Going with Jesus: Holding It Together

Preached on Sunday, November 11, 2012

Scripture readings: Matthew 28:16-20; 1 Peter 5:1-14

I was at the Washtucna School the other day, talking to someone who was in the middle of eating their lunch. They were eating a sandwich, and it took me a while to notice how it was constructed. Instead of the insides of the sandwich being laid out between two slices of bread, they were laid out between two leaves of lettuce. That sandwich looked like it had a lot of good things inside it: and so I thought, why not?



A trail along the Feather River

Slices of bread hold the contents of a sandwich together, and keep the sandwich from becoming too hard, too messy, to eat; maybe not all of the time, but most of the time. The lettuce seemed to work the same way.

But some things seem unlikely to hold things together and prevent a mess. A sandwich made between two layers of tomato would not work so well. A sandwich made between two layers of tuna salad or egg salad would not work at all. Even though they are good things to eat, they are very messy things to hold onto. Those things need to be inside the sandwich, and they need to be held together by the right stuff.

The closing words of the Gospel of Matthew are called “The Great Commission.” They are shaped in a way to hold good things together; things that could be messy if we tried to hold onto them by themselves. They are Jesus’ “marching orders” to us, as the members of the body of Jesus that is called his church. They are orders to go to everyone, and make learners of everyone; to claim everyone for God, to give them everything Jesus gave us. We need a way to hold onto all of this, and Jesus gives us his way. It is a way called grace.



The great commission is the work Jesus gives us to do. It is our mission. “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.” (Matthew 28:19-20a)

But is this our work, or the work of Jesus? Alright, it’s the work of both. It is our work and Jesus’ work. It is certainly the work Jesus wants done. It is not always the work we want to do.

The only help for us, sometimes, is that Jesus has shown us his truest and deepest self, and so we love him with all our heart, and we know he loves us with all his heart. When you love someone, and you know that that particular someone loves you, and you know that that someone wants you to do something very important, then you have got to do it: you have got to try, or you can never be happy.

This is so not bad, really; and it is about love. Real love is strong. When I have been in love, I wanted to know that girl. I wanted to know how to make her laugh, or smile. I wanted to know how to get her to touch me and hold me. That is a very strong thing; just wanting to know how to do that. And the love of Jesus makes us want to do something we might not choose to do, otherwise.

Walking along the Feather River

Everything he tells us to do is about love. What does it mean to make disciples, except to make them eager to learn from the one who loves them?

The classic pick-up line of Jesus to any of his disciples has always been, “Come, follow me.” Be with me, and spend time with me. Watch me and listen to me. Talk with me. Let’s watch and listen to everything together. Let’s do everything together. This is love, and this is the deepest friendship. Disciples do this together with Jesus.

Baptizing everyone is about claiming them for Jesus and writing his name on them. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is like being ready to write the name of all the fullness and the totality of God on everyone you meet.

The water is a sign of the saving love of God who can float them safely through the dangers of a fallen world, and wash them clean from the stains of that world, so that they can hold their heads up high to that world and say: “God has made me new and confident to live for a better world.” This is all about love.

Teaching everyone to obey everything that Jesus has commanded you is just the same as not leaving out anything they need to know about living and going with Jesus. It is about sharing everything that Jesus has said and done and how that changes and shapes us.

Even Jesus dying on the cross and rising from the dead teaches us the secret of being a disciple and going with Jesus. It is the most important commandment of Jesus. We know that the secret of going with Jesus is his invitation to die to ourselves and to rise in his love and power every day. This is also love.

But it is still hard. It can even be dangerous. Peter has spent a lot of time telling us what we should already know, that going with Jesus, in this world, sets us up for being misunderstood, and laughed at, and mocked, and treated unfairly, and downright mistreated. Going with Jesus, in this world, sets us up for suffering and sorrow.

This world is determined to compete with Jesus and rob us of him, if it can. There is a spiritual power that is opposed to God, which Peter compares to a roaring lion. That is the devil, which means the accuser and the enemy. (1 Peter 5:8-9)



Jesus says, “Go, and make disciples of all nations.” By “all nations” he means “everyone in the world”, and (as it applies to us) it means everyone we meet.

Looking into the Feather River

But this is very hard. How can we make learners of everyone, when it is so hard to learn ourselves? How can we make learners of everyone, when they aren’t interested? How can we make learners of everyone when we don’t like them, or when they don’t like us, or when they don’t like what we stand for, or when they see through our misrepresentations of Jesus?



How do we make disciples of everyone (or learners of everyone) when the learners we do have just won’t settle down together and learn from each other? Peter says, “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.” (1 Peter 5:5) But that doesn’t feel very helpful. We don’t find humility very much fun; and it is so hard to get others to appreciate it and play along.

Being people who are committed to going, as Jesus said, instead of staying; being people who are committed to going to everyone, as Jesus said; being people who are committed to making everyone into learners, as Jesus said; being people who are committed to claiming everyone, and to giving them everything that Jesus has given to us, as Jesus said, is hard and messy work, even though it is all about love.

The structure of Jesus’ instructions tells us how to take hold of this hard and messy work. Jesus begins and ends his instructions with grace. Grace holds the instructions of Jesus together from front to back, from top to bottom; like the bread or the lettuce of a sandwich.



The first layer of Jesus’ instructions is his authority: “all authority in heaven and on earth.” The Greek word for this authority is not about Jesus holding a position that gives him the right to give us orders. This word is also translated as “power” and it is not about the ability of Jesus to use his power to make us or obligate us into following his orders. The authority and power of Jesus is the essence of who Jesus is.



Looking into the Feather River

Authority and power are the essence of what is in him. They are his ability to be what we need most. They are his ability, as God and Human, to form a perfect bridge; to come down and be with us, and to hold us close, and to bring us up to live on higher ground in his presence. So he shares our birth and our life, he shoulders our sin and weakness on the cross, he shares death and defeats its fear and power.

There is the advertisement about a “power drink” that asks the question: “Is it in you?” The power and authority of Jesus is “in him”. It is who Jesus is by his nature and by his action. And what is in Jesus is also in us, as he lives within us by faith.

The other layer of the sandwich that holds together the work of Jesus is “his presence.” “I will be with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

The power and authority of Jesus is the foundation of the work he calls us to do. The top layer is the presence of Jesus who is with us always. His presence covers us every day.

This is the grace of God in Christ. Going with Jesus requires life as a sort of “grace” sandwich.



The other day I needed to pull up some black locust shoots that had grown surprisingly big while I was gone for a few weeks. They had wicked thorns. I got wounded in the attempt, so I put on my work gloves in order to get the work done.

If you want to do some hard, tricky, messy work, like the work of a metal shop, or cutting roses for a bouquet, you want to wear work gloves. You have to hold the work of Jesus in the gloves of his grace. You have to wear his authority and his presence. You have to work that close. He never intended to send us out any other way.



Walking along the Feather River

There is something we need to know about the presence of Jesus, when he says that he will be with us always. The Greek says that he will be with us “all the days”, until the end of the age.

It’s easy to think of “always” as a unchanging thing. But we really need to have the presence of Jesus matching the challenge of each day as it comes. The easiest days may be our most dangerous because they lull us into forgetfulness. When we think of Jesus being with us “all the days”, it teaches us to count every day, no matter what that day brings.



We have good days, and we have bad days, but we have no days without Jesus. We have no more of Jesus on the good days than we have on the bad days. But we have him with us differently. We have no less of Jesus on the worst day of our life than we have on our best. Jesus is with us, exactly as we need him, “all the days”.

We may think about wasted hours, and wasted days and years; but the hours, and the days, and the years by which we count our time with Jesus are never wasted; no matter what we may think, and no matter what others may tell us.



The Bible is the word of God, through which we can receive the mind of God; the very thoughts of God. There is a thought we need to learn about the end of the age (or the end of the world, as some translations make it). The thought is that there is a structure and purpose in time, as God has designed it and created it.



Long ago, the Jewish rabbis came to think that, from the very beginning, God did not create only one world, but two worlds. They came to believe that, from the very beginning, God created this world (or this universe) and the world (or universe) that is to come.

And these two worlds bear a special relation to each other. The world to come is designed to be built on this world, like ripe fruit is built from a blossom.

Walking along the Feather River

The “end of the age” is almost like the concept of closure where things come together. The end of this world, where there is so much going wrong (where there is so much injustice, and hurt, and anger, and fear, and blindness, and tragedy) is about the righting of wrongs, the healing of hurts, the deflating of anger, the lifting of fear, the opening of eyes.

The author Ernest Hemmingway wrote this: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.” But the end of the age which Jesus promises, and which Jesus rules (where Jesus is the king) goes much farther for us. The end of the age is the time and place where no one who comes to Jesus will go un-mended.  The age to come is built on the mending of every broken person in every broken place.

The way to the end of the age is by dying and rising with Jesus. When we die and rise with Jesus there is no breakage that will go unnoticed and unmet. Every broke place will have the glory of Jesus in it.

Every broken place in the creation will be like a jewel or a crown in the world to come. Every life in Christ will wear a crown. Every day in Christ will wear its crown.

Nothing will be wasted. Peter says: “And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.” (1 Peter 5:10)

Sometimes this glory is the power to give comfort to others. The Apostle Paul once put it this way: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4) It is the very nature of who God is; to make us strong in the broken places.



East of Live Oak looking toward the Feather River

Even in this world, even now, we see just a bit of this at work. This is the grace that enables us to follow the great commission and command of Jesus. This is the grace we wear when the work is tricky, and hard and messy.

This is how, when the days seem bad, Jesus makes us strong, firm, and steadfast for those days. But Jesus is with us always; all the days. And, as Peter says, “This is the true grace of God.” (1 Peter 5:12) And by “this” he means God gives us the gifts we need for everywhere he sends us, and for everyone we must meet and claim for him, and for every way we seek to teach and help others follow him. This is the true grace of God.

Going with Jesus: Claimed and Owned

Preached on Sunday, October 28, 2012:

Scripture readings: Matthew 28:16-20; 1 Peter 3:18-22

You know that when kids go to camp the parents are supposed to label all their clothing. This doesn’t always help.

The only time I went to camp, it was a Y.M.C.A. camp. It was the summer when I was eight years old. The last day of camp we packed up all our things, and we piled our luggage on the road so that it could be loaded onto the buses, and we were all supposed to take showers so we would be clean enough for our moms’ inspections.



A Hazy September Day

In the process of taking my shower, I lost my underwear. It didn’t matter that it was labeled. I lost it anyway, and I couldn’t find it. I cried like a baby. And my other underwear was in my bag, which was buried under the luggage of other boys who were ready to take the buses for home. I cried with embarrassment because I was obsessed with a peculiar kind of nakedness that lurked under my clothing.

In the scriptures we have read this morning, Peter tells us about a form of embarrassment felt by God’s people. It is a peculiar kind of nakedness. Jesus, sending his people out, under his authority, into a world that is under his authority, gives to his people a permanent label that covers this nakedness and protects them from this embarrassment.

A lot of Peter’s first letter is concerned with a very peculiar form of embarrassment. It is the embarrassment that goodness feels in a fallen world. It is the embarrassment that comes from having been caught not wearing the uniform of the world.

There is a universal uniform of the heart, and the mind, and the life that does not know the grace of God. God’s people do not wear that uniform, and it sets them apart. It makes them look strange.

There is a universal style that says, “We are in charge of ourselves. We will serve ourselves.”

You can serve yourself by being a rule-breaker. To a lesser degree you can create a specialty of your own by flaunting certain rules, and a lot of people choose this way to run their own show. It is a way of being in charge.

You can also serve yourself by being a rule-keeper, and that is the uniform and style of religious people, who still manage to serve themselves instead of God. They run their own show by appointing themselves to be the chief score-keepers and the judges of others. No matter how strongly such people orient themselves to God, they still assert their own way of being in charge.

In a fallen world, human nature maintains its independence from God by any means possible, and at all costs. Whether by rule-breaking, or by rule-keeping, they wear the uniform of the world.

The people who know the God who became a human being in Jesus have seen the face of a God who pours himself out for us as a sacrifice to set us free from our isolation from him. The people who know the God who became one of us in Jesus know their need for such a sacrifice.



Old Farm Equipment

They do not live in the uniform of the world: the world’s heart, and mind, and life. They live in Christ, who died and rose for them. And so the sinners and the religious people of the world may think they are strange, and even bad; just as the world thought that Jesus was strange and bad, and crucified him for it.

So Peter, as we have just read, tells us about “those who speak maliciously about your good behavior in Christ.” (1 Peter 3:16) In the previous chapter, Peter said, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Peter 2:12)

You have to understand, here, that good lives and good deeds, as Peter speaks of them here, do not mean lives and deeds of rule-keeping. There is more than one New Testament Greek word for goodness, and this particular goodness, as Peter tells it, means the lovely goodness of lives and deeds done in the grace that comes from God.

It is a goodness of beauty. It is a goodness of attraction. It is a goodness that carries an infectious power that can that can reproduce itself in those who are on the seeing, and the hearing, and the receiving end of that goodness. It is the goodness that first came to us with the love of God in Christ that covers our sins, and changes us from the depth of our hearts. It is the goodness that God came to show us in Jesus.

It melted our hearts. It stripped us of all our self deceptions and self righteousness, and all the defenses we had built to protect us from losing our independence from God. It is the goodness that now enables us to stand before God and this world with a good conscience.

Our problem, as God’s people, is that we can have this goodness of God’s grace and yet we feel naked because we have lost the universal uniform of a fallen world. They think we are strange; and we wonder if they are still right, after all.

We inherit the uniform of the world at birth. We learn to love the uniform at a very early age. It gives us the self confidence that comes from blending in. It gives us the confidence that comes from the acceptance of others.

I was visiting cousins, years ago, and reminiscing with my cousin Don about songs our family used to sing together, and we started singing bits and pieces of them. My Cousin Candy’s son, Kevin, was in the living room with us. Kevin was seven or eight years old. Either Don or I thought of “The Leland Stanford Junior Farm” song. It’s a college drinking song and there is just a little bit of mild vulgarity in it.



Fall Colors in the Weeds

I said, “We can’t sing that. Kevin is here.” And Kevin said, “I want to hear it!” Kevin wanted to wear the uniform of the world. Now Kevin wears the uniform of a Marine Corps captain.

Think like a child again. What is it like to be a child and not know the meaning of a word that everyone else seems to know? What is it like to know that you are the only kid in your class who has not done a certain thing?

You think you must be the only person in the whole world who has not done it, and you feel ashamed and naked. You are missing an essential piece of the uniform of the world.

What if you are a grown up, and you know that other people are doing something in the way that they report their income, for taxes, and they are making more money than you are because of it? You think you are missing out on something. You feel foolish, and embarrassingly innocent.

Peter says, “It is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.” (1 Peter 3:17) It is better to be embarrassed by the exposure of your goodness. It is better to have others think you are different, and to have them think you are naked because you are different, than it is to have the confidence of the uniform of the world. And yet, sometimes, we feel we have let ourselves be cheated, because we have not been smart enough to put on that uniform.

We feel guilty of a kind of failure to measure up to the values of the world around us: a peculiar kind of nakedness. But this is the peculiar kind of nakedness that forms the uniform of Jesus.



Jesus was crucified for his goodness, and for the goodness of his mission. He was stripped nearly naked for our salvation on the cross. “It is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. For Christ died for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.” (1 Peter 3:17-18)



Bird on a Wire Fence

The soldiers at the cross took Jesus’ clothes, as the gospels tell us, but the ultimate nakedness is the emptiness with which we leave this world. Jesus put on that nakedness when he died for us. Death is a peculiar kind of failure; a sort of nakedness that shows we are not in control.

The cross seemed like a kind of failure; the failure of goodness to succeed in this world; the failure of goodness to thrive. It was the righteous one who died, and only two unrighteous people died with Jesus; one on each side of him, on crosses of their own. The rest of the fallen world crowded around the foot of the cross, and they mocked and heckled Jesus in his nakedness.

Who looks more successful when you look at a picture of Jesus on the cross? And yet Jesus rose from the dead and has the final word on everything in this world. The nakedness of Jesus and his people always has the final word over the uniform of the world.

When our goodness is not the goodness of the grace of God at work in us; when our goodness comes from our selves, and from our own competence, and from our standing up to the world on the ladder of our self righteousness; this world will pull our pants down and show that we have nothing underneath. (I really saw something like this happen to someone when I was in high school.) Then we have something to be embarrassed about. But, if we stand up to the world by standing in Jesus, and in his cross, and in his resurrection, and in his righteousness, then we will have nothing to be ashamed of.

That is the good conscience, the clear conscience that Peter is talking about. He is telling us about the difference in the kind of success offered to us by the uniform of the world as opposed to the better success of the promise and the goodness that do not come from ourselves.



It is the promise and the goodness of life, coming from the resurrection of Jesus, that overcomes this world. The victory of Jesus has the final word, and Jesus is the place where we can stand with confidence.



Baptism, as Peter puts it, tells us of the resurrection power of God in Christ to stand over all other powers of this world, and to bring us through this world knowing that we can hold up our heads when the world tells us we are naked, and empty, and foolish. The power of the resurrection of Jesus carries us to safety out of a fallen world.



The flood, in Noah’s time, as Peter puts it, was the proof of the power of God to carry his people to safety, out of a fallen world. Jesus spoke to that ancient world of Noah’s time by the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus offered that world a safety that only Noah and his family accepted. Whatever we imagine seems more successful and more powerful than we are, Jesus is able to speak to it, and overcome it, and have the final word, and bring us through it.



Pretty Fall Weeds

In our reading from the Gospel of Matthew, the good news was still brand new. Jesus was dead, killed on the cross. Now Jesus was alive. Jesus proved that he had the final word over a world of evil, and sin, and death. He conquered them all, when he conquered death.

He proved that “all authority in heaven and on earth” was his. He proved that he was the king of heaven and earth. He sent out his people with the promise of his presence to give them the power to serve him. He sent out his people telling them to bring his lost world to him. He gave them the authority to baptize people everywhere “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19)

The words of Jesus that tell his disciples and us to make new disciples “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” are not about a ceremony or a formula of the right words to use. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are the fullness of God. They are everything about God who creates, and saves, and empowers us with the fullness of his presence, and his life, and his work.

Jesus was saying, “Go out and claim people for the fullness of God; which includes me, the Son. Label them with the ownership of God. Put the name of the completeness of God upon them.”

This world with all its false promises tries to own us, and but its label on us, and make us wear its uniform. God puts the stamp of his ownership upon us in a way that cannot be lost.

You see, we do not put the label on ourselves. These words tell us that Jesus sets a pattern for us. We are authorized to claim others and not ourselves. Once upon a time, in our own turn, we were claimed by God. And so the claim placed upon us gives us the authority to claim others. Grace is always given and received. No one comes into the kingdom of God any other way.

Think about children. Children learn confidence by being claimed, in love, over, and over, and over again.

Even if the children who seem unclaimed have to battle their way to adulthood by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, and by claiming themselves, that kind of success is naked without the humbling success of first being claimed and owned by someone else.

You cannot learn the art of love without learning to be loved, without letting yourself be loved and claimed beyond your control. Nothing else works. We can hold onto Christ, and claim the love of Christ in our great need, but we do not truly know him, as he is, until we know that it is his nature to claim us first, without our having any claim of our own, on our part.



Washtucna on that Hazy September Day

Once we know this, we have the authority of Jesus to claim, for him and for his kingdom, anyone like us who has no dream of a claim on the kingdom of God. That means anybody and everybody. The kingdoms of this world have become his kingdom. (Revelations 11:15)

He authorizes us to establish his authority over this world and over all the people in it. We claim them for the grace, and the love, and the goodness of God that they cannot claim for themselves.

