Last Instructions Before Returning Home
Matthew 28:16-20
This past Thursday was Ascension Day when Jesus’ returned to his Father to take his place at his Father’s side. It’s forty days after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and a lot has happened in those forty days. Jesus continued teaching his disciples, getting them ready to take over the work of making disciples, getting them ready for when Jesus leaves them. Jesus has restored Peter after Peter’s betrayal the night of Jesus’ trial and called Peter to take care of his sheep.
Jesus calls them to meet him on a mountain, echoing back to Israel’s time at Mount Sinai after the exodus from Egypt when God meets them on the mountain, giving them what they need to be his people among the nations. Jesus is going home to be with his father and to take his place at his Father’s side. Jesus tells his disciples after they worshipped him, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Jesus is telling them that he’s not only Israel’s king, but he’s King of kings, giving notice to the world, to Satan, and to his church to listen to his voice alone. Jesus now has the authority and power to carry out his and Father’s plans and vision for the world and all creation.
Jesus turns to the disciples and leaves them with these last instructions before returning home, starting with the command, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations.” This is an ongoing command and the disciples understand it as, “Go and keep on making disciples of all nation.” This is not just for the disciples, but for the church through all time. This is our mission statement, the basic foundation of who we are as the body of Jesus, the foundational reason for our being. This is what we’re raised and trained to do, or should be doing, raising our children, new members, and believers to have as their heart mission.
Our call to make disciples is rooted in loving God and loving our neighbours as ourselves; desiring that they’ll embrace Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, as their king and good shepherd and listen to his voice. All three of the great commandments from our king are intertwined together; loving God and our neighbour and making disciples all flow out of God’s love for them and us. Peter writes in his second letter, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” Jesus is calling for this to be our great desire too, no excuses.
We make disciples, as Jesus says, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Disciples are made as we make Jesus attractive through our lives, living lives that give God the glory, helping them to embrace Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, committing themselves to Jesus and accepting his mark, his sign and seal by being baptized. This is followed up by teaching and training them to obey everything Jesus has taught as a sign of their commitment to Jesus, a sign of their love for Jesus and an expression of their willingness to join in being the body of Jesus in the world.
Jesus ends his instructions by telling the disciples, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Jesus doesn’t give the disciples their marching orders and then leave alone to figure out exactly how to do what they’ve been told in their own strength, ability, and wisdom. All Jesus’ power and authority is with them and us as we follow his orders. We may not feel especially gifted or able to make disciples and share the good news. Jesus’ promise of his presence is also a promise that we’ll always have what we need to make disciples. It comes down to a matter of obedience, not of ability, desire, or competence. Jesus promises them the Holy Spirit just before his death, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” … “when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.”
Jesus’ power and authority is with them and us through the presence of the Holy Spirit as we follow his orders. We may not feel especially gifted or able to make disciples and share the good news of Jesus’ coming, life, death and resurrection, yet Jesus’ promise of his presence is also a promise that we’ll always have what we need in order to make disciples. It comes down to a question of obedience and trust, not of ability; it’s about desire, not competence. I remember one teen girl from Allendale, Michigan who went to the public high school and wanted to share her faith in Jesus with a few of her friends. She came to my study one day after school to talk to me about how to have the right words to convince her friends to follow Jesus. We looked at the Scriptures and found that it wasn’t so much having the right words, but about having the right desire, about wanting to obey and please Jesus and trusting that he’ll give us what we need. She came to youth a few weeks later with two of her friends. She introduced them to me and kind of laughed and told me that she stumbled over her words, said a couple of dumb things, but her two friends were still interested in whatever it was that made her do something scary because she cared so much about them. We’ll explore this more next week.
We don’t often reflect much about how Jesus returns to heaven. In Acts 1, Luke shows us how Jesus leaves, “After Jesus said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
How Jesus returns to be with his Father emphasizes his divinity, giving authority to his command and his promise to be with them always. The imagery of the cloud echoes back to God meeting Israel at Mount Sinai after delivering them from slavery in Egypt. In Exodus 19, God calls Moses to enter the cloud in order to meet with him, “Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently…. The Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up and the Lord said to him, “Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the Lord and many of them perish. Even the priests, who approach the Lord, must consecrate themselves, or the Lord will break out against them.”
The cloud’s an image of power, of divine presence, of God’s glory and presence. At Sinai, Israel is given a way of living with God, each other, and the nations. Israel is called to obedience and worship and given a reminder of God’s presence and glory every time they looked at the pillar of fire or cloud that guided them for 40 years in the wilderness; reassuring them of God’s power and providence. Paul points back to these images in 1 Corinthians, “For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” Paul also points ahead to Jesus’ return with all power and authority as our king in 1 Thessalonians 4, “After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”
On Ascension Day, we see that Jesus ascending to the throne of heaven as the divine king of the world reminds the world that the chaos of sin and destruction is coming to an end. It may not always seem like it when we look at the world today, when we see what’s going on in Gaza, what’s happening in Ukraine, when we see the poverty, the brokenness in our inner cities, in the levels of domestic violence and brokenness in too many of our homes, it can feel hopeless, but Ascencion Day reminds us that our king wins, especially in the darkest of times, but we remember that this is why we’re here as his body, to move against the darkness and shine his light into the darkness by being salt and light, being Jesus’ blessing wherever he has placed us. It’s not easy, but Jesus is with us as we go into our communities as his body.
