Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “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.” Matthew 28:16–20

“And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.” — the shorter ending of Mark.

Mission:

The great commission. Many of us will be all too familiar with this last statement in the gospel of Matthew.

It forms the basis of many mission organisations, it’s the imperative often cited for us to go out into this world and tell people about Jesus. It’s the starting point of us understanding the need to share the “good news” of Jesus.

I have to resist being too angular tonight, because at the plain reading this is quite a challenge. The plain reading, which is the simplest reading, clearly states, that Christians are people who create Christians. Christians are also people who obey everything that Jesus commands us to do. That the obedience to Jesus is tied in with the good news.

Obedience is part of the good news. It’s part of what it means to be a Christian. It would be easy I’m sure to distance ourselves from this by saying “what is it that we need to be obedient to?” it would be easy to see this task as way too big for us. And often we do. Often we can look at this world and see it as the very complicated place that it is and say the task is too great. And we can retreat rapidly into the foreground of our immediate gratification and the issues that confront us right here and now. Some of them are painful issues. They are issues that consume us, even if it’s not right there in front of us, but also in the background, subconsciously. Our pain can drive us to want to lick our wounds and need for God to heal us before we feel empowered to do anything.

Sometimes we can hide behind these things and as a result this idea that we are meant to have a lasting impact on this world, gets lost somewhere along the way.

But there is no out. We can’t escape these words. There’s nothing there that allows a soft approach to it. It’s what we are meant to do, it’s part of who we are as Christians. In the same way that we are meant to pray, we are meant to play an active role in God’s redemptive project. He charges us with being his hands and feet and heartbeat and mouthpiece in this world.

Where there is injustice, we speak the good news. Where there is suffering we speak the good news. Where there is joy, we speak the good news. Where there is success we speak the good news. There is possibly never a time when the good news is inappropriate. BUT there are plenty of inappropriate ways of expressing it.

Now we might think by default that a missionary is one of those people that we send overseas. We might even think these are people who have really cottoned on to what all this Christianity is about. And perhaps it is safer for us to feel that way.

I remember growing up through the church thinking that these people had made it, they really meant their faith. That they were the crème de la crème of the Christian stock. It’s true, I used to think that they were somehow special, and specifically called in ways that the rest of us weren’t. you’d hear stories from people like Val Sinclair and how they were doing treacherous things in the highlands of papua new guinea. Landing airplanes with truckloads of supplies on these airstrips that were on the side of hills because there was no safe landing places. They’d tell all these stories about the natives turning to Jesus and for some reason there’d always be a story about chickens in there. I always remember stories about chickens for some reason. We would hear back from them about the hard stuff, and we would pray for them thinking that God was going to come through for them. And we would give to them—perhaps not generously ‘cos after all they’re doing the Lord’s work and we wouldn’t want to overpay them for that.

But they weren’t real people. They were spiritual people. They didn’t have doubts, they had rock solid faith. They gave me some kind of hope, that there was something worthwhile to this statement of Jesus at the end of Matthew. The overseas missionary represented authentic Christianity. And I think it still does to many of us today.

But it never connected with me. Until the day I thought I’d save the world by playing my trumpet. And I joined a theatre group that went around new Zealand and Australia, and we preached the ‘good news’ in these concerts on Saturday nights. We hoon into . . .

But I wish in that missionary endeavour that someone had pointed out the verse preceding the great commission to me.

It seems that at this great meeting point, probably at the point before Jesus ascends into heaven, at this meeting point, we have a group of two types of people. There are those who worshipped Jesus, and those who doubted. And get this, Jesus says to both of them, it’s right there, Jesus lays out the charge to both the doubters and the worshippers.

He satisfies both camps with his statement, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” which is a statement that answers the doubters and also embraces worship.

But the point I want to drive home at the moment is that the doubters need not see themselves as unfit for mission. If that were the case, none of us could do it. If it’s not clear from the text of the great commission, then just look at the people Jesus chose to minister to this world with him. Those disciples were not all that flash as far as Christians can be seen. They doubted, showed lack of understanding, questioned, got it wrong, fled when the going got tough, and ended up demonstrating significant disappointment with Jesus by returning to their prior jobs as fishermen no more than two days after Jesus was crucified.

They were not the crème de la crème, the pick of the bunch. They were people just like you and me and . . . those missionaries we support.

I bet you that if you asked these guys whether they felt special, almost all of them would say no. They bleed like us, they grieve like us, they count the cost like us. They sin like us. They are no more special than you or me. So we should be inspired by them, not because they have transcended reality, or managed to find the secret to a good Christian life, but they should inspire us because they have decided to serve God warts and all. To let God’s power be revealed through them, because they are weak. Because they have acknowledged that they are not ever going to be perfect and that that is not a requirement for mission. That mission is about serving other people, irrespective of how I feel, that mission is about caring for other people, even when I don’t care for myself. IT’s about loving God and loving people. It’s still about journeying with God, but it’s in a different context. They do not have a special place in God’s heart, because I don’t think they are doing anything significantly different to what we are supposed to be doing. They have responded to God’s call on their life. As much as we should respond to God’s call on our lives. In that sense, we’re all the same. The question is, are you confident that you know what your calling is?

Furthermore, because they are sooo like us, they need our support. It’s not just enough that we give some money from time to time. It’s that we also need to be connecting with them and praying for them. And that can actually be a calling on someone back here. That kind of interaction is vital for these people as much as it is vital to us in this congregation.

It’s isolating in another country. It’s not easy. Annabel Short has often commented how hard it is to be so disconnected from things here in new Zealand while she’s in Bangladesh.

These people need our support through prayer and encouragement as well as through finance. Money will pay the bills, but it won’t alleviate homesickness.

I think they are wonderful people, but I also think that you are wonderful people. And for us all to fulfil the calling that God has put on our lives is one of the greatest sources of fulfilment for us. We need to be inspired not because of what they are doing but because of how they are responding.

And they are responding by letting God use them for his mission.

I want to finish with looking at one other text. It’s in the bible but it doesn’t have a reference like the other verses. It’s found in mark 16. And it’s known as the verse that comes after verse 8. But it’s not verse nine. It’s because it’s one of three possible endings to the book of mark. Three different scriptural authorities have different endings. And this shorter ending as the NRSV puts it has a really interesting slant on things.

“And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.” — the shorter ending of Mark.

How’s that for some beautiful language. The sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. It’s stunning. But apart from that the idea that this was sent by Jesus through the disciples into the world.

So let’s answer the following question from the heart:

What does that mean for you?