A sermon based upon Matthew 28: 16-20
By
Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.
Flat
Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
The
Second Sunday After Christmas (Cycle A), January 5th, 2020
Human
stories in the news are always the best.
One of the best of the best human stories is about Larry Walters, a
thirty-three-year old truck driver in California. For his entire life, Larry
wanted to fly, to glide through the sky, but his poor eyesight prevented him
from getting his pilot license. So,
Larry spent most afternoons sitting in his backyard on an old lawn chair.
One
afternoon, in mid-1982, Larry hooked up 45 helium-filled, surplus, weather
balloons to his old lawn chair. He tied a 6-pack of beer to one leg, some
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to the other, put on a parachute, hung a CB
radio to his belt, and sat down in his lawn chair with a BB gun in his lap so
he could pop the balloons when he wanted to come down.
Larry
thought he would go up about 200 feet. Instead, he shot up 11,000 feet, right
through an approach corridor of the Long Beach Airport. When Larry finally shot out enough balloons to
land safely, reporters immediately asked, “Were you scared?” “Wonderfully so,” Larry
replied. “What made you do this?” they asked. Larry said, “Sometimes you
just can’t sit there!”
The
ending of Matthew’s gospel agrees with Larry Walters: “Therefore, go and
make disciples of all nations,... When
it comes our proper response to the Great Commission given by Jesus Christ, we
‘just can’t sit here’! Each of the four
gospels, and the book of Acts too, have some form of challenge and commissioning.
Similar to Matthew, the Gospel of Mark has
Jesus saying: “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all
creation” (16:15).
Luke’s gospel has Jesus declaring: “…repentance
and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning
at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these
things” (24:47-48).
In Acts, Luke is more specific: “…you will
be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of
the earth.”
Then, in John’s gospel, the great commission is
given most concisely: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (20:21).
Each
in there own way, have the same urgency. They create the same feeling I had at each opening
of the 1970’s hit TV series, ‘Mission Impossible’. The
show always started with an offer for ‘agents’ to take an ‘impossible’ mission,
saying , “If you choose to accept this mission…”. But the difference with the gospel mission is
that it not a secret mission and we are not given the option to refuse. As one mission’s professor told his students:
“Some must go, some must let go, some must help go, but everybody needs to
get going.” ‘Sometimes we just can’t
sit there’! First century Christians
lived by Christ’s mission. Missionaries
in the 20th century devoted their lives to it. But the question in this 21st century is what
will we do with it? How will we ‘choose
to accept’ the mission Jesus has given to us?
As
we begin this New Year together, from now until Easter, I plan to preach about the
fundamental purpose the church. Last
year, both of our churches formed strategy teams to think about our specific
mission as churches, but our consideration isn’t complete until the whole
congregation joins in this discussion.
To help us focus on the church’s primary purpose, I’m going to follow some
key passages from Matthew’s gospel, which is appropriately nicknamed, The
Church’s Handbook.’ It is in
Matthew’s gospel that we have the Great Commission expressed in its most classic
form. Standing at the center of four imperatives
to Go! Baptize! Teach!
Obey, is what has become, in our increasingly secular society, the
most pressing priority of the church today, to Go, and Make
disciples’…”. Our mission, ‘if we choose to accept’, is to
answer in our own churches, is not to answer what should we do, but it is to
answer ‘how’ we can ‘make disciples’ of Jesus Christ.
…AND
SOME DOUBTED
To
begin to answer ‘how’ starts by answering ‘who’. Who ‘can’ and ‘should’ be a disciple of Jesus
Christ?
When
you answer who now, we should refer back to who ‘then’. For the story of the
gospel, in all four gospels is that Jesus chose his own disciples; twelve to be
exact. No doubt this was symbolic of the
the 12 tribes of Israel, expressing the hope that 12 leaders would rise up and
help bring God’s perfect rule over his people.
What was most peculiar about Jesus was that he chooses his own
disciples. The normal practice in Jesus’
day, was for would-be-disciples to choose a rabbi they would like to teach
them, the unique difference with Jesus is that he took the initiative and did
the inviting.
