Preached on Sunday, May 5, 2019
Scripture
readings: Genesis 1:26-31; Matthew 28:16-20
There’s a
friend of mine who has told me that he became a Christian when he held his
first baby child in his arms. He knew, in his heart that he, as he was, was not
the man to raise this child. He needed to become a new man. So, my friend gave
his life to Christ, so that he could be a wise, loving, faithful father.
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| Walking near Crab Creek, north of Desert Aire-Mattawa, WA Late April, 2019 |
The truth
is that my friend was raised in a Christian home and seemed to belong to Christ
already. But, his baby daughter became the witness commissioned by Jesus to go
to the nation of Washtucna and make a disciple out of her new father, teaching
him to observe all the Jesus had commanded her.
Paul
writes: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away,
behold the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17 RSV) My friend became a new man
for a new world: the new world of fatherhood. By the way, my friend’s wife was
always a saint. She must have seen his future when she said, “I do.”
My friend
saw his old world passing away. In the bigger sense our whole world is passing
away, ever since Jesus died and rose from the dead. (1 John 2:17) A new world
has begun because of Jesus.
To us,
this world still looks like a dying world. We will only see that new world of
Jesus when he comes again. We live in a new creation and we, who are in Christ,
are a new creation, even though we don’t look anything like new.
We are
called by the Lord to live as his new images in this new creation. We know
there must be different rules and a different calling than we had in the old
creation, when we were trying to make ourselves in our own image, in those bad,
old days in that bad, old world that was turned away from God.
God gave
my friend a new calling, with his new heart, in the new world called
fatherhood. This new calling was what we might call a covenant; a fancy Bible
word for a holy promise bringing and holding God and human beings together.
The last
few lines of the Gospel of Matthew are such a covenant, such a holy promise,
that brings us and holds us together. Through this promise, we have a
relationship of grace and empowerment with the Lord Jesus.
Jesus
begins his new promise like this: “Behold, all authority in heaven and earth
has been given to me, go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” And Jesus
completes his new promise like this: “And, lo, I am with you always, to the
close of the age.”
Jesus
places himself at the beginning and at the completion of the promise to show
that he is the one who holds it all together, for us, from the beginning to the
end. The grace and the empowerment promised to us by Jesus is very clear, here.
What
Christians commonly call “The Great Commission” is our calling and mission in
the world that has been claimed by the authority of Jesus. Jesus came into our
old, broken, rebel world from the throne that he shared with his Father in
heaven. He dispensed with his heavenly authority for a while: while he was
growing up, and working, and journeying toward the cross and the tomb. Jesus
became truly human for us, in order to claim us from the inside out.
The
classic way for an explorer to claim a new land for your own nation is never by
gazing at its shoreline through binoculars and saying some magic, claiming
spell. You have to set your own foot inside the new land and raise your nation’s
banner.
Jesus set
his feet inside the broken world of the human race, in flesh and blood, as
though he was making himself a citizen of the place. Then Jesus raised the
banner of the cross and claimed us for his kingdom.
Jesus
built the only kind of human life in which we can follow in his footsteps. He
built this new shape of human life for us when he was baptized for our
repentance, and received the Holy Spirit, just as we all must baptized for
repentance and receive the Holy Spirit.
Jesus opened
the door into what we must all receive, in order that we may be washed clean in
our hearts, and be moved, and enabled, and directed by the Holy Spirit in our
own lives. So, Jesus moved in first, into the new world of repentance, and baptism,
and receiving the Holy Spirit. Jesus claimed authority over our transition from
our old life into our new life.
He did
this before us, and he did it for us, so that we don’t take those alone. Our
repentance, our baptism, and our life in the Holy Spirit are just as good as
his, because he walks with us through it.
Jesus pushed
his authority further when he made his way to the center of our hearts and took
our sin and rebellion upon himself, on the cross, and made our lives stronger
than sin and stronger than death in the resurrection.
Jesus
reclaimed human dominion in this world when he reclaimed us in birth, in life, in
death, and in resurrection; and defeated the powers of Hell and the Devil. In
Jesus, there is no longer any place for us to go where he hasn’t been already.
He is with us always, in so many ways, until all the ages and all the places of
creation are brought together for the new heaven and earth.
