1. Making Disciples—Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations . . .
“You had one job”, has become a popular Internet meme over the last couple of years. It is a way of celebrating those tasks that seem like they should be simple, but an individual has managed to get them disastrously wrong. To this end, the Internet is awash with examples of benches facing walls, tee-shirts with upside down logos and ineffectual security barriers. The one job that the Church has differs in just about every way to this meme. The one job of the Church is stated in the famous Great Commission:
Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations . . .
A job, or task, it might be. But let’s be honest this is not an easy one. It is rather more challenging than getting benches the right way around and logos up the right way. And a lot trickier than building a barrier. We can all remember times when this one job might have looked rather less than straightforward. There are times when being a disciple feels embarrassing. There are times when it brings fear. Perhaps the fear of losing our job or of discrimination. For some it might bring the fear of violence. Even when we overcome fear and embarrassment the right words seem difficult to find in the heat of the moment. On some occasions the right words do come but the person we share with, smiles happily that our faith is good for us, but they have their own alternative. Sometimes our efforts elicit hostility; when we listen in turn we find out about someone’s pain from how a Christian ill-treated them. There are also times when we encounter someone who cannot entertain the idea that God is a God of love due to some personal tragic experience.
All of these obstacles, and more, can be roadblocks where our effort at discipling grinds to a halt. Sometimes these obstacles are merely hard ground which we can overcome. But let’s be clear it’s a difficult job. There are two things that help with this job. The first is to remember that the calling is a corporate one. The second is to remember the remarkable resources that God give his people to carry out this commission or mandate or job. I’ll look at three such resources each of which reminds us that we are called as churches, in fact the Church, to this task.
2. Resource 1: The Authority of Jesus—All authority in heaven and on earth . . .
The task of making disciples is not a hobby or a marketing exercise. It is not something based on the authority of politicians, business people, economists, experts or any frail human. This is something that is God’s plan for creation. He doesn’t just permit it, it’s the actual point of the Church. William Temple, a Twentieth-century Archbishop of Canterbury, put it this way:
“The Church is the only organisation
that does not exist for itself,
but for those who live outside of it.”
It is important to note that the world is also ready for this role of the Church. This is all part of God’s post-Eden plan. The way back to God is the one-by-one discipling of those who hear the gospel. We can do much to serve people outside of the Church, and so we should, but our greatest hope is for them to become disciples of Jesus and to join God’s plan.
Sometimes we worry about such single-minded mission. What about the Church? By which we mean us—what about all our issues, concerns and needs? There is no tension if we understand mission and discipleship correctly.
God’s mission—being made a disciple—is not a one-time event. It is a lifetime pilgrimage. It is a lifestyle. Mission and discipling are on-going way of being and doing. As Church we are an organic living body—the body of Christ. As an organic entity we grow, firstly, by each of us becoming healthier, holier, more virtuous, more like Jesus (or whatever term we prefer), second, as new disciples join us. Paul famously said, that the gospel was “first to the Jew, then to the Gentile” (Romans 1:16). This might not only reflect the obvious racial and religious distinctions at the origin of the Church. Perhaps today he would say: “the gospel is first for The Church and then for the Nations”. Perhaps. In any case, the gospel of Jesus Christ is an organic reality—if the gospel is not alive and well in our lives and collective life—if we are not growing as disciples—we cannot disciple.
All authority has been given to Jesus and he freely delegates it to us—that is we his body. Like most biblical images its more than a picture, it’s an expression of an incredible reality. The plan was, and is, audacious. The Three-in-One-God sent the Son to become the man Jesus. Then Jesus who was both God and man made for himself a group of disciples. These disciples are no less than a revived Israel. This is the significance of the twelve – although at the Great Commission there are only eleven of course. The final stage is that Jesus delegates authority and empowers his disciples by the Spirit.
God’s authority had already been given to God’s people, of course. They were to reach and teach the nations—the ups and downs of that commission is the narrative core to the First Testament. Sadly, the story of Jonah sums up the overall impact made by the people of God. Jonah famously didn’t want to go and disciple the nations but went in another direction.
