind. And the second is like unto it. Love your neighbor as yourself. John 13:35 reads, “By this they will know you are my disciples, that you love one another. 1 John 4:7 reads, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.” love that calls us, as Jesus did, to welcome and care for the other, not to judge each other, not to be bound by old laws and norms, but live in a way that enables God’s love for all of humanity and for all of creation. love that compels us, as in a story Jesus told just a few pages earlier in the Matthew text, to leave the feast, to go out into the highways and byways, to find those who have been excluded, discarded, and ignored and bring them back inside and give them a seat at the banqueting table.
Go. Be intentional. Be available. Be aware. Be an ambassador. Make disciples. Invite one another into a path that leads toward the center of God’s own heart. Baptize. Honor the covenantal ties that bind us to one another in sacred community. Teach, lift up again and again that Jesus message for the world is simple. Love God. Love each other. Love God’s creation. May God make true and living disciples of us all. Amen.