The Great Commission

I took a flying leap at this one for Lenten services tonight...we'll see what happens!

Hi!  Welcome back to our Lent series on the Mission of the Church.  You all keep coming back, and so we must be doing okay.  

So, the last few weeks, starting with Ash Wednesday, we’ve been working a lot with the gospel of Matthew.  ‘Cause, I don’t know, that’s where this stuff seems to be…but so far, everything that we’ve read has been from the time while Jesus was doing ministry here on earth, before he was crucified.  So we always have the Cross sort of looming in the background…we know what’s coming…

But this, what we read tonight, comes after Easter.  It is the final verses of Matthew’s gospel.  Now each of the four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote their own versions of the Jesus story, and for the most part, they pretty well match up.  I mean, you can tell that they are all writing about the same things, even if some of the details differ a little.  But each of these writers is writing…basically independently of each other – they’re not thinking that their version of the story is going to get stuck in a giant book with three other versions of the story, and then you’ll really be able to put all the pieces together.  No, the gospel writers were writing what they thought their audiences needed to know…and so what was just read tonight is what Matthew thinks we need to know, as the final, last authoritative word from Christ.  

Now, even though we’re in Lent, I think it’s okay to read and learn from the post-Easter stories.  Because us Christians, we’re Easter people.  We understand that the world is fundamentally different because of the Cross and the Resurrection.  We don’t use seasons like Advent and Lent, which are times of preparation, to pretend like we don’t know Christmas or Easter are coming.  We are not pre-Jesus, and we shouldn’t pretend like we are.  We use these seasons of the Church Year to allow God to deepen our faith, to open ourselves up to the gifts he is giving us, but we don’t just…pretend like we don’t know the ending.

We do know the ending.  

At the end of Lent, is Easter.  

And the disciples in these few verses from the end of Matthew also know the ending.  Christ is risen from the dead, praise the Lord, now what?  Well, we follow him, I guess.  And so they go to the mountain where Jesus told them to go, and he comes up to meet them, and they worshipped him and even though they know the end of the story, some of them still doubted.  Hmmm.

Do you think Jesus knew that some of them were still a little doubtful?  I do.  But he doesn’t appear to have kicked them off the mountain.  

See, I think as Christians, we tend to think that if we don’t believe “enough”, whatever “enough” is, or if it’s hard for us to believe, or if we have moments of doubt, or maybe even giant sweeping waves of doubt sometimes, that we’re bad Christians, that we’re spiritually immature, that we’re not really good enough, that we’re not really “church people”, whatever.  

But I think this story here tells us otherwise.  You can have doubts.  Heck, the disciples did. Like, the day after Easter – the first Easter.  I mean, if you’d think there’d be anybody who didn’t have doubts, it would be the people who were right there, who watched the whole thing play out.  

But some of them were doubtful…and they still worshipped.  It’s possible to worship, and to be a little doubtful.  It’s also possible to have some doubt, some questions, some wonderings if it’s all true, and still be part of the Church.  Church isn’t just for the super-believers.  Obviously, Sunday morning worship isn’t just for the super-believers, that much we know, be welcoming and all, right?  

But neither is the rest of what the Church is and does.  Look at this story.  They were worshipping, even though some of them doubted, and then Jesus gives them instructions.  Apparently, he doesn’t consider having doubts an impediment to ministry.  

And neither should we.  As Christians, we should not think that having doubts, having questions, not always “getting it”, having days where it’s blissfully wonderful followed by days where you think maybe not a lick of it is true, we should not think that these experiences – whether they are our own, or somebody else’s, disqualify us from participating in the Church – all of the things we’ve been talking about this Lent, and all of the things you already know about what the Church is called to do and be.  

And what is it, then, that we are called to do and be?  What does Jesus tell us in these final words from Matthew’s Gospel?  He tells the people who are already disciples…to go make more disciples.  Baptize them, and teach them everything I taught you.

Disciple, or discipleship, is kind of a big word that is mostly only used in church.  Occasionally you see it elsewhere, usually used in a negative sense, but since it’s mostly a church word, we should probably explain it.  So, when we hear about “disciples” in the Bible, mostly we think about the 12 disciples.  They were like, the super-secret-special Jesus friends , a cut above the rest, the good ones, right? 

