The Great Commission

Sermon for Easter V BCP Preached at Evensong in Magdalen College, Sunday 25 May 2025 Zephaniah 3.14-end, Matthew 28 (omit vv.11-15) ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them … and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember that I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ The final verses of St Matthew’s Gospel, known as the Great Commission. The second lesson, of which that was the conclusion, began rather more surreally and more dramatically with an earthquake by an empty tomb, a terrified detachment of Roman soldiers, and an Angel coming down from heaven, while Mary Magdalen and the other Mary appeared at the crack of dawn ‘to see the tomb’. I frequently see my parishioners visiting and tending the graves of their departed loved ones; and I know that they derive much comfort from doing so. No doubt it was the same for the Marys in the few peaceful moments they had before the earth shook and everything changed. Again. By the tomb, even an empty tomb, they could at least feel close to Christ and share their memories with each other. Remember everything he commanded. But, brutally, the grave does not allow the visitor and the visited any shared future. For that, the Christian seeking an ongoing relationship with Christ must recall that the heart of their faith is a dynamic not with a book or a moral code; still less with a grave full of bones; but rather with a person. Not über-personal; not my chum, mate or bro; but someone with whom, in prayer, liturgy and silence, the individual can engage, seek transformation. Learn obedience. The Great Commission is a text that is rather rich for the blood of many these days, having been a curse as well as a blessing in the history of the Church. The instruction to ‘make disciples of all nations’ has not led to attitudes or relationships with other faiths and countries of which one can be universally proud. And although plenty of parishes are happy to celebrate partnerships with African Christians, for example, and to be thankful for their faith, much missionary practice in the past cannot be a source of satisfaction. Yet the first verse of Matthew has described Christ as ‘the son of Abraham’, so an international dimension to any faith stemming from the ‘father of many nations’ is perhaps to be expected. This is also why we are taken so insistently by Matthew to Galilee. It is where Jesus began his ministry after the arrest of John the Baptist. A mixed area of Jews and gentiles, it was the ‘Land of Zebulun and Naphtali’ whose people had, as we hear every Christmas, ‘walked in darkness and seen a great light’. Having himself begun here, the Lord would have his Church begin here also, even if it sometimes proved to be a place of tension and conflict. How the Church of England behaves in our own multi-faith context is of pressing importance as we appoint an Archbishop for Canterbury. Professor James Walters, Director of the LSE Faith Centre, has written recently of the need for the new Archbishop to give interfaith relations as much attention as possible, confident that a robust religious pluralism in no way contradicts Christian evangelism: ‘Giving room to other religions should not be seen as allowing less room for Christianity,’ he says. Any Easter faith shared at home or abroad must therefore have at its heart a generous hospitality and gracious restraint in its disciple-making. It also needs the humble obedience that comes from remembering that to be a disciple is to be a learner, gradually acquiring the skills of loving God and one’s neighbour. Christians sometimes appear either to expect to manage immediate Olympic levels of holiness; or they become despondent, even blasé, as they live with an unimaginative and repetitive repertoire of sins. So the recollection that we are all learners is one that might help. Indeed, it was of a previous Archbishop, Robert Runcie, that it was said that in spiritual matters one always felt that he still had his L-plates on. It’s a good image to have of one’s own religious efforts: it might be a remedy against pride and the debilitating habit of dogmatism that does so much to stifle dialogue and extinguish charity. Make Learners of all the nations. Invite them all, anyway. The Great Commission speaks also of our obedience to the commands Christ has given; chiefly, one supposes, the new commandment to love as he has loved. Speaking of obedience, I note that, were it not a Sunday, today would be the feast day of the Venerable Bede, in whose honour we might turn with profit to the Rule of Saint Benedict, to see how a monastic community learns obedience in the ‘school of the Lord’s service’. We might note in passing that monasteries and Oxford Colleges still have a little in common, in theory at least, principally the importance of study and the practice of gathering round the two tables of the refectory and the chapel. In the monastery, the hard work of learning obedience happens through listening attentively to God and one another. Fuelled by a ceaseless diet of prayer and scripture, especially the singing of the psalms, each monk acts as a whetstone or agent of salvation for all the other monks, rather like spouses in a marriage, fitting each other for heaven by the common purpose of their life together. Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that build it! The stakes are admittedly higher in a monastery, where brethren are yoked together for several decades, as it seems they are in small rural parishes like mine. If you fall out with someone there, it might be forty years before you’ve kissed and made-up, scowling for thirty-nine of them over the chilled goods cabinet in the Community Shop. But even in shorter time-frames and in spaces decluttered of tiresome neighbours by the privatising force of ear-pods, there is still a good deal of unavoidable contact, of learning not just to put up with each other, but to try to start not liking, but loving one’s neighbour as oneself. Learning to keep Christ’s command. The one great constant on which the Commission claims we can all rely is Christ himself. Unlike the visions of Luke and Acts, in which Christ disappears into the heavens, waving his benediction, though mercifully not quite singing So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehn, Adieu; in Matthew, there is no departure, no ascension through the clouds. Having passed through death into the imperishable life of God, Christ is both exalted at the Father’s right hand, and able to abide with his disciples till the ending of the age. The God prophesied at the start of the Gospel as Emmanuel, God-with-us, is, at the Gospel’s conclusion, the same God who is always present. Present in the Temple, enthroned between the Cherubim. Present when two or three are gathered together. Present in those made in the divine image. Present in the wine and wafer of a Sunday symbol. Present when he called her name: Mary. Present when he calls yours now, and in the long, dark-curtained watches of the terrifying night. Present. Always present. Stay non-commissioned, if you will. Avoid, ignore, dismiss the presