Going, going...

Matthew 28: 18-20

Introduction

I only get to speak to most of you, face to face at least, about once every three years. It kind of reminds me of a monastery in southern Spain where they have taken a vow of silence. Once every three years the monks are allowed to appear before the Monsignor and even then, they are allowed only two words. After his first three years dedicated to prayer, Bible reading and silent meditation, Brother Joaquin finally has his moment. “Do you have anything you would like to say, brother?” said his superior. “Hard bed” was his answer. After three more years, another chance was spent with “Bad food”. It was three years before he could opine, “Cold floors”. And then, most recently, he grunted, “I quit”. “It doesn’t surprise me in the least, ” answered the churchman, “since you’ve come here you’ve done nothing but complain”.

I’m not here to complain, but I am under that pressure to spend my “two words” carefully on our triennial visit. And I am a missionary in Spain… so I think you know what to expect, “he’s speaking on the Great Commission” (you’re right!) – Jesus’ last great marching orders to “Go and win the world”!! What do you expect? This theme occupies Twinky and me in one way or another every day. If you had invited a fireman to speak perhaps he would be talking about everybody having smoke alarms, which he would no doubt tie in to a hair-raising sermon on hell… if you invite a youth ministry gal she would be convincing you of the import of influencing our youth for Christ… but I am none of these. I am a missionary in Spain. We are working in one of the more Gospel-resistant modern cultures on the planet. So you’re stuck: it’s Matthew 28:18-20 again. But wait!

I would like to discuss with you, in fact, only one word of the Matthew 28:18-20 text. What word do you suppose that is? Judging by the two or three churches I have spoken to on this theme, I know you have probably guessed… “GO”. Right! And I would like to say basically one thing about that word. This is a one-point sermon on one word. If you’re taking notes it should all fit on a 3 x 5 card, and still leave good room for doodling and a small shopping list on the back.
I have heard a good number of sermons on missionary work. I have been pressured, cornered, brow beaten, fooled and cajoled. Encouraged, too. And one of my personal challenges even now is to serve the Lord from love and not out of guilt. So much of that guilt is based on the feeling of so many of us that we haven’t done enough, that somehow we haven’t really “gone” with the Gospel where should have gone. No doubt you are already bracing yourself to graciously receive what I am about to say. I thank you for that. You are very kind, but it won’t be necessary.

Perhaps you really like where you live and you are well tied in to the community. Your kids are in a good scout program. The schools are good. You enjoy your job. Your spouse is from the area and you have family near. And now here comes this missionary and he’s going to try to convince you to go to Botswana. And if he builds up the guilt enough and you are able to resist, no doubt he will offer a bit of a relief if you throw in a few bucks and pay HIM to go! And you will think you got a good deal.

No I am not here to say any of this. I’m not going to try to convince you to pull up stakes and live in a dung hut ministering to the Masai tribe while swatting flies. I’m not going to try to make you feel guilty about mowing your lawn or enjoying life right where you live. I think you will be encouraged, but still challenged by what I believe is the real relationship of the word “go” and Jesus’ command in the Great Commission.

For preachers, “go” really is a great word. It preaches well. It’s only two letters and has a sound not unlike “bang”. Just say the word and you’ve got people jumping. It’s a simple idea that does not need much explaining. Who doesn’t know how to go?? If you’re in a car, well, you just push that right pedal “to the metal”. If you are in class and someone yells, “go” you don’t think twice… you’re out the door in a second. Great, no homework today! “Go” is chock full of action, you can feel the wind in your face and the salt spray… kind of like that scene in Titanic with the couple in the bow of the ship. All right, so the Titanic sank. But the image of the couple moving ahead through the waves is inspiring! Flags are waving and we are finally getting somewhere! And boy does the word “go” make us missionaries look good. Hey, we’ve gone. We’ve out there getting it done. We’re eating worms for the Lord. Makes us look good and feel good about ourselves. We’re the “A-Team” of Christian ministry. Or… are we????

“Go” sure adds mystique to mission. It conjures up in our mind the sound of strange languages, dress, unknown dangers, and weird foods, “going where no Christian has gone to preach the Gospel”.

“Go” is a great motivating word. There is just one problem with this use of that word in Jesus’ command in Matthew 28. It’s wrong.

