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“Your
mission, if you should choose to accept it...” Those were
the words that began the hit television series, Mission:
Impossible, each and every week. Every week, the
Impossible Mission Team would receive their instructions and
then be sent on a journey.
Journeys
are important things. They are a quest, a path, a passage, a
crossing from one place to another. Some journeys last a short
time. Others last a lifetime. When you consider it, all
journeys are really beginnings. When you are on a journey, you
quickly realize that you never quite arrive at your
destination. As soon as you get to the end of your journey,
you often realize that it is, in fact, just the beginning. In
journeys, all endings are beginnings. Ask any of the young
people who just got back from a week in Mexico. They will tell
you that their journey is far from ended. In fact, it has only
just begun. Before we were even done with the trip, they were
already talking about what they were going to need to do once
they got back here in order to take what they had learned and
share its message with others. Their journey isn’t over. It
has only just begun.
This
Sunday, as a Christian community, we begin in earnest our
journey through Lent. Lent is a forty-day journey to Easter.
We are on this journey in search of something. We hope that we
find ourselves on a path, a crossing from one place to
another. And at the end of our Lenten journey, I hope that we
too will discover that this is only a beginning—a new
beginning, full of new understandings and new possibilities,
new hope and new life.
So
at the start of our journey, it is important to know that we,
too, just like in the TV show Mission: Impossible, have
received our instructions. We have received our marching
orders. Our marching orders are found in the Great Commission.
They are the mission instructions given to all Christians, and
they indeed set the course for the journey that is our lives.
As we stand at the beginning of this journey, let us hear
those words from Matthew’s Gospel one more time.
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 I have commanded you. And
surely, I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.
That
is our mission, if we choose to accept it. No small task,
really. “Go and make disciples of all the nations.” Change
the world! Every corner of it. In fact, it does seem like a
mission impossible. But it is my hope, and really my belief,
that in the next few weeks, as we look at the Great Commission
piece by piece, we will discover that it can indeed be a
mission possible for each and every one of us.
So tonight
we want to begin by taking a look at the Great
Commission—looking at two of its themes, the first two
phrases in it. The first is “All authority in heaven and on
earth has been given to me.” The first thing you realize is
that every journey needs a guide. Somebody who has been there.
Somebody who knows the twists and the turns. Somebody who
knows the terrain, the language, who knows where the trouble
spots are, who knows how to get you out of trouble if you’re
in trouble. Every journey needs somebody who has been there.
Again,
fresh off of this Mexican experience, I can say that if we
didn’t have guides, I wouldn’t be standing here today. We
would have been in a whole lot of trouble. We would not have
known where to go. We would not have known where not to
go. But we had people who had been there before. People who
had traveled the roads we were going to travel. Who knew the
language. Who could interpret the difficulties. Who would help
us when we needed encouragement. We could manage the tough
patches. We had guides who knew where we were headed.
And so at
the beginning of our journey, the Great Commission simply
tells us that we have a guide. We have a guide that we can
trust on our way. In fact, we know that our guide is
the way. Jesus, his life and his teachings, are what we have
been called to follow. So what does it mean when we say all
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus? What
does that mean for us? What are the things that we should base
our lives on if that is true?
All authority on heaven and earth has been
given to Jesus. I believe that means at least four things for
our lives. First, it
means that we believe what Jesus believed. If you were to look
at the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus and begin to
figure out what it was that Jesus believed, we would do well
to believe it, too. If we are to believe what Jesus believed,
then we believe that the Kingdom of God is at hand—that
it’s near, that we can touch it, that we can experience it
here and now.
If
we believe what Jesus believed, we believe that in the Kingdom
of God, there is a place of privilege for those who are left
out of the kingdom of the world. Those who are outsiders or
marginalized, who are poor, who are not given a place in the
kingdom of the world, are given a place of priority in the
Kingdom of God.
If
we believe what Jesus believed, we believe that love and
justice are inseparable. If we believe what Jesus believed,
then we believe that turning the other cheek and loving our
enemies are the only responses to violence. And if we believe
what Jesus believed, then we know that sometimes the law of
God, the law of humanity, is higher than the laws of society
and our culture. (Alexa helped me write that on the plane.)
If all authority on heaven and earth has been given to
Jesus, then we believe what Jesus believed.
Second,
we are called to live like Jesus lived. And how did he live?
Jesus lived simply. He understood what was important and
surrounded his life with things of value.
Jesus
lived his life in community. He called others to him. While he
was the Savior of the world, he understood that he was not a
lone ranger. He knew he needed to be in community with others.
He knew that our faith is worked out in the context of
community. If we want to live like Jesus lived, we need to
surround ourselves with people who are also trying to live
like Jesus lived.
