Matthew 28:16-20To growing love and growing unity, we add growing mission. The old adage is that “it’s hard to see the forest for the trees.” The sharing of our spiritual and natural gifts and fulfilling the call of God on our lives is part of a much bigger and grander work. As the old “Blues Brothers” movie says, “We’re on a mission from God.”
Picture yourself as those disciples. You have just experienced the horror of having your leader falsely charged and brutally crucified. You ran for your own lives and feel like you let the master down. You are absolutely confused about the direction of your life, because you have been following Jesus 24/7 for three years. Then you discover that Jesus has risen and he is sending you back into the mission field, but this time it is without him. The mission is still the big picture of your life. So it is with you and me. We share ourselves as part of God’s bigger picture of the redemption and transformation of the world. It is that mission for which others have gone before us, often at great sacrifice.
This passage is theme of the entire United Methodist Church, but there is often great debate about what “making disciples” means. Is it leading people to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Is it teaching people the basics of the Christian faith? Is it feeding the hungry and clothing the naked? Is it changing the lives of people and the systems in our world that are unjust and harmful? For a long time, we have majored on one of these four things, believing that doing one would lead to the fulfillment of the other three. We now know that is not the case. “Making disciples” means intentionally doing all four of these things. That’s why the missional cry for the United Methodist Church is “Make disciples for the transformation of the world.” I like that statement a lot.
Where do we make these disciples? The answer is both inside and outside the church. But clearly the greater part of that work is outside the church! That’s why your spiritual and natural gifts have been given to you – to make the life-changing world-changing presence of Christ real right where people live, any time and any place.
The promise of this passage is as we “make disciples”, he will be with us always. I have appreciated the WWJD campaign that asks, “What would Jesus do?” But the truth is that it is the wrong question. Christ is risen and still at work in the world. Christ indwells us by the Holy Spirit. Following Jesus is not hypothetical. It is a present reality. As the Easter hymn sings, “He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today.” The proper question is “WIJD” – What Is Jesus Doing? And once we figure that out, we do it along side him, sharing our spiritual and natural gifts, allowing our greatest passion to meet the world’s greatest need.
This is the final blog entry for this Spring Master’s Program class. What a joy it has been for Matt and myself to share with you in this daily Bible Study and this wonderful class. Our prayer is that your walk with Christ has been advanced, that you have become clearer about how God has “graced” you, and that you are more intentionally listening and seeking to fulfill God’s call on your life. May God fill you with His Holy Spirit to the point of overflow. Amen and Amen.
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