It’s time to go. You’ve heard that a few times in your life, I know. Said it many times too. Go. Let’s go. Can we go? Ready to go? Questions, statements, promises, pleading - Go has lots of moods, lots of attitudes. It’s hard to deny the excitement inherent in Go. It just drips with possibility and with newness. Go into a new world, a new reality, a new way of being. Who could say no to Go? The horizons are calling and the world is yours. Just go. Go and see, go and live, go and be. A new chapter is a new beginning, but also a continuation of the story so far. Go! Of course we want to go.
But. There is the other side of Go. In order to go you have to leave. To move toward a new tomorrow is sometimes to leave a comfortable – or even not so comfortable, but maybe familiar – yesterday. To embrace the call to go is to turn your back on stay. It is to leave behind those who have become family, even as you stride into an uncertain hope, a possible joy.
We stand on a mountain with the remaining disciples, as they wait for whatever might be coming next. Mountains in the Bible are more than simply geologic formations. They are theological signposts. Something significant is going to happen. You can tell. There’s a mountain. It’s a dead giveaway. Or rather a living one. Mountains are alive (thank you Rogers and Hammerstein by way of Julie Andrews), but not just with the sound of music. No, mountains are alive with the Presence and Power of God. Standing on this mountain, the lives of all of the disciples was about to change forever. In fact the whole world was about to change forever. Not that they knew that in that moment. All they knew is that they heard that word: Go.
Matthew 28:16-20 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 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, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
I’m only reading the last couple of verses in worship, so we can get right to the Go. But here, I’ll back up and include some of the prelude to Jesus’s command. There’s some very important information in these extra verses. We want to get right to the crux of it, to the Go, the Great Commission. And that’s certainly understandable. That’s where the work is, that’s where the call is. We are a part of a denomination that takes as its mission understanding that we are to be Making Disciples for Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World. And we say it like that, with capitals and emphases. You can hear it in how we say it. We say it with fervor, with passion, we say it, let’s admit it, with a bit of desperation. We’re losing our grip on what we have been, and uncertain about what we will become. So we cling tightly to the Great Commission for the salvation of the church, of the denomination. And we hold it so tightly we squeeze the life out of it. It has become our weapon, our bludgeon to force a resurrection of the churches we were once upon a time, in our memory if not in fact.
It comes down, I believe, to how we hear the word Go. All authority has been given to me, says Jesus, to drive His point home. To sear it into their souls, so that they would bow to the King, and scuttle out of the mountainous throne room ready to do His bidding by hook or by crook. Go. Make disciples! Whether they want to be made or not. Baptize them, even if you have to hold them under the water until they stop squirming, get them in, get them done. Then teach them to obey. Obey. Put them in their place. Under the thumb, under the heel. Make them good, make them pure, make them right when all they seem to want is wrong. Get ‘er done!
You’re squirming as you read those words, aren’t you? I hope so. I was squirming as I wrote them. But the truth is that is the attitude of many in the faith historically and today. The Great Commission is license to hate, to wield the sword, to put down, look down, come down on those who don’t measure up. Go, run over the world until you’ve made it into the image that is palatable to Me! And if some get hurt in the process, well, better that than to miss the urgency of the call to Go. It’s in there, they say. That steel, that iron, don’t mess with God. All authority has been given to me. There is no other way. So, you’d better shape up. Get in line. And if you don’t have the right credentials, we don’t want you, we won’t let you in. Go.
Matthew says, with what sounds like a certain amount of sad honesty, that it was eleven disciples that gathered on that mountain. Did you notice. Maybe he hoped you wouldn’t. Eleven. They were broken. Incomplete. One of them turned, betrayed them, threw it all back in their faces and pushed to make something happen that wasn’t going to happen, or pulled down the curtains to reveal the smoke and mirrors of the whole enterprise. At least that must have been what he thought. Oh, I know, John says it was the enemy. That he was infected, diseased. Can’t blame him, he was a cancer that was cut out. Let’s point the finger and let him take the blame. It absolves us. Our betrayal can remain hidden that way. Our weaknesses, our failings pale before his.
But Matthew doesn’t seem interested in blame, just in truth. Eleven disciples gathered on that mountain. Carrying their wounds, their failures, their disappointment and their fears. Even when Jesus appeared, he says, that they worshiped but some doubted. Really? The resurrected Christ, stood before them, about to ascend into heaven and take His place at the right hand of Almighty God. And some doubted? Still? On the mountain?
We aren’t told what they doubted. Him? Themselves? The mission that was about to be handed to them like a hot coal from a fire? All the above or something else entirely. Who knows? We don’t. Except that we do. Because we have them too. Those doubts. That sense of inadequacy. That feeling that maybe we shouldn’t force someone else to believe what isn’t within them to believe. That maybe we should just keep it to ourselves, this faith thing. Keep it quiet, don’t make waves, don’t disturb the neighbors. Live and let live. That’s a better motto. Better than Go anyway.
But then, maybe we’ve got the tone wrong. Maybe it isn’t about triumphalism. But about joy. Not about being right, but about being whole. Maybe Jesus meant that all that happen has just shown that His way, His life, His parabolic teaching was indeed a better way to be, and that if we were thinking right we couldn’t keep it to ourselves if we tried. It will leak out of us as we live in the world as fully alive human beings. So, says Jesus, live intentionally. Live outwardly. When He says “make disciples” he doesn’t imagine a anvil upon which we pound them into shape. Instead, He imagines a relationship. He says, Go spend time with people, value them, learn from them, know them, help them, tell them what makes you the fully alive person that you are. It isn’t a course you take and get a diploma, it’s a way of living that we are always growing into. Make disciples as you are being made into a disciple.
Baptize them. That sounds formal, ritual, joining up, signing on the line, right? Well, sure. But maybe more. Baptism means cleansing. Washing. Maybe he meant less of a rite of the church and more of a process of being made clean, peeling off the understandings of a self-centered culture, scraping away the stuff centric life, and immersing yourself in the Creator God, the Redeemer Christ and the Sustainer Spirit. Give them something else, Jesus was saying, to live by, to be defined by. Give them Me, He said with that trademark thousand watt smile. And teach. Oh yes. Teach them obedience. Not by breaking their will, though, not by beatings and repetitions, but by passion and joy and encouragement.
Go, He said, to them and to us. Go. And trust that He knows how hard that is. That to Go forward is to leave something behind. That to accept the call to Go is to live with uncertainty and a sense of what if and why not. It is to embrace the goodness of God in spite of those doubts. Trusting that new place, the new world is a mountain of potential and power and the Presence of God. And maybe the real call is to live into Go rather than to jump and run to meet some deadline, some quota. Having known failure, Go is harder to hear. Harder, but not impossible. Because with God all things are possible. Even Go.
Shalom,
Derek
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