“A Reckless Faith”
Matthew 28:16-20
Allen Huff
Jonesborough
Presbyterian Church
6/15/14
According to
Matthew, this is the first and only appearance of the resurrected Jesus to the
disciples. We notice immediately that in
Matthew Jesus does not Star Trek his way through locked doors. He does not munch on baked fish to prove
himself more than an apparition. He does
not stroke Simon Peter’s guilt-ridden ego by asking him three times, “Simon, do
you love me?” In Matthew, Jesus appears
to the disciples only once, on a Galilean mountaintop, and his only words are
the three sentences of the “Great Commission.”
Now, in
between the announcements of Easter morning and the Great Commission, Matthew
tells an interesting story. This story,
unique to Matthew, implicates the Jewish leadership in a kind of B-movie
cover-up. According to this account, the
Roman guards, who become “like dead men” when the Easter angel appears at the
tomb, scurry off to the chief priests to tell them what they have seen. They are justifiably afraid because should
the soldiers’ superiors find out what happened, they would surely execute the
hapless guards.
After mulling
things over, the chief priests and elders give this instruction to the panicked
soldiers, “Tell your commanding officers this: Tell them that Jesus’ disciples
snuck in while you slept, and they
stole his body. And here, here’s some
cash. If you promise to tell that story,
it’s yours.”
If ever there
were a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, this is it. These Roman soldiers can either tell their
commanders that they fainted with terror at the sight of an angel, or that
Jesus' disciples slipped in and stole Jesus’ body while they, the guards, all of them, slept through their duty
assignment. Either way, the guards will
have their own crosses to bear – at least figuratively and probably literally.
Apparently,
this tale did circulate in the days and weeks following Easter. And it illustrates how closed, how entombed
we become in an imperial world of black-and-white dualism. When the obedience demanded is simply to obey
the commands of superiors for the preservation of an empire, violence
reigns. Then, when that earthly
authority finds itself toe-to-toe with heavenly authority, it implodes. On its own, earthly authority always resorts
to violence, and over time violence always creates its own undoing.
‘All heavenly
authority and all earthly authority are mine,’ says Jesus. These are his very first words to the eleven
remaining disciples, some of whom, says Matthew, “doubted.”
Tom Long calls
this scene one of “near-comic irony” because “nothing in the surroundings seems
to support [Jesus’] claim.”1
Yes, one who appears to be the same Jesus who was executed speaks these
words. And if he is the same person,
then something extraordinary is afoot, though, for the moment, its means and
purpose defy comprehension. So, as the
disciples stand on that mountaintop, the space for doubt stands as wide open as
the yawning expanse of the creation around them.
I’ll be
honest: I am pretty sure that I would be among the doubters. I am pretty sure that I would hear the word
“authority” and immediately imagine Rome and her empire, her armies, her
wealth, and her unflinching resolve to send her sons off to war to kill and to
be killed for the sake of property, power, wealth, and the way of life such
things in excess afford.
Given all that
has happened and all that I would probably expect to happen, I doubt that I
would have the spiritual vision to see beyond this dizzying moment. Herein lies the stumbling block: Jesus, if he
is really there at all, challenges his disciples to go ahead and travel a path
that has yet to be cleared. He
challenges them to inhabit a time and a place in which all heavenly and earthly
authority have become one. He challenges
them – he challenges us – to live, to
think, and to act as if we already live fully in the embrace of the household
of God.
To live as a
disciple is to live a life of trail-blazing love, gratitude, and hope in a
world addicted to fear and wallowing in despair. Jesus challenges us to live in heaven as fully as we can stomach it
while still walking the imperfect boundaries of earth. Only by some spiritual authority can anyone
live eternally in a time-bound context.
As Christians, we call that authority Resurrection, and we know that authority by name: The Living
Jesus. And when I say that we “know”
that authority and that name, I do so embracing all of the doubt on that
freshly Eastered mountaintop, as well as all of the awe, wonder, and speechless
joy.
So, how do we
live as disciples of Resurrection?
