Bless to Me: Blessing the World
Matthew 28:16-20
August 30, 2020
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here https://youtu.be/mhVS5dCY8PY
I had expected to share more about the ancient Celtic people and the distinctives of their spirituality than I have done so far, and today is the last Sunday of this series. There are many volumes written on this subject, and probably many arguments about how much can be verified about people who lived so long ago. This might be more my interest than yours, so let me just offer this one piece. It comes from Bridge House, an intentional Christian community in Southern England which leans on this tradition.
On their website, they say “Celtic Christianity was a faith hammered out at the margins. The Celts lived on the margins of Britain, on the margins of Europe and on the margins of Christendom. They lived close to nature, close to the elements, close to God and close to homelessness, poverty and starvation. They were under constant threat, from invasion by Vikings and other Germanic tribes, from Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Roman imperialism, from all sorts of forces that were bigger and more powerful than they were. Nor was it just their land and their livelihoods that were threatened but their language, their culture, their institutions and their beliefs. It has been said that there are two kinds of people in history - those who do things to others and those who have things done to them. The Celts as a race indisputably belong to the second category. Their story is one of' oppression, suffering and progressive marginalization - the same way that was trodden by Jesus in his time on earth. But it is a story, too, of remarkable hope, imagination, wholeness and simplicity, qualities that we are beginning to discern our own need of in a society that for all its outward sophistication and success is perhaps just as threatened and suffers just as much.” [1]
“Celtic Christianity was a faith hammered out at the margins,” they say. There are many who believe that Christians have followed Jesus the most faithfully at those places and times in history when we were not encumbered with earthly power, when we occupied more of the margins than the mainstream. That is certainly how we started.
We heard today the very end of Matthew’s gospel. We might remember that Matthew’s story began with King Herod and his brutal massacre of babies. The story of Jesus is immersed in violence and injustice. If the Empire had had its way, the story would have ended with Jesus’ crucifixion. But that is not the ending we heard. Instead we heard of a commissioning into a future saturated with the presence of God.
It is an unlikely ending. Tom Long describes the scene as one of near-comic irony. We have given these instructions the lofty title of “The Great Commission.” We might expect to see row upon row of thousands of followers waiting for marching orders while a majestic choir belts out the Hallelujah Chorus. Instead, when Jesus proclaims “all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me,” he “is on an unnamed mountain in backwater Galilee with a congregation of eleven, down from twelve the week before, and even some of them are doubtful and not exactly sure why they have come to worship this day.”[2]
Let’s remember how they got to this point. On Easter morning, two women went to the tomb and found it empty, except for an angel with a message for the male disciples. On their way to deliver that message, they encountered the risen Christ who repeated the message “Go tell my brothers to meet me in Galilee.” Without seeing Jesus for themselves, the Eleven men acted upon the message delivered by the women and made their way to Galilee. As a result, they come a place where they do see him. They respond with worship in the midst of their own doubt. It literally says “they worshipped and they doubted.”
“They worshipped and they doubted.” Jesus sends the “whole mixed lot of worshippers and doubters out, sends them out without making any distinctions among them. . .”[3] Matthew calls them the Eleven, without explanation, but we know that Judas is the one who is missing. We know that this community has suffered loss and betrayal. In spite of their brokenness, in spite of their doubts, they obeyed the instructions to go to Galilee and they will obey what he says now.
To the disciples, Jesus says “Go . . .” “This is the same voice that said to Abraham, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’ . . . Long ago, God promised Abraham that all the nations of the earth would be blessed because of Abraham’s obedience. Now, that promise is kept through Jesus, son of Abraham, son of God.” [4]
Unlike the other three gospels, Matthew does not mention Jesus’ physical body, his wounds or scars, or any special post-resurrection abilities. Matthew’s emphasis is on Jesus’ words, on his teaching. [5]
There is a picture emerging that I find comforting and hopeful. The picture is of a small group of people who have experienced profound loss and betrayal and trauma. They are not at full strength. They don’t get to see the risen Christ at first. They have to trust enough in someone else’s testimony to get to the place where that happens. And then, when they do, Jesus doesn’t walk through locked doors or prove that he is the Son of God. They worship and they doubt simultaneously, but they live their lives on his teaching. I find that hopeful and comforting because it seems a lot closer to my own experiences with Jesus.
