May 22, 2011 | 4:00 p.m.

Prophets of a Future Not Our Own

Matthew J. Helms
Pastoral Resident, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Matthew 28:1–10, 16–20

Those of you who have been with us in the weeks following Easter know that we’ve been tracking the growth of early Christianity into the church after Jesus’ resurrection, looking at all four Gospels and pieces of Acts as we trace how the church came to be the church. Today’s reading from the last chapter of the Gospel of Matthew brings us to a pivotal piece in this development, what we might call the mission statement of the early church. These verses are hugely important for understanding how early Christians saw their role in growing this small faith. Jesus charges the disciples to go make other disciples in all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Trinity and teaching them all of Jesus’ commands, and we see these things get played out in the Book of Acts as well as in Paul’s letters. But while these words, which are called the “Great Commission” by scholars, have intense relevance and meaning for the early church, I have to wonder, what does the Great Commission mean for us today?

It is a difficult question with a range of answers, but for many Christians, the Great Commission has always been the clearest mission statement we have and we should follow it as closely as we can. When I was in college, I attended a church that took the Great Commission very seriously—in fact, one mission trip that I attended turned a little awkward because of it. This mission trip was from Madison to Chicago and for the most part we did things many visiting groups do: we worked at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, we sorted clothes for a social service agency, and we spent some time serving food at a local shelter. But on our last night, the leader of our group had something a little different in mind. “Tonight”, he said, “we’re going to be going out and making people disciples of Christ on the streets of Chicago.” Wait, what? This was a little different than what I grew up doing, so I raised my hand and asked what exactly that meant. The leader looked a little confused and repeated, “We’re going out into the city and making people disciples of Christ. We’ll each pair off and then go share the gospel with the people who are on the streets.” Now I don’t know all of your backgrounds with this, but I felt tremendously uncomfortable: apparently we’d just be approaching random people in the street on a Saturday night—in the Loop, no less—and telling them that their lives needed to change. “So, what do we say?” I asked. The leader looked exasperated: “You just need to tell your testimony; tell them about how Christ has changed your life and how he can change theirs.” I thought, ‘Yeah, you know, because people change their minds about their entire lives just because a college kid came up to them after they had gone to the opera and he told them about following Jesus.” So slightly stunned and feeling like I was going to wind up looking like one of those folks yelling on the street corners, I set out with another guy who looked just as confused as I did.

I’ll be honest; it took us a long time to even get a word out. As we silently walked the street, I tried to envision a scenario in which it would be appropriate to share this with someone. I struck up conversations with a few people, but I just couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Eventually, when it became clear that neither of us were going to say anything, we just left and got some food before calling it a night, feeling kind of guilty that we weren’t able to talk with anyone.

While this experience is funny looking back on it, I’ve also found it to be convicting in other ways. At the end of almost every worship service, there is a space for a charge and benediction, a time when the pastor gets up and either rehashes the themes from their sermon or another piece of the service and then sends everyone on their way with a blessing. Empowered by this charge and clear sense of direction, we each go our separate ways—and then promptly do something else. I typically take the train home and have dinner. Perhaps you all have a typical Sunday night post-church activity as well. And yet, at the end of each service, we pastors still lift up words like “Go out into the world, empowered and changed, ready to show Christ to your neighbor. Amen.” It’s a nice idea—just as my college church leader’s idea of sharing testimony was a nice idea—but it leaves us feeling guilty when we don’t live up to our charge. Is that what it means to follow the Great Commission and to be sent out into the world?

It will be helpful for us to start exploring that question within the context of the Gospel of Matthew. Rome in the first century was a wide-open, cosmopolitan empire where ideas and thoughts were exchanged daily in open marketplaces. Amidst the hubbub and babble of those selling goods, you could also hear people advocating for various social, philosophical, and religious stances. Matthew’s Great Commission was in many ways a commissioning to go live into this culture: one would make disciples by teaching them about what Christ said and did, as well as informing them of his saving resurrection. Since few people had heard who this Jesus of Nazareth was, this type of public sharing was absolutely necessary in order to have this early band of Jesus followers grow in numbers during the first century, and it was very effective, which we can see in the book of Acts as well as in Paul’s recounting of his own ministry.