“Behold,” says
Resurrection, “I am with you…always.”
We are people
of faith, not certainty. We are animated
by an abiding presence whom we trust but cannot prove. That makes it a subjective trust, of course,
and the one who is with us nourishes that trust and transforms it into hope by
helping us to interpret both ancient testimony and personal experience. Our trust always frustrates the careful and
reasonable doubters around us, and within us.
Doubters demand explanations and justifications for a way of life that
follows, above all else, the command to love one another as Jesus loves us – to
love the whole of creation as the Creator loves it. To live according to the love of the one who
unites all heaven and earth, all gentiles and Jews, the one who unites every us and them that humanity creates, to
live according to that kind of uniting, resurrecting love, we fly on the wings
of a reckless faith. We journey into the
unknown “knowing” only that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the
conviction of things not seen.” (Heb. 11:1)
Aldo Leopold
was a conservationist and a sold-out lover of the natural world. In 1949 he published A Sand County Almanac,
a collection of essays that has become a classic in the tradition of John Muir
and Henry David Thoreau. In Almanac,
Leopold shares many of his favorite discoveries and timeless teachings from
nature. Reflecting on the return of
spring to a cold and barren Wisconsin landscape, Leopold celebrates the return
of the geese above all other creatures.
“One swallow
does not make a summer,” he writes, “but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk
of a March thaw, is the spring.
“A cardinal,
whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken,” says Leopold,
“can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but
finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed.
But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the
chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a
prophet who has burned his bridges.”2
The “Great
Commission” which Jesus offers on that mountaintop is a disruptive call to
declare our prophetic faith in a brand new spring, even as the ice still covers
the water. Indeed, his call is more than
a friendly invitation. It is an all-out
dare. Jesus dares us to live in
courageous insubordination of the well-guarded tombs of Rome, Babylon, and
Egypt. He dares us to live in
bridge-burning defiance of everything that legislates or preaches human
dependence on those earthly dominions that claim the absolute authority to tell
us what is good, faithful, and true, namely that in order to realize our full
humanity we must earn, spend, and own, and that if we must subdue or even
obliterate whole cultures to maintain a way of life, so be it.
If we are The Church, however, if we are the body
of the risen Christ in, with, and for the world, we must live differently. When
we equivocate ourselves out of obedience to Jesus’ command to adventurous,
dangerous agape love, when we fail to live as disciples who follow the reckless
power of Resurrection, we cannot make
disciples of others. We may make some
“converts” to a particular way of thinking, but regurgitating some prescribed
formula does not empower any of us to love as we are loved.
“Go...and make
disciples of all nations.” This is a
holy dare to live in the reckless authority of Resurrection, to inhabit
the household of God, to inhabit the presence of the Living Jesus, here and
now.
Every week I am reminded that
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church is a place where we can and must learn to
experience and trust this reality – where we can and must learn to enflesh the
command to love. In this small
congregation we have the full spectrum of ideas, hopes, and fears –
theologically, politically, and everything else. Depending on the question you ask, you may
get every imaginable answer. But we fly
on together, fellow travelers, fellow geese.
Every day, God's new spring opens a hole in the ice, a place for us to
land, a place of gratitude and respect for one another, especially when we
don't agree.
When you find yourself sitting on one side of
an issue and the person in the pew next to you sitting on another, I hope and
pray that you recognize that tension as our part of our strength. For through that tension, all authority in
heaven and on earth speaks to us, unites us, and continually transforms us into
a body who recognizes its shared calling.
Standing in that mountaintop tension, where there is wide open space for
doubt, our options are, by grace, reduced to one common call – the call to obey
Christ’s command to trust the authority of Resurrection,
to accept the dare to love.
In the name of the Father, and the
Son, and the Holy Spirit, thanks be to God.
1Tom Long, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on
the Word, Year A, Vol. 3. David L.
Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors.
Westminster John Knox Press, 2011. p. 47
2Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, Ballantine
Book, NY, 1966. pp. 19-20.
No comments:
Post a Comment