What is not nearly so comfortable is the realization that the small, minority, marginalized community is given the global mission of proclaiming obedience to Jesus and his teaching. It is a mission that will be carried out in a dangerous and resistant world. [6]
They are sent to all nations, “which doesn’t mean ‘nation-states’ in the modern sense, but something more like foreigners, tribes of people who are not at all like you.”[7] These are people with a proud ethnic identity that goes back to Abraham, but Jesus gives them and us a mission to everyone that transcends any allegiance to country or Empire. I’ll speak plainly – anyone who works allows loyalty to country to be primary, anyone who chants “America First” has not understood the call for allegiance that Jesus demands.
The command is to disciple others. The ways of carrying it out are baptizing and teaching. The disciples have not been entrusted with teaching before. But now they are sent to teach the world what Jesus taught. Things like “be reconciled to one another. Love your enemies. Welcome children. Forgive. Pray, fast and give alms but not in a way that calls attention to yourself. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. And above all, love God and love your neighbor.”
This is also our mission. We have a lot in common with the Eleven who received it first. If we feel small and inadequate, so did they. If we feel ill-equipped to understand the culture and people we are called to love, so did they. If we feel, hostility and opposition to God’s ways of love and justice, how much more did they.
We are often overwhelmed by this call. It sometimes seems that so little of Jesus’ teaching has permeated the world in the last 2000 years. What difference can we really make?
I was in a Zoom call last week with Jeff Woods, who is the Interim General Secretary of our denomination. Jeff has served American Baptist Churches at the national level for many years. Several of you have worked with him. You know his compassion, his strength as a leader. This Zoom call was a conversation about our responses to needs of this moment, most specifically to the challenges presented by white supremacy and by pandemic. Jeff reminded us of the ways we have responded to racism in the past. As early as 1865, we expressed a concern for black education and founded Shaw University, Virginia Union and Morehouse College, three historical black colleges. During World War II, our missionaries were a regular presence within the Japanese internment camps, ministering to the physical and spiritual needs of those confined there. You probably know that Dr. King was an American Baptist minister. Jeff Woods reminded us that the MMBB, our pension board, sought him out because he was receiving death threats. He enrolled in the benefit plan a few weeks before his murder, enabling his family to receive life insurance benefits.
We are a small denomination, made up mostly of small churches, but we have made a difference. We are carrying out this mission. We are blessing the world with the teachings of Jesus. In the last months, we have sent medical supplies to Hong Kong and China to slow the spread of coronavirus. Our missionaries in Lebanon are ministering to refugees from the war in Syria and now to those who survived the catastrophic explosion. We have provided food and rent assistance, medical aid and child care across the United States. Many other Christians are making similar efforts. I mention our denomination just as one example of the ways we are connected to a larger world. We are blessed to be a blessing.
It seemed like an impossible mission that Jesus gave. It was. It is. Unless we attend to Jesus’ final words here, “Remember I am with you always, to the end of the age.” We depend, we survive, we thrive, we bless others because of the mercy and strength of God.
“Behold I am with you” Jesus says. It is an amazing statement which we can only appreciate in Greek. Ego eimi means I AM. This is the divine name. The name of the God who appeared to Abraham and to Moses. The one who said I AM who I AM, I will be who I will be. Jesus has said I am the Way, I am Truth, I am Life.
Meta humon – means with you.
But here, Meta humon is sandwiched between ego and eimi. In Jesus’ final proclamation he asserts the divine name, but “with you” placed inside it. We are within the very life of God.[8]
“Remember I am with you always, to the end.” We survive, we thrive, we bless others, with the teaching of Jesus, because of the mercy and strength of God within whom we move and live and have our being. Thanks be to God.
[1] https://www.bridge-house.org.uk/ethos/celtic-christian-spirituality
[2] Thomas G Long, in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 3, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011) p. 47.
[3] Richard Swanson, Provoking the Gospel of Matthew: A Storytellers’ Commentary, Year A (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2007) p. 136
[4] Thomas G. Long, Matthew: The Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), p 326
[5] John Petty at https://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/2008/05/lectionary-bl-1.html
[6] Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, (Maryknoll, NY: Obis Books, 2000) p. 549
[7] Tom Long, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 3 p. 47
[8] John Petty at https://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/2008/05/lectionary-bl-1.html