Did you
ever look through the scriptures and become amazed at how many
times Jesus went into prayer? Even in tonight’s scripture,
before Jesus made one of the most important decisions of his
life, calling together the twelve people on whom he would
begin to build his kingdom, he spent an entire night in
prayer. Wow, that jumped out at me when I prepared for this
sermon. I had never caught that before. How different my
ministry and my leadership would be if I earnestly went to
prayer before I made decisions. Those who want to live like
Jesus lived will be in prayer and will seek after God,
especially in the moments of our greatest decisions.
If
we want to live like Jesus lived, you can’t miss this in the
stories of Jesus: Jesus was a man filled with passion and
filled with determination, who was never deterred from the
call that God had put on his life, sharing it with everyone,
even when it cost him his life. To live like Jesus lived is
what we are called to begin to do if we are to trust the
marching orders of the Great Commission.
The
third thing we are called to do is love like Jesus loved.
Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love. If we want to know
what love looks like, we have it in the person of Jesus. How
did Jesus love? Jesus’ love was real and it was honest and
it was full of the range of emotion. Jesus wept. Jesus got
angry. Jesus got scared. Our love can be real, full of real
emotions. Jesus’ love was patient. How many times, if we
were in Jesus’ spot, would we have found another twelve to
start with? He said, “Peter, you are the rock upon whom I
will build the kingdom.” How many times did Peter screw up?
I wonder if sometimes he called Peter “the rock,” not
because of his strength, but because of his brains? “Peter,
you are the rock….the rock head….but upon you I am going
to build my kingdom. Because I have patience. I see something
in you which you don’t even see in yourself.” Patience. We
too are called to love with patience.
Jesus’
love was without judgment, especially for people’s pasts and
people’s hurts. Almost every healing story is a competition
between Jesus and a party who is judging the person who needs
to be healed. Did you ever notice that? Jesus shows up to heal
somebody, and somebody else steps in and says, “This person
doesn’t deserve healing. Don’t you know where they’ve
been, Jesus? Don’t you know where this woman in the circle
has been? Don’t you know what she’s been up to?”
Jesus’ love is without judgment on people’s pasts and on
their hurts.
So
we are to believe like Jesus believed, live like Jesus lived,
love like Jesus loved, and finally, if we are to believe that
all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus,
then we are to minister like Jesus ministered. How did Jesus
minister? Jesus ministered by meeting people’s physical
needs as well as their emotional and spiritual needs. The
hungry got fed. The blind received sight. The lame were given
the opportunity to walk. The naked were clothed. Jesus met
people’s needs while he ministered to them.
Jesus
sat down and broke bread with people at every walk of life.
Jesus ate a lot. He wasn’t afraid to go to the high end of
society to a party, to talk with people there, to find out
what was going on. He wasn’t afraid to go to a table with
sinners and tax collectors. And the most radical thing about
it, he wasn’t afraid to invite those people to sit at the
same table together. When they sat at the same table together,
he said, “The Kingdom of God has come close.” In fact, he
said, “It is at hand.”
So if we want to minister like Jesus ministered, we
will break bread with people of every walk of life, meeting
them where they are.
If
we want to minister like Jesus ministered, we’ll challenge
people to see life differently, to see it deeper, to see it
beyond what it appears to be. If we want to minister like
Jesus ministered, we’ll invite people to follow. We won’t
be afraid to invite people to come along. We won’t be afraid
to invite people to find a place in the family. We’ll find a
spot.
And
finally, if we want to minister like Jesus ministered, not
only will we invite, but we will also give people room to say
no. Remember the story of Jesus and the rich young man? This
man comes up to Jesus. He’s full of hope, and he asks:
“Jesus, what do I have to do to follow you? I want to follow
you. What do I need to do?” So Jesus tells him. And the
Gospel tells us that at that moment in that man’s life, it
was more than he could do. And Jesus let him go. He didn’t
follow after him. He didn’t chastise him. He didn’t call
him names. He did not condemn him to everlasting darkness. He
gave him room to say no, hoping that the seed that was planted
in him would one day again be watered by somebody else.
So
if we believe that all authority in heaven and on earth has
been given to Jesus, if we are about to begin this journey
together, it simply means that we must believe like Jesus
believed, we must live like Jesus lived, we must love like
Jesus loved, and we must minister like Jesus ministered. We
have a guide for this journey. And there is no better guide
than the passionate, determined, loving, gentle Savior who
asks us to follow.
