The Mission to Conquered Peoples.

Matthew 28:16-20.

I.

            After his resurrection, Jesus’ last words in the gospel of Matthew are spoken by him on a mountain in Galilee.  And the thing that catches me here, first of all, is that, “some doubted.”  They are standing there with the risen Jesus before their eyes, and still some are not sure what is happening or who this is.  And the Greek text doesn’t even have the word “some,” which means that it is possible that no one was fully tracking with this event, even as they are worshiping!

            So, if they doubted while the risen Lord was standing in front of them, at least maybe we should not feel so bad when we doubt.  Indeed, maybe doubt is part of what makes faith faith.  Some kind of interpretive leap is always necessary.  The raw data of our experience is never so obvious and conclusive to everyone.  Faith is when we hold to the invisible truth beneath the visible experience. 

            In other words, there are always many ways to read and interpret our experience.  On that mountain, the minds of the disciples were racing to grasp, categorize, and understand, what they were seeing.  Clearly the risen Lord appeared in some form that was not immediately recognizable to everyone.

            And we know what that’s like.  We know that different people see Jesus differently.  We know we can excitedly tell someone about Jesus… and have them shake their heads and go, “I don’t think so.”  How many different artistic portrayals of Jesus are there?  How many would we recognize as Jesus?  How many would we even reject as clearly false? 

            Remember that in Matthew the disciples have not yet seen the risen Jesus themselves.  All they have is the testimony of two women, Mary Magdalene and someone just called “the other Mary.”  They are the ones who found the tomb empty and then Jesus appeared to them, telling them to tell the disciples to go to Galilee where they would see him.

            So the disciples have made the trip back to Galilee purely on the word of these two women who told them what must have seemed like an impossible and even insane story.  So their first act of faith is to trust them.  Now, they were probably going to go back home to Galilee anyway.  But who knows what each disciple is thinking as he climbs that mountain?  Who knows what they are expecting to find at the top? 

            Did they think “this is pointless, but Mary has never led us astray before, but she is a woman and you know how excitable they can be, and what have I got to lose, if she’s wrong then this is all over, and if she’s right it’ll be the greatest thing ever… but if she is right and Jesus does appear, then what will that mean for me?  What will I have to do?” 

            I imagine a mixture of hope and ambivalence, skepticism, confusion, expectation, and wonder, as they gather.  Maybe that’s how we always come to church.  Maybe that’s okay.

II.      

            Jesus does appear and speaks to them.  “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”  In other words, “In what I am about to tell you to do I’ve got your back.  Your mission is from God and God will make it prosper.  Basically, you can’t lose.”

            We cannot see the risen Jesus apart from his life and death.  That’s why so many witnesses make the point of telling us that he was identified by his wounds.  The continuity between the One who suffered and died and the One who now appears is essential.  The authority is given to the One who was crucified and gave his life for the life of the world.  The stone that was rejected has become the cornerstone.  The king of the losers has become king of the world.

            Jesus’ authority is based on his identification with the oppressed, sick, powerless, and poor people, which happens throughout his ministry and culminates in his crucifixion.  Jesus’ authority is based on his identification with the scapegoats and the “examples” made by the human authorities.  They are usurpers; he, the One they crucified, is the new and real authority.

            “Therefore,” he says, “Go and make disciples of all nations.”  The word in Greek is ethne, and in the first century one of the specific references of ethne was to distinct and discrete groups of people conquered by Rome.  So it wasn’t necessarily just nations to which Jesus is referring.  Nations as we understand them, with flags and anthems and boundaries and governments and Olympic teams, did not exist.  I suggest that when we read the word ethne in the New Testament, it should perhaps often be translated as “conquered peoples.”

            In other words, the message and resurrection of Jesus Christ is good news for all peoples, Jews and Gentiles.  But it is particularly good news for peoples, like the Jews, who are being crushed under the yoke of Roman imperial rule.  In fact, Matthew’s gospel – and the whole New Testament, for that matter – is not just a handbook for how to live a faithful life; it is more pointedly a handbook for how to live a faithful life in an oppressive, violent, unjust situation.  It is about how to build a community of peace in the midst of a terrorist Empire.

            What the disciples are to do with regard to these oppressed nations is first to make more disciples.  In other words, bring more people into the circle of Jesus-followers where they can learn what Jesus taught.  A disciple is basically a learner.