So,
if Jesus still does the inviting, what qualities do you think Jesus used to
select his disciples then, that he might still use today? That would make for
an interesting study, but we can only address three of them that are reflected
in this Great Commission Text from Matthew. And the first quality is quite
surprising. Our text begins openly and
quite honestly, reporting that when Jesus entered the room with his remaining eleven
disciples, after his betrayal by Judas, his crucifixion and resurrection, the
text says: “When
they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted.” (Matt.
28:17 CSB17).
Does the Bible’s honesty shock you? Here, we not only have a picture of what was
going on in the Upper Room, but what happened there also reflects what
continues to happen in church, when we all come together to worship each
Sunday. When we come together to
worship Jesus as Savior and Lord, there will always be those ‘some’ who
still have doubts. Can you have a more honest,
realistic, and important description of what it means to be church in the
world, than that all of us are not fully convinced? And should having doubts about Jesus, being
cautious or hesitant, keep you from following and learning from Jesus? Certainly not? This may, in fact, be what qualifies some of
us to become learners and disciples of Jesus.
Without the capacity to doubt and the courage to face and ‘doubt your
doubts’ you will not be a very good follower of Jesus. As someone has said, ‘doubts are the ants in
the pants of developing a strong faith’.
One great illustration of doubt I heard about came right
out of the tragedy of 911. One Christian
who was filled with hurt and hate afterward, told a fellow Christian, that he
couldn’t come to church and honestly pray the the traditional ‘Our Father’,
saying, ‘Forgive us…as we forgive.” He
told his friend at church, “I just can’t come and repeat this and mean it.” To which his friend answered, ‘That’s OK, you
just come anyway, and when we get to that part we’ll pray it for you until you
are able to say it again?
Such openness, honesty, transparency and integrity is exactly
what Jesus is looking for in a learner, or disciple. I realize thinking about our ‘doubts’ and ‘integrity’
too, might sound like a rather strange place to begin to think about
discipleship. But it’s not, because the
point of everything Jesus was about then, and still is about now, is the truth. The very first call of every ‘would-be’ disciple
should echo and answer the same question Pilate, the Roman governor asked, when
he encountered Jesus: ‘What is truth?’
“Truth”
is a core value of the Christian gospel, just like integrity and honesty is. Christian discipleship begins with a desire and
need to know the truth; but this is not just a desire to know the truth about
the world. It is also reflected in the need
to know the truth about myself, as I am known to others, and to God. And this truth about myself and about
ourselves, becomes clear in the light of Jesus Christ who said: “I am the
Truth…the Way… and the Life!” Jesus
is the ‘truth’ that every disciple aims to learn and follow in their life.
The
presence of ‘doubters’ among the first disciples of Jesus, even after his ministry,
crucifixion, and resurrection, reminds me that to ‘learn’ the truth about Jesus,
just like we learn about the world and about ourselves is a ‘truth’ that takes ‘time’
to learn. Everything we need to know
about life, about God, about faith, and about Jesus doesn’t come to us all at once. Even more so, the ‘truth’ we still need to be
learning from Jesus, is not just learning about Jesus, it is most importantly,
it is truth that we learn ‘with Jesus’. Jesus’
invitation to discipleship and ministry is an invitation to ‘be with him’; to
spend time with him, or as the song says, ‘to walk with him, and to talk with
him, and to say that he is my own….’
What
this song reminds us is that being a ‘disciple’ or ‘follower’ of Jesus is much
more than simply believing, learning facts, mastering ideas, or developing a
certain protocol or procedures for life and living. When you read the gospels closely, you’ll
understand that all of Jesus’ disciples constantly struggled. They struggled with believing. They struggled
with understanding. They struggled with
learning. They also struggled to live how
Jesus taught them to live. What those
first disciples did do well, however, and what they did, was to ‘be with Jesus’.
Even though Peter denied him, he was
still ‘with him’, watching from a distance. And
after Judas betrayed him, he could not stand himself because he gave up being
with Jesus for money.
What
the gospel story about discipleship means, as British Pastor Sam Wells has
said, is most basically an invitation ‘to be with Jesus’, to learn from him, to
follow him, and to join him in ministry in the world. Back in 2015, Dr. Wells released his book, ‘The
Nazareth Manifesto’ where he speaks of ‘being with’ as the way of a disciple
who follows and learns from Jesus. In
that book he speaks of a person who hurting, perhaps homeless due to some
problem in their lives. He says our tendency
as humans is not to reach out and help that person, but our human tendency is rather
respond in judgement of that person, saying ‘it’s because they did this’ or ‘they
did that’ that they are in the shape they are in. But, Wells goes on to suggest, if we were ‘with
Jesus’ when we encountered that hurting person, would Jesus respond that way;
even more so, would we respond that way, if we were with Jesus and Jesus was
with us?
