Bravely Doing the Work of Christ
Service link: https://youtu.be/LywCmUVjHl0
Readings: 2 Timothy 1:6-14, Psalm 105:1-11, 43-45, Matthew 28:11-20
Do you understand how world-changing Jesus’ resurrection is? Do you understand that it has changed reality as we know it and experience it? If God’s love has conquered suffering and death, there is nothing that stands in his way. If we have faith enough to follow him and listen to his word that means that God lives in us and we live in God. That means that nothing can stand in our way either. The difficult part is that we must trust this new reality and life in Christ. The world still tempts us and scares us and our old lives still try to pull us back into old habits, but in Christ we are way more than the limited and fickle things that surround us.
God has always been trying to pull us into this reality of bounty and strength. You can look all the way back to the garden of Eden and humanities role as leaders. You can look at the way God blessed Abraham to become a blessing to all people and how God protected and cared for him in a way that he shared bounty. Or you could look at the way God lifted up Moses to guide a people out of slavery, through the Red Sea, through the desert to a promised land full of more than enough. The problem everytime is that people didn’t trust God’s providence, strength and bounty. Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit so that they could be like God, taking his place. Abraham took a servant girl because he thought his wife and him were getting too old. Moses and the people hid away from the promised land, because they didn’t think God could protect them.
We find this repeating itself in our gospel today. Once again like so many times in the past and in our lives, God has done a wondrous and powerful thing. He has taken his servant Jesus who suffered immensely and died and he has raised him to new life. I remember in highschool after another students proding, I heard an atheist history teacher say, it is practically a historical fact that something incredible happened after Jesus’ death, as there has never been a record time of such profound change in mass amounts of people for generations.
Yet humanity still doubts, we still battle against its, we still hold onto the old reality, we still react in fear. Look at the guards, in some ways, they were the first to witness the angels at the empty tomb, the earthquake, the stone rolled away and the dead rising from the dead, even as they lay paralysed on the ground. Now they come back with this incredible story and experience. They tell the religious leaders and then would rather tell a lie to the governors, probably because they thought it would save their life. The guards lie, because they aren’t brave enough to trust Jesus’ resurrection and so they hide and try to erase the best news we could hear.
The religious leaders and elders conceive of this lie, when they heard what had caused the earthquake and the raising of the dead. We already know they were jealous of Jesus, but now they don’t even want to think about the possibility of what this means. They would rather hold onto the status quo of slavery and death than trust in a whole new potential for life. Many people go on telling this lie, even though thousands of people see the resurrected Jesus, even though thousands witnessed the dead coming to life and the earthquake, even though this rag tag bunch of disciples, Jesus’ followers become strangely empowered to do God’s work. Why? I think sometimes we like simple excuses, even though we know we live in a complicated world.
Then there are the disciples themselves. We have already seen how they didn’t understand scripture, how they doubted because they didn’t see Jesus, how they went back to their old lives, how they forgot their calling and today we see how the disciples doubted even while they looked upon the resurrected Christ. We can be right beside God as he does something wondrous, we can be surrounded by people witnessing and praising the same glory as us, we can be in relationship with God and yet still we can doubt. We can doubt his goodness, his power, his providence, his love, so much so that we don’t step out in trust to live in this new world he is creating.
This is very real. I would guess this fits with much of our lives. Who here hasn’t doubted at one point or another? Who here has always stepped out in every situation with trust that God will provide? Who here has understood and witnessed to the truly beautiful and astounding good news of Jesus’ resurrection at every moment? We all doubt and step back from acting, but our doubt does not make the reality of the raised Christ in our midst any less real, it just means we don’t experience it as fully as we could.
What is the solution? When we doubt, which will inevitably happen, that is the moment that we must become courageous to step out and trust. In this life, it seems we will never know the full grandeur of God’s character, his bounty and his grace, but he keeps working none-the-less. Our courage and faith will help us to step into this new reality, even as our mind, as our emotions and our bodies are still trying to catch up with the reality in our midst. The hope and solution is there if were only willing to follow it in Christ. And the first step we all need to take is a personal/communal commitment in baptism, or confirmation.
The amazing thing is, even Paul, who was once a prosecutor of Christ and who now was suffering in a jail could find and see the power and grace of God working even there. Paul could find such bounty in the good news of Jesus’ resurrection that it was worth all of the pain and persecution. Paul could trust that God would do something wonderful with it all, as he will with all of our lives, even if we must face struggle and suffering sometimes.