            The most imperative thing the world needs right now is people who follow Jesus, who live in simplicity, generosity, forgiveness, honesty, and healing; people who do not take, abuse, waste, steal, demolish, deplete, dissect, or hoard anything in creation.

III.

            Jesus instructs his disciples to “baptize” these conquered peoples “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  Of course, he literally means ceremonially baptizing with water, which has always been the ritual for entering into the gathering of Jesus-followers.  And these words of Jesus have become mandatory for all baptisms in the church.

            But I think the original readers of this gospel would also have heard the literal meaning of the word “baptize” which was “to immerse.”  The disciples are to, in a sense, immerse broken people into the good news of the God who is revealed as the overflowing community of love we came to call the Trinity.  The full implications of this would not be worked out until at least the 5^th century… and we are still working them out. 

            I am reminded of the way burn victims are gently immersed into a healing bath of salt water.  People who have always lived in an environment of injustice and violence need to be immersed in a new environment, one of healing, communion, love, and peace.  The Trinity is the way Christians say that God is this community, this healing, empowering, saving, joyful dance of overflowing love, in which creation, redemption, and sanctification happen.

            The living gathering of Jesus-followers is supposed to provide this healing, restoring, nurturing, saving environment or bath.  In a sense to immerse someone in the name of the Trinity is to gather them into the blessing embrace of the community, the church. 

            We had allowed baptism to be this sentimental sprinkling of water on a baby.  We had allowed baptism to become separate from the rest of church life, like it was something that happened to us a long time ago, but which there was no point remembering or talking about any further.

            But baptism is supposed to represent, among other things, the beginning of life in a new environment.  We don’t baptize anyone a second time, of course.  But our whole life in the church is in a sense a continual baptism, a continual immersion into the name of the Trinity.

            This is the antidote to existence under the pressure and demands of an Empire.  We form an alternative community where the Empire’s values and practices do not hold.  Where the Empire wants to drive people apart, making them isolated individuals in constant self-centered competition for scarce resources; the gathering of Jesus-followers draws people together into one body in which our mutual sharing witnesses to the awesome abundance of God.

IV.

            Jesus also instructs his disciples to go out and teach others to obey everything that he has commanded us to do.  And the most effective method of teaching is by example.  Teaching means encouraging others to do as we do.  It was the Pharisees and scribes whom he castigated back in chapter 23 as hypocrites.  Jesus’ disciples’ faith is expressed and validated in their actions.  They don’t say one thing and do another.  They strive to live together, and help each other to live as Jesus lived.

            That’s what the church is about, as far as Jesus is concerned… and who else matters?  It’s not about making good, productive, loyal, patriotic, compliant citizens, as someone once informed me.  I don’t find that in the New Testament anywhere.

            In John’s gospel the commandment from Jesus is “to love one another as I have loved you.”  In Matthew we see some of the radical character of this love in places like the Sermon on the Mount.  The church is a school of love, the kind of love Jesus shows us and gives to us.  Selfless, mutual, sacrificial, unconditional love.

            Sometimes I hear this passage used to defend the view that all the church should be doing is converting people to Christianity.  They get indignant when it is suggested to them that the church should be helping people in need.  Because that’s not what Jesus says to do here.  Which is true.  Jesus said to do that in chapter 25, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago.  There he is pretty clear that those are saved who minister to the needy.

            The choice is not: either make disciples or feed the hungry; either baptize or visit the sick and imprisoned; either teach people to obey Jesus or welcome the stranger, as if we can’t do both.  Obeying everything that Jesus has commanded includes serving those in need.  Being a disciple means immersing people into a community of generosity and love that overflows into the wider world.

            Being a Christian does not mean merely giving verbal assent to a set of doctrinal statements about Jesus.  Evangelism is not about merely getting other people to agree with these statements.  It means, in some sense, being Jesus!  That is, we are the continuing presence of Jesus Christ in the world, we are the inheritors of his mission, we are his body, empowered by the sacrament of his body and blood, enlivened by his Word and Spirit.

V.

            And he is with us always, even to the end of the age… which is to say, forever.

            Because he is with us, we can be the church.  We can be the gathered community of Jesus’ followers, people who keep and teach his commandments, who are then sent out in mission to a needy and broken world.  Because he is with us we can be his agents and instruments, peacemakers, healers, and comforters.  Because he is with us, we can love one another as he loved us, and extend that love into our whole world.

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