Father, Spirit, Jesus

With Us

Matthew 28:16–20 NRSV

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Sometimes we are made to feel like a fool for believing what Christians do. Jesus had only lived on this earth for 33 years when His life was tragically snuffed out as He was nailed to a Roman cross and was crucified. He had only taught His disciples, his followers, his students for a scant 3 years when it all came to a screeching halt. He was arrested and He was crucified. He died and He was buried.

Normally, the death of a leader will either mean the death of a movement or the leader who was killed becomes a martyr. I have often wondered how life may be different in America if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. hadn’t been assassinated on that fateful April day in 1968. What kind of difference would he have made as a leader in the civil rights movement had he lived? Would the movement have made more progress, or was his martyrdom more effective than his life could have ever been? I don’t really know the answers to those questions, and it is probably futile to try to formulate an answer.

Jesus was dead and He was buried, but He didn’t become a martyr. Martyrs bodies stay in the grave. What we believe, because of the testimony of the disciples and others who saw Him is that not only was He dead and buried on Friday, but that He rose from the dead on Sunday - conquering death. Not only had he conquered death, He had appeared to the disciples over a period of about 40 days, over and over again. We are told that He continued to teach the disciples during this time and that they worshipped Him.

And yet, in this passage that we know as the Great Commission we are told that there are only 11 disciples with Him. Judas had betrayed Jesus and then taken his own life. The 11 disciples that were left went to an unnamed mountain in the back country of Galilee. We are not told why they went there, just that they did. There, we are told that this small group saw Jesus, and they worshipped Him, but Matthew adds that Even some of that small crowd still doubted Him.

Sometimes we are made to feel like a fool for believing what Christians do.

It was to this small group of 11 men that Jesus gave the task of going and making disciples, not just in Jerusalem or in their home towns, but To make disciples of all nations!

Now, when He said nations, He was not talking in terms that we often think today. Today, our world is divided into nation states, and we proudly declare that The Church of the Nazarene has church work in more than 140 nations. I have been at our General Assembly for the march of nations and watched as people carry a flag to represent every country in which we have active ministry. It is a wonderfully exciting and moving experience to see that. It is of utmost importance for us to take the message of holiness to the entire known world.

When we try to recapture what Jesus was saying to His disciples, it is not that Jesus was speaking of nation states when He said to make disciples of all nations. He was telling His disciples that They were to make followers of Jesus among all the people that they would encounter everywhere. It was their task to take the message and life lessons that Jesus had given them and make lifelong learners of people everywhere they went.

It was quite the task for this little group of believers. There were only 11 of them - although a few weeks ago there had been 12. Their numbers were dwindling, and even among the 11 that were present, we are told that some doubted. Thomas Long says in Feasting on the Word that “Telling this little band of confused and disoriented disciples that they were to herd all the peoples of the earth toward Mount Zion in the name of Jesus would be like standing in front of most congregations today—many of them small and all of them of mixed motives and uncertain convictions—and telling them, “Go into all the world and cure cancer, clean up the environment, evangelize the unbelieving, and, while you are at it, establish world peace.”

Thomas G. Long, “Homiletical Perspective on Matthew 28:16–20,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year A, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, vol. 3 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 47–49.

The task laid out before them was impossible for them to accomplish. They had no training in how to do such a thing. They weren’t even community organizers, they were fisherman and ordinary men, and 1 tax collector.

Sometimes we are made to feel like a fool for believing what Christians do.

And yet, we saw last week what Jesus was able to do with this small band of men when the Holy Spirit came on them. On the Day of Pentecost, they were filled with the holy Spirit, and on that very day they reached people from all over the known world. It wasn’t because of who they were, but because of what the Holy Spirit was able to accomplish in them that the world changed. All authority has been given to Jesus. It has not been given to the church, or to the leaders of our or any other denomination. Authority has not been given to the church in America - authority has been given to Jesus, and He has sent His disciples with strict instructions that they were to make more disciples. They were to multiply His work, and so are we!

