Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
The sermon
text for today was inspired by the Holy Spirit through the apostle St Matthew. And
he was one of the disciples who was there when Jesus spoke these words:
All
authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make
disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything that I have
commanded you. And behold, I am with you always until the end of the age.
Prayer: Lord
Jesus Christ, come and be with us, in my preaching and in our listening today,
together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sometimes we might ask children:
What would you do if you were in charge of the whole world? What would you fix?
And in our Gospel reading today,
this is exactly the situation that Jesus is in. He says: All authority in heaven
and on earth has been given to me.
It’s difficult for us to imagine
exactly what kind of authority is given to Jesus! If we think of all the world
leaders, like the President of the United States, Barak Obama, or the President
of Russia, Vladimir Putin, or the United Nations, or whoever—none of these
people are given authority over the whole earth. In fact, the President of
America is not given absolute authority even over America—he only has authority
to fulfil his duties as president. As President, he can’t break the law, for
example. We might think that someone like him has absolute authority,
but really he doesn’t.
But Jesus says: All authority
in heaven and on earth has been given to me. He doesn’t just have authority
over one country, but over all countries. And not only does he have authority
over all nations and over the whole earth, but also over heaven as well. All
authority in heaven and on earth. And the leader of a country can only
influence people from the outside, but doesn’t have authority over people’s
hearts. But Jesus has been given all authority. Even in our own homes,
or workplaces, or wherever we find ourselves, wherever we have been given a
little bit of authority over someone else, we realise that that authority has
been given to us by Jesus, and that we are allowed to share Jesus’ authority.
Jesus says: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
When Jesus was going to the
cross, and was on trial before Pontius Pilate, we read where Pilate says to
Jesus: Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to
crucify you? Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all
unless it had been given you from above.”
So here we see Jesus with all the
authority of heaven and earth in his hands. In the book of Revelation, when
John has a vision of heaven, he describes this power and authority of Jesus, by
saying: In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp
two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.
It’s important for us not to
think of this authority as not simply belonging to Jesus because he was true
God. We believe that Jesus is true God and that he was there right before the
beginning of the world, and created the world together with the Father and the
Holy Spirit.
But then at Christmas time, we
learn how Jesus took on human flesh for the first time. He became a true human
being, a real man, with real flesh and blood. And now all the authority in
heaven and earth is given to this one man, Jesus Christ. And his human body is
now capable of doing things that most human bodies are not able to do.
Just remember that in each
Christian church all around the world today, Jesus is present himself in the
flesh in each one of them, speaking his word to each Christian personally. Now
no other human being can do that. But to Jesus is given all authority in
heaven and earth.
So what does Jesus do with all
this authority?
He gathers his disciples together
and he says: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them
in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them
to observe all that I have commanded you.
First of all, Jesus wants to make
sure that his church throughout the whole of its future history is always going
to have a plan, a job, a certain task. There should never be a time when a
church looks at itself and says, “We don’t know where we’re going or what we’re
supposed to be doing.” Right here at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, we see that
Jesus gives his disciples all the direction they will ever need. He gives them
a strategic plan, a strategic direction, and he says to them: Go! Go in
this direction, follow this path, this way. And we know that Jesus says to his
disciples: I am the way. I am the way and the truth and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through me. Now, Jesus says, I’m going to send
you in a particular direction where I choose, but I’m going to give to you and
all Christians and the whole church now a purpose and a goal.
So he says: Go and make
disciples of all nations.
Listen to those words: all
nations. Jesus has just shed his blood for the sin of the whole world. And
even though people throughout the world may have different coloured skin, they
all have the same coloured blood. And so Jesus pays for the sins of all nations
and of all peoples with his blood. Jesus commands these disciples to go
wherever he sends them and wherever they find themselves to make disciples. And
they are going to have to make disciples out of people that are nothing like
themselves. They are not simply to go to their friends and family, but to new
places, new countries, new cultures, wherever they find people with red human
blood. Sometimes in the church we might feel that the people here are not
really like us, and we like to go to a church where we find people just like
ourselves. But Jesus never made the church like that—it was always to be for
all nations, all ages, all temperaments, all personalities, all stages of life,
all levels of education, all nations.
And so, what are the things that
Jesus wants these disciples to use in order to make disciples of all nations?
He says: Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe
all that I have commanded you.
We might sit around and think of
all the different ways in which we might like to spread the good news of Jesus
Christ and make disciples of all nations. But Jesus actually has already
thought this through exactly, and gives two simple tasks. He says: baptise,
and teach. And all our work of mission as Christians boils down to these
two things: we bring people to be baptised, and we teach them everything that
Jesus said.