Now that he
has created and claimed the new earth and our new life, Jesus has sent us on a
mission a bit like the mission of Adam and Eve in the old creation. They were
commissioned to “dress and keep the earth”; or to “work it and take care of
it”. (Genesis 2:15 KJV and NIV) This was the dominion of Adam and Eve. It was
their rulership over the earth: to work on the earth and take care of it, to be
servants and guardians of it.
The Great
Commission of Jesus for us doesn’t take the First Commission away. Instead,
Jesus adds the mission of partnering with him to care for and protect the new
human world by bringing our living witness to Jesus wherever we go, into all
the nations, or just into our own nation.
We are to
go to all nations. If we don’t go to all the nations, then we go to all the people
around us.
We take
part in the Lord’s work of recreating everyone who will listen, and be moved,
and follow. Everyone is beloved by the Lord, and the Lord’s greatest joy is for
them to become new creations where the old has passed away.
This is
where being in the image of God comes in. The image of God is not having a face,
and hands, and feet, and internal organs. The image of God is not some spirit,
soul, mind, and body thing. God’s image isn’t even a matter of being a person
of self-awareness and purpose, although that comes a lot closer. God’s image is
intimate relationship. God’s image is intimate, faithful love.
The idea
of a mirror comes into this, in the Bible: “seeing in a mirror dimly, and then
face to face (2 Cor. 3:18)” or looking into “the law as into a mirror (James
1:23.” Human sin interrupted the faith that comes from looking into the Lord.
Human sin interrupted our ability to look at any time and see all that God is;
and caring for all that God cares about. In Jesus, God has stopped and
untangled this interruption.
Because
of this, you can pay good attention (quality attention) to everything that
matters most to God in your life and, yet, center your attention on God at the
same time. You can play with your kids. You can pay your bills. You can work at
your job, and your art, and your garden. You can work on your check book or
online banking site. And you can look into the presence of God at the same time.
You can
write a book or read a book. You can watch television and hear the news. And
you can look into the presence of God at the same time.
That’s
what being the image of God is about. Then, whatever you are thinking, whatever
you are saying, whatever you are doing is what God would do if God were you.
Then people will look at you and see God: see Jesus, see God in Jesus Christ,
in you. They may not know it. But they may crucify you for it just as easily as
they may praise you for it.
That will
be one of the ways you can measure your competence, your abilities, your
success. For better or for worse you will play and fit the role of Jesus. You
will spread the new creation for the new world; the new heaven and earth that
are coming.
Making
disciples means bringing people into the image-changing and image-making that
comes from this intimate relationship. You learn from Jesus by listening and
watching. You learn from Jesus by following, which means going where he wants
to go: not to the righteous but to sinners. You will be the good physician. You
will be the good nurse to those around you.
To
baptize them means to give them a good, Christ centered death and resurrection
in Jesus. They will die to themselves and live in Christ.
Teaching
them to observe all that Christ has commanded you means bringing them all back
to your own calling. Wherever Christ has found them, that is the starting line
of their part of the race in the image-of-God relay.
They will
love taking care of and protecting the least of the people around them. They
will love bringing others into the life that makes us the image of God by
intimacy: looking and listening and following the presence and purpose of God.
You teach others to observe all that the Lord has commanded you by sharing your
life’s work and your life’s discoveries and your greatest loves with them.
Then the
whole business spins around, and around, and around. It goes from generation to
generation, family to family, country to country. It’s like a country folk
dance, or a square dance, passing under the over-arching arms of the ones who
are smiling at you through the lands and the ages of the kingdom of God.
There was
a man whose name I can’t remember, and whom I have never met, but Christians in
my home town used to talk about him. He came to my home town, from South Korea
to America, because God called him to be a missionary to us.
The
Americans had brought their faith to his country. Now the Lord called him to
bring his faith to ours.
He was
smart but, most of all he was humble and childlike. He was in a new world, for
him, and other Christians helped him as they could. By helping him, they
learned to grow in their own faith through him. Non-believing Americans
understood the good news of Jesus better for having known him.
I don’t
remember what became of him. It’s only one example of how The Great Commission
works. It’s how the sacrifice and the resurrection of God in Christ creates the
new creation around us, as we live face to face with the presence of Jesus.
Jesus
holds us together, through the strength of his promises, for as long as the
ages and worlds gather together in his kingdom. Jesus is with us always, as we
go with him into this bold new resurrection world.
