1.
So Jesus meets his friends on a mountain in the Galilee. And his friends are bewildered and beside
themselves. Some of them worship him and
weep with him. Others hold back, not
sure about risking themselves all over again.
And I imagine still others worship him and yet hold back. This honest, human mixture of faith and
doubt, hope and discretion. We recognize
it as our own.
And Jesus, undeterred, goes right ahead with his charge: “God
authorized and commanded me to commission you,” he tells them. “Go out and train everyone you meet, far and
near, in this way of life. Mark them by
baptism in the threefold name: Maker, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I
have commanded you.”
We call these last words—these last words in Matthew’s gospel—Jesus’ Great
Commission. At least, that’s the heading
you’ll find in many of your English translations. But Great Commission doesn’t quite capture
the edgy, provocative, dynamic tone of Jesus’ charge. Jesus’ charge to us in the beloved community
today. A Great Commission is something
you give a San Jose car salesman when he sells a fine automobile. A Great Commission is something a Wall Street
trader takes home after a day of fancy finger work and good fortune in the markets.
Jesus is calling on his friends to teach compassion, to risk
forgiveness, to embrace poverty, to believe in lost causes. Jesus is calling on his friends to teach
these things, to practice these things in daily life, to dare the world to
follow along. This isn’t so much a Great
Commission as it is a stunning invitation to believe in the power of love and
to trust in grace as the one and only way to heal everything that’s broken in
the world and in our hearts. Instead of
a Great Commission, let’s call it a Gutsy Gathering of Grace. Jesus laying it on the line. Jesus inviting commitment and courage in a
Gutsy Gathering of Grace.
And let’s notice the three verbs in this Gutsy Gathering of Grace. The biblical poets, the biblical storytellers are so fond of threes, so fond of threefold patterns in their texts. So notice the three verbs here. Train, mark and instruct. Train, mark and instruct. Train people in this way of life. Mark them by baptism in the threefold name. And instruct them in the practice I have commanded you. Train, mark and instruct. For long stretches of Christian history, this very text has been used to promote an aggressive kind of evangelism, as if turning souls to Christ was the point of it all, as if the mandate is to bring the whole world to Jesus and all will be well. But do you see? Do you hear the difference in our story this morning? Train people in this way of life. Mark them by baptism in the threefold name. And instruct them in the practice I have commanded you. Train, mark and instruct. This is about creating community. This is about nurturing practice. This is about training ourselves in the radically risky and profoundly loving ways of the gospel. A gusty gathering of grace.
Now just a little bit of exegesis to round this out. You now, exegesis is that discipline we bring
to these texts, doing what we can to understand them in their time and
place. Seeing if we can build a bridge
to new meanings in our own ministries and lives. So just a little bit of exegesis.
It seems to me that the setting of this morning’s text—the end of it
anyway—is profoundly important to Matthew, to Jesus and to those friends
gathering in the befuddling days after his resurrection. Where do they meet? Where do they gather, this Gutsy Gathering
of Grace? On a mountain in the
Galilee. On a mountain Jesus has set for
their reunion.
Now as readers—as folks who take the practice of reading seriously—we
remember this mountain in the Galilee.
We remember Jesus first gathering his disciples there and sitting down
in the midst of them and teaching.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the peacemakers.” We remember Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as the
very first Gusty Gathering of Grace. “If
anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants
to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces
you to go one mile, go also the second mile.”
This mountain in the Galilee is the very place where instruction and
training and practice take shape. It’s
the classroom where discipleship finds its rhythm and its discipline. “Do not worry about your life,” Jesus says on
the mountain, “what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body,
what you will wear. But strive first for
the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness and all these things will be given
to you as well.”
Do you see the connection, the possible, the probable connection,
between the Sermon on that mountain in the Galilee and the charge Jesus gives
on the same mountain at the very end?
Our charge is to train and to mark and to instruct. Our charge is to train the poor in spirit and
those who hunger and thirst for justice.
Our charge is to train the peacemakers and the merciful. Our charge is to instruct and inspire those
who will turn the other cheek and cast new visions of shalom and peace. Our charge is to instruct and inspire those
who will go the extra mile and turn old enemies into new friends.