God, in Christ, is our Lord and Savior. Standing up with a good and clear conscience, against all that this world throws at us, comes from no other place than the nature of God himself, and we only know who God is through Jesus his only Son.

That is the authority that rules heaven and earth and gives us our message. And we need to hear that message for ourselves. We need to hear the message of the resurrection power of Jesus, and find that it has the final word for us.

Going with Jesus: In His Steps

Preached on Sunday, September 16, 2012

 

Scripture readings: 1 Peter 2:9-25; 3:15-17; Matthew 28:16-20

When I was ordained, I moved to a small church on the Oregon coast. One of the first things I did was visit as many people as possible, right at the start, to get acquainted. On one such visit, one of my members told me, “Dennis, I hope you have big feet.”



The Rabbit in My Back Yard

I asked him what he meant, and he said, “A lot of people are going to expect you to fill Mickey Moffett’s shoes.” Mickey Moffett was my predecessor. He had pastored that church, in that small town, for more than twenty years. He was legendary in his community. He was one of those people who seem to be larger than life, and he had served his church until he died.



The verses at the end of the Gospel of Matthew are often called “The Great Commission” and they speak to us about our spiritual feet. They are the “marching orders” given by Jesus to his disciples, to the church, to us. They give us our mission, and they tell us how we are to proceed to our destination. Jesus tells us to go, and how to go, and that he will go with us.

Peter tells us that, as we follow Jesus, we are to go “in his steps”. “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you and example that you should follow in his steps.” (1 Peter 2:21)

I remember childhood trips to the mountains in winter, when there was snow on the ground. I remember my dad making footprints in the snow and me trying to follow “in his steps”. When Peter puts the suffering of Jesus as part of the pattern for our walking in his steps, we realize that Jesus has a pretty big stride; and big shoes (or big sandals) to fill.

The word “go” is a big word. It can be as exciting as saying “let’s go”!

Yet it was not always an exciting word to the first disciples. They may have found it scary.

There was a time when Jesus said “go” to a large group of seventy-two disciples. He sent them to provide a preview of what he would say and do in the towns where he planned to go next. He sent them to heal and to teach.

So they went when Jesus said “go”, and they came back completely surprised. They experienced the unexpected, and they were glad that Jesus had told them to go. They were glad they went. The fact that they came back so surprised and glad tells us that they did not set out that way when Jesus sent them. (Luke 10:17-20) Now they seemed to catch on.

Is That the Same Rabbit by the Church Basement Widow?

But, strangely, after all the excitement of the resurrection, when Jesus was preparing to return to his throne in heaven, when Jesus told the disciples to “go”, they didn’t go. Or they certainly took their time about it.

Jesus had to arrange the events of history to force them into the habit of going. Jesus practically drove them to it. The Book of Acts tells us a little bit about this story.

Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” (Matthew 28:19) Some of Jesus’ disciples were goers and some were not. It has been this way ever since. Because of the goers, the good news of Jesus has become known all around the world, so that the Christians in North America and Europe are only a drop in a very large bucket of disciples.

Today, if you want to meet your average disciple, you have to go to Africa, or India, or China, or Latin America to find one. But there are still unreached people around the world, and there are still plenty of places to go; even in Washtucna and Kahlotus and Hooper.

Nation, as Jesus puts it, has very little to do with our idea of nation (in the sense of a nation with borders and a single government). Galilee, the land where Jesus grew up, was called “Galilee of the Gentiles” and that really means “Galilee of the Nations”. (Isaiah 9:1; King James Version)

Gentiles and nations only refer to all of the ethnic groups that exist outside the people of Israel. Galilee was full of these different nationalities, or groups: Greeks, Romans, Syrians, and others, living side by side, or in neighboring neighborhoods and villages.

I essentially grew up in a small town of many nations. You could list the local nations as: Anglo (that’s us), Mexican, East Indian Hindu, East Indian Sikh, Filipino, Japanese, and others.



But you could list the nations of my town another way: farmers, townies, Okies and Arkies, old-timers, and newcomers. The old-timers, themselves, were divided into at least two nations that didn’t speak to each other or agree on anything.

It could be just as hard to go and talk to someone you don’t know in India as it is to go and talk to someone you do know (all too well) who lives down the road from you. It could be just as hard to go and talk to someone who doesn’t know you in Haiti as it is to go and talk to someone who does know you (all too well), who lives down the road from you.



A Big Yellow Rose by My Back Porch

Most disciples give the command to “go” positive lip service, but most of us don’t want to go. We would like other people to “come” and to stay; but only if they are not too different from us, and if their staying wouldn’t require any change in us. If we do go to others, it is often with the assumption that we will change them to suit us, because we don’t need to change.

Perhaps (for those of us who are rooted in one place) going means receiving those who come to us. Their coming to us requires us to make the long journey of faith that is called change. The going that Jesus calls us to is meant to change us. Being a disciple is all about change, and about our abiding willingness to change. It is a part of living by faith.

How can you be a person of faith and not be willing to change? How can you listen to Jesus and do what he wants you to do without changing? Walking in Jesus’ sandals means either going to someone around the world, or next door, in a way that will change you forever. Or else it means receiving those whom God has sent to you and taking that journey without going anywhere.

