A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .
THE MOST CHALLENGING SERMON YOU MAY EVER HEAR
Matthew 28:16-20, Preached at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, March 30, 2008
A man goes to a doctor for a physical examination. The examination is concluded, and the doctor says, "Sit down. I have good news for you. You are in perfect health. In fact, you have the health of a man half your age." The man thanks the doctor, gets up and heads for the door. When he gets near the door, he collapses, and dies on the spot. The doctor turns to the nurse and says, "Let's turn him around so it looks like he was coming in." When you get up from this message, if anyone happens to collapse at the doorway, I am liable to do the same.
Our text is about truth, or at least, it is from our viewpoint today. Dr. Karl Menninger used to ask his medical students, "What is the most important task in medicine?" Some of the students answered that it is the relationship with the doctor. Others said it was the prescription of medicine. Other suggestions were offered. When they finished, Menninger said, "The first, and most important task of healing, is diagnosis."
To understand scripture you have to be willing to look at it truthfully. You have to be willing to see it honestly. I guess I am calling this diagnosis, not that the Bible needs to be healed. My point is that I am trying to follow Jesus when he says in John 4:23-24, “The hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth ….” Now please do not get me wrong. In no way am I saying I have the truth, or that I can see the truth better than others. Nor am I saying that we worship more in spirit and truth here than elsewhere. What might be a strong suit among us when it comes to our church life, might be a weaker point at some other church. But perhaps they see and do certain things better than we do here. No church is perfect. No church has it all together. We could learn from each other. But I will say this, I think we have a very good shot at being able to see scripture honestly and truthfully, rather than wishfully or ideologically. We are not stuck in the mode where the bible has to be made to say something, even if it doesn’t, in order to support our perspective on life, liberty and the pursuit of God. Or we don’t have to ignore important scripture that might disagree with our viewpoint in order to keep our conscience clean and dry.
It is nice to be able to say you know exactly what the bible says and make it clear and easy to follow. Now as you can see by the size of our congregation versus the size of mega churches with their thousands and thousands of worship attendees, more people want it that way rather than this way. The truth can be a little more unconventional and difficult to decipher. What is gained by simplifying the Bible is a false sense of security toward God and Bible. What is lost is the willingness to look hard at scripture, to look at it honestly, and to wrestle with its nuances and its gray areas. What’s lost is the spirit.
What I am saying is this: There are cracks or tensions in scripture, but these aren’t imperfections. By simply ignoring these cracks, these tensions in scripture, and making everything simple and perfectly manageable, we ignore the spirit. The scripture has tensions and cracks for the simple reason this is the true way God is always alive always for people, for Christian believers. To deny the tensions in the New Testament is to deny that God came in the flesh and meets us still in our real, particular, unique lives and circumstances. Implicit in the idea that the Bible can be understood perfectly and simply, without regard to these tensions, is the idea that God is no longer needed. God has set down what we must do, and now we must do it. In this view, there is no place and no need for a God who wants to lead his people forward through time, growing us in the midst of historical changes, such as when we moved from governing our societies by means of absolute monarchies to governing ourselves through constitutional democracies, or when we changed from believing God approved of enslaving others who could be enslaved to realizing God meant life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. But this is exactly who God is and what God most wants to do with us and for us. After all, isn’t Jesus called Immanuel, which means God with us? Isn’t Matthew’s Risen Lord the one whose final words to his disciples are: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” If there are any cracks in the Bible, then it is only because nothing this side of heaven’s throne is perfect. God alone is perfect, everything else, including the Bible, needs God to live, breathe, grow, and do what God has called it to do. Nothing, not even the Bible, is immune to God being God, and the Lord of all. Anything we do was, is, and shall always be human, very human.
What we want to see this morning is that since Jesus elevated truth and spirit above everything else when it comes to worshipping God we should as well.
This is where we are headed this morning. Truth and Spirit are our guides to real worship, to real church, to true Christian life. You might be asking what these two, truth and spirit, mean? We can answer that by looking at our resurrection passage from today’s reading. Did you notice anything interesting, peculiar perhaps, or at least unique to Matthew’s gospel when it comes to this story? We are about to uncover one of these tensions or cracks to which I was just referring. If you want to compare Matthew’s to Luke’s and John’s stories you can turn to page 91 for Luke’s version and page 115 for John’s.
One thing you may have noticed is that Matthew’s risen Jesus is in Galilee, whereas Luke’s and John’s risen Jesus is in Jerusalem. In fact, Mark and Matthew’ risen Christ tells his disciples to go back to Galilee where he will meet them; Luke’s resurrected Lord stays in Jerusalem; and John’s Messiah is in both Jerusalem and Galilee. Now you might think that perhaps Mark and Matthew are talking about a certain period of time and Luke another period of time but John puts it altogether. That would be a good harmonization. We are not the first ones to think of this.
The truth is that over the last 1,700 years, innumerable attempts by some of the greatest Christian thinkers have been made to make a fifth “Gospel,” a fifth Gospel that would be a harmonization of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This harmonization would put together a seamless combination of the four, perfectly placing together events, stories, teachings, and places chronologically, so that we could read Jesus’ story as told by each author in one place from beginning to end without what I call tensions or cracks. Doesn’t that sound good? Doesn’t that sound like it should be able to be done? Doesn’t this sound like you should be able to pick this Gospel up at your nearest Christian bookstore, or Publix checkout line or on Ebay? Well why can’t we? After two thousand years, you would think this would be in every Christian home. But it isn’t. It isn’t available anywhere, is it? The truth is nobody could put one together because the pieces don’t fit well enough together to be put together seamlessly and perfectly, without tensions. Perhaps you are feeling a little challenged right now. I told you this may be the most challenging sermon you ever heard.