Sometimes we get the impression that what we are to do is to make church members or church attenders, and so we read and study how to reach people and build great churches, but Jesus specifically gave the instruction that they were to make disciples. It is still our task to go and make disciples of all nations - to go and make disciples wherever we may be. To go and make disciples without regard to whether people look or talk like us.

Let’s be honest, here - sometimes the church has done a much better job of taking the message around the world than we have done to take the message next door or down the street to the person who doesn’t look like us. We are not to just send out others who will make disciples where they are - We are to go and make disciples! Sometimes we look proudly at the job we have done because we have sent others, but sending others does not mean that we no longer have the same obligation. We are to make disciples wherever we are. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel woefully inadequate for the task that Jesus has given to us.

Sometimes we are made to feel like a fool for believing what Christians do.

Jesus further gives the instruction that the disciples, and therefore, we are to baptize all kinds of people in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Baptism is not just a matter of using water to get people wet. If that were the case, we could accomplish this command much like the police in Hong Kong are doing with looters and rioters. Did you read about this? In Hong Kong, they are apparently spraying rioters with water that has blue dye in it so that they can identify the participants later. We all know that may work to identify rioters, but maybe we should use colored water so that we can identify who has been baptized. I don’t know, it probably wouldn’t catch on.

I am not trying to make light of the importance of baptism. It is an essential of the Christian faith. Baptism, as a sacrament, it is something that Jesus Himself told us that we were to do as the church. But getting wet is not enough. I was called upon years ago by a family that had an elderly member of their family that was actively dying. The family had called me to come, even though I had not met anybody in that family before. As far as they could remember, this mother, grandma, and great-grandma had never been one to go to church, and as far as anybody could remember, they had never known her to be baptized.

There were some of the family members that wanted me to baptize her as she lay there in a coma. It was their understanding that since she was soon going to die, she needed to be baptized because without being baptized, she would be hopelessly and eternally lost. Just putting water on someone and calling it baptism will do nothing but get them wet. I often tell people when they are preparing for baptism that if they have not truly repented of their sins and are a disciple, or follower of Jesus, then baptism will only get them wet.

When Jesus says that we are to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, it is prefaced by His command to “go and make disciples!” That takes a whole lot more work than just getting people wet. Jesus adds that Making disciples includes teaching people to obey everything that he had commanded them. Teaching is one of the things that the church has worked hard at down through the years.

That’s one of the reasons that the Church of the Nazarene has developed colleges and Universities all around the world. It is also why we see Sunday School as such a vitally important part of what we do. Right now we have been unable to have Sunday School for quite awhile, and that breaks my heart in many ways!

I want to encourage you, that we all have to take our own education into our own hands as well. Spending time in God’s Word and learning what God desires in your life is essential to our Christian life. Just because we cannot meet in our classes, please don’t neglect the opportunities that you have to learn and grow in Christ even during these days. Hopefully, it will not be long before we can re-open Sunday School once again.

How has the church done with these instructions that Jesus has given us? Well, unfortunately, the history of the church is not squeaky clean and the church has not always even chosen the moral high road. I wish that the history of the church was the history of people who always followed Jesus’ teaching and direction. I wish that we could be proud of everything that has been done in and by and through the church in the name of Jesus. But I have read church history. The church has not always been faithful to the teachings of Jesus.

Even in very recent years, the church has not always lived up to the teachings of Jesus. You don’t have to look very far until you see that to be the case. That is because the church is a human institution, and is made up of human beings who sometimes mess up. Sometimes it happens because there are individuals who are part of the church, and they may have gotten wet, but they never really repented, meaning turned away from their sins. They are part of the church, but not truly part of the kingdom of God. Sometimes it happens because we are human and we are limited in our ability to understand, so our failures are not intentional.