At the Great Commission the disciples were still reeling from recent events. They were still eleven not twelve. They had seen Jesus die the death of an insurrectionist. They had seen him resurrected. Some still doubted. They were, like us frail. The Great Commission started, and continues, from such a point of frailty. That is the right place to start because we have resources from God himself. For a plan such as this has the authority of God. An authority worked out in death and resurrection. An authority given first to Jesus and then to us. Surely such a mandate must stir our hearts to overcome fear? Doesn’t such authority put embarrassment in perspective? Surely such an important call must impact our life choices?
In this Great Commission we are the first to know the freedom we have in Christ. The gospel reveals God as a God of freedom. The gospel reveals that we are free in Christ. If we know what it means to live in such freedom we can’t help but contribute to the core work of the Church—in being free we become active for God.
3. Resource 2: The Baptism of Jesus—Baptising them in . . .
Have you ever thought about baptism as a resource? It is, but like all expressions of the gospel in our Information Age we can lose confidence in it. Despite first appearances, baptism is a powerful act—but it is not just something we do. It is not an arbitrary rite of passage. It is not a test, although maybe we experienced one afterword like Jesus did. It is nothing less than being incorporated into the body of Jesus. For as we go down into the water we die with Christ. As we rise from the water we are resurrected with Christ. It is the visible start of the life in the body, the Church. This is something to be remembered. It is something to call to mind as we continue the long walk as followers of Jesus.
But baptism is not about an individual. This sounds especially odd to those of us who see so-called believers’ baptism as the right approach (as do I). But it is only in our ridiculously individualistic modern world we could see it as an individual affair. It is about joining a body of people. Sometimes the individual guilt and feeling of failure we have around speaking the gospel is because we see it as an individualistic enterprise. It is not. We all have parts to play to be sure—but as corny as it sounds we are a team. But the Jesus team takes teamwork to a whole new level—we are one body. We need to know our part in the bigger work of the Church. Because together we have been baptised into one body. None less than the body of Jesus Christ.
The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins captures this idea in his short but remarkably rich poem, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, where he says:
. . . — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
Christ plays in the churches, as we gather in worship and fellowship. What a beautiful truth.
Many religions have acts of cleansing with water. But no other has an act of union with the living God. As we carry out Jesus’ task, we baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Baptism is a great encouragement—when we see others baptised we are reminded of our baptism. This rather odd act is a life-giving one. It is an organic act. We visibly see the Church grow, one disciple at a time. As we see others baptised we see the gospel at work in the present and remember it at work in our past.
4. Resource 3: The Presence of Jesus—I am with you . . .
What a remarkable promise. What an encouragement. But what does it mean? Firstly, we can note that God has always been with his people. As Israel set out to inherit the Promised Land, we hear, God speak to Joshua:
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.
Joshua 1:9
On the return from exile and during the building of the Second Temple we read:
Then Haggai, the Lord’s messenger, gave this message of the Lord to the people: ‘I am with you,’ declares the Lord.
Haggai 1:13
How do we experience the presence of Jesus? Let’s be real and let’s be honest—it does not always feel like Jesus is right here in our midst. But our feelings are no measure of spiritual reality. There’s also some serious theology behind the promise of Jesus being with us. Because God as holy creator is distant, or transcendent. Yet in His grace He is close, or immanent. It has always been so. The first two chapters of the Bible show God as transcendent in the first creation account (Genesis 1:1–2:3) and God as immanent in the second creation account (Genesis 2:4–25). After the events of Genesis Chapter 3 it is in Jesus Christ that God’s resolution of the problem of our frailty and his holiness is made. God the Father is wholly other—neither our flesh, nor spirit, can survive his presence. But in Jesus, the God-Man, we have God with us, by the Spirit. This is mystical and not magical. We can’t conjure Him, we can only seek to experience him because God has promised to be gracious to us. And Jesus has promised to be with us to the end of the age. He’s bridged the gulf between us and God. Unlike the human response to fixing a broken relationship, Jesus didn’t meet us halfway—he came the whole way. Jesus came the whole way to make us disciples. He came the whole way to make disciples of all nations.
Sometimes we joke that God must have a made a mistake in delegating the discipling of the nations to the Church. But this is no joke. We are not inadequate for the task, because despite our weakness we have been given resources from God:
- We have the authority of Jesus himself.
- We have the gospel on show here in our midst in numerous ways including baptism.
- More than these two, we have Jesus with us.
We have not been set-up to fail. We have been equipped by the living God so that together we can make disciples of all nations.
PsalterMark 