Therefore, GO!

A Sermon Inspired by Matthew 28:16-20

First in the "Open Our Eyes" Worship Series

This month during worship, as we read Scripture together, as we pray over it, as we apply it to our lives, we’ll be asking God to “Open Our Eyes.” Over the past two months, even while we have been apart from one another, we celebrated Easter and Pentecost. Christ has been raised from the dead. The Spirit has come with wind and fire. As we prepare to return to in-person worship gradually during the summer after these high holy days of the Christian year, we might wonder, “What’s next?”

Our Pentecost questions linger…

“What should we do?”

“What are we able to do because of this wonder and gift from God?”

“How should we live?”

“Who are we as disciples of Jesus, empowered by the Spirit?”

“Where should we go in mission?”

“Who should we include?”

These are all questions the early church, the first disciples who received the Holy Spirit in that upper room asked, wrestled with, and tried to answer faithfully as they learned what it meant to be Jesus’ witnesses and to carry on his mission in the world.

These are all good questions for us to ask ourselves today! Just as Jesus asked those first disciples to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth, so he asks us. Just as Jesus commissioned his followers to make disciples, to baptize in his name, and to teach others, so he commissions us today!

As we join those original disciples in Matthew’s Gospel today in Galilee and hear Jesus’ words to “Therefore, go and make disciples,” notice how the disciples begin in a posture of worship. Our first response to experiencing the risen Christ with eyes wide open is to fall at his feet and worship. To sing out in praise that our God is holy, holy, holy. To name and celebrate all the ways our God is worthy of our praise, worthy of the songs we sing, worthy of being the desire of our heart, worthy of us spending our lives in service to God’s mission of love and grace.

Yet, Jesus doesn’t tell the disciples to stay on that mountain and worship him forever. We already know from that time Peter saw Jesus transfigured, shining in glory on a mountain, that worship that stays put in one holy place is not what Jesus desires from his followers. Again, Jesus reminds us that true worship is active. “Therefore, go, and make disciples of all nations,” Jesus says. That would be awful hard for the disciples to do if their worship never moved from the mountain where they saw Jesus. If our first response to experiencing the risen Christ is to worship, then our second response is to allow that worship to spill into the world as we go!

Today, in the life of the church is known as Trinity Sunday. As we hear Jesus commission the disciples to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we are reminded that the work of the Holy Trinity, this mysterious and beautiful nature of God, is the work of transformation in the world. Jesus’ followers are given authority to baptize and teach so that they might make disciples for the transformation of the world.

Jesus’ words to the disciples today in Matthew’s Gospel are often referred to as the Great Commission. It’s a reminder that the work Jesus speaks of today is first God’s work. Lives are changed and hearts are transformed only through the power of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet, Jesus extends this work to his followers, asking them to cosign this mission.

“Make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world” is actually the mission statement of the United Methodist Church. It’s our calling, our reason for being, our understanding of what it is to be the church! And, today, we remember that it is an active calling. Jesus says, “GO!!!” This Trinitarian transformation business doesn’t happen when we stay still in worship. It happens when our worship spills over into our everyday lives and our everyday world.

On this Trinity Sunday, we might ask ourselves:

How do we share the love of God the creator?

How do we live in the hope of Christ the redeemer?

How do we offer the sustaining presence of the Spirit in life-giving ways?

As I consider how we embody the love of God in our lives as disciples, I keep thinking of the ways I experienced the love of God through the life of Mattie Ruth Brewer. Mattie Ruth, who passed away at 104 years old this week, was a faithful woman of God who loved her church deeply. As I prepared to share memories of her life at her funeral last Thursday, I asked the family if I could borrow her Bible, the one she read from each day. They graciously obliged, but they did make sure to point out that they would be giving me her most recent Bible. She had had many copies that she had worn out, the binding cracking, pages falling out, from her studying God’s word so diligently. As I turned over the pages of Mattie Ruth’s Bible, I found verses of Scripture underlined, prayers and notes written on slips of paper tucked between the pages, signs that Mattie Ruth didn’t only read the Bible…she sought to understand it and to live by it. But, of course, none of this surprised me. While I only had the honor of knowing her for two years, it was clear to me that the love of God pervaded everything Mattie Ruth did. The way she welcomed our children into her home as they visited her and played the piano for them. The way she always asked me about how her church was doing, wanting to know if people were getting along, if people were coming to worship. The way that on the last time I visited her in February before the virus hit, she offered me some of the Valentine’s candy her family had brought her. Mattie Ruth embodied the love of the creator God in all that she did.

Like Mattie Ruth, we are called as disciples of Jesus to share the hope of the risen Christ with our community—our family, our friends, our neighbors—through relationship. When God wanted us to know what love and hope was like, God put on skin and came to live among us as Jesus Christ. In our everyday relationships, we have the power to choose whether we will live to serve our own purposes, taking care of our own needs, or whether we will follow the example of Christ, who sacrificed his own life for our forgiveness and freedom. What sacrifice might Christ be calling us to make in our lives so that our witness of faith and our mission of love might be more authentic?

Finally, as a community of disciples called together to worship God not only in song and praise but with every aspect of our lives, we join the Holy Spirit in mission as we become the life-giving presence of God in the world. Isn’t that what it means to be the body of Christ? To be the hands and feet of Jesus serving in our neighborhood? By now, I hope you are already familiar with the growing ministry of the Come and See Community Kitchen, a community ministry that was birthed at our 2020 Vision conversation back in February. Since March 15, dedicated volunteers have been working b tirelessly to provide not only meals but, also, relationships (even the socially distanced kind) to 
vulnerable members of our community, especially senior citizens. As we return to in-person worship and our community finds a new normal in the midst of the pandemic, the Come and See Community Kitchen is also shifting and finding its new normal. I hope really soon we’ll be able to share more about what this ministry will look like as it moves into the Mason Building, giving new life and mission to this gift that was given to our congregation.

Through the words of the Great Commission, as Jesus tells us to “GO!” we are reminded that the focus of our faith is not on our inward, personal worship alone. God seeks to transform our hearts and lives as disciples, turning our focus outward to the world in which we live. Today, we remember that we aren’t just called to look after our own souls, although attending to our personal faith lives is important work. But, as the church, we are in the business of transforming the world. Jesus said, “GO!”

Even as we prepare to return to in-person worship, our worship cannot end in the Activity Building, in the sanctuary, in our living room, in whatever space we worship and sing praise. Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit demands more! If the red flames of the Spirit that adorn our United Methodist crosses are truly going to burn in our hearts as disciples, then our worship must spill out into the community and neighborhood around us. Each time you hear or pray a benediction this summer, remember…our service of worship may have ended. But our worship through service is just beginning! Therefore, GO!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.