I really think that in the current mess that our world is in, many truly good people have inadvertently been involved in a system that has allowed racism to be considered acceptable. But God sent Jesus to the world, and Jesus sent His disciples, and therefore, us, to make disciples of the nations - yes, even those that do not look like us or talk like us or have the same kind of experiences in life that we have.

Sometimes we are made to feel like a fool for believing what Christians do.

But even with all of the flaws and failures, I believe in the Church of Jesus! I believe in this plan that Jesus has given us, and God wants to use His church to reach the people in our world. We have embraced from the earliest days of the Church of the Nazarene, the idea that we are to go - Nazarene Missions International, under different names - Nazarene Women’s Missionary Society, it was called in its early days. Then it was known as Nazarene World Mission Society for many years. Today, we call it Nazarene Missions International. Under any name, our mission wing has been responsible for promoting holiness around our world in many, many places.

A few years ago, our denomination recognized that the United States and Canada are also considered mission areas. There are people all around us that do not know the truth of the gospel, that God made us all and gave us the freedom to choose, but all of us chose sin. Every one of us has chosen to turn our backs on God and walk away from His plan for our lives. This sin separated us from God, and we cannot breach the divide that our sins have caused. That is why God sent His only Son, so that He could teach us how to live and give His life on Calvary for our sins.

Our sins demanded death!

Romans 6:23 NRSV

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Jesus paid that penalty for our sins. But 3 days later, His tomb was empty - He was raised from death to life - and because of that, if we will accept His offer of forgiveness, we will be born again. In that moment, we begin a lifelong growth process that will bring us to be more and more like Jesus.

I believe that in spite of all of the flaws, Jesus can make His church to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. Jesus said, “Go 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 I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Jesus gave this commandment to His disciples – and through them, the commandment comes now to us! Our job is to seek – to Go and make disciples! But notice this – Jesus says – “I am with you always” – even to the end of the age. We have the responsibility to tell people about our savior. No Generation can tell the Good News to this Generation except this Generation. That means that you and I have a job to do. If we don’t share the good news – it won’t be shared! We are charged with telling people in our time about Jesus.

But I am so thankful that we don’t have to do it alone, Jesus said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” When we share with our neighbors and friends about our relationship we have with Christ – He is right there with us.

Now, while it is true that He will help us – He will be with us – not everyone will accept Jesus because we have told them about Him. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t keep telling them. Why - because God is the only answer to the problems that plague our world. If you had the cure for cancer and did not share it – it would be criminal. If you had the cure for aids and did not share it – it would be immoral. But we know the cure for sin. If you know Christ – He has touched you – He has forgiven you. You know how people can have peace with God. We MUST share the cure in a sick and hurting world.

Sometimes we are made to feel like a fool for believing what Christians do.

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year A, Volume 3 Homiletical Perspective

Garret Keizer, a minister in Vermont, tells of conducting an Easter vigil in his little church. Only two people show up for the service, but Keizer nonetheless lights the paschal candle and says the prayer. “The candle sputters in the half darkness,” he writes, “like a voice too embarrassed or overwhelmed to proclaim the news: ‘Christ is risen.’ ” He goes on:

But it catches fire, and there we are, three people and a flickering light in an old church on a Saturday evening in the spring, with the noise of the cars and their winter rusted mufflers outside.The moment is filled with ambiguities of all such quiet observances among few people, in the midst of an oblivious population in a radically secular age. The act is so ambiguous because its terms are so extreme: the Lord is with us, or we are pathetic fools. So it is always with the church. We take a fragmentary community, a fragmentary faith, a fragmentary understanding of the Trinitarian God, and we go into the world with everything Jesus has taught us. Either the Lord is with us and all authority has been given to Christ, or we are indeed pathetic fools.

Sometimes we are made to feel like a fool for believing what Christians do. Either the Lord is with us and all authority has been given to Christ, or we are indeed pathetic fools.

Yes! Jesus Christ is with us! He has promised that He would be with us to the very end of the age.