Matthew 28:16-20 NRSVUE

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 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 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

This is one of the most selectively interpreted passages in the whole Bible.

You can pretty much identify what kind of Christian someone is by which parts of these 2 verses they emphasize.

There are the people who emphasize going to all nations, often white people, who think their job is to conquer the world with Western Christianity.  Colonialism has done a lot of harm in a lot of places.  Like it’s basically the fault of Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries that LGBTQ+ folks are demonized in colonized places, like much of Africa.  White missionaries taught that all of the indigenous religions were “Devil Worship and Demonic,” and since Queer folks are often drawn to religious life,  the Queer clergy of those indigenous religions became associated with “Devil worship,” so now in many colonized places, being LGBTQ+ is considered demonic.  Despite the fact that there have been Queer Clergy in Christianity since the beginning!  

But there’s also good things about going to all nations.  In places like Tonga, South Korea and Cambodia,  organizations like United Methodist Women introduced Feminism into those very patriarchal cultures.  Feminism being the very simple idea that women are equal in the eyes of God.

There are baptists, whose focus is on baptizing everyone.  “Getem’ wet and getem’ saved!”  To which I would annoyingly counter to my Lutheran friends, that if the goal is merely baptism, then why not create “Operation Baptismal Font.”

Load up a bunch of bomber aircraft with tanks of Holy Water and hose down the whole Earth while playing the baptismal liturgy on loudspeaker.  “I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!  A-men!”

Of course, baptizing people without their consent is religious abuse, so I would never actually recommend “Operation Baptismal Font”…although infant baptism is, precisely, baptizing people without their consent.  We are substituting the parent’s consent for the child’s consent, which is why we follow it up with Confirmation, so that young people can make their own commitment when they are old enough to decide for themselves.

Baptizing people, with consent, and confirmation are a good thing, but it’s the beginning of our membership in the church, not the end all and be all of our faith.  Baptism is something, it isn’t everything.

And then there’s the names in which we Baptize people into the church.

We Methodists like all of orthodox, Appostolic, Christianity  are Trinitarians, so we baptize in the names of the Trinity. The World Council of Churches says that I MUST Baptize in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or they will kick us Methodists out of the Council of Churches.  But this kind of exclusively male language for God leaves out the rest of the Biblical Witness where God also describes Godself as, 

• El Shadai, which translates to – The Many Breasted One
• A Mother Hen who gathers her chicks under her wings
• And the Tetragammanon –  Yahweh – which is an abbreviation for 
• “I Am Who I Am”

Father was meant to convey a familial relationship, not to identify God’s gender as exclusively male.

God uses, male, female and ungendered descriptions for Godself, so I think the most accurate pronouns for God are They/Them or God/Godself, which is why we use “Our Creator” instead of “Our Father” in worship.  And I typically Baptize people in the name of Creator, Christ and Spirit.

But once again – which parts people emphasize or de-emphasize tells you a lot about what kind of Christian they are.

There are those who focus on teaching them to obey.  

We often see this in “high-control” forms of Christianity.  

Like Complementarianism – that’s the official term for versions of Christianity that believe that women are subservient to men.

They’re they ones who LOVE quoting Ephesians 5:22-24

22 Wives, obey your husbands as you obey the Lord.

23 The husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church people. The church is his body and he saved it.

24 Wives should obey their husbands in everything, just as the church people obey Christ.

First of all, Paul was kinda dead when Ephesians was written in about 90 or 100 AD.  So the Paul who wrote letters to the women whom he left in charge of the Christ Communities that he founded, obviously didn’t write the book of Ephesians.  So this passage is quite different from the mutuality that the authentic Paul wrote about in Galatians 3:28 and 1 Corinthians 7.  

Ephesians chapters 5 and 6, including the instruction that slaves should obey their masters (Ep 6:5-8), are not the teachings of the authentic Paul, but the household codes of behavior in First Century Roman Culture.

These hierarchical teachings are the result of A beleaguered church deciding to “go along, to get along,” within Roman culture.  Showing us, that from the beginning, Christians sought ways to temper the radicalness of Jesus’ message in order to survive in the world.