I have described this command to “go” as something that applies to individual disciples. It is much bigger than that. It applies to the church as well. It applies to every single congregation.

Congregations are called by The Great Commission to go, and take the faith-journey called change. And what are they worth to Jesus if they never do it? Aren’t such churches in danger of becoming a private club? Jesus did not come to establish a club. What will become of the church that will not make the faith-journey of change? Jesus commands us to go and to move out.

Jesus says, “Go and make disciples.” The command to go is clear. The command to make disciples is odd, when you think about what it means.



Jesus gives us a big job, but it is the big job of little things. The big job of the big things belongs to Jesus. Jesus is the one with “all authority in heaven and on earth”. Jesus, the ruler of the universe, grabs people and conquers their hearts and minds. Jesus the King converts people and makes them a new creation. Jesus the Lord leads people throughrepentance and the crisis of decision. Those are the big things.



Holly Hock

We are commanded to do the little things that surround the big things of Jesus. We make disciples. The word disciple means something like student or learner. The church is a lot like a school, and school is full of little things. School is full of seasons, and repetition, and routine.

As disciples of Jesus, we are people who go to the school of Jesus, and we invite other people to come to school with us. School is about watching and listening. It is about paying attention. Both students and their teachers have to do a lot of paying attention, or nothing will be properly learned or properly taught.

If we are going to make disciples, we have to pay attention to other people. We have to watch them, and listen to them. We have to ask them questions and try to answer their questions. We have to be patient. To make people into disciples, we have to love them first.

There was some advice that a camp counselor an old Disney show gave to a new and difficult camper. He said, “Take an interest in the others and they will take an interest in you.” The same rule holds with making disciples.

When I was a kid, a friend of mine wanted me to go to church camp with him. To get me interested, he told me all about the booby traps, and about how the cabins would raid each other.

To me this sounded far too much like school for me to be interested. I loved to learn, but I hated school. School was not full of real booby traps and raids; but every day there were kids lying in wait for me, waiting to do something to me. I saw summer as I time when I could be safe and quiet; where I could sit on the garage roof, under the spreading walnut tree, and read my books for hours.

We are called, and the church is called, to take an interest in the world and the people around us, and show them something worth being interested in.



This is why Peter lays so much stress on being an example. He give instructions on what to say. He teaches us to show respect and honor to others in the way we live among them. Peter says, “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Peter 2:12) He means that they will be one of us, praising God by our side, when God comes to earth. He means that God will use our lives, as students in the school of Jesus, to make them into the students of Jesus.

Elephant Garlic among Asparagus and Rudbekia

This is not only for us as individual disciples. This is for us as a community of believers, as the church, as the school of Jesus. If we don’t do this, then an old saying will come true: “Your actions speak so loudly that I cannot hear what you are saying.”

There is nothing big or dramatic about being disciples of Jesus, and bringing others to school with us. It takes a lot of time, and quiet, and patience. It takes learning to work well and play well with others. It takes a lot of just sitting around together with Jesus in our midst. That is what the first disciples did. That is part of what it means to be a disciple. We will look at this more, in the weeks to come.

When Peter tells us that, “Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example; that you should follow in his steps,” he is waking us up to the center of what it meant for him to be a disciple of Jesus. For Peter, the part of being a disciple that he could never forget was the practice of walking in Jesus’ steps.

Peter had a very definite idea of where Jesus’ steps would take any disciple. The steps of Jesus took Peter from the peace and quiet of Galilee to the risk and fear of Jerusalem. The steps of Jesus led Peter to the cross and the resurrection. Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24) This, too, is the road where Jesus says “go”.

Peter says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree (on the cross), so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24) Jesus’ wounds and Jesus’ suffering were his experience of bearing our sins, carrying our sins on his own shoulders. By faith, we enter into the world of the cross, and we hang there on the cross with Jesus, or on the cross next to him.

As Jesus dies for us, we die to ourselves. We change. The faith-journey takes us to the change of the crucifixion and then to the resurrection. The sacrifice of Jesus and the death of Jesus empower us to die to ourselves. Then we experience the healing that comes from the forgiveness of our sins and the gift of a new heart, a new life. It is like being born again.

But notice that there are two actions that go together: dying to sin and living for righteousness. Righteousness is living right, and thinking right, and speaking right, and relating right to others. This never happens just once and then we are done with it. It must go on and on.

The same is true of dying to sin. Dying to sin, and living for righteousness, and receiving the healing of the soul that comes from the wounds of Jesus is something we need every day and every hour.

Our problem is that we actually like some of our sins, and so we certainly don’t want to die to them. Other sins we don’t like. We may truly hate them. But we love to wallow in them. We are addicted to the little hells of our sins that protect us from the healing change of God in Christ, because we are afraid of his command for us to go out.

And yet this is what we need, and Jesus transforms what we need into our marching orders, and then he says “go”. He makes what we need and fear most into what will heal us.



Tropicana Rose?