Let’s go back to our scripture. What we read this morning is called the commissioning passage. The now resurrected Jesus of Nazareth commissions his disciples to carry out his work. We read Matthew’s. Luke has one, as does John. Mark doesn’t have a commissioning story because his gospel ends before it gets that far into resurrection appearances. In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus commissions the eleven disciples in Galilee. But not just anywhere, 28:16 says, “Now the disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.” (Italics added) Neither Luke’s nor John’s commission story takes place in Galilee, and certainly not on a mountain, but in Jerusalem. In fact, in the Gospel according to John, Jesus commissions the eleven in the Upper Room, when he enters the locked room, breathes the Holy Spirit on the disciples, and says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you…. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” That’s John’s commissioning. Matthew’s risen Jesus, on the top of a mountain in Galilee, tells his disciples, “Go … 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.” I imagine you are still feeling challenged. But don’t worry there is good news here.
But before we get to that I want to tell you a quick story about a pastor’s little boy, who inquired of his father, "Daddy, I notice every Sunday morning when you first step up to preach, you stand behind the pulpit for a moment in silence, and bow your head. What are you doing?" The father explained, "I'm asking the Lord to give me a good sermon." “Well,” the little boy said, "Why doesn't he?" Hey, look, we try.
Why does Matthew put Jesus’ commissioning story in Galilee and John puts his in Jerusalem? Tough question, huh? But here is a related question: Why does Matthew tell the Sermon on the Mount but neither John nor Mark do? Luke does, but he doesn’t take three chapters to lay it out in the kind of detail that Matthew does. If the sermon on the mount was such a significant moment in Jesus’ life and ministry as Matthew perceives, wouldn’t you think the other three would at least report it, and yet only one does? Take a moment to consider that question because it will get us further down the road to the end of our discussion. While you do let me make clear that we are being perfectly scriptural or biblical, even literal, this morning. In fact, what we are doing is perhaps being more literal and scriptural than others who claim for themselves the title of literalists, that they take the bible literally, and often use it a divisive word to elevate their sense of Christian faith and deflate others. And yet they would be shocked at this kind of honest and literal look at scripture. You are being very gutsy this morning, and I appreciate you sticking with me.
Normally we would just have to say that someone got it wrong. Either Jesus commissioned his disciples in Jerusalem or he did it in Galilee. It’s not like he did it twice. So do we have to pick? And doesn’t picking mean that one or the other actually got it wrong? This is why a lot of preachers would never ever bring this up. Now that I’m up here, I’m not sure why I did…. Just kidding. I want you to be able to look at the bible, our holy scripture, and not be afraid of the truth of what is written in this. It may not be as easy to digest or comprehend, but at least we are heading in the direction Jesus would have us go: truth and spirit. Nobody can take that from us. “Galilee” and “Jerusalem” are in black and white, and really shouldn’t be avoided.
Alright, so let’s see if we can fix the pickle we’re in right now. First of all, we shouldn’t assume something. We shouldn’t assume how we are supposed to understand the Bible. We think, we assume, we are supposed to be able to read these words like they are a newspaper or a history book. They are supposed to be factually, chronologically, and geographically accurate as to time, place, and persons. We assume truth is told in this way and only this way. But remember the titles of the four gospels are the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and they ain’t never done made a fifth harmonized gospel of them. Second, scripture itself never says this is the way we are meant to read scripture. Anyone who says the Bible must be read like a history book, its truth understood as objective reporting, forgets that the good book never says that. What it does say is this, in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness….” Scripture is inspired by God, but it is not written by God. It’s written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, and a couple of others—at least the New Testament is. They were inspired by God but they were each dealing with certain issues and circumstances, and trying to emphasize certain points and aspects of who Jesus was and is. Scripture is useful for teaching, we are told. But it doesn’t say anything about historical accuracy for accuracy’s sake. That’s what we bring to the table. That’s our concern, not scripture’s.
Scripture’s concern is that the story of God in Jesus Christ be told, but it is always told to someone who hears it with certain concerns by someone who has to tell it for a particular reason. Third and finally, each gospels makes perfect, flawless sense on its own and in its own right because they are each written by a person who tells a complete and true story of Jesus Christ to a particular audience the author has in mind, such as Matthew’s community of Jewish Christians who are wrestling with understanding how Moses laws and Jesus’ teaching/commandments fit together or don’t fit together; or Mark’s scared community of Gentile Christians who are facing persecution and perhaps even death. Dealing supremely well with massively important issues like these, life and death concerns like these, is the truth that matters.
So let’s go back to Matthew’s Galilee resurrection commissioning story. Two important words stand out for our purposes. The first one is “mountain” and the second is “teaching.” Where in Matthew’s gospel do mountain and teaching come together? I mentioned it earlier. The sermon on the mount. Why does Matthew’s gospel elevate the sermon on the mount while the other gospels do not? Because Matthew is dealing with Jewish Christians who are trying to understand Jesus’ teaching in relationship to Moses laws. Matthew’s Jesus is the teaching Christ, the one whose teaching must supplant Moses’. So at the end, Matthew’s resurrected Jesus naturally returns to Galilee, to the mountain or mount, reminding his disciples and Matthew’s audience of the teaching in his sermon on the mount. There he this time commissions the Church to “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.” This is the truth. This is the gospel. This is the inspired word of God. We worship in truth and spirit, as Jesus taught.
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