Sermon from February 7: Our Hope and Calling

Our Hope and Calling
Epiphany V; February 7, 2021
Matthew 28

I frankly am uncertain where to start for you today. What I feel compelled to say to you about Matthew 28 comes from reading the text and deciding that the translation is misleading. Yet I have tended to be critical of preachers who do too much explanation during the sermon; generally I think we should give you the results of our work, without forcing you to endure the process of the work as well. But I think I will start by inviting us all to stand on that hilltop with the Eleven, while pausing from time to time at the dining room table where I did most of my work on this sermon.

We’ve heard the news from the Marys; they say that they’ve seen the Lord, but all we have is their word for it. But on that word we’ve made the trip back to Galilee, to this hill, where we’re standing and waiting for Jesus. If he really is going to appear. We don’t doubt that they saw something, they had a vision of some sort and that the vision is worth making the trip for. But resurrected? People have had visions of the dead. King Saul, desperate for some assurance, got a medium to conjure up the spirit of the prophet Samuel. We saw Lazarus come out of the tomb, still wrapped in his shroud. But neither of those is resurrection. Resurrection is the beginning of new life, the start of a new creation, God’s remaking of the whole universe into something redeemed and new. Is that really what the women saw? A resurrected Jesus?

Here we are, on this hilltop on a brisk Spring morning, shivering a little and huddling for warmth and encouragement. Sometimes we just need to be close to each other for the warmth of each other’s bodies and for the reassurance that we’re not alone on this hilltop. Then we see him; his coming is as sudden as lightning and as gentle as opening a door. We all fall at his feet, but some of us are uncertain of what we are seeing. Is this a vision? A ghost? A reanimated corpse? Or the new creation?

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” says the familiar voice. We know what else we will need for reassurance that this is a resurrected Jesus, a new creation: we will need to eat and drink with him, just as we used to, and catch the glint in his eye that tells us that God is here, God is remaking the creation, God is making all things new. And that assurance will come. Dinner with him, walks with him, the chance to feel his touch again and know that it is not only the familiar Jesus but somehow someone radically new: a glimpse of what we will be, what the grass on this hilltop and the birds flying overhead will be. A glimpse of what the entire creation will be, when God is done with it.

Thinking about those birds flying over us as we stand on the hilltop with Jesus has taken me back to the dining room table where I did most of my work this week. I look out the window at the lagoon and watch the birds landing on the water, ducking their heads underneath searching for fish, then surfacing and looking about at their companions. There’s a beautiful heron standing on the opposite edge of the lagoon, looking around and enjoying the morning sun. I’m thinking about what I just read in Matthew 28: “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.” (New Revised Standard Version)

I’ve been hearing those words all my life. We Christians have traditionally called them the “Great Commission,” and quoted them as what Jesus commits us to doing in the world. They have motivated evangelism and mission and outreach, as well they should. But I’m dissatisfied; I get out my Greek New Testament and take a look. And decide that I don’t like the translation. Here I am, one preacher against a whole tradition of translation! And as much as I dislike preachers showing off their Greek scholarship, the only way I can think of to put this Great Commission into perspective is to invite you to look over my shoulder at the words Matthew wrote in Greek and tell you what I think they mean.

The main verb in that sentence is not “go,” but “disciple.” I guess we don’t usually think of “disciple” as a verb, so we translate it as “make disciples,” but then we have to get clumsy with what follows. Well, knowing my own limitations, here’s the way I would translate what Jesus says: “So when you go out, disciple all ethnicities, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to keep everything I have commanded you.” I think these small changes matter, because they have made me realize three things.

The first thing is that the emphasis is on teaching. A “disciple” is a learner, someone who listens to a teacher and is trying to learn something from that teacher. The teacher may be a living person or someone you know only through books. I have often thought of myself as a disciple of Miguel de Unamuno, the Spanish philosopher, poet, and novelist whose picture hangs in my study. His work has influenced the way I think about God, about life, about good and evil. He died more than twenty years before I was born, but I did get to meet his daughter in 1976. I think of myself as his disciple. So the main thing Jesus tells us there on that hilltop is to teach, to disciple people, to bring them into the circle of those who are learning from Jesus. Yes, I chose my words carefully: not learning “about” Jesus, but learning “from” Jesus. He is the source of all that we learn.