Um, not actually.  A disciple is, well, it’s a student, of someone, but it’s more than just “sit in the classroom and take notes for the test later” kind of student.  It’s a much more “full” sense of student – it’s like, follower…or…apprentice…or, like the person that you are a disciple of is kind of your mentor.  Parents, or people who work in human resources, you understand this: the word discipline comes from the word disciple…and when you discipline someone, you are trying to teach them – about what is and is not acceptable behavior, about how we live in this world.

Do you have people like this in your life?  Sometimes it’s a teacher – maybe in high school or college, there was that one professor who just…captivated you.  You know, you enjoyed her classes, you appreciated his perspective on things, she taught you to think about the subject matter…and life…in a way that’s really helpful, he’s the one you went to for suggestions or advice or just a list of good books to read over the summer.  But it could be someone who’s not a teacher, at least not in the strictest sense of the word.  It could be your grandpa who taught you about how to work with wood…and how to get along with people.  Or the old lady down the street who mothered you, even though you were an adult with your own children, when your mother died.  Or whoever.  

It’s that person, or people, in your life who share facts, sure, but also wisdom.  The people that you admire and respect, and can honestly say, “I want to be like that person, I want to follow this person’s lead because they clearly know what’s going on.”  

This was Jesus, for the disciples, and it can be Jesus for us.  See, Jesus was a rabbi – a Jewish religious leader, in his day.  And the way that religious training worked back then was that, they didn’t really have like, main central schools where you learned how to be a rabbi.  You didn’t go off and go to seminary, the way we think of today.  Instead, you joined up with one of the local rabbis who was taking on students, and learned from him.  And what did you learn from your rabbi?  What did the 12 disciples learn from Jesus?  Not just the practicalities of “how to be a rabbi” whatever they might be, but…how to think, about God, and about people.  How the relationship of God and his people works…now that Jesus has come, and launched a new covenant, and how to understand that, and live it, and talk about it with other people. 

That’s what being a disciple of Jesus is: not just learning a whole lot of “facts about God” – like if we memorize the Apostles’ Creed then we’ve got it down.  Memorizing the Apostles’ Creed – and the Lord’s Prayer and the 10 Commandments and so on are good things, and we should do them.  But in addition to that, being a disciple, a follower, a student of Jesus means learning from him how to think and talk and act and live in a way that reflects the “facts” that we know.  It means building a relationship with Jesus the same way you build a relationship with that favorite college professor or your grandpa or whoever.  It takes time, it takes listening, it takes pondering, it takes putting it into practice.  

When Jesus tells us to make disciples of all nations – everybody – he’s telling us that this is what he’s looking for: people who “know the facts,” yes, but even more than that, people who have that relationship, who are constantly learning and growing into the life of Christ.  

Of course, being a good Lutheran, I should point out that God is one who is reaching out, God is the one who makes the first move, when we share the love of Christ with others, when the pastor stands up here and baptizes someone, when we teach people about Christ, it is obviously our hands, our mouths, that are doing the acting, the speaking, the pouring of the water…but it is the Holy Spirit who empowering that, it is the Holy Spirit working through each one of us to disciple us, and to disciple others.  

Because the way rabbi school, discipleship, worked in those days...you didn’t get to say, I like Rabbi Joseph, he seems like a really good guy, I’m going to be his disciple.  Rabbi Joseph, or whoever, had to pick you.  There wasn’t really an application process, per se, certainly not the way that we think of it today.  The teacher, the rabbi, the mentor, picked who he wanted as his students, as his disciples.  

He picked you, you became a “member” so to speak, of the rabbi school, and you got to the task of learning.  The process of becoming a disciple is that the rabbi picks you for his school, and then you start learning.

And this, good Lutherans, is why we baptize babies.  If anyone ever tells you that we shouldn’t baptize babies because they don’t know enough to believe in Jesus…well, baptism isn’t about us choosing Jesus, it’s about Jesus choosing us.  When Jesus went down along the lakeshore and called up Peter and Andrew – total strangers – from their fishing boat – did they “choose Jesus”?  No.  He brought them into his school, and started teaching them.

