“Love’s Disciples” – Sermon on June 15, 2014
Genesis 1: 1-2:4 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, God’s Spirit swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness was called Night. And God saw that the light was good. There was evening and there was morning, the first day.
God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. And God said, “Let the waters be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear. Let the earth burst forth with vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth.” And it was so. And God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, the third day.
God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” So God created every living creature that with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” God made the wild animals of the earth, and the cattle, and everything that creeps upon the ground. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in God’s image, in the image of God they were created; male and female, God created them. God blessed them, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work, and rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all the work of creation. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
Matthew 28: 16-20 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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.”
“Love’s Disciples” – Sermon on June 15, 2014
I was so pleased and excited about the scripture passages shared this morning. The Genesis 1 reading is one of my favorites – the beauty of each part of Creation being spoken into existence by a God who must create, as a painter must paint and a writer must write and a musician must make music, our God must create. And the incredible example of a God who not only creates, but pauses to gaze upon what was created and declare it good, except humankind, which is, declares God, very good. And then we have the closing words of the Gospel of Matthew – a post-resurrection reunion between Jesus and those who had been with him the longest, the eleven apostles – words of commission, words of encouragement, words of promise. And right on the day we celebrate a baptism, we hear again the words of baptism. We are reminded that each time we welcome a soul into the Christian faith through the waters of baptism, we are fulfilling our commission.
Now usually there is a uniting thread that runs through the readings for a given Sunday, some way they all connect together. The connection between the Creation story and the passage in Matthew that is commonly referred to as “the Great Commission,” is not so obvious, but I am glad they are together. Because even though there is not an obvious connection, I think that we can better understand the Great Commission when we hold it up against the Creation story. Because the Great Commission has been abused. Some have understood this commission – to go and make disciples of all nations – as a duty to travel around the world and get people to give up the spiritual and faith beliefs they have held perhaps for thousands of years in order to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior – by force if necessary. This great commission got all tied up with colonialism, with taking over not just faith beliefs, but land and resources. It contributed to the Spanish Inquisition and to the decimation of the Native American peoples and their culture. It was terrible, sinful. It led us further away from the discipleship Christ commissioned his followers into.
There are still those who think that discipleship is about believing the correct thing and getting others to believe correctly also. But what if belief in Jesus is not that important? What if it is only important as a building block of trust? Perhaps when Jesus said to his followers, “believe in God, believe also in me. I am the way and the truth and the light,” he was saying this not as an ending but as a beginning. He was asking them to do something much more difficult than accepting some statements as truth. He was asking them to live differently – to live as he lived, showing mercy to the outcast, healing lepers, forgoing power over people in favor of empowering them. He was asking them to love one another, to be servant leaders, to sacrifice their individual needs to consider the common good. His statements about believing in him were meant to help them be willing to take those steps. But the end goal for Jesus, the reason he came, I believe, was not necessarily that more people would believe he was the son of God, but that more people would live as he lived and taught, and thus would change the world, even if they had never heard his name.
Eugene Peterson, in his contemporary scripture translation “The Message,” interprets the Great Commission this way: Jesus gave his charge: God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, up to the end of the age.
In today’s passage, Jesus tells the eleven that all authority has been given to him. He is saying that the usual divisions – nation against nation, tribe against tribe – no longer apply. All are one under God. All are one under the God who created all of it. The divisions are not of God – not the divisions of country, the divisions of slave or free, of sick or well, of clean or unclean, not even of you and me. Yes there is diversity in the world, there are differences. Look at how much diversity there is in the Creation story – every plant and tree and grass; every flying or swimming thing, all the wild animals and domestic animals, all the bugs, the sky, the sea, the stars sun and moon. But it all came from that primordial chaos, ordered and shaped and fashioned into that which is good.
All authority has been given to Jesus Christ, the messenger of God’s love. That is why Jesus came, not to get people to believe he is the son of God, but to help people see that God is a God of love and mercy, that we don’t need to be afraid, that it is the very nature of God to Create, to Redeem, to Sustain. The baptism is symbolic, a celebration of that three-fold nature of the divine – the lover, the beloved and the love itself, but we are making disciples when people experience love from us that is so compelling that they themselves want to pass it on. They want to share what they have, heal in whatever way they can, stand beside and stand up for the oppressed. They do this not because they have been inculcated with the correct belief, but because they have experienced the joy that comes from living this way, and they know that no one can take their joy from them. Whether they know his name or not, they are accompanied by Jesus, just as he promised. They are truly love’s disciples. May we be one with them. Amen.
