In the last few verses of the gospel of Matthew, the resurrected Jesus sends the disciples out into the world. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
As the concluding words to the story of Jesus’ time with the disciples, I read that as a commission to go and do as Jesus taught, to go and share the good news and baptize people into this understanding of how God is present in the world.
It feels to me like Matthew’s version of the moment in John’s gospel when Jesus says “love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35). Then he describes The Way which will become the very heart of how the earliest followers lived. Or later in John when the resurrected Jesus says to Peter “feed my sheep.” Or even like in Luke when he commissions them as witnesses to all nations, witnesses of Jesus life and love. Even Mark has a commissioning, though most scholars feel it was added later, perhaps even to sync it up with the others.
Point is, they all felt it was important for Jesus to tell them to go and do what he’d been doing, to share what they’d experienced with him and help people find their way to the divine spirit of love that’s in all of us and live it with each other. That’s their witness, that’s The Way.
I’m feeling the weight of the words in Matthew, though: authority, make disciples, obey, commanded. I’m wondering at how we’ve often done missionary work in the past, when our behaviour has been anything but the love that Jesus intended us to share. We’ve certainly exercised authority, commanded and taught to obey, but so often not in the context of “love your neighbour as yourself” (Matt. 22:39). More often to make others simply be more like us.
But Jesus is really only asking them to do what he’s been doing: healing brokenness and restoring life, showing people how to live out the divine spirit that’s in all of us. Jesus’ teaching isn’t just words, it isn’t just behaviour, it’s a way of living from the heart. And it doesn’t involve authority or power over people and it certainly doesn’t mean exercising that power to make people be like us. Jesus doesn’t ask us to love people into being anything more than more truly their divine and human selves. This is The Way.
When we love like that we not only empower others, we further empower ourselves with the diversity of all we learn, and we create community together. Disciples are people: made by love, not command.
