Have You Accepted Your Commission
When my dad graduated from Colby College in 1954 he received his commission in the US Air Force. Many of you received a similar commission. A commission is “an instruction, command, or duty given to a person or group of people.” For the following three years after receiving his commission, the US Air Force told my father where to go and what to do. He went to Colorado, an island or two in the Pacific, and eventually an air base in Japan. Accepting his commission bound my dad to be obedient to the authority that granted it. The final words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew are known as The Great Commission. Jesus gives a command, an instruction, a duty to the eleven disciples and to all of us who would be his followers. Listen to Matthew 28:16-20,
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 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, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
November 17, 2013
Matthew 28:16-20, Have You Accepted Your Commission
Doug Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
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Jessica Eaves was shopping in Guthrie, Oklahoma, last month when her wallet was stolen. She spotted the man she suspected of taking it in a nearby aisle and wondered what to do next. What would you do in that situation? Would you yell for help, grab the guy, get security? This is what went through her mind: “As I saw him, a scripture came to me from Luke, which basically says ‘If someone should take your cloak, you should give them your shirt as well.” The passage inspired her next actions, as she approached the man and calmly said, “I think you have something of mine. I’m going to give you a choice. You can either give me my wallet and I’ll forgive you right now, and I’ll even take you to the front and pay for your groceries,” or she would call the police. “He reached in his pocket and gave it back to me,” she added that “he started crying as we walked to the front. He kept apologizing and saying that he was embarrassed.” Eaves, a mother of four and leader of the Christian outreach team at the First Christian Church in Guthrie, responded that she makes mistakes every day and has just as much to be embarrassed about, as she believes that in the eyes of Jesus, no one sin is greater than another. She paid $27 for his groceries, which was almost all the money that she had in her purse. “I never carry cash. When I got to the check-out counter that day his (the robber’s) total was just a little over $27 and I had $28 in cash in my wallet. And so I knew in that moment it wasn’t me. It was Christ that played in that moment.” Jessica Eaves sounds to me like a woman who has truly accepted her commission as a follower of Jesus.
Looking at Matthew 28 a little more closely we see that the last resurrection appearance of Jesus and the commissioning of the disciples occurs in Galilee on “the mountain.” Mountains play a significant role in the Gospel of Matthew. The final temptation of Jesus (4:8) and the transfiguration of Jesus (17:1) occur on a high mountain. The best-known part of Matthew’s Gospel is not the sermon in vineyard; it’s the Sermon on the mountain (5:1). Matthew’s gospel concludes with the resurrected Jesus speaking on the mountain his last words of instruction. If this is the same site as the Sermon on the Mount, it further reinforces Matthew’s strong emphasis on doing the will of the Father in heaven as taught by Jesus.
When his disciples saw him – some believed and some doubted. But then Jesus speaks and the disciples’ doubt seems to go away. His words are absolutely critical to any of us who would follow him. Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Jesus has been exalted through his death and resurrection to the right hand of God and he has ruling authority as God’s Son. Just as the US Air Force had authority over my father when he was in the Air Force, so Jesus has been given authority over everyone and everything. So he’s telling us that he has the authority, power, and strength we will need to do what he is commissioning us to do and he will share it with us. If we’re going to serve Jesus, like the first disciples, we’re going to need his authority, power, and strength because our assignment is way beyond our human capability.
The next word Jesus speaks is “Go.” We can’t stand still or stay where we are, we can’t expect people to come to us on the mountain; we need to go, move, get out of where we’re comfortable, we have to take initiative. What we have to Go and do is to Make Disciples – not church members, but disciples, apprentices, people who will become like Jesus in every aspect of life. And we’re to Make Disciples of individuals from every nation and ethnic group. This is the inclusive, global vision of Jesus’ movement. Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel (10:5), Jesus told the disciples not to go anywhere among the Gentiles. With the Great Commission Jesus states that the good news is to be shared with all people. It’s an invitation to a life of fulfilment and adventure unlike anything else we might experience. Baptism is the way we’re initiated into the new community whose identity is in the empowering presence of God. Matthew doesn’t take for granted that people will take seriously Jesus’ ethical demands and Jesus says the disciples are to be, “Teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
There’s always a danger that we can be educated beyond our level of obedience, in other words, that we know more of the Bible than we actually live and practice on a daily basis. Oswald Chambers wrote, “Obey God in the thing he shows you, and instantly the next thing is opened up. God will never reveal more truth about himself until you have obeyed what you know already.” Obedience is important when one accepts a commission. If my dad had decided after accepting his commission, “I don’t think I want to go to Japan, I think I’ll go to Hawaii instead; not only that, I’ll scrap the uniform, and get another job that lets me spend a lot of time at the beach.” That would be considered desertion; in a less serious situation, if you’re not where you’re supposed to be in the military you are AWOL, Absent Without Leave. As followers of Jesus, we want our lives to demonstrate we’re good soldiers of Jesus Christ, not like someone who is AWOL or even worse a deserter to the cause.
If we call Jesus our Lord, our Savior, our Leader, our Guide, our Friend, if we believe he is who he claims to be, then we will strive to do what he tells us to do. It isn’t always easy to be obedient and we shouldn’t expect it to be. Hebrews 5:8-9 tells us how Jesus learned obedience. “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source for eternal salvation for all who obey him.” In 2 Timothy 2:3-4, Paul writes, “Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs; the soldier’s aim is to please the enlisting officer.”