So, courage, faith and trust to follow Jesus through all of our doubts and fears is essential to us sharing and experiencing the new reality of the risen Christ. But how do we know what Jesus wants of us? How do we know how to follow Jesus in our lives? We have all heard of people who have gone astray or who said they were following God to disastrous ends. I think these are less common then we think, but the point still remains, how do we know God’s purpose for our lives? If you want to know more about this question look back at last weeks sermon on God’s purpose for our lives, how we are called to use all the gifts he has given us bear fruit and lift up others.
God has also given us tons of ways to get to know him and so he has given us a lot of ways to learn how to follow him. He has given us his creation which bears the intelligence and order of its creator. Today, we are pointed to three other essential ways we are meant to know and share Jesus. Tradition, community and his commandments. These are all intertwined and should not really be divided.
Tradition from early Judiasm, to the first apostles, to the first generations of followers to today, is like us living in and learning from the grand community of Christ’s followers through history. This gives us the opportunity to step out of our own limited experience, beyond the movements of the time, beyond our own doubts and questions to see where God has always been leading - not that other generations won’t get things wrong at times, but we must recognize that our time will also get things wrong; God is the only consistent.
Community is often the first place we experience Jesus Christ as we can and should be his image bearers to those around us. When others can’t see him, or have been hiding away in fear, or have put up with the status quo, the community becomes a way to show them what they have never seen otherwise through our courage and faith to step out. It also becomes the place that we build up one another to continually know God more and more. All baptism happens here and becomes the entry way into the family of God. It is through this community that we encounter and take on the Holy Spirit that God uses to guide us.
Lastly, God’s commandments are the very place that God directs us. They are the foundation, or the building blocks for our every action. It is not like the Bible is a law textbook, or helpful advice, or a manual on what to do. If God was to write a law textbook for every situation there would never be an end to it. Even modern law is build off of precedence, which in my understanding are often generalizations not always accounting for the particulars. God and Jesus’ commandments are still right and good, but what they are meant for more than anything else is to shape our hearts. To shape our whole being to know how to act and respond. To understand how God is faithful so that we can be faithful. The commandments both through their hearing and following are meant to bring us closer to God, so that we might better hear his voice and know his hope to its realization. He has given us the bible which is a library of God working with and walking beside broken humans to redeem and empower them.
Today, we are commissioned by God to step out bravely, to make disciples of all nations, to baptise and to teach them God’s way. We should not let doubt, fear, loss scare us, instead we are called to invite others into the community of Christ whereby we all are learning and growing. The beautiful things is that as we go, we never really have to go without, because Jesus tells us to “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age”. If Jesus who has authority over all things goes with us, then we can always be courageous and trust that we too will overcome.
Bible Study:
Readings: 2 Timothy 1:6-14, Psalm 105:1-11, 43-45, Matthew 28:11-20 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Timothy+1%3A6-14%2C+Psalm+105%3A1-11%2C+43-45%2C+Matthew+28%3A11-20&version=NRSVA
2 Timothy 1:6-14
What is the reason? Look back a few verses
What is Paul urging Timothy to do? How would this change how we or Timothy live?
How are we saved? What does this mean about our work now?
According to Paul what is God been leading us into?
Why does Paul find such trust and hope even while imprisoned?
Why is the Holy Spirit important in this work?
Matthew 28:11-20
Why would the guards, the elders, religious leaders and many jewish people lie about what happened to Jesus? (Remember they would have all experienced the earthquake, the sun going dark and the raising of the dead that happened earlier in Matthew)
Why do you think some disciples doubted even as they were with Jesus?
What does this mean?
Why are they praising Jesus in this moment?
What does it mean that Jesus has been given all authority in earth and heaven? What does it mean for us then that he is with us?
Why is Jesus’ command to make disciples, baptise and teach his commandments so important? Especially in light of the good news of his resurrection? (Remember this ends the gospel of Matthew)
Why is it important that people are baptised in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit? What does this mean vs. an alternative?
Digging Deeper:
Can you think of times when you doubted, or were ashamed of the gospel, or when you put up with the status quo?
Why did you do this?
How could Jesus’ resurrection give you courage to face anything?
Can you remember any time where you acted out in courage, even though you were scared or worried?
What are some of the ways you have gotten to know God?
What has increased your faith?
What are some ways that you might help others in getting to know God or meeting him in the first place?