So what do you need for a
baptism? We need two ingredients: water and the word of God. So when we baptise
a person, we put water over them and say: I baptise you in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus says in this
passage today. How much water do we need? Jesus doesn’t specify. Sometimes
people are baptised by being immersed in water, sometimes people have water poured
over their head, and sometimes people are sprinkled with a small amount of
water. Each of these situations is a full baptism, because Jesus is the one who
does the work here. The most important thing about baptism is not what it looks
like or what it symbolises, but what it does. And Jesus wants to give salvation
and eternal life and the Holy Spirit through it. St Peter says in his letter: Baptism
now saves you. And also Jesus says in Mark: Whoever believes and is
baptised will be saved.
If we are immersed fully with
water, it reminds us that the old person drowns and a new person rises to new
life. If we have water poured on us, it reminds us that the Holy Spirit is
poured out with all his gifts. If we have water sprinkled on us, it reminds us
that the blood of Jesus is sprinkled on our hearts. But whatever way a person
is baptised, the most important thing is not what the ritual or the ceremony
reminds us of, but what Jesus actually gives us. And Jesus is not bound by a
certain amount of water, because he speaks his word.
So who should be baptised? Jesus
says: all nations. Nobody is to be excluded. Men, women, children. Some
people, of course, think that babies should not be baptised. But Jesus does not
say here all nations except babies. Jesus died for babies too and he wants
disciples to made out of them too. He says all nations. And no matter
what anyone may say, you will find no passage in the whole bible that forbids
the baptism of babies. Usually the reason why people don’t bring babies for
baptism is because they don’t believe that baptism is the work of Jesus, but
instead that think that baptism is a human work that we need to perform, that
babies are simply not able to do. But in baptism, adults, men, women, children,
pastors, do nothing: all the work belongs to Jesus.
But the church’s task is not
finished simply when we have baptised a person. Jesus says: Go and make
disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything I have
commanded you.
All the spiritual authority in
the church comes through teaching, and not by force. And we are commanded to
teach not traditions or our own opinions, but the words of Jesus.
Of course, teaching people means
that people need to learn. And basically Jesus says here, if you don’t want to
learn something, you can’t be my disciple. There’s always something new that
Jesus has to teach you. And Jesus says: Teach them everything I have
commanded you. That’s going to take time. People are not going to become
model Christians overnight, they are going to need to be taught, and taught for
their whole lives. Also, anyone who knows their sin and knows what it’s like to
run into temptations knows that we need to be taught again and again that Jesus
died and rose again so that he could win for us the pure forgiveness of each
and every single one of our sins without any contribution on our part. How easy
it is to forget this! How easy it is to build up our own importance and our
work, and then to forget Jesus and his work!
And yet, this teaching is the one
thing that people often forget when it comes to church mission. We can think of
kinds of things that the church could be doing, but teaching? This is the work
in the church that gets no respect, no human reward, and no credit. But at the
same time, to teach person the words of Jesus one word and one sentence at a
time, that is work that Jesus considers to be so valuable. When the teaching of
God’s word is going on, no matter whether Christians are gathered in a tin
shed, in God’s eyes that place is a crystal palace!
And what better place to start
when we teach that to tell them what baptism is? What’s it for? What does it
give you? Who is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit? There’s enough
sermons for me for the next year at least!
And then right at the end of this
passage, Jesus gives this wonderful promise: And behold, I am with you
always, to the end of the age.
Jesus says that he personally, in
his human flesh, will be with us always. I heard someone say during this week
that when Jesus says: I am with you, it means that his spirit lives on.
This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Jesus is physically risen from the dead, and he
says: I, he means I, and he means nothing less that I. I am with you always
to the end of the age. And when Jesus is with us always in the flesh, we
know that his Father is with us, because Jesus says: I am in the Father, and
the Father is in me. And we know that when Jesus is with us always in the
flesh, we know that he will send the Holy Spirit to us, since he says: I
will send the promise of my Father upon you. Receive the Holy Spirit.
So yes—Jesus is with us always to
the end of the age, wherever there are people being baptised and taught his
word and therefore being made into his disciples. Jesus is with us always,
always cleansing each of our sins with his blood, always healing each broken
heart, and always binding up the wounds of each person.
What a wonderful thing it is to
have Jesus with us always to the end of the age! What a wonderful thing it is
to be baptised by him in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit! What a wonderful thing it is to be taught his word and to continually
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit!
Amen.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we
thank you for your word to us today, and we pray that you would give us
everything that we need in order to be faithful to you, in our daily lives, in
our homes and in our church. Heavenly Father, pour out your Holy Spirit on each
one of us, through Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord. Amen.
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