Trinity Sunday 18 May 2008

The Great Commission

I imagine many of you will have heard of the TV programme called Grand Designs. It is a fascinating programme and not be confused with the plethora of property programmes that we tend to love or hate. Each episode of Grand Designs has the presenter Kevin McCloud tracking a couple who are building a new home, following them through from design, though construction to completion. The houses are not run of the mill. They reflect the values, passions and vision of the owners and tend to be sited in unusual, often dramatic settings. The programmes are of course about building houses, but they also work at a rather deeper level.

In almost every case throughout the building period the couple keep meeting unexpected problems. They’re often seemingly catastrophic in terms of both time and cost. Kevin McCloud’s gentle questioning but sympathetic understanding leads people to be very open about the roller coaster process of turning their dream into reality. And about the motivation that keeps them going. Sometimes when watching I think the people are completely bonkers! In other cases their determination to see their vision through and to stick to their principles is extraordinarily admirable.

At the end of each programme Kevin McCloud revisits the house some months after completion to see how they are getting on. The building site has often been transformed into a fairly amazing home. Right at the end we see what it was that the couple were trying to achieve. Very often the results are remarkable and the pain and trauma of the past years has been worthwhile.

Trinity Sunday marks the end of the building process that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our gospel reading is the last four verses of Matthew’s gospel. It is what is known as the Great Commission. God the builder has completed his work in Jesus Christ and the disciples are instructed to take over. The disciples have witnessed both the vision and the trauma of the gospel – their task now is to live in, or more than that, to be the new house of God. The Church. And they are given a final instruction as to how they are to fulfil this task of being God’s people.

The risen Christ comes to the disciples, to Galilee where he had told them to wait for him, and to a mountain. Mountains are symbolic – they are the highest points we can climb. It is on mountains that God revealed himself – on Mount Sinai, in Exodus 19 and 20, God met his people and gave them the commandments. On mountains God commissioned Moses and Elijah. On mountains, Jesus resisted the devil’s temptations; was transfigured meeting Moses and Elijah; gave his great Sermon on the Mount; on the Mount of Olives gave his final teaching to his disciples before his death. And now, in this final passage, has invited the disciples to meet him on the mountain at Galilee. So that, like Moses and Elijah before them, they could be commissioned.

Discipleship is never straight forward. The disciples knew it was Jesus – they saw him and worshipped him. But note these words – ‘but some doubted’. This is not really unsurprising – they were in uncharted waters, uncertain as to whether they should be worshipping him, as opposed to God himself. Their inherited religion was of course monotheistic – to worship any person or thing other than God was to break the commandments.

Jesus responded by assuring them that it was right to worship him. He declared that all of God’s authority had been given to him. To come to Jesus was, and is, to come to God. And consequently all that Jesus bid them do was also an instruction from God himself. His final words reinforced his authority – he said ‘I am with you always’. Remember the ‘I am’ sayings of John’s Gospel. And recall the words of God when he commissions Moses ‘I AM WHO I AM – you shall say to the Israelites I am has sent me to you’. So Matthew closes his gospel leaving the disciples, and us, with no illusions – Jesus is with us to the end of time; he is God.

Despite their uncertainty the disciples bow down to worship Jesus. And then their task, their commission is given. Jesus declares that all authority over the earth has been given to him. Jesus is already ruling the world. But he does not rule it with the power of force and coercion with which he was tempted by the devil – he rules it with life-giving love. It is a love offered and available to every single person in the world. But the world as God intends it is not complete. The project is still in progress. And here is the crunch. The channel for God’s love is us, Jesus’ followers and disciples. The project only progresses in so far as we who have been commissioned are taking it forward.

Jesus gave the disciples three tasks. They are straightforward enough to say, somewhat more daunting to put into practice. The first was to ‘make disciples’. Jesus said to the disciples on the beach – I will make you fishers of people. Evangelism is central to the way in which God’s rule is spread, bringing people to faith in Jesus and shaping their lives to live according to his ways.

The second was to baptize them – not in this context the infant rite of passage which has become our practice, but the realisation that we are all baptised into new life. Fonts are placed in prominent places in our churches, next to main doors, to remind us of our baptism. We might picture ourselves immersed in a river like Jesus, dying to life without him and rising cleansed to share in his new life.

And the third task is to teach. We can give our lives to Jesus Christ, bowing down to worship him, even though some, like those first disciples, may have doubts. But then our journeys of faith just begin. The rest of our lives are given over to learning, learning how to build and shape our lives around Jesus teaching. We are all constantly in the role of both pupil and teacher, learning and sharing over and over again.

Hearing these tasks repeated can at times fill us with a sense of our own inadequacy. Is Jesus really relying on us to continue his work? He is, but built around the great commission is a promise: I am with you always to the end of time. As the angel said to Mary, right at the start of Matthew’s gospel: they shall call him Emmanuel. Emmanuel which means ‘God with us.’ Matthew’s Gospel ends with the promise fulfilled. We have a great commission, but God is with us. He is with us through the power of the Holy Spirit – the communion of the Holy Spirit as Paul describes it to the Corinthians. God’s ever present power within us individually, but so importantly, with us as a community. It is in fulfilling these tasks together, supporting, inspiring and loving each other that we are drawn closer to God. We are given the courage to make disciples, to baptize and to teach.

Like the people in Grand Designs, we have a vision of what to achieve. But we are inspired not by self-interest but by the sacrificial love of Jesus, our Emmanuel, who promised ‘and remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’.