The command in the Great Commission is not “go”. The command, as you may well know, is “make disciples”. Sadly for some, “make disciples” does not preach so well as “go”. Hey, “make disciples” doesn’t even sound interesting, at first listen. No motivating sound goes off in our head. No “pop”, “bash”, or “pow”. No visions of exotic jungle birds or Spanish señoritas looking over their fans at a bullfight. In fact, if “make disciples” paints any picture at all for you, it may well be early morning Bible studies, thick notebooks with a lot of verses to look up and blanks to fill in, or a Sunday School class for Christian illiterates who aren’t allowed access to the good stuff until they swallow the “discipleship core program” pill. Or, perhaps for you discipleship is a kind of Christian “Eagle Scout”: for the few, the motivated. Sounds complicated, difficult and we suspect boring.

In fact, making disciples is the great adventure of Christian apprenticeship. It is a passing on of knowing Christ and serving him. It is based on relationships and as such is not a program or to-do list. But I am not talking today about making disciples. What I want to answer is this: “What does go have to do with making disciples?”

It’s “going”.

The verb “to go” in the text has the same form as two other verbs in the same context: “to baptize” and “to teach”. These two verbs are translated in many versions “baptizing” and “teaching” and help define key elements of making disciples. You make disciples baptizing and teaching.

It would appear that in order to remove any hint of command implied by the form of the Greek verb “to go”, it would be better to simply translate the word “going”. Why, then, do the NIV and KJV translators leave it “go”? It may be for reasons of context that they have left it “go”, thinking that in fact Jesus had it in mind for them to go somewhere. But that may well be “reading into the text”. There is often pressure to not touch traditional translations of texts so as not to raise suspicion or rock the boat or to upset Christians. And it may appear to translators that leaving the verb as “go” does not force readers to understand it as a direct command. All of us use this form of “go” when we tell our child, for example, “go and clean your room”. The real command is to clean the room, and it just so happens that we are standing in the kitchen, so the going becomes part of carrying out the command. But it is not the critical part of the command, and had we been standing in the child’s room we could have simply said, “you’ve got to clean this mess!” Or, the “go” could simply mean, “get moving and clean your room”.

Let’s run with this idea, then, and see where it takes us. A most simple translation of the Great Commission would then be: “Going, make disciples, baptizing and teaching”. Or perhaps you could say, “As you go, make disciples…” or “On your way, make disciples”. Loosening our belt we might even say, “While you’re at it, make disciples…” or “As long as you’re there, make disciples…” or “Since you’re going that way anyway, make disciples…” To a Brit, the Lord might say “Carry on there chap, and be sure to make disciples. Right.” Or if we were paraphrasing a “super Living Bible” we might say, “Hey, I heard you’ve been transferred to Chicago… while you’re there make some windy city followers of Christ…” or “Congratulations on the birth of Katie! Now that you have a daughter, job number one is to make her into a disciple of the Lord Jesus…” God has put you there, given you that daughter, given you that job, put you in that circumstance and that is precisely where he wants you to make disciples.

So here is my one and only point on the word “go”: God wants us to go about life and make disciples where we find ourselves. He will direct us to live and act in many different ways. Sometimes a catastrophe or what seems to be a random circumstance will force us to take a certain job or move to a certain place. God directs our lives that way, sometimes. It is very likely you are right where God wants you in many respects. So… get on with it and make disciples right there where you are!

Three large errors.

There are three gross misconceptions that many well-meaning Christians have entertained for much too long when they mistakenly make “go” the command.

“I’ve got to go somewhere to evangelize/disciple/minister.”

So many of us think, “I’ve got to change location, go on a trip, get off my normal life path” in order to really do God’s work, to reach souls for Christ, to make disciples. For example, go to a prison, preach or sing at a breakfast mission downtown, go to Haiti with the youth group, build a church building in Mexico. “That’s REAL ministry”, we say.

In a more general way we are often trying to put ourselves in a superior role, we look for people who are sloppier, poorer, more needy or in some way do not have their act together in an area where I do have my act together; I go to them and I preach the Gospel. Don’t get me wrong. God in fact does call individuals to change location in order to share the Gospel with someone who otherwise might not hear. He also calls all of us to minister to widows, orphans and prisoners. There are people who are called to go downtown and speak to the guys who live in the street.

But God’s overall command to all believers to share the Gospel does not have any “go” component that requires all of us to change location. Jesus made it clear with a parable. Who are we to minister to? Our neighbor. And who is our neighbor? The Good Samaritan was already on a business trip, let’s say. He was going along his way and turned the corner to see a man beaten nearly to death. He did not have to do much more than stop and help this man. He didn’t even have to cross the street. It was the man who didn’t want to help that crossed the street to avoid the bad scene. This is the general “rule of thumb”: as you go you will find the people that God wants you to disciple.