Learning can be slow and sometimes clumsy. Birds don’t need to be taught to fly, but it can be amusing to watch how they do it. As I look out the dining room window, I see one of the birds – what is it? Is it a species of duck unfamiliar to me? Or another sort of water bird? – one of the birds decides to take off and it rises slowly from the water, skimming the surface of the entire length of the lagoon, rising into the air only a moment before it would have hit the small bridge for golf carts. It makes me wonder how many bridges I have run into or nearly stumbled over in my attempts to take off with Jesus.

Our calling is to disciple, to teach, to bring people into the circle of those who are learning from Jesus. And the second thing I realize is that we are to teach people to “keep everything that I have commanded you.” I suppose the word “obey” is okay, except that it feels wrong in context. Jesus is raised from the dead, the new creation is beginning to be shaped from the old creation; I don’t hear Jesus telling us to make a list of rules and tell people to obey them. After all, what sort of things has Jesus been commanding us? Simply a new list of rules? Or a new way of living?

In a warlike world Jesus has shown us the new creation is peace. In a vengeful world, Jesus has shown us the new creation is forgiveness. In a diseased and despairing world, Jesus has shown us the new creation is hope. In a greedy, self-seeking world, Jesus has shown us the new creation is service. In a bitter, partisan world, Jesus has shown us the new creation is love.

The rules that you and I decide to keep are in service to the sort of people we choose to be, the kind of life we choose to live. Our calling is not merely to teach commandments; our calling is to disciple people into Jesus’ way of life. No wonder some of us, shivering on that hilltop, are feeling doubtful. When he sent us out to heal the sick and cast out demons, that was easy compared to this. We can devote the rest of our lives to the project of discipling people into Jesus’ way of life and maybe have relative success with a handful. We may, if we’re blessed, succeed with our own children, but even that isn’t guaranteed. It’s easier to heal the sick, to cast out demons, to teach a new set of rules than to disciple people into a way of life.

And for the third thing that I realize I have to take you back to the dining room table so you can look at my Greek New Testament with me. When nearly every translation says “all nations,” as in “make disciples of all nations,” the word is “ethne.” It means “nation” in the sense of “identity group,” such as “the Irish” or “the Xhosa.” It doesn’t mean nation in the sense of “United States of America” or “Argentina.” It means “the Vietnamese,” not the nation-state of Vietnam. “Ethne” is the source of our English word “ethnic” and “ethnicity.” So our Great Commission is to disciple all ethnicities into Jesus’ way of life.

Here is where that is taking me: you and I are living in an era in which the mission field doesn’t begin across the ocean, but begins outside our front door, and sometimes even in our own living rooms. So I think the ethnicity that we are called to disciple, the ethnicity that needs to learn Jesus’ way of life, is White people in the United States. I know that not all of you who hear this are White, but hear what I say to my fellow Whites. We White people have learned the world’s ways very well, the ways of power and prestige and progress, but we have not learned Jesus’ ways, the ways of service and forgiveness and love. The healing of our nation-state will begin as we, the community of Jesus, disciple all ethnicities into Jesus’ way of life, beginning with the White people who have dominated our land since its birth. That will be hard, and it isn’t made easier by simply saying that it would be good for everyone to do so.

Jesus’ way of life is a hard sell, learning it is a struggle and discipling others into it is a challenge. I think that is why we have tended to take the easy way out. We either try to get laws passed that enforce the rules that we think will serve Jesus – whether it is something as simple as prohibiting shopping on Sunday or as complex as abolishing abortion – or we try to scare people into following Jesus by convincing them that they will burn in hell if they don’t. Force and fear: those are the world’s ways; those are not the ways of the new creation.

So what do we have, concretely, to offer people as we disciple them into the ways of Jesus, into the new creation? We have our answer right next to us as we stand huddled, shivering on the hilltop. We have the community of faith. As flawed as we are, as difficult as we can be, we do have each other. And we remember Jesus’ promise that whenever two or three of us are together, he is there with us. We don’t need to scare hell out of people or get the government to make people behave the way we think they should, we need to invite them into a community of people who rely on Jesus and are learning together to live in the new creation. That is why he tells us to baptize them: we are not merely to get them to do certain things, but to initiate them into the community of the new creation. That is who we are, that is what we are: we are the community of the new creation. Whenever two or three of us are together in the name of Jesus, there he is with us, discipling us, teaching us, remaking the creation through us.

So as we go and disciple all ethnicities, as long as we stay together we can live in Jesus’ promise: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Robert A. Keefer
Presbyterian Church of the Master
Omaha, Nebraska