After he encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, Paul was certainly one who did all he could to fulfill the Great Commission. In the passage we heard earlier in the service from 1 Corinthians 9, Paul states the essential position of a disciple – we’re to use our God-given freedom not to indulge our own will and desires, but to imitate Jesus in sacrificially loving and serving others. When we become disciples of Jesus or members of a church, we give up our rights and take up our responsibilities. Everything Paul does, he does for the purpose of making disciples, he says, “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.” Paul was constantly traveling and adapting to different cultures, religions, and habits as he told others about new life in Christ.
Paul says he is free with respect to all – to Jews, those under the Law or outside the law, the weak, but he was willing to accommodate himself, becoming all things to all people so that by all means he might save some. This is a key issue some of us may need to wrestle with –How may we need to accommodate our own strongly held opinions or deeply held desires in order to pursue the most important goal of saving people personally and as a congregation?
Certainly Paul was strong-willed and opinionated, but he was willing to adapt, his behavior and attitude, not his message, any way he could to achieve his goal. Paul gives some examples of his willingness to adapt his behavior in verses 20-22, the first three having to do with Jew/Gentile, or we might say today church/unchurched issues. For Paul who was Jewish to say he became “as a Jew,” shows how strongly he understood his position as a follower of Jesus to transcend every other defining allegiance in his life. Paul states he’s not under the law and he not only resisted the imposition of Jewish Law on Gentiles, he also adopted a more casual attitude about aspects of the law, such as kosher observance, when he was among Gentiles. Paul looks to overcome cultural and ethnic divisions in order to bring all sorts of people in to the one community of faith.
Paul endured the hardship of opposition, beatings, imprisonments, the disloyalty and abandonment of colleagues, the challenge of fund raising, and conflict with people both inside and outside the church. Paul endures all of it for the sake of sharing the good news with others. Paul constantly adapts his behavior and the form of his message, but not the essential content, in whatever way necessary to reach as many people as possible with the good news of God’s love in Jesus. What does that imply for us; for our discipleship, our service, our sharing of the gospel, our attitude, our church, our future? Practically, it means every single thing that happens or is done in a church may not be the way we would do it, but if it helps others come to faith or grow in faith then we can and need to support it. How well we do this will be very important to our future.
Paul says we who are free, when we’re invited to follow Jesus, become, slaves of Christ so that as we are being saved, God can also use us to save other people. A pastor colleague of mine shared the following thought: “Western consumerism has led me to see the Gospel as something I consume for my benefit rather than something that consumes me for God and others benefit. This must change.” Twenty years ago, the Academy Award winning film Schindler’s List was released. The film tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a German entrepreneur, who first exploits but later, protects Jews in Poland during World War Two. When Jews are forced into the ghetto, Schindler employs them at his kitchenware factory. This arrangement is beneficial for both Schindler, who gets cheap labor, and the Jews, who are protected from being sent to concentration camps. When the Nazis close Poland’s Cracow ghetto, Jews are sent either to death camps or a labor camp at Plaszow. Disillusioned with the Nazi party, Schindler conspires with his Jewish accountant, Itzhak Stern, to employ Jews from Plaszow, hence saving them from extermination.
When Germany finally surrenders, Schindler knows he is a wanted man for wrongly using Jews as slave labor. As he prepares to flee, Schindler is surrounded by over 1,000 Jews whose lives he saved. Looking at the faces of the people he saved, Schindler is overwhelmed by the sudden recognition that his extravagant spending, the money he threw away, the costly possessions he kept and tried so hard to preserve are absolutely meaningless and worthless compared to the value of saving even one person. Even with all his flaws, Schindler had done a great deed in saving so many. The conclusion of the film tells us that in 1993 there were only about 4,000 Jews left in all of Poland, but there are more than 6,000 descendants of Schindler’s Jews in Europe, the United States, and Israel.
When we find ourselves at the gates of heaven, God may ask us who else is being saved because of our friendship, our service, our sharing, our hospitality, our giving, our love, our sacrifice, our prayers. Will there be people who will crowd around us, hugging us, because of what we’ve been willing to do to save others? We can’t take gold or cars or church buildings or any other possessions to heaven, but we can take people. God so loved the world he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Those of you who served in the military hopefully received an honorable discharge when your time was completed; however, we’re never discharged from being a disciple. Have you accepted your commission? Are you fulfilling it? Have you been drawn like Paul and the first disciples by the invitation to embark on the adventure of a lifetime with Jesus? Are you willing to become all things to all people so that we may by all means save some? The challenge would be daunting and overwhelming if not for Jesus’ final words, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Jesus will not leave us alone. He is still Emmanuel, “God with us.” What he commands us to do he empowers us to do.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion
Have You Accepted Your Commission Matthew 28:16-20
A commission is “an instruction, command, or duty given to a person or group of people.”
Why do you think Matthew tells us that when Jesus’ eleven disciples saw him that some worshiped him and some doubted?
What difference does’ Jesus statement concerning his authority have on the rest of what he says?
How overwhelming must it have been for the disciples to be one of the eleven persons commissioned and charged to “make disciples of all nations;” how challenging does it sound to you today?
How are you learning to obey everything Jesus commands? How are you sharing his teaching with others?
What difference does Jesus’ promise in his final sentence make in your life: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”