The Great Commission

Matthew 28: 16-20

It can be easy to believe that we have to be perfect before we can claim to be doing anything as “christian.”

When I first started out in my career as a choir director, I had to overcome an intense feeling of unworthiness about daring to lead a church choir. For me, choir was an important spiritual home. When I lost my faith, I still maintained a connection to church through choir. And so for me, being a choir director was akin to being a pastor.

And only good christians can be pastors, right? Only good christians can lead in the church. Only good christians can work in churches.

We can be convinced that only good people may dare to claim that what they do in the world is in the name of Jesus. But if we read the gospels, we learn otherwise. But if we read the gospels, we learn otherwise. We hear stories of Jesus entering the home of Zaccheus BEFORE Zaccheus confessed to his repentance and that he would sell half of his possessions to benefit the poor and stop defrauding the people from whom he was collecting taxes (which all tax collectors did).

Jesus didn’t wait for the disciples to hear his sermon on the mount before he told them to follow him. There is some comfort we can take, I think, that we don’t have to have it all together before we can live out our lives as followers of Jesus. All of us (ALL of us) struggle with sin, and by God’s grace we seek transformation and wholeness from it.

And in the meantime, we are among those today who receive Jesus’ great commission, like all followers of Jesus have, to “make disciples of all nations” and teach “them to obey everything” Jesus has commanded us to do.

And perhaps nothing illustrates the grace of Jesus than the fact that Jesus is still with us today, even as the church itself has committed massive sins in its efforts to do just that throughout human history. For this passage that consists of Jesus’ final words to the disciples has often been contorted to justify horrendous acts of violence and colonization in the name of baptizing the nations “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

We have a lot to figure out about being the church today when we are in decline and when we reckon with the moral failures of Christianity. But one thing rings abundant and clear about these final words of Jesus. Because those final words weren’t the great commission.

Jesus’ final words were actually a tender and loving promise: “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Thanks be to God.