And yet, Ephesians also contains chapter 4 verse 12, my favorite Biblical basis for my job description as a Pastor – to “equip the saints for the work of ministry.”

So we don’t want to throw this baby epistle out with the bath water, but there’s a lot of bathwater in the book of Ephesians.

So those of us who question high control forms of Christianity, then ask, obey what?  A small group of insecure men?  No!

We are to obey EVERYTHING that Jesus (because Jesus is the one speaking in this passage!) …

We are to obey EVERYTHING that JESUS commanded us.

Which, If you were here last week, or the past few weeks, as I preached my way through the last part of the Gospel of John you might remember that Jesus said in John 13:34, “I give you a new commandment…that you LOVE one another.

Or as Jesus put it in Matthew 22 and Mark 12,  Love God and Love your neighbor – All the Law and the Prophets are summed up in these two commandments.

Which can be summed up in one word.  LOVE

We are supposed to disciple people into Jesus’ Way of Love.

And that’s hard.

Because, have you met people?

So some Christians put the emphasis on remembering that God is with us always.

As it says in Romans 8:38-39

38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

And on those days that are really no good, awful, kinds of days, Romans 8:38-39 is a wonderful verse to remember.

And there are Christians who put their focus on, “to the end of the age.”

The people who are eagerly awaiting the return of the Messiah.

This can be a fear inducing, harmful, cult of doomsday preppers.

The people who are preparing for the tribulation and the rapture – which are not  Biblical things!

Or this can be people who are focused on following Jesus with intensity.

People who are trying to live as if today is their last day and they may face God tomorrow.  So they do their best to love God and love their neighbors – which is Biblical.

But the reason that I titled this sermon, Everything, is because I think we need to read this passage as a whole and take everything in this passage seriously.

The Greek that gets translated as “go therefore” actually reads closer to

As you go about your life, disciple people.  

People of all nations, not just fellow Jews, not just fellow Americans, not just fellow middle class white people, not just bible studies for church people…

…we are called to disciple all the people.

We are also called to baptize the people we disciple into the family of God, the church, the Beloved Community, The Way.  Jesus called it The Way.  It doesn’t really matter what we call it – the idea is that Baptism is a right of initiation – a ritual where we consent to letting Spirit mess with our lives.

And we baptize in the names of the Triune God – none of which are expansive enough to fully contain the expansive identity of God!

And we are obligated to teach or disciple (same thing) teach those who have consented to join the movement to obey EVERYTHING that JESUS commanded us – which can pretty much be summed up as love.

And because loving one another, not just our favorite people, but all people is hard — I mean, you’ve met people.  Sometimes we are a delight and sometimes …not so much.

Because the rule of love is hard, 

We need to remember that the Great I Am is with us always, all the way to the end – whatever that means.

Because, seriously, any theologian who thinks they can tell you exactly what the end will be is trying to sell you something.

 And this is Methodism.

To fully embrace both the Great Commission – as people often refer to this verse, and the Great Commandment of Love.

Not to Cherry Pick which parts we like and which parts we don’t.

Because, let’s be real, us Progressive Methodists love to love our neighbors, but we are afraid, yes I said it, we are afraid, to make new disciples. 

But as we talked about last week – In Acts chapter 2:43-47,  “day by day, God added to their number those who were being saved,”  because day by day” the people gathered together with “glad and generous hearts,” to love their neighbors by sharing food and meeting people’s needs.

And friends – I am not kidding, when I say that every single time Haven Dinner meets to share food and share our joys and concerns, God is adding another new person!

We make disciples by obeying what Jesus commanded us to do – which is to love our neighbors.

There is no separation between the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.

The Great Commandment is right there in the Great Commission – in the part where Jesus tells us to obey everything that Jesus commanded us.

As the Mandalorian would say,  This is the Way.

Love is the Way.

So…

As you go about your life, wherever you are, whomever you are with, make disciples by obeying the commandment of love, whom we can then Baptize into the Way of God, and teach to obey what Jesus taught us – which is Love, and it’s not going to be easy, so remember, God is with us, always, to the very end.