[What follows are two posts I made on Facebook during the past week. They were designed to open discussion on how to preach on Trinity Sunday, specifically how I might faithfully preach “against” the Great Commission. After the two posts, I’ve selected copy/pasted some of the comments. I hope the combination of the original posts together with the comments can illustrate how fascinating social media dialogue can be prior to the “event” of Sunday worship, functioning essentially like an asynchronous Bible study. I encourage reading this whole blog post, with the OPs and then the comments, as preparation for worship tomorrow.]
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Post I:
This coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday and the gospel lesson assigned for the day is Matthew 28:16-201, often called the “Great Commission” because in it Jesus “commands” the disciples to go to all nations and baptize and disciple them.
It also contains the Trinitarian formula used at baptisms, which is why in the year of Matthew it’s selected as the text for Trinity Sunday.
Now typically those who attend our services and listen to my sermons know I mostly attempt a generous reading of the Biblical texts. Which is to say although I may ask some questions, overall I do not interrogate or reject scripture but strive to come alongside it.
However, this Sunday I plan to preach AGAINST the text. I do so in solidarity with the millions around the world who have been the targets of this non-reciprocal and colonial discipling.
Just a few notes on why:
1. I think it likely these verses are not original to Matthew but the addition of a redactor.
2. The commission as spoken and written does not match the spirit of other parts of Matthew (think of the Beatitudes or the parables of Matthew 25).
3. I’m so done with discipling. Like the disciples we read about in Matthew, I myself hardly have my own shit together.
4. Yet I am a big fan of baptism, not as command but as gift.
5. And I love Trinitarian theology because it’s our best articulation of how this one we know, Jesus, is also God. I just don’t think the Great Commission command is a good representation of how the Trinity moves in relationship to us, let alone in Themselves as Trinity.
6. And for the love of God can we honor our neighbors in other faiths for who they are (full stop) before we immediately move to proselytization? Isn’t the mutual sharing of faith better as reciprocal open encounter?
Post II:
I mentioned earlier this week I plan to preach “against” the Great Commission text in Matthew. This garnered some interesting responses, about which I offer ten points:
1. Is it assumed that faithful preaching on scripture is “agreement?” I would like to assume that actual engagement with a text as a living text could/would include the freedom to disagree.
2. Stating my thesis meant I needed “proof” so I’ve been busy all week re-reading the whole of Matthew. We might say that to work against the text you have to work with the text even more.
3. Yes, the text is from a pre-colonial era and authored by a non-dominant community. That’s an intriguing qualifier. We can hear a text as it was heard by first hearers only through the lens of how we now hear it.
4. I still don’t like “discipleship” much.
5. But I teach and lead all the time.
6. Even or especially through posts like this.
7. It’s hard for me to reconcile the commission with the Beatitudes and the parables in Matthew 25.
8. This is a classic interpretive move: interpreting the text by way of other texts.
9. Is Scripture really so fragile it can’t handle our strong disagreements?
10. Hey look, even when we argue with the Bible we are still reading the Bible. This might be a working definition of true “authority.”
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Some Of the Comments:
“Have you read the First Nations translation of this passage? It is one of my favorites, and turns the whole colonizer-based notion of "making disciples" on its head. Their translation turns the original text into something more like 'go unto the nations modeling self-displine as I have shown you, so that people may see, learn, and be inspired to behave with discipline themselves by your example.'"
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The one thing I am struck by in this text that goes akilter from what you are saying is that Jesus before the Resurrection makes a big deal about who is in and out of the kindom of Heaven and after the Resurrection he sends all the disciples out to bring the kindom— even those who it explicitly says doubted. It’s almost as if Jesus changed his mind. It’s almost as if the traumatized child whose cousins were all murdered by Herod’s troops was healed by his own crucifixion and resurrection. While I don’t think this helps you preach against the text but I do think it has a certain resonance about it that losing the Great Commission text would silence. So I’m ambivalent. Yes, preaching against the text is called for if we look at it as a text to convert the nations. But I have come to see it as a text that humanity-izes the kindom, including Jesus.
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I’m watching Mary Beard’s documentary about Rome. In very early Rome what distinguishes them from the peoples around them is they don’t just go raid their neighbors for slaves and cattle. They do, but they also raid their neighbors’ futures by turning them into Romans, and drafting their sons into an army. Sounds suspicious to me. It sounds like the commission in question is more Roman than Jewish. It sounds like something added to the text. Something that should be preached against.
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There are three references for baptism in the Gospels. 1. The baptism of repentance according to John. 2. The baptism of righteousness that Jesus receives. 3. The baptism practiced by the 12. In Matthew and Mark we hear about the general baptism done by the followers of Jesus. Both Matthew 28 and Mark 16 read as additions to the text. Luke describes the apostles baptising only in Acts. John 4 reports that the disciples baptized at the direction of Jesus. Paul is baptized, reports baptisms he has done, and promotes immersion into the Anointed ( baptism). What makes Mt 28 jump out at me is that the Risen Jesus invokes the trinitarian formula. In no other saying does Jesus come close to such a saying. This is an outlier text. It anchors baptism in the future rather than the present or the past. It creates competing goals between ceremony, teaching, appropriation. These futuristic objectives leave the text very malleable to a very different situations than the first century of Palestine. Which thus requires the promise of Jesus' abiding presence until the close of the age. The temptation is to receive the changes experienced over time as endorsed by the power of heaven. This would be a mistaken assumption. When Matthew 28 speaks of the teachings of Jesus, then the Sermon on the Mount must serve as the default template that rules out certain applications of the sending to all the ethnos. Any form of colonialism or dominionism is excluded (love your enemy). That means the text speaks in large part against Western Church history since Augustine. It calls us inheritors of colonialism to start over and be re-immersed in the Anointed.
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I agree. I never understood why questioning Scripture or even God was wrong. Like, even Jesus asked a question on the cross, so…
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So I always thought the Great Commission was to share the light of my candle in Christ with my Buddhist, Muslim, and Jewish neighbors as they share their light with me.
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Like Badiou, I think of the Great Commission as an Event like the Russian Revolution. After the Russian Revolution, the Soviet government formed the Communist International to unite all world socialists together in one front. (This of course wasn't without problems and was shut down by Stalin) The soviets didn't think they were the only socialists in the world. Nor did they think they were the only right ones. They thought a great commission of socialists across the world would further the social movement. So they made disciples, or rather disciples self-made themselves out of individual, disunited groups across many nations into a united front. I thought the Great Commission is a calling to make cadre of the Jesus movement across the flocks of the world. But of course I think of Jesus as a socialist organizer before it's time. So while a (Jesus) revolution is the most authoritarian thing in the world but it an authority made up of called up leaders to reciprocate callings together.
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I am with you always. That’s the part I’m going to focus on.
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Is that preaching against the text, or applying the altogether Lutheran hermeneutic that Scripture interprets Scripture?
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.17 When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”[a]
If you look at the early Christian church they went through all the earth motivated by persecution. As they went they shared the Lord’s supper wherever they went. The church grew exponentially. The problem is not the text . It is the “church” which grew more legalistic as time went by. The text is a spiritual injunction not intended to be a demonstration of the law. By all means speak against the church wherein the blame lies. But to go against the Word remember a house divided against itself cannot stand.