The
second part of the Great Commission then says: “Go therefore
and make disciples.” Go. What a great word. Go. Go is the
opposite of stop. It is the opposite of stay. It is important
in this scripture to understand that “go” here isn’t a
suggestion. Jesus didn’t say: “Well, if you’ve got time,
maybe you should think about doing this.” It’s not a
suggestion. In the Greek, it’s clear. It’s an imperative.
It’s a command. The rest of the passage is contingent on
this. None of the things that come after it will happen if we
don’t go, if we aren’t willing to begin the journey. All
of our journeys are contingent on our willingness to go. We
have to move. We can’t stay put. A journey of a thousand
miles begins with a single step.
You
know, I used to be a wedding DJ. That’s how I paid for
college. At the end of the night, I’d always say: “Thanks
for being here. It was great to have you. You don’t have to
go home, but you can’t stay here.” I think that’s what
the beginning of the Great Commission says to us, too. We
can’t stay where we’re at. We’re challenged to take the
next step. God is always asking us to discern the next step on
our journey. Where are we being called to go? Where are we
being asked to go deeper? Where are we being asked to go that
we have not yet gone?
I
want to say a little something about that, because I know
enough about myself to know that sometimes I take the
imperative “to go” to mean “to go and add new things to
my plate, to go in lots of new directions.” I want to be
clear that while we are called to go, we are really called to
listen to God more closely and discern what it is that God is
calling us to go after, to move towards, to move into. Our
spiritual growth isn’t measured by how many different
directions we are going. In fact, for some of us, the next
step on our journey may be to take some stuff off of our
plates and focus on those few things that God is really
calling us to do. It is my hope that over this Lenten journey,
each of us will have the opportunity to find that, to discern
where we are being called to go.
Go
and do what, though? Our scripture tonight makes that clear. Go
and make disciples. That is the heart of the Christian
life. To share the good news of Jesus Christ in word and in
deed to the world. At the end of the day, it is the
realization that we have a story that is too good not to tell.
But I’m afraid that too often in the church business, those
of us in leadership force people to put the cart before the
horse. We can’t make disciples until we’ve been made into
a disciple.
So
that’s what I’m going to ask us to do over the next five
weeks: focus our Lenten journey on that. We will go. We will
focus on Jesus and on the Great Commission and look at our
journey with Christ, so that by the end of this journey we can
indeed be a part of making disciples in the world. But the
first disciples who are going to be made are ourselves. Where
are we on the road of discipleship? Who are we as disciples?
Who has God created us to be? What gifts have we been gifted
with? How can we employ them in the world? How can we be a
part of this Great Commission to help change and transform the
very world? Those are the questions we’ll look at over these
next few weeks.
And
the truth is, we’re all called to take this journey. I read
that scripture tonight from Luke with the names of all the
disciples, those first disciples who were called into
ministry. They were real folks. They were regular folks. Folks
like you and like me. There was Peter, the natural leader, the
gregarious guy who was ready to try anything. There was his
brother, Andrew. He was more quiet and behind the scenes, but
he was the guy who was always bringing others to Jesus. There
was James. He’s the doer, the guy who told us “faith
without works is dead.” There was Philip, the practical one.
“Jesus, how are we supposed to feed all these people with
just five loaves and a couple of fish?” There was John, the
mystic. There was Thomas, the questioner. There was Matthew,
the businessman who dreamed of doing something different with
his life. There was Simon, the zealot, the revolutionary
dreamer. And there was Judas Iscariot, the man who kept the
books. Jesus called and still calls regular folk into the
mission possible, the mission of changing and transforming the
world.
It
takes all kinds. What kind of disciple are you? Where do you
fit on this journey? Let us go. Let us discover together this
Lent who we are called to be so that we can indeed live into
this life-changing, world-transforming commission that God has
charged us with. Go, therefore, into all the world and make
disciples. And on this Lenten journey, let the first disciples
that are made be us. It is in that hope that we begin this
journey to the cross and to Easter.
Notes: I wrote much of this sermon on a plane ride back from the
Mexican border with ten of our youth who had just taken part
in a week-long emersion experience. While on the plane, two of
our youth, Alexa Frye and Hilary Sheridan, helped me come up
with many of the examples of how Jesus thought, lived, loved
and ministered. It is no surprise that these two young women
are quickly becoming ministers in their own right.
The
four themes for following Jesus—believe like Jesus believed,
live like Jesus lived, love like Jesus loved and minister like
Jesus ministered—came from a talk I heard delivered by the
Reverend Eugene Blair, the director for African American
Church Development for the Detroit Annual Conference. His talk
was given at the gathering of the Emerge worship community’s
weekly gathering. Emerge is the new worship and fellowship
community being called into existence by our own Carl
Gladstone.
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