And so we baptize – because in the Sacrament of Baptism, God brings us into the Church, the post-Easter version of “rabbi school”, and then we start learning.  And we pretty much don’t ever stop.  Nobody “graduates” from this rabbi school, nobody graduates from the Church.  But even though we’re all still learning how to follow Jesus, how to live in this post-Easter, resurrection world, how to love a God who loves us more than we will ever comprehend, how to love other people the way God loves them and us, even though we’ll never have that all figured out – we are still called, given the mission, to go out and start making new disciples.  

Ancient Greek doesn’t really have punctuation.  So, when you read it, and start trying to translate, say, the Bible, into modern languages that do have punctuation, you have to work hard to figure out where things like commas and colons and periods go.  When I read this verse, “go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you,” I think a colon, belongs right after “nations”.  Go, and make disciples of all nations: baptizing them, and teaching them. 

Make disciples: by baptizing, and teaching. 

This story, these 5 short verses here, are what is known as The Great Commission.  Last week we had the Great Commandment, this is the Great Commission.  The disciples – which is now all of us Christians, even those who sometimes have some doubts, are being commissioned – given a mission – to go to all the nations, meaning, the whole world, and make disciples.  Baptize, and teach.  And remember that God is with us always; he is the one actually baptizing and bringing people in, he is the one teaching us all.

A short word of advice here: as we go about this mission, we need to have a sense of urgency.  There are a lot of people in this world…state…town, who don’t know about Jesus.  There’s plenty of work to be done. But there are good and bad ways to go about it.  We don’t, for example, run out into the streets with a firehose and start baptizing people willy nilly, right?  We don’t “teach all the things Jesus commanded us” in an obnoxious way by yelling at people or being public nuisances.  You can’t nag people into the Kingdom of Heaven.  It just…doesn’t work that way.  So we do it in a way that’s respectful, but we definitely do it.

So keep learning, keep being a disciple of Jesus, keep learning about his love and his grace and his forgiveness.  And while you’re at it, go, and make more disciples, of all nations.

This is the mission of the Church.

Amen.

In Which I Do Not Have a Brain Tumor or MS

So...in January, I went to the eye doctor, because I hadn't been to the eye doctor in years.  Like, maybe 10.  I know, for shame!  But...now I'm like a real adult, with a real job, and real health insurance, and not moving every flipping year.  So I went to the eye doctor.

Eye doctor (for whom pastoral care bedside manner is not particularly a strong suit) tells me I have swollen optic nerves (= increased brain pressure), and I need to see a neurologist.  Cue freaking out.  (Eye doctor: "I'm sure it's really nothing...")

So I go see the neurologist, who explicitly and very sweetly tells me to "please don't freak out, I really think you're going to be okay."  My neuro exam checked out totally fine (except for the optic nerve thing), so next up was a brain MRI. He asked if I had headaches, and I said I have lots of sinus headaches, but not "non-sinus" headaches.  He seemed to think maybe what I thought were sinus headaches were really high-pressure headaches.  Well, maybe, I guess...Could be, I suppose, right?

So the nurse calls to tell me that the MRI is clear except for some sinus blockages...do I have sinus problems?  Sigh....

Anyway...on to the spinal tap...the working theory at this point is that I have high cerebro-spinal fluid (CSF) pressure...so we need to actually measure the pressure to find out...which is done by spinal tap.  So back to the hospital, spinal tap under live xray (nice, because then they can see what they're doing instead of just randomly stabbing you in the back), spend a few days lying flat on my back...My awesome aunts took care of me, and my awesome friends came to visit me (even pastors need pastoral care!).  That was Friday.  I drove back to Huron on Saturday and had one heck of a headache by the time I got there.  Then on Sunday, well...I hate cancelling church for weather, but we had a heck of a blizzard, and I think God knew that I just needed another day to lay around instead of standing upright trying to preach...

So my neurologist calls back and sure enough, the pressure was high.  Normal is 150...maybe as high as 180.  Mine was apparently almost 300.  So, there's that.  Which leads to a diagnosis of "Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension" = you have high CSF pressure and we have no idea why.

They start me on Diamox which is a diuretic/glaucoma/altitude sickness drug.  A pretty low dose.  Side effects are..meh.  Tingly fingers and toes and face, sometimes, all carbonated beverages taste BLECH, some vision changes...probably just as my eyes adjust to not having so much pressure on them all the time...

Plus, also, in "News of the Unexpected" - I can hear!!!   And smell!!!  I had no idea I was so sensory-deprived.  But two days after starting the medication, I had to turn down the volume on my phone and car stereo because it's SO LOUD.  I nearly lost it at a women's Bible Study because I didn't understand why they were all being SO LOUD.  Haha, just adjusting to new sound!  And I can smell - things like coffee and buffalo wings and all sorts of things that I had no idea I was missing out on until suddenly - there they are!  Crazy!  It's like this:

It's really amazing, actually!

So I had a follow-up with my neurologist today. He's glad I'm doing so well, keeping me on the meds at least until I see him again in April. 

Plus I definitely don't have a brain tumor, or MS, or any other diseases which are diagnosable from blood tests, being as on the day of the spinal tap, they drew out what appeared to be half my blood volume to test for a million different things.  So I'm healthy.  I feel good.  And I can smell coffee!!!!!!

Yay, me!

This Weekend

Remarks as prepared for delivery...heh. :)

Good morning!  Okay, I want to start today with a little audience participation.  Thank you, Doug, for reading the Scriptures this morning.  Let’s go with the second reading, the one from First Corinthians.  Raise your hand if you have ever heard these verses read – or preached on – before today.  Go ahead.  It’s okay.  I know we’re Lutheran, but you’re allowed to raise your hand.  Ok, good.  No, don’t put them down.  Keep them up for a second.  Okay, keep your hand raised if you have ever heard these verses read or preached besides at a wedding.  Okay, hands down.  The introverts can relax again. 

Ok, here’s the thing – I hate destroying people’s illusions, but here we go…these verses are not actually about weddings or marriage.  I mean, they’re not bad advice for people getting married…this is what it means to love somebody…but I’m not married, and there’s a couple of these that I had to lean on pretty heavy this week in my own life.  Instructions on how and why to love people are not limited to the kind of romantic love that we most often mean when we’re talking about weddings and marriage.  It’s not even limited to family.  Think about this for a second – think about a person in your life who you are not married or otherwise related to, but whom you love.  Somebody that you have genuine, Christian, nonromantic love in your heart for – maybe it’s a good friend, or a teacher or coach, or student or athlete, or a coworker or whatever.  Somebody that you just – you care about them.  Think about that person for a second, picture them in your mind, take a second to reflect on just how glad you are that this person exists on the planet and is in any way part of your life. 

And now answer this.  Is that person perfect?  Do they ever annoy you?  Or not return a phone call or text message?  Do they ever show up late, or not be ready to work, or forget to do what they said they would, or say something offensive, or in any way just…irritate you from time to time?  Of course.  But you still love them.  You would still do anything for your best friend, or your old football coach, or whoever.  And so you need these verses, telling you how to love.  This isn’t just hearts-and-roses-weddings-and-Valentine’s Day kind of love.  This is in-the-trenches kind of love.

It’s the kind of love you need in a church. 

Which is fortunate for us, because it turns out that’s exactly who Paul was addressing this to.  This whole section that Doug read today follows right on the heels of where we’ve been the last two weeks – St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthian congregation.  The first week was, “Here are all the different spiritual gifts people have to be used for the common good – they are: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miraculous powers, prophecy, discernment, speaking in tongues, and interpreting tongues.  Last week was, “Even though they are all different gifts, like different body parts, they are all useful, and used together and in a coordinated fashion, make the Body of Christ able to do its work, and that’s pretty awesome.  But even better than all of that, Paul says, and here’s where we get into this week’s reading, even better and more important than any of the aforementioned gifts, is love.  I’m going to read this again, and quote from the New Living Translation:

“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.  If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing… Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!  Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture!  But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless…Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”

Now, notice that I skipped over the whole “love is…this that and the other thing…”  I did that because I wanted to come back to it and focus on it for a minute.  Now that we know that love is more important even than our spiritual gifts, Paul wants to tell us how, exactly, we are supposed to love.  Fine, we can love people, but what does it look like?

Here we go.  Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.  It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.  Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

And remember, this is about the love that we have with our family, our friends, our spouse, and the whole Body of Christ…and it’s also about how we love our enemies.  In the gospels, Jesus says “Love your neighbor,” but he also says, “Love your enemy.” 