That’s
an revealing way to express ‘discipleship’ isn’t it; not just to say that we
believe in Jesus, or follow Jesus, but that we are ‘with Jesus’ in a way that
Jesus changes how we respond to life, and how we respond to others, especially how
we look at and respond to other people in need?
What
I thought was most interesting about the review of Dr. Well’s I read, was a letter
written from a retired doctor, that was written in response to the review of
his book. Because it shows the rarity of
a doctor becoming, not just hospital chaplain, but understanding what it means
to answer the ‘Nazareth Manifesto’ and to become a disciple who is ‘with Jesus’,
I want to read that brief letter in its entirety:
“I
am a retired physician (child and adult neurology). I went to seminary after
retiring and now I am a hospital chaplain.
Seeing
things from a different perspective, from the other side of the reflex hammer,
I have become more and more aware of what I call “accusatory medicine.”
How
often I hear from medical colleagues as well as clergy and lay people, “Well,
look at him. He is overweight. He smokes. He does not exercise.”
Most,
but not all, is said out of the hearing range of the patient.
Meanwhile
the patient is suffering or dying from cancer, pulmonary disease, or complications
of diabetes. It becomes not a matter of “Who sinned? This man or his parents?”
but of “You sinned, so here you are.”
I
shudder when I realize I have been the accuser as well. As we have endeavored
to make our staff aware of "accusatory medicine,” we have encountered
surprising denial and resistance that crosses religious and denominational
lines. (There is a great) need for medical
personnel and chaplains to “be with,” to be “incarnational,” not accusatory.
ALL AUTHORITY GIVEN…
Being or Becoming a disciple not simply a belief, an
idea, or a process, but it is an invitation to ‘be with Jesus’ and to
learn to see life and others differently; in a way that is redemptive and rescuing
rather than accusatory or judgment. The
call of a disciples first and foremost, is to be ‘with Jesus’. And you can’t ‘be with Jesus’ until you
commit to spending time with him, learning from him, and joining with him in
the kind of mission, purpose, and ministry Jesus calls his disciples to
complete. So, one of the first steps we
make in following Jesus, and answering Jesus’ call to discipleship is to set
aside ‘time’ to be with him.
May I challenge you do set aside some special time
each day, to ‘be with Jesus’? Of course,
you can be ‘with Jesus’ in many ways; through having a prayer time, by having
intense or directed Bible Study, or getting involved in a specific ministry or
mission that is not ‘accusatory’ but is ‘incarnational’; in other words, being
the ‘hands and feet of Jesus in your world.’
So, the most important first step in following Jesus
and learning from Jesus is to find some way to ‘be with Jesus’ each and every day. This is the way you will begin to overcome
your doubts and your reluctance; you must decide and you must act on that
decision ‘to be with Jesus’.
But you’ll not take this challenge seriously, unless
you are willing to give Jesus ‘authority’ over your own life. All
the ‘imperatives’ of being a ‘disciple of Jesus’ don’t rest finally on my authority,
nor do they rest upon your own wish or will.
If you remember, the ‘prayer’ Jesus taught his disciples says, “Not my will, but thy will be done, on earth, as it is in
heaven.” Christian
discipleship, that is, ‘being with Jesus’ is about making Jesus your authority,
your teacher, and the LORD of your life.
How do we make Jesus ‘our’ own authority in life? Well, besides being ‘with Jesus’ we must
also be willing to ‘submit’, ‘give’ or ‘surrender’ ourselves to what Jesus is
teaching us and actually ‘following’ the commands he gives. In other words, the “Great Commission” is
only “GREAT” when this ‘COMMISSION” becomes “COMMANDS” that shape the
priorities we have, both as churches, and as people, who are following Jesus. These five ‘imperatives’, “Go, Make, Baptize,
Teach, and Obey, were given not simply
from the Jesus who is our Savior, but from the Christ, who has become the risen
LORD; who in our own saving becomes our teacher, our master, because he is the very
revelation of love and of even God himself, in human flesh.
