The Great Commission

I sat in a chair one Sunday morning as I watched a basket of bracelets get passed around, embossed with the phrase that was plastered across the large screens at the front of the Church: “Why Not Me?” This phrase rang of a religious revival of the NIKE slogan “Just Do It.” Yet, this is often the way that our Gospel reading of the Great Commission is taught in churches today, a call to “Just Do It” after all, “Why Not Me?” The phrase intended to bring about a lively action of the Church is instead a deafening proclamation of death. And as the curtain is pulled back on this revivification, it reveals not a lively faith, but a decaying corpse, filled with the desire of good intentions.

In speaking of the Great Commission in Matthew 28— “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age— we do the same thing when we too eagerly jump to the word “Go” and forget what has come before it. Just prior in the chapter, the disciples met Christ at the mountain to worship Him; yet, they doubted. Whether they all doubted or just some, we are brought face to face with the question, “How could they doubt when confronted with the resurrected Christ standing in front of them?” The mountain—the place where Christ constantly reveals himself—is the same place where again he comes to the disciples and reveals himself in his resurrected body; yet, they doubt.

If we are honest with ourselves, we too are often no different than those who doubted. As Christ revealed himself to the disciples, so Christ reveals himself to us in his word and in the Sacrament, and yet we too doubt. Christ feeds us, nourishing our body and soul, giving us new life; however, as the days go by and life happens, we are confronted with a life that is a race to death, and we forget and doubt that Christ is near—or even truly alive. We cannot jump to the command “Go” because we find ourselves stuck in our own doubt and decay. Our dry bones cry out for the breath of new life.

This breath of life is revealed to us in Genesis and Revelation as originating in Christ himself. As Christ claims, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the Beginning and the End” (Rev. 1:8; 22:13) we understand that when we read “In the Beginning, God created” (Gen 1:1), we are proclaiming that Christ has created all things and that all things find their beginning and life in THE Beginning, Jesus Christ himself. All of life and time is shaped and oriented to Christ as he has redeemed time in his life, death, and resurrection, which is lived out in the Church through the sacraments and in the liturgy. This is implicit in Matthew chapter 28, which begins “Now after Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week…,” this temporal marker, reflecting Genesis 1, indicates a reconfiguration of time in the resurrection of Christ. As “All authority has been given to [Christ]” at creation, the new life given by Christ, stemming from his act of creation and redemption, all time and life is ordered to him. Christ is not just the Beginning, but he is also the End. Our passage affirms he is always with us “even to the end of the age” because he himself is now our End. In the person and work of Christ, new life is given, and the Christian is ordered to and united in Christ.

This new life is not a participation in a hopeless death; rather, it unites us to a life of participating in the Trinity. As Christ commands the disciples to “baptize… in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” he has claimed salvation to be a Trinitarian work of creating new life. Just as creation was a Trinitarian action— “In the Beginning” that is in Christ, “God” the Father, created” and “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters”—so too baptism is the Trinitarian act of new creation. It is in this light, the call to “go” is heard as a call to come into the life of the Trinity, to be shaped and formed to Christ.

We are formed and shaped to Christ, not as if he is distant from us, but as he is “always with [us], even to the end of the age.” Christ remains near for us today in the Gospel and the Sacrament, and it is here that the Church is formed to Christ. As word and Sacrament are presented in the liturgy, the Church is reminded of their new birth in Christ through baptism, and their lives are being formed to Christ, who is with us. It is only here, when we have died to self and been made alive in Christ, who has nourished us, formed us, and united us to himself, that we proclaim, “Depart—or go—in peace.”

Just as Christ was faithful to the disciples, so he is faithful to us, and in our doubt he draws near to us, revealing and giving himself afresh. As we are recreated and joined to Christ, we participate in the Trinitarian work by calling people to Christ, that is, from death to life, from an end to a new beginning, which finds its end in the eternal Christ. In baptism, we find our beginning, and in the word and Sacrament, we are united to Christ and strengthened for ministry. T.S. Eliot writes in his poem “Little Gidding”, “And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time.” Only as life is understood as being formed by and to Christ—as he is both Beginning and End—can we understand our participation and end in Christ and in the mission of God, for “to make an end / is to make a beginning.”

God's Peace,

Fr. Aaron