As You Go

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples … baptize them … teach them … I am with you always” (Matthew 28:16-20).

A new Monday, a new Scripture, and a last look at our current Let’s Go! theme.

We’re on a mountaintop in Galilee.  The entire “Jesus movement” consists of just eleven disciples.  Their risen Lord has gathered them there, and gives them an enormous commission: The. Whole.  World.

But first: Jesus anchors his great commissioning in a fundamental truth: all authority now belongs to Jesus.  The Risen Lord is not merely “lord” of a far-off, ethereal “heaven”; he is also Lord here on planet Earth.

How Jesus exercises “all authority” is critical for disciples then and now to understand.  It does not mean that Caesar will fall on his face in worship as soon as the news reaches him.  It does not mean the immediate cessation of wars, sickness, famine and every other such ill.  It does not mean that the accomplishing of the commission will be quick and easy, or that following Jesus will immediately translate into your best life now.

Jesus’ “all authority” words are for his world-going disciples.  Jesus wants us to know and securely rest in the reality that though Caesar (or our neighbors, relatives or co-workers) don’t yet recognize or submit to this authority, or may be completely indifferent to it, or may even actively oppose it (and us!), Heaven backs it.  But Heaven’s authority works non-coercively, non-violently, apolitically (that is, it is not dependent upon a particular political system, party or leader).  It’s an authority that works like seed in a field, yeast worked into dough, hidden treasure.

It’s the authority that was coronated on a Cross, carried in the hands that still bear those scars, and communicated in words like these: “Whoever would be my disciple must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.”  We do not “apply” the cross to others; we carry ours for their sakes.  We live in the authority of the Crucified, not the crucifiers.

So as we go, that’s how we go.

Consider how our pastors bless us at the end of weekly worship: “As you go…”  

Every day, each and every one of us goes.  Some of us don’t get out of the neighborhood; a few cannot get out of our homes; some travel far and wide.  But as we go, wherever it is, near or far, along familiar paths or foreign terrain, we go in the authority of our Master, we go to do what he is already doing: calling people to follow, making them into disciples, baptizing them into new life, and teaching them to faithfully live out his words of life, blessing, justice, mercy, reconciliation, truth and peace.

Our lives are to communicate and demonstrate that Heaven and Earth are no longer divorced by the Powers of Sin and Death.  Instead we declare, in the authority of the Crucified and Risen One, that the marriage of Heaven and Earth is underway.

You’re not responsible for every aspect of disciple-making; can you name the ways Jesus has uniquely shaped you to join the church’s task of making disciples?  Can you name some individuals – or a “demographic group” of some kind to whom Jesus is telling you to go?

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