Faith for the Future: Discipleship
| John Wilkinson |
Third Presbyterian Church |
| May 18, 2008 |
Matthew 28:16-20 |
In the early 1800’s, religious revival was sweeping across
the frontier of the United States. Under the broad banner called
the Second Great Awakening (the First Great Awakening had occurred
in the 1740’s), new forms of religious practice, religious
belief, religious leadership, were popping up as this new country
was emerging.
In this area, we know some of the story, including our own,
here at Third Church, with Charles Finney and other evangelists
focusing both on individual salvation and social morality. The
“Burned Over” district, our region was called, in
a reference to the powerful work of the Holy Spirit moving across
the land.
In other regions, other kinds of things were happening. In
the early 1800’s, in Tennessee and Indiana and Kentucky,
the revivals took on other forms. In 1801, something called
the Cane Ridge revivals were led by a Presbyterian, of all things,
Barton Stone. Stone and his followers ultimately decided that
creeds, like the one the choir will sing in gospel form today,
were misleading. They further believed that ministers got in
the way of people having true and authentic religious experience.
This matters today for several reasons. It reminds us, in the
season of our “Faith for the Future” capital campaign,
that this church was born in a pivotal era in American history
and in a pivotal moment in American religious history. That
revival experience, which we variously have tried to embrace
and reject, is in our DNA.
In fact, this conversation may be the most central of all,
because it focuses most completely on who we are, whose we are,
and who we are called to be. The Cane Ridge revival story is
important to recall for historians, because it launched the
first fully American-born denomination. And it is important
to remember for all of us because of the name, and focus, of
that denomination. A simple phrase: they called themselves “disciples.”
So many things are happening today. We focus on Micah 6, because
that’s the theme of the wonderful video that our youth
have created, with its repeated reminder of what God requires
of us. We bristle a bit at the notion of “requirement,”
but Micah’s words ring with clarity and power in our ears
and in our spirits.
We focus on Trinity Sunday, the Sunday following Pentecost,
a Sunday devoted to the controversial, mysterious, foundational
doctrine of the Christian faith – God in three persons.
And we focus on Matthew 26, which hints at the Trinity but
also articulates another set of requirements. Where Micah says
do justice, love kindness, walk humbly, Jesus in Matthew says
go and make disciples, baptizing them, teaching them. Today,
we will connect that text more concretely to the reception of
a wonderful group of young people into the communion of this
church through commissioning.
This is an iconic episode in the gospels. In is not unlike
Jesus’ commencement speech to his disciples, his valedictory
address. They are excited and doubtful at the same time. They
are absolutely unsure of their futures. Jesus seeks to calm
them down, and then it is five quick commandments. Go. Make.
Baptize. Teach. And remember. A final word of reassurance and
encouragement.
We could focus on the internal three words – the words
that we seem to associate with the notion of evangelism –
make, baptize, teach.
My friend Joanna Adams describes the evangelism dilemma: “They
come, when the baby’s crying, don’t they? Around
dinnertime. The phone is ringing; the dog is barking. You are
just about ready for a strait-jacket, and there’s the
doorbell, and there they are: two clean-shaven, square-jawed,
smiling young people who want to make their witness to you about
Jesus Christ. You are not particularly interested in Jesus Christ
at that moment. You are, in fact, drawing on all your spiritual
resources in trying to resist the impulse to hit them in the
head with your cooking spoon, but your mother told you to be
nice when someone comes to the door, and so you admit to them
that you are a believer and say that they can go to the next
door neighbor’s if they’d like. That doesn’t
help, because they’ll not be deterred in their mission
of making their witness to you, because from their point of
view, it’s your soul or your supper that’s going
to burn and you would be wise to make it the latter.”
(“No Other Plan”)
We are not exactly sure what Jesus meant when he told us to
make disciples, but force fed, ignore-this-at-the-peril-of-your-eternal-damnation,
does not seem quite right.
Joanna Adams says our task is to take back words like “witness”
and "disciple” from those “who have turned
the life-giving gospel of Jesus Christ into a hard-edged, mean
sort of thing. Our task, our glad responsibility is to bear
witness to the saving love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ,
to make visible his reign wherever we can and however we can,
but always with love and respect for human dignity.”
That sounds like discipleship to me.
One of the things I learned from our group of commissioned
and commissioning ninth-graders this year is an incredible measure
of tolerance and an incredible measure of humility. They live
with racial and ethnic and sexual diversity and a deep religious
diversity that will need to insist that we believe what we believe
with integrity and clarity, but that we do so with humility
and respect as well. Our truth is our truth, but in your face
and divisive it need not be, whether in Rochester or Rush or
Henrietta or Webster or Greece or Penfield or Pittsford or Brighton
(where our class members live), or halfway around the world.
So we could focus on those internal commandments, make and
baptize and teach. But I’d rather focus on the bookends.
Go…and remember. They suggest an integrity of discipleship,
a holistic approach of thinking and doing, of reflection and
practicing, of a thoughtful faith and an active faith. Here
are some implications:
* Going and remembering has something to do with the Trinity,
not yet understood in Matthew as a formal doctrine, but the
experience of the community – the ways they experienced
God and understood God. We are called, I believe, both to wrestle
with the theological implications, but more so, to help each
other understand how God is active in our lives, and in the
life of the world.
* Going and remembering has something, clearly and strongly,
to do with baptism. The heart of the experience, the event that
seals our identity as children of God. We call our class “commissioning,”
and that works. Others churches use phrases like “confirmation,”
as a time to confirm those baptism promises earlier made, or
“communicants,” to remember an earlier practice
of a kind of “first” communion. Those work as well,
but regardless, this is a day to “remember your baptism,
and be grateful.”
* Going and remembering is an outcome of the Easter story. Remember
that this was the culmination of the resurrection trajectory.
Eugene Boring writes that “faith in the resurrection is
a matter of worship, not of analysis. It does not exclude doubt,
but takes doubt into itself.” (New Interpreter’s
Bible, Volume VIII, page 505)
* Going and remembering is not as isolated activity. We are
not alone. We have each other. And more than that, we have Jesus’
assurance, first, that “all authority on heaven and earth
are given to me.” And then, we are told that he will be
with us always. This is no solo act, nor an experience based
on our own skill or abilities. As Charles Cousar writes, “we
can count on the attendance of the crucified and living Christ,
even in our darkest hours.” (Texts for Preaching, Year
A, page 345)
I wonder, today – not only as we think about a capital
campaign and the future direction of the church, not only as
we think of a challenging doctrinal formula called Trinity,
not only as we welcome and then launch a group of young people
into the church and into the world – I wonder if we can
think like those pioneer Presbyterians, burned over and revivalized.
I wonder if we can be open to new ways of understanding God
and experiencing God, and therefore open to new ways of living
out our faith in this new frontier.
I wonder if we can live our hopes and not our fears, because
by so doing, the God we know as creator and redeemer and sustainer
will take us to new and wondrous places.
I wonder if we can be made into disciples, formed, like a beautiful
work of art by an artist whose divine creativity makes the fragrance
of the lilacs and the song of the bluebirds and the loveliness
and the persistence of the human spirit.
And having been made and formed, might we make and form, teach
and obey and share and give, with respect, with humility, but
also with clarity and integrity and authenticity. And with hope.
And with love. And justice and kindness. It is what God requires.
It is what Jesus commanded us to do. It is what will make all
the difference. Amen.
