All and Everything and Always

A Sermon Preached by

The Rev. Paul Debenport

September 13, 2009

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Yes, I know that school started a month ago.  And I know church school and our new church program year kicked off afresh August 23^rd.  But because in my formative years neither of those happened until after Labor Day, still to me, today is the kick off Sunday of new beginnings.  Which is why I selected The Great Commission passage from the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel to help get us moving again as disciples and as a church.  Hear God’s Word in Jesus’ words to us this new day:

And Jesus came and said to them [his disciples]: “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.”

The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

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The Great Commission.  I must have heard this passage a lot in my church growing up; at least that’s what I concluded a few years ago when I ran across my hand written application to seminary, drafted when I was barely 20 years old.  Reading it decades later, I found parts of it rather embarrassing.  Clearly I was a young man with a sense of calling, but with no clue to what that might mean, and what my gifts and limitations were.  I waxed sophomoric about serving in “the mission field,” or at least as a college or hospital chaplain.  I even mentioned that perhaps I could serve in Harlem, though I wasn’t real clear where Harlem was, but I did know it was a world away from my home in Texas.  Just a year into seminary, my African-American friend and mentor, Dr. Geddes Hanson, set me straight on that idea, when he smilingly exclaimed to me, “What the heck would you do in ministry in Harlem, Paul?  After seminary, maybe your should just go back home to Texas (which was a foreign nation to him) and teach the love of Jesus there, which might even help the folks in Harlem a lot more than you going there!”  (I said it was embarrassing.)  And in God’s infinite wisdom, it turned out I was called and commissioned into a local church [which I had never mentioned wanting to do in my application] in the state and then the region of my youth.  Now I know that this calling back “home” ended up being involved in ministry with people and experiences perhaps as far “out there” from my original thoughts as going to Harlem or China.  Sometimes, our great commissioning turns out not to be “out there” or “over there.”  Sometimes it’s here, at home.  But early on, at least, I always focused on the “all nations” part of this passage, meaning someplace “out there.”  However, now, after almost four decades of ministry in the United States, it’s only the first half of that phrase “all nations” that grabs my attention: the word all.

Clearly, Jesus was never a do-it-halfway kind of person or Savior.  With Jesus it was always all, and everything and always.  The gospels give us fair warning about this, long before we get to Jesus’ commissioning the disciples just before he was to ascend and leave them to follow through here in Matthew 28:  “All your sins are forgiven.” “Go and sell all you have.” “Come unto me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” “Drink this, all of you, remembering me.”  Not some; all.

Jesus’ Great Commission is just as insistent on the matter of mass inclusion: all authority; all nations; teach all to obey everything; I am with you always. And because it’s the Great Commission, as opposed to a Great Commandment, notice how the movement, the trajectory, is one of radiating outwards—like an arrow whizzing through our neatly concentric boundaries; and like a stone being skipped across a calm lake sending out ever expanding ripples.

How much authority do you have, Jesus?  All authority.  No one else, no ruler, no appetite, no ideology or even theology has final authority over us, only Jesus has all authority for everyone and everything on earth as in heaven.  He is sovereign over all of life, economic life, national life, church life, personal life.  All authority.

Which nations get priority?  All nations.  No one nation is chosen of God over the others.  God has no “most favored nation.”  All nations.

What are we to teach?  Everything that he has commanded us.  Not just the parts that are comfortable, comforting, and familiar, but also the parts that upset our old, favored, limited understandings, even the commands to love enemies, of all people, and to forgive all who transgress against us, as all of us have been forgiven all that we confess.  And whom are we to teach the all of Christ?  Everyone.  Everyone:  women, men, children, youth.  The not so smart and the smart.  The haves, the have nots, the high and mighty and the down and out.  All and everything and everyone.

And where are you, Jesus?  Where will you be?  With you, with all of you, everywhere, always.

Jesus’ Great Commissioning just keeps getting bigger and bigger, wider and wider.  It a radical, radial, increasingly inclusive commissioning.  The circles of Christ’s love just keep getting wider and wider, and we keep being sent to the periphery, even when we stay close to home.  As our lives in faith deepen, the margins as we know them will have to be redrawn to include even more, because our “all” is never a match for Jesus’ “all.”  We’ll get used to those, and then Jesus will call us to draw them again.

This might strike some as a Great Dilution—of tradition, of worship, of orthodoxy, of music, even.  But I think not, for notice how Jesus addresses our concerns in his list of all.  Who has all authority?  Who’s calling the shots?  Jesus, not us.  Jesus stays squarely at the center.  He is still the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last Word.  Jesus promises to stay squarely at the center, always.  He’s the one who skips the rock of God’s Word onto our placid lakes.  He’s the one who sets the arrow of ministry and mission in motion.  Jesus is the authority in charge, not we ourselves.  It is Jesus, on the move.  Jesus, flying past the trees and beyond our vision, maybe beyond our wildest imagination, wider and wider, more and more inclusive, all and everything and always.  That’s who Jesus is, who God is, sovereign over and loving toward all, everything, always.[1]

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With some embarrassment, I began this sermon describing how I once thought this commissioning—which is all of our commissioning —meant I was supposed to go to some exotic place and people in order to be a faithful disciple, only to be called back to the southwest where I was from.  But through the years I now realize that “all nations,” all kinds of people came to me both to be taught and to be taught by.  And it’s the same with us in this church now.  Some here, indeed, are being called by God from time to time “go into all the world,” which I greatly admire and encourage.  But most of us, most of the time, are commissioned to be Christ’s faithful disciples right here where we live.

But all nations, all the world, all kinds of people with all kinds of experiences, needs, and gifts are being sent here.  This church is not the same as it was when James Menaul founded it in 1881, nor when Hugh Cooper was led to lead us into founding Presbyterian Hospital to help the indigent “tuberculars.”  We’re not the same church at its membership zenith 1962.  We’re not even the same church as when I came here almost two decades ago.  All nations, all peoples, from all sorts of places near and far are increasing coming here, that has and shall continue to stretch our boundaries and lead us into new ministries and mission and into deeper fellowship as Christ’s followers.  So for most of us most of the time, Christ’s Great Commissioning today is a call both outward and inward, to be a new and newly commissioned church, increasingly open to the widening ripples of God’s Word, increasingly willing to follow the arrow of Christ’s ministry and mission wherever and with whomever Christ calls us—even right here with Christ’s ever new all and everything and always.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.