3.
Twenty-something pilgrims gathered here—at the church—yesterday for our
Winter Version of the Contemplative Sabbath.
We set aside the entire campus for silence and contemplation: some of us
walking a labyrinth here in the sanctuary; others practicing yoga with Sarah
Joy in the hall; still others heading up the hillside for a walking meditation
in the woods.
What we do in these day-long experiences is create an intentional
community. I guess you might call it
another Gutsy Gathering of Grace. By
making the commitment to one another and to the Spirit, we create a community
in which we pray and we meditate and we wonder.
And in that wondering, we train for life in the Spirit. We practice letting go. We instruct one another in the ways of
patience and compassion and moving slowly in the world.
Some of my favorite moments come at mealtime—when we sit together and
eat together in silence. Without
conversation. I’m aware of my
companions in new ways, their slow, quiet sipping of soup, their satisfied breaking
of bread. I appreciate them for the
differences in their approach, in their manner, in their physicality and
spirit. I’m conscious, too, of the taste
of lentil soup, aware of the gift of fresh greens and cool water. In these simple ways, in just these simple
ways, we create a learning community, an intentional community, a piece of the
beloved community. Training and marking
and instructing. A gutsy gathering of
grace.
Today, of course, is Super Bowl Sunday.
And I like football as much as the next guy, I guess. But it strikes me that the Super Bowl is
something like the empire’s feast day. A
celebration of power and might. A glorification
of great wealth and glitzy advertising and American capitalism in
hyper-drive. Isn’t it possible, friends,
that the gospel invites in us something very, very different and
countercultural? Isn’t it clear that
Jesus charges us to train ourselves in the ways of meekness and poverty, in the
ways of mercy and peace? We Christians
are urgently invited to live in a kind of tension with the world as it is, to
live at loving odds with an empire that celebrates brute force and glamorous
wealth and consumerism run-amok.
That’s what we were doing in here yesterday—in our quiet, Contemplative
Sabbath day. That’s really what we’re
doing here every Sunday and in classes and mission teams throughout the
week. Developing our practice of
compassion and generosity and courage.
Building up a beloved community.
And coming together as a Gusty Gathering of Grace.
I want to add one footnote to all this.
Just recently, my friend Rabbi Paula Marcus has passed on to me this new
book. It’s called the Jewish Annotated New Testament (ed. Amy-Jill Levine). And Rabbi Paula and I will be teaching a
three-week class around the book later this month. Basically, it’s a commentary on the New
Testament—gospels, letters and all—from the perspective of contemporary Jewish
scholars. I recommend the book to you,
without reservation. And I hope some of
you will join Rabbi Paula and me for that class later in the month. Down at Temple Beth El.
As I read the commentary here on Matthew’s gospel, I’m reminded that
everything about Jesus’ teaching was profoundly and passionately Jewish. He teaches us to observe the Sabbath in a
faithful, just and disciplined way. He
teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves—with all the energy and
creativity of the Jewish prophets. He
teaches us to observe the rhythm of days and honor the cycle of seasons and
cherish the generosity of God—who gives us all things according to our
need. Jesus is—obviously—a Jewish
teacher, a Jewish rabbi. He seeks to
inspire a movement and practice of Jewish renewal.
So you and I turn, then, from notions of Christian superiority and
triumphalism. We turn from any sense
that Jesus is charging us to convert Jews and Buddhists and Muslims and
nonbelievers to the true faith in Christ.
Instead, we return to Jesus and his Gutsy Gathering of Grace in Matthew
28. “Go out and train one another,” he
says, “in this way of life. Mark one
another by baptism. And instruct one in
the practice of compassion and nonviolence and generosity and mindfulness.” What we’re to be about—in this place, in this
ministry—is the building up of mighty souls, not mighty empires. What we’re to be about is the formation of
mega-spirits, not mega-churches. What
we’re to be about in this place is a Gutsy Gathering of Grace—a church that
heals broken hearts and frees frightened captives and turns the tables on every
injustice.
As we do, we trust—with all our hearts—that Jesus our Brother is with
us always, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.
Amen.