But as Christianity grew from a fringe Judean group to a world power, it struggled to reinterpret the Great Commission into new contexts and realities. After Christianity became fused with the Roman Empire under the reign of Constantine, there became a dangerous nationalistic aspect to “making disciples of all nations.” The clearest example of this danger was the Roman Emperor Charlemagne, who in the late eighth century offered two choices to the foreign armies he defeated: either you could choose to be baptized and convert to Christianity, or you would be beheaded by Charlemagne’s army. Without a doubt, this is the worst way I have ever heard to follow Christ’s call to “make disciples of all nations.” And yet this militaristic conversion aspect of the Great Commission has endured even today. If you have read Barbara Kingsolver’s book The Poisonwood Bible, which follows a Baptist minster’s attempts to baptize a village in the Congo, it frighteningly depicts the damage such attempts can do to families and areas. And yet there are still churches that have a powerful desire to find those in this world who may not have heard about Jesus firsthand. Large numbers of missionaries flow into China and India each year, hoping to teach people about Christ and baptize them, and not necessarily in that order. Is this how Jesus’ Great Commission to us would sound if it were delivered again today?

The Commission says, “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, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” There are clearly some core aspects of this commission that have not changed. There is a clear sense that we must share our understanding of who Jesus is, as well as be active in helping to nurture the faith of new Christians. But as I hear this Great Commission, I can’t help but notice a conspicuous absence of any sort of prescribed methodology by which Jesus commands us to make these disciples. When the disciples heard it, they took to the streets using the common approach of their time as they shared their views within the marketplace, but that is not the only way to share our faith in Christ. I am reminded of words attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: “We are to preach the gospel at all times, using words if necessary.” In an age where unprompted religious professions are viewed with skepticism by those who do not share those same views, perhaps there are times when we are called to use our lives as our witness rather than our words.

I certainly do not want you to leave here feeling as though speaking about your faith would be wrong, because I do not doubt that there are important times and places to speak of our faith. But there is more to making disciples than words. There needs to be a conscious effort to model Jesus’ teachings in our lives before we have any sort of authority to speak to what it means to be a disciple. There is a well-known provocative question that asks, “If you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” I pose that question to all of us, myself included: Would there be enough evidence, not just in our speech and verbal self-identification as Christians, but in our actions as well? When people look at us, do they think, “There is something different about them; they very clearly love God and love their neighbor”? Do they think, “They are a good listener that I can go to when I am in trouble”? Do they think, “Based on how they have treated others, I can trust them with anything”? Do we show enough evidence in our lives that we might be known as Christians to those who those who do not know us?

It is a tall order, perhaps, and a little unrealistic to think that we can perfectly reflect the Great Commission in our daily actions. That’s part of the reason we confess our sins in worship each week—to note that we have fallen short in our lives as we seek to live out the commands that we were taught. And yet part of the beauty of our faith is that we do not have to be perfect; we are not called to save the world but to instead witness to the one who can. This sentiment is captured perfectly in a prayer spoken by a deceased Catholic bishop named Ken Untener. Untener’s prayer reads,

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts; it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. . . . This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds which are already planted, knowing that they hold future promises. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that . . . we are workers, not master builders; ministers, not Messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

These are powerful words and they speak poignantly to the Great Commission we are given.

Looking back on that mission trip to Chicago that I went on in college, it seems clear that there was a bit of hubris to it, the hubris that Untener warns us against. In that one evening, our leader was expecting us to be Messiahs, to see someone completely change their lives based on our testimony, but this was not the call that Jesus gave us in the Great Commission. We are to make disciples of all nations, yes, but we should not confuse ourselves as the saviors to people in those nations. Disciple-making is long, laborious work; baptism isn’t just a moment, but a lifetime of commitment. This mission statement we are given does not call us to be the ones to fix everything. Instead we are called to preach the gospel with our lives at all times, using words only if necessary. Our charge from Jesus isn’t to convert the entire world; it is to focus on the person in front of us. As we go forth from this place, we shouldn’t leave with a sense of guilt for not going out to far-reaching corners of the globe to spread the gospel. Some people are called to that while most aren’t. Instead, we should leave being thoroughly convinced of our charge: to love God in heart, mind, and deed and to love others as we love ourselves, showing love and caring to each person we encounter, whatever that might look like. We may not get to see people’s lives change from beginning to end, but we remember that we are prophets of a future not our own, and so we love confident that love will indeed change this world.