Let's Go

The first recorded sermon of Jesus is found in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke.  In his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus is handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.  He unrolls the scroll, carefully looking for just the right spot, and reads the ancient words written in Hebrew.  The crowd sits in expectant silence.  Finally, Jesus says: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  Jesus makes his identity and his mission exceedingly clear: He came to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind and freedom to the oppressed.

If this first sermon of Jesus gives us a glimpse at Jesus’ identity and mission, then within his last sermon we find our own identity and mission as his disciples.  The final words of Jesus found in the twenty-eighth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew are: “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.”

This command of Jesus is often referred to as “The Great Commission.”  It gives the disciples of Jesus their own identity and their own mission: disciples then and now are to go and make disciples of all nations.  In Greek, the phrase “all nations” can also be translated as “all the Gentiles.  Jesus says, “Go!  All of the world and all of its people are your mission field.”  These words often give us our purpose to go on mission trips, to support missionaries, and to send money to developing countries; we are responding to the call to go to all nations.  Today, however, instead of thinking about all the nations, or all the Gentiles, I want us to consider the people who are closest to us.  Perhaps in our time, all the Gentiles are all of the people of our community, our local community and our church community.  What if all nations includes the Nones and the Dones of our neighborhood?  What if all nations includes our children and grandchildren who no longer find church relevant or important in their lives?  What if all nations includes the youth and the children of our congregation?  How are we doing making disciples of these people?

Sometimes, as the church, I believe we fail to take this “GO” word seriously, especially with the people who are closest to us.  GO is an active word, a word that means we might just have to DO something.  We might have to get up and leave the walls of our church building.  We might have to make contact with people who are different from us and build relationships with them.  We might have to make a change.  We might have to take a risk.  We might have to set ourselves up for possible rejection or worse yet, failure.

It’s much more comfortable and safer to stay where we are and wait - wait for people to come to church, or come back to church, or drive by and want to come in.  Joseph Yoo, in his article Why Many Welcoming Churches Are Dying Churches, says: “What’s not okay is for us to mistake the words of Jesus to “Go” for “Stay and wait for people to come.”  It’s often easier to stay and be welcoming and friendly to people when they walk into our doors, but I’m not certain this is what Jesus had in mind when he told us to GO.  We need to be welcoming, but more importantly we need to GO out and be invitational and relational.

This year, I hope that we can ask ourselves this question: How can we GO and build disciples in our community, connecting with the Nones, the Dones, the Millennials, our youth, and our kids?  How might we be able to worship with them, teach them, and care for them?  How can we GO and do this in ways that matter to them, even if those ways look different than the way we’ve always done it before?

It’s a big task.  It’s a big risk.  We might fail.  But the promise of Jesus remains: “Remember...I am with you always.”  Jesus never promised us discipleship would be easy.  Discipleship is pretty tough stuff and church can be a pretty messy place.  My box is pretty comfortable and I kind of like it just the way it is.  But, if we want to take Jesus seriously when he says GO, we have to be willing to let him lead us where our trust has no borders.  Even there, Jesus promises to be with us.  So, church, let’s GO.