A second error may be making us feel way too good about what we are calling ministry:
“If I’ve gone somewhere, if I have somehow gone out of my way, I’ve done what God wants, I’ve made disciples.”

Evangelistic “activism” may assuage our conscience but it is not usually effective. We can pack up the youth group and ship them to inner-city Philadelphia to hand out tracts on AB Street, and they may feel really good about that… but this kind of activity may not contribute in any way to making disciples. And, my, do we celebrate these kinds of activities like they are the absolute ideal of fulfilling the Great Commission! We make a big deal of the “Tibet Outreach” simply because it is Tibet. It is so far away it just has to be ministry. It just has to count for the Gospel. This is a pretty stupid conclusion, don’t you think?

“Displacement Ministries” (Apostolic Ministries, if you will) have their place, but they should not be the “meat and potatoes” of evangelism / discipleship. Also, cross-cultural ministry opportunities sometimes help us better understand our own culture. And coworkers for the Gospel who are working in difficult situations can often use help. Twinky and I certainly have greatly benefited from helpers from France and the US with our work in Spain. They have come to pray for us, they have tried to generate interest in Bible reading among students, they have helped our small church in Zaragoza feel like a part of the bigger picture of the body of Christ that is worldwide in extent. Great! But, we must not allow ourselves to feel too good about making trips or spending a lot of energy to go to the end of the earth when we don’t even know the neighbor’s kids names. Often the only thing our neighbor knows of our Christian faith is that we fly out the door Sunday mornings in a tizzy and come back after a few hours a little more rumpled and looking rather hungry.

Making trips is one thing. Making disciples is something else. At times they are related, but not always. But the biggest and saddest error that comes from thinking that “go” is the main command in the Great Commission is simply not paying attention to the opportunities that touch us every day in the course of our lives.

Because we have defined discipleship /evangelism as some special activity we go somewhere to do…

...we miss the opportunity to disciple all the people we see in the normal course of our life – as we go – our peers, people like us, people we already know and understand in part because they are doing what we are doing.

You must see that God has put you where you are. You are not walking a random path. None of your current circumstances are in any way related to luck. You are “on mission” and the Lord is asking you to keep your antenna up. Be alert for opportunities right where you are to bring Christ to those you naturally are meeting every day.

A key to “going” is that you must see yourself free to move about in the community and not just in the church. This is your mission!! And it can be a lot of fun! Yes, you can do fun stuff, things you like to do in the company of potential disciples. You like to sing? OK, OK, you can sing in the church choir. But why not sing in the community choir? While “go” is not a command there is the assumption that you are moving about, going, meeting people, living and working somehow in your culture. The Lord in no way commanded us to walk about the earth in a hermetic suit. We are here to engage. And can I add that you may find people mostly open to talking and getting to know you, and through you coming to know your Lord, if they are having fun. I spoke to this issue a few years ago in a sermon called, “Why did Jesus go to parties?” I tried to show that Jesus hung around with people from all backgrounds, ate long dinners, and had fun in the company of non-believers precisely because that was his mission, to be with “sinners”. He moved about in his culture, went to wedding parties where he no doubt danced with the bride and helped supply the wine in a pinch (a wine without peer in the history of wine), hung out with tax collectors, let a prostitute wash his feet with her tears, messed with the kids, touched the infectiously sick (which healed them of course). He was so unreligious, so down-to-earth, that even John the Baptist was scandalized and began to doubt that Jesus was the One. This is the kind of “going” that should inspire us to live well right where we are.

You may have noticed in verse 19 that we are to make disciples “of all nations” and again it could be tempting to link that phrase with “go” and repurchase your ticket to Tanzania. I believe, though, that Jesus is simply saying, that wherever we go we should not limit our sharing, we engage with whomever is willing to listen, whomever you meet, from any culture.
Imagine yourself as a first century Christian living in Jerusalem. You are Jewish of course. Your city is being attacked – it is 70 A.D. and soon all your Jewish friends and family are fleeing for their lives, Christians and not. So, after some months of arduous travel you and your family find yourselves in… Spain, for example. You’ve escaped with the clothes on your back. As a believer committed to obeying Christ, you begin to see a new dimension to the Great Commission. Perhaps you even see that this cruel attack by Rome on Jerusalem is serving a purpose for the spread of the Gospel. You read, “As you go, (wherever you go!) make disciples of all nations.” So, here you are in Spain your new home and you are to make disciples of not just Jews like yourself, but with whoever is in your natural path.

Now, how will you respond to Jesus’ last great command?

Going… as you go… on your way… while you’re at it… as long a you’re there… since you’re going that way anyway… (and God has put you there!)… make disciples of all nations.