So, here’s my point; there is no discipleship
without ‘being with Jesus’; but there is also no true being with Jesus without
granting Jesus authority over your life.
And this is what makes discipleship most challenging today. We live in a world where we have so much wonderful
freedom to choose, to decide, and think, so that we have certain ‘rights’ to be
the ‘boss’ of our own lives. This ‘freedom’
is a wonderful thing, and we should thank God for it. But that’s is exactly the point. Freedom comes from somewhere. It is a gift.
And even our freedom to choose to be ‘our own boss’ and ‘to make and
live by our own choices’ comes to us as a gift, that is not only to be ‘had’,
but is also a ‘gift’ that can be lost.
This was exactly the context of Jesus’ teaching. He came so that his disciples ‘could know the
truth, and the truth would make them free.’
Jesus did not come to confine or restrict, but Jesus came to help his
people claim God’s gift of freedom. But
God’s freedom not, and never is without making claims on us, or without cost to
us. This is why Christian discipleship,
as a way of truth and freedom, begins as a way of ‘surrendering’ ourselves to a
higher authority than our own will, wish, desires, or self-centered demands. Christian discipleship only begins when we ‘surrender’ ourselves to the ‘authority’
that is ‘given’ to Jesus Christ.
Leslie Weatherhead, a Christian preacher and writer of
another age, also named ‘surrender’ as the very first step of ‘being
with Jesus’. Weatherhead quoted the Great
American psychologist William James, who said, ‘the crisis of self-surrender
is the ‘vital turning-point’ of the religious life’. But of course, those words were easier to say
in a day when people still had some remaining respect for ‘human’ or ‘divine’
authority, but what does ‘surrender’ mean, and what might Jesus’ authority mean
in a world where most people are determined to live by their own ‘authority’,
or live by no authority at all? Interestingly, Weatherhead’s word about
discipleship beginning as ‘surrender’, was given way back in the 60’s and 70’s
as ‘established authorities’ were being greatly questioned in both American and
British life. Today, however, it’s not
just political or religious truth that is being questioned, but all kinds of ‘truth’
being called into question. People don’t
only question what their parents say, what the politician says, what preacher
says, but they also question what the professor says, and what the professional
says, so that today, there is no more
important ‘truth’ than my own.
But even in a world where everyone wants to be their
own ‘boss’, the ‘narrow’ entrance into the Christian way of life has not
changed. There still no Christian
discipleship, no actually following Jesus, and no finding of the true spirit of
Jesus without surrendering to Jesus, as not only Savior, but as ‘Lord’ of your
life. What it means to ‘make Jesus LORD’, must be answered in every age and in every single
life. Being a disciple means that we honestly and
sincerely answer what does it mean to surrender ourselves to Jesus as our LORD,
even when we still have a life, when we still have a job, when we still have a
family, and when we live in this world, and when we are still our ‘own’ person who
still has to make hard decisions in life?
We still sing that classic song and line that says, “All to Jesus I surrender, All to him, I
freely give,…” but what that means in the real, day to day life, which is
also a life that we choose to live ourselves, but not only for ourselves, is
how we become disciples of Jesus Christ.
However, we decide, means that following Jesus has
many answers, it all boils down to ‘surrender’ in a way that, as we say in the
church, in a spiritual, personal, but real way, the Spirit of Jesus come and
sits down on the ‘throne’ of our hearts.
This is what surrender has always meant, and will always mean. The apostle Paul explained true discipleship of
the ‘heart’ as ‘having the same mind of Jesus Christ, ‘when he took the form of
a servant’ and humbled himself, sacrificing himself for others (Phil. 2:1ff). Accepting this kind of ‘mind’ Paul told the
Romans, meant both in Paul’s day, and in our own day, as well, ‘the transforming of our minds’ (Rom. 12:2), from the way it is, to the way it should be. And this is the ‘learning’ that makes
discipleship the journey of how we see things, to how to learn to see life, as
Jesus taught his disciples.
I WILL BE WITH YOU…
So, now, we have come to understand the core of the Great
Commission of Jesus Christ is to ‘go and make disciples’. There is so much that more that can
and should be said about this, but most of all, we need to grasp here that ‘disciples’, that is followers
of Jesus Christ, are ‘made’, not born.