If you want to be a disciple and make disciples, you will have to die and rise; perhaps over and over again. That is what being a Christian is about. Some people think that being a Christian means following a lot of rules and meeting a lot of other people’s expectations, but it is not about that. It is about dying and rising with Jesus. The church must be a fellowship of people dying and rising all the time.

In fact, if you decide to avoid the church, and try to be a disciple on your own, without the church, you will probably find a spirituality that requires very little dying and rising. And that will seem like a good thing, because dying and rising can be uncomfortable and unwelcome. But it is the glory of God. It is the way of Jesus. These are the steps of Jesus and we must walk in them.

Jesus walks a wide stride in sandals much too big for us. But he is our master, and he calls us his children; and his children love to try, with all their heart, to match his stride and wear his sandals. The vast steps of Jesus may seem much too big, but they are redemptive. They are saving. They are the very heart of mercy and forgiveness. We will grow with Jesus as we walk in his steps, and go, and make disciples.

Going with Jesus: The Encounter

 Preached on Sunday September 9, 2012

Scripture readings: 1 Peter 1:3-9; Matthew 28:16-20

The last five, or the last three, verses in the Gospel of Matthew are sometimes grouped together under a common title. They are called: The Great Commission.



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Even though this title isn’t in the Bible, there is a lot of wisdom in it. It tells us what Jesus wants to accomplish in this world of ours. It tells us his primary purpose. It tells us the part he wants us to play in his purpose, and how he wants us to go about it. We are going to look at this great commission over the next several weeks.

First of all, here is this thing called “The Great Commission”. I confess to having trouble holding a clear definition of “commission” in my mind. I do see it as a direction, a purpose, a mission that has been given to us. And by “us” I don’t mean “us” as individuals only. I mean “us” as the people of God, “us” as the Church, “us” as the Body of Christ in the world.

At the same time I see the great commission as a sort of authorization given to us by the authority of Jesus. We have been appointed; not delegated, but appointed. We have been given an authority to serve, under Jesus and responsible to him. It is almost like being given a rank, or made an officer; although, in the Church, the Body of Christ, the ranks we receive give each one of us a different role in the mission, but they never create an elite. They never create an upper echelon, or a high command.

I have relatives who are, or who have been, commissioned officers in the armed forces; in the Marines and the Coast Guard, and I am afraid of the thought of their seeing my uninformed attempts to understand this. The great commission means being given a rank of authority and responsibility in the purposes of Jesus. It means holding authority under an authority beyond your self. It makes us all, together, a unit serving “under orders”.



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The last verses in Matthew show us Jesus announcing his authority to his disciples, his followers, his friends; the people who have found their meaning in life through fellowship with Jesus, and in the growth that comes from living and learning with Jesus. Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.”

Heaven and earth, in the language of the Bible, means everything. It means everything that has been created; everything physical and everything spiritual; everything visible and invisible. All reality belongs to Jesus. It is under his authority.

All authority is what Jesus has. Commissioned authority is what Jesus gives to us, his disciples. It is an authority under his authority, and always responsible to him.



Jesus spoke to the core group of his disciples. Since the disciple named Judas Iscariot betrayed him, and got him arrested and crucified, and then, in remorse, hung himself, there were only eleven disciples left, out of the original twelve.



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There were other disciples, besides the eleven. The core disciples were like the first impact of a wave set in motion by Jesus, and the other disciples were the extension of that impact. We, too, are the extension of that same wave. Jesus started it in the last verses of Matthew.



Everyone, no matter where they are in that wave across time and space, receives the same commission. The disciples (including you and me) are all disciples and disciple makers at the same time. The commission of Jesus allows for nothing else. We never become more that this. When any of us disciples helps another person to be a disciple, we aren’t helping them to become any more than a disciple and a disciple maker.

We are part of a wave, the wave of Jesus. Jesus created the wave when he made his high dive from heaven to earth. The dive behind the wave deepened when he died on the cross to take away the sin of the world. The wave became a tsunami, a tidal wave, when he rose from the dead. The wave destroyed the power of sin and death. The wave spreads life over the world as we ride that wave and follow him.



The wave of Jesus is also like the sound waves of a voice. Every voice has a unique wave pattern. Even if you were to record one voice, and make it sound different by speeding it up or slowing it down, the essential identifying pattern would remain. There is a technology for destroying the natural patterns of a voice, but that is another story.



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Every human voice is as unique as that person’s finger print, but the finger prints of our fingers are stuck in one place at a time. The waves of a voice can go on and on. We could capture one of your voices, and convert it into radio waves, and broadcast it out into the universe, and it would go on, and on, and on.

The wave of Jesus is like the waves of his voice. The wave carries the finger print of his identity. The wave carries who he is, and what he is like, and what he has done for us. The wave of Jesus takes each one of us up in its wake, and it carries the presence of Jesus through us, from disciple, to disciple, to disciple, to all people, to the end of the age and beyond.



And here we need to say that Jesus did not call those disciples (or us) one by one, to take part in that wave one by one. He called his core, as a group, as a body. He called them to come to him together, and he commissioned them together. He did not commission us to act as lone wolves.



We have been commissioned to become part of this wave. One of the great things about such a wave is that, although it may have no end, it must have a beginning, and it must have continuity. It must have a connection with its beginning.



