"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."
These words from Matthew's gospel have traditionally been referred to as 'The Great Commission' because it commissions the remaining disciples to carry on the earthly work of Jesus after his ascension. No other gospel writer uses quite the same powerful combination of words and images as Matthew, although each of them includes a broadly similar charge to the disciples:
(Mark 16: 14-18)
"Later he appeared to the eleven themselves ... And he said to them,
'Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole of creation.
The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not
believe will be condemned'".
(Luke 24: 36-49)
"While they were talking, Jesus himself stood among them and said to
them, 'Peace be with you.' ... Then he opened their minds to understand the
scriptures, and he said to them, 'Thus it is written that the Messiah is to
suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness
of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations ... You are witnesses
of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so
stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."
(John 20: 19-23)
"Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' After
he said this he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced
when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the
Father has sent me, so I send you.' When he had said this, he breathed on them
and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any,
they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.'"
These passages leave us in no doubt that Jesus's disciples are charged by Jesus to continue the work he began, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to teach the faith to all nations.
Two weeks ago, in our reading and sermon, we thought about our individual mix of spiritual gifts. We said that God implants particular gifts into every Christian disciple to enable them to build up the church of Christ in this time and place.
From today's reading we get a view of the bigger picture, the wider purpose of God to which our individual ministries must be directed. Using our gifts, this is our mission: "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."
But there is another level to this mission. Christians are called to live and work together in community. We call the Christian community the Church. And so our communities, our work teams, our churches need to relate their local situation to the wider commission. Churches serve widely varying groups in very different places. God encourages us to discern how best to apply the particular resources of each community to God's greater purpose. We look at what we have, who we are, and where we are, to discern how best to respond to the Commission. This often results in a church spelling out its own particular mission statement, and this is something we did as a congregation a few months ago.
We use a summary of our mission as a Christian church. We say we are:
Raised up by
God,
To be transformed disciples,
Following Jesus,
Using our gifts,
So that our people might be saved.
This leaves us with challenges on three levels - and I would argue that our way forward is to join them all up.
On a personal level, we each need to uncover and apply the spiritual gifts which God has implanted in each one of us. We do this by knowing and loving ourselves, knowing and loving each other, knowing and loving Jesus, and by drawing on the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.
On a community level, we each need to grow and develop in our church life as a Christian community built upon the values which Jesus taught among his own community of followers. We need to use our gifts to build up the church of Christ and direct our energies to wherever we can make a difference to God's world in this place and time.
But the final goal for both our personal and our church ministries must relate back to the Great Commission which Jesus gave to those who will carry forward the ministry he began while on earth. And unless these connecting threads are in place, our discipleship is in question because we risk focussing on self rather than on others and on Jesus.
I invite you in
the coming weeks to connect up those threads in your relationship with Jesus:
* to take up the challenge of discerning the gifts which God has given;
* to consider prayerfully how your activity in this Christian community serves
to transform you and others around you;
* and to think about the extent to which we - both individually and as a church,
'Go', 'make disciples', 'baptize' and 'teach others'.
Perhaps it will help to think of some examples of the Great Commission at work in our lives.
When we reflect on the beginnings of our own Christian faith, we recall the people who introduced us to Jesus. Many of us will think of a particular person who enabled us to begin our journey of faith, and perhaps others who re-introduced us to a renewal of our faith.
None of us goes alone to Jesus: access to Jesus is always mediated through people. Before we meet Jesus, we first meet a litany of other people. We all come to Jesus by way of generations of Christians who shared their experience of him - people who were themselves introduced to Jesus by others. So, the story of Christianity is a story of a great chain of witnesses linked through the apostles to Jesus himself.
We have our own part to play in introducing others to Jesus. We don't have to be great missionaries to do this; if we believe that Jesus is worth knowing, we will bring others into relationship with him by our own quiet witness. And we don't have to be able to deliver formal classes in order to teach our faith: we can teach by the quiet example of our lives.
But we do have to 'Go'. We have to respond actively to our gifts, to our church's mission, and to Jesus's Commission to discipleship. We have to move in some way, to make progress, to grow and to develop. Above all, we need to be prepared to change and allow Jesus to transform us. We must look outwards, not turn inwards, and play our part in that great chain of witnesses linked through the apostles to Jesus himself.
Jesus himself is with us to the end of the age. The Holy Spirit has been breathed into us to empower our mission and ministry - we have been clothed with power from on high. We have the Commission of Christ to go, make disciples, baptize, and teach.
Please pray about
how we should use our gifts, our resources and our energies over the next few
months in order to save and transform our communities; because, if we accept
Christ's Commission, our next task is to get up, and Go.
Amen.
(Philip Jones)
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.