To become a learner, follower, or disciple of Jesus
Christ is to decide to ‘be with Jesus’, not just believe in Jesus: “The devil’s believe and tremble”, the book of James says, but being with, and living like Jesus in the
world is about much more than the any simple VBS formula: ADMIT, BELIEVE, and
CONFESS. If you understand this to mean
‘confess and make Jesus your LORD’, your are on the right track, but God’s
salvation, which means surrendering your whole life to God, is not something accomplished
in a simple formula of 1,2, 3. While you
may begin to ‘work out your salvation’ in by believing and being baptized,
the work of God’s great plan of salvation is a whole life ‘thing’, a
daily thing, which all starts as a ‘surrender’ thing.
Jesus concludes his Great Commission with the
motivation to inspire his disciples to want to be with him, so they will surrender
to Jesus’ authority for their lives. It is as if Jesus is saying, “If you go, make, baptize, teach and obey, you should ‘remember’ that: “I will be with you until the end…” (28:20). Here, the language
about ‘the end of the age’ is very specific on purpose. It can be translated ‘until the end of the
world’ (KJV), but ‘the end of the age’ is what is what it says, because Jesus preached that God’s kingdom is
coming ‘on earth, as it is in heaven’. With this promise, Jesus called
his disciples to live toward the world’s ‘transformation’, not until the world’s
end.
But there is something else. Jesus is not just promising to be with his
disciples, but he is still challenging and motivating his disciples to stay
with him, to be with him, to live in him, and that this promise of Christ’s presence
will be realized, not simply by us ‘being’ disciples with Jesus, but as we continue
to ‘make disciples’ of Jesus in the world.
Here, Jesus is being very practical and realistic, not only just
spiritual or other-worldly. What he
means is that Jesus’ presence is felt in the world, as long as, we continue to make
disciples in the world. How we do this, always
starts with letting others see Jesus in us.
Tertullian,
one of the early Church fathers, said that he and most of the early converts to
Christianity were won to Christ not by books or sermons, but by observing how
Christians lived and how they died. That’s still the way it works. I don’t understand how a person can call
themselves a believer, a follower, or a disciple of Jesus, and not be concerned
about helping others ‘see Jesus’ in the way they live.
Will
Durant, a well-known and respected historian of another day, tells of the time
his little girl approached her mother and asked, “Mother, what is God like?”
The mother hesitated in the face of so great a question. She could have helped her
sew on a button, plan a meal, work a math problem, even talk with her about her
boy friend. But, about God she was unsure, so she sent her daughter to her
father. The little girl went in to her father and said, “Daddy, what is God
like?” He, too, hesitated, unsure of what to say. Later, among her
possessions, they found a slip of paper on which she had written a bit of free
verse. This what she wrote:
“I
asked my teacher what God is like. She did not know.
I
asked my mother what God is like. She did not know.
Then
I asked my father, who knows more than anyone, what God is like. He did not
know.
I
think, if I had lived as long as my teacher, my mother, or my father, I would
know something about God.”
Of
course! They each knew so much about the things that were important to them. Tragically,
their little girl learned that God was not near the top of their list.
So,
as we begin this new year, the challenge before us, and the church today, is
Discipleship. This is not only the
question whether we are being disciples, but also it is the question as to
whether we are making disciples? This
means that we too, even in our own homes, are simultaneously, both a learner
and a teacher. We are to be with Jesus, surrender to Jesus, learn
from Jesus, to remain faithful to Jesus, so that we can know in ‘this age’ that
Jesus is in, and will be with us.
But
this ‘promise’ that Christ will be ‘with us’ can’t be realize unless Jesus is
also ‘in us’ as we livesas his disciples and as we continue to make disciples to
follow him. The good news here, is that we are not alone, nor
are we on our own in this, but Jesus has promised to be with us. Again, if Larry Walters lived to tell about ‘not
just sitting there, but doing something’ after traveling 11,000 feet in the air;
and God looked after him, think what God can do through us. Whatever Christ calls us to do, he also gives
us the grace and the strength to do it. He is ‘with us’ when we choose to stay ‘with
him’. Amen.
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