We must have a connection with Jesus. We must have a connection with who he is, what he is like, and what he has done for us. We must have a connection with our master’s voice, in order to speak for him, or (even more importantly) to speak from him, and to pass him on to others.

So the story of Jesus giving his disciples (and giving us) his great commission, is about a meeting. The great wave began with a rendezvous with Jesus.

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At this rendezvous an amazing thing happened. We read that, at this meeting, some of the original disciples “worshiped” him, while others doubted. This is strange. It was a meeting with Peter, James, John, Matthew, and all the rest. Which were the one who doubted?

This was a meeting between Jesus and the people who knew him best. They were the closest to the events of what we might call Jesus’ greatest days. They were with him at the last supper. They were with him when he was arrested, and then most of them ran away. Peter and John followed, and they watched at least part of the trial going on, at the high priest’s house, for a while. Then they also ran away. John was there at the cross when Jesus died. I am sure that they had all gone to the empty tomb when they received the report that Jesus had risen from the dead. The gospels tell us that Jesus himself had come to them, and showed them the wounds in his hands and feet. These eleven friends had been most deeply involved in Jesus’ dying and rising from the dead. Their lives were wrapped up in Jesus and the powerful actions of his life.

When Matthew tells us that some “worshiped”, it doesn’t mean that they prayed and sang hymns. It means that they simply flattened themselves, face down, on the ground at the feet of Jesus, at the sight of Jesus. They prostrated themselves before him.



They had an immediate physical and spiritual reaction to the one who had all authority in heaven and earth. They didn’t need to be told about his authority. They just knew it and acted accordingly. How could they forget that this was only a few days after Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead?



We have to see that this is really all the same authority and power that Jesus was talking about. It wasn’t just the authority that Jesus said he had. It was the authority that knocked some of them off their feet. Falling flat on your face is a way of saying that here is someone in whose presence you don’t have a leg to stand on. Here is someone who has the right to do with you whatever he wants.

Some of the eleven doubted. They hesitated to let Jesus topple them, and overthrow them, and make them fall down. They didn’t know if they were able, or if they wanted, to give Jesus their unconditional surrender.



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The truth is that the one who has carried all the sins of a fallen world in order to rescue that world has great authority. The one who has carried all the world’s failings (including our own), and the pain, and the injustice, and the evil of this world (and yet who has been able to rise again out of the ruin of it all) has the authority to confront that world and say anything, and ask for anything.

Anything this world can dish out, Jesus can speak to. Any obstacle this world this world can raise to the invasion of the kingdom of God, Jesus, the King, can overcome.

If we doubt or hesitate in the presence of Jesus, if we see him as he is, we do so in the very face of hope. It is true that some people are afraid of hope. Sometimes hope seems too good to be true; or hope confronts us with such a huge change of heart that we don’t know how to deal with it.

Peter tells us what comes to us on that wave. “In God’s great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade.” (1 Peter 1:3-4)

Jesus is the King who has created the wave we ride. He is the one who commissions us to ride that wave in order to pull others in.



Peter wrote about what it is like to be pulled into the wave that never loses its connection to the living Jesus. “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:8-9)



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Faith is not a virtue that we achieve by some mental process. It is not some kind of discipline of positive thinking. Faith, hope, and love are the gifts that come from being born again as children of God. Faith is a gift from God, working in Jesus, and it is a gift that carries, within itself, the giver of the gift.



I have an afghan crocheted by my Baci, my Polish grandma. I feel close to her when I see it or touch it. But faith brings an even stronger presence of the one who gives us faith. Peter tells us something about this living reality of faith that comes from its giver: “and even though you do not see him now you believe in him.” Peter’s choice of Greek words speaks of actually “believing into” Jesus. By faith Jesus is not something or someone “out there”. Jesus becomes the very world we live in, the very air we breathe.

Faith is not an idea or a determination that we develop. Faith is an entryway inward to God. It is a way of seeing the invisible and receiving it. It is not just about something you hope for, but it is something that comes to you, even as you hope. In the course of believing, Peter says that you “are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” It is something that is going on, and growing, even as we speak.

The work of Jesus that claims you for his own, and makes you like him, and pulls you into his wave in the world, is not only something you will receive at some point in the future. It is in the future. It is also something you are receiving now.

This is how you are being made into a disciple now. And this is how you are able to carry out your commission as a disciple maker now.



Looking down at Kahlotus WA

The Greek word for authority, that Jesus uses, carries the idea of capability and competence. It means that Jesus is able to make us, even now, what he wants us to be, no matter how unqualified we may feel, no matter how inept we may seem to ourselves or to others.

This is what Jesus wants to pass on to the whole world. It is his capability and competence to rule through the hearts, and minds, and words, and lives of those who trust him. This is part of his coming kingdom. It is his capability and competence to create new people of faith through those, like us, who have been commissioned by him.

Jesus’ capability and competence are perfect, because he has it all. He has all authority. Through him we, working together, and working with him, have whatever we need to go forth. So, together, we really can come to Jesus, and go forth together with him.