Worship. Doubt. Disciple

Matthew 28:16-25

Seattle Mennonite Church

April 28, 2019

© Amy Marie Epp

Worship. Doubt. Disciple.  These three words have something in common - a couple things, actually.  They are all ideas found in the text today - sometimes called the great commission -  and they are all both nouns and verbs.  Although only two of their are usually used as verbs.  And (maybe finally) I they also have in common that I’m going to be focussing on them in my discussion about this text - usually called the Great Commission.

The Not-So-Great Commission

First, something about that title - the great commission - or as I’ve been calling it in my head (and sometimes out loud) - the ‘Not so Great Commission’.  “Go therefore, into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded.”  Not so great because people like Waziyatawin, who came to us, a Dakota woman from southwest Minnesota, and said, “These words do violence.” Waz, her ancestors and many others like them have been the victims and survivors of these words wielded as weapons.

This passage from Matthew is the primary scripture on which the Doctrine of Discovery was based.  The Doctrine which permitted and encouraged the genocide and removal of indigenous people from their lands all over the world by European colonizers.  The doctrine from which we (ethnic) Mennonites must not distance ourselves from simply because of our own martyred history or because we weren’t directly involved in violence.  While my ancestors didn’t fire the guns or wield the swords, their farms were built on stolen land from which indigenous people were forcibly removed or killed.  Their plows tore up habitat that had been sustaining communities of creation for millenia.

It’s important to acknowledge the harm that this scripture has done in the world.  And after hearing from Waz I don’t know that I’ll ever think of this as the great commission again.  I do think there might be a little good in it, though.  There is invitation in it, anyway.  An invitation to worship, doubt and disciple.

Worship

First there is worship.  The eleven have retreated.  They have gone to the place where Jesus said they would meet him and they found him there!  When they saw him worship was their immediate response.  Our congregation does many things.  We are active in the world.  Each of us is active in many ways in our varied communities and doing justice, making peace, seeking God’s dream for all creation.  But our primary way of being formed in Christian community, as the body of Christ, is in worship.

In worship we come together.  We hear God’s word.  We focus our hearts and spirits on the person of Jesus, present with us.  And with Christ as our focussing lens, we pray for each other and for the world.  We are shaped by the Spirit through scripture, study, song and discernment.  We go from this place - this brief retreat - empowered to do all the things that we do out there in the world.

After the chaos and trauma of their last week, Jesus gave the disciples an opportunity for retreat.  For being away from the world, to meet him, to be with each other.  For there they would return to the world and be leaders, preachers, healers, ministers, just as he had been.  It’s from this place of retreat that he delivers his final instructions.  That they encounter and worship him.

Doubt

And.  At the very same time that the disciples fell down in worship of Jesus, they doubted.  Not - as we heard - “some doubted”.  Just “they doubted.”  “When they say him they worshipped him and they doubted.”  I don’t think you know how much hope that gives me.  This isn’t just one doubting dude named Thomas but all.  And even if it’s just some (it’s not) they are at once there with Jesus, worshiping, being formed in his presence and all the same they are doubting.  Encountering what is apparently a miraculous resurrection - the real and present Jesus before their very eyes - and doubting.

So these 2000 years later, I breathe a sigh of relief.  Doubt is a familiar feeling.  We are, if we’re honest, all doubters, are we not?  Skeptics.  Questioners. Agnostics.  Even I know there are atheist among us.  Universalists.  I began my sermon naming the challenge and doubt I have in And yet we worship.  Together.  We worship Jesus and are formed in his life and teaching.  We hear the words of scripture and are formed by the each other and the Spirit.

Doubt is a fact. And doubt did not stop Jesus from continuing the dialogue.  Eugene Peterson, God bless him, says, “Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and made his charge.”   Jesus is not deterred by doubt.  

Disciple

Jesus is undeterred from calling his disciples to disciple.  That verb that we don’t use as a verb. Now it’s your turn, he’s telling them.

One of the things is so hard to hear in this text with contemporary ears - the thing that truly does feel violent - is the MAKE disciples, baptize ALL nations, OBEY everything I’ve commanded you.  It doesn’t feel like Jesus, until you remember the kind of cat that Jesus was.  The kind of cat who shows his little cats how to be and what to do and where to go when to rest.  Jesus is companion and model for this disciples.  And as companions the little cat learns.  The little cat observes and matches pace.  Then Jesus disciples his disciples and he is calling on the disciples to travel around and disciple disciples of their own.  Of course it get confusing and repetitive in English because it all sounds the same.

There is a reason that we have a Discipleship Council - the council that holds worship and Christian formation and mutual care. Because discipling is one of the central things we’re called to as Christians.  Walking alongside each other with Jesus as the first discipler.

Words like ‘obey’ and ‘commandment’ are similarly hard to hear, when many of us don’t even use the terminology of obedience with our children any more.  We say instead, “follow my instructions” or ‘listen carefully” or “pay attention” when, let’s be honest, we really mean, “Just do what I say already.”  But what is the instruction - aka commandment - that Jesus is asking us to listen carefully to?  What is the ‘everything I have commanded you’ that he’s talking about.

The only commandment that Jesus has ever previously named - and it is actually called the “greatest commandment” by Jesus unlike this which not jesus but people named the great commission - is in Matthew 22.  I’m sure you all know it.  A lawyer asks him as a challenge, “What is the greatest commandment?” and Jesus answers:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

Obey everything I have commanded you.  Everything, in other words, two things: love God and love others.  Disciple others in this way.  

These final instructions from Jesus are a reminder to the Matthean audience that they are not the gatekeepers for God’s dream for wholeness.  They are not to be withholding.  They are not to use love as a weapon.  It’s not they who decide who should be a disciple, who should be baptized, who who be  part of the kin-dom.  It is invitation, not weapon.  Jesus has already told them that love and discipleship looks like feeding, clothing, liberating, visiting, quenching.  

I am with you always

So this passage has been used to the worst violence in the worst ways.  Violence we can’t undo.  I hope that we can undo something within ourselves that will enact healing instead of violence.  

When we come to the end of the passage Jesus says (I can’t not hear it in the KJV), “And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”  On the one hand, we could hear that like Jesus creeping on us, always watching - like Sting or Santa Claus.  But I hear it as a promise.  A promise of ongoing discipling.  Ongoing companionship.

When we gather in worship, Jesus is in our midst.  The Jesus we have encountered throughout the entirety of Matthew healing, preaching abundance, challenging temple authorities and empire, turning tables and appearing first to women.  Here, in worship, we encounter Jesus encouraging our continued love of God and neighbor.  Encouraging our doubt and skepticism - especially when the doubt is of systems that continue to oppress and self-centering narratives that remain unexamined.

This scripture has done violence.  May we be disciples who continue to acknowledge land, and not only that, build relationship, learn, volunteer our time, return resources through real rent.  May we be disciples who, through our worship and even in our doubt understand the call to walk alongside all nations, vessels for God’s love discipled to us through Jesus.  Amen.