This is how we are to love – our neighbors and our enemies – our parents and our children – our bosses and our employees – our friends and the people we can’t stand and the people we don’t really know – the people who go to our church and the people who go to a different church and the people who don’t go to church at all.  This is how we are supposed to love others, because it is precisely the way that Jesus loves us. 

“Love one another, as I have loved you,” Jesus says, in the Gospel of John.  And this is how he has loved us.  

So, up until this point, I’ve been talking about how we’re supposed to love other people.  But I want to switch gears for a minute.  Think about yourself now.  Instead of thinking about a person that you love, think about Jesus and you.  You’ve done some rotten things this week haven’t you?  When you think about it, you know it’s true.  You’ve made bad decisions and hurt other people and not done the things you’re supposed to and yelled at the dog or the kids or your best friend or the waitress.  You’ve wasted time or told a lie or wanted something that isn’t yours or cheated on your tax return or cheated on your spouse.  

What do you suppose Jesus thinks about all that?  He doesn’t like sin – that’s true.  He wants us to follow his will for our lives, and not do things that hurt ourselves or other people.  And yet, even when we sin, Jesus is patient and kind.  Jesus is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.  Jesus does not demand his own way.  Jesus is not irritable, and Jesus keeps no record of being wronged.  Jesus does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.  Jesus never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.  Jesus.  Loves.  You.  Hear that, okay?  Jesus loves you.  Whatever it is you’ve done – whenever it is that you’ve failed at loving other people – Jesus still loves you.  

And so that’s why we love others, just like this.  We hang in there, and we keep on loving, even when the situation is tough.  Even when other people aren’t acting the way we’d like them to.  Even when we keep getting burned.  We keep our heart open, and our hand out to help.  We keep loving.  Because that’s what Jesus does, and that’s what he asks us to do.  

Now, hear me on this. Keeping no record of wrongs, never giving up, enduring through every circumstance, etc doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to address conflict and try to improve a relationship.  And it certainly doesn’t mean that you have to tolerate abuse or mistreatment.  Nowhere does Paul say, “Love is being a doormat.”  There will, from time to time, possibly be people in your life that you need to no longer interact with, for reasons of safety or sanity, and don’t let anyone tell you that, “if you really loved me...”  No.  

Even Jesus knew when to walk away.  In the gospel lesson for today, Jesus is getting mocked, and harassed, and physically assaulted.  After he stands up in the synagogue basically announcing that he’s the Messiah, in his own hometown, people come after him.  They’re basically saying, “Who the heck are you to say that, you’re just Joseph the carpenter’s son!”  Jesus responds with, well, a good summary is, “Yeah, I knew you wouldn’t believe me…same thing happened to Elijah and Elisha…” And then the Bible says, “All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this.  They got up, drove him out of town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff.  But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.”  

Jesus loved them, but he wasn’t a doormat.  He walked away for the sake of his own safety - but he still loved them, and that’s good news.  Because I think we also, often try to drive Jesus out – out of our town, out of our life.  Who are you, Jesus, to tell me how to live?  Who are you to be God “that way?”  I want God to be like “this” or like “that”, and you’re not doing it that way.  Get out.  I’ll handle it myself.”

Ever said that?  Or thought that?  I have.  There have absolutely been moments in my life when I’ve said, “God, you’re doing it wrong.  This is what needs to happen, so get to it.” 

And the good news, the Gospel, is that even when we’re doing that to Jesus, trying to drive him out because we don’t like the way he seems to be running things, he keeps on loving us.  He keeps on being patient and kind, not envious or boastful or rude.  He doesn’t demand his own way or get irritable or keep record of our wrongs only to beat us over the head with them later.  He doesn’t rejoice over injustice, as though we “had it coming”, but he rejoices when truth wins out, never giving up, never losing faith, always hopeful, and enduring all circumstances.  That is Jesus.  That’s how he loves you, and how he loves me.  That is how he loves every single one of us, and it’s how he asks us to love one another, as the body of Christ.  

Three things will last forever: faith, hope, and love.  And the greatest of these is love.  Praise God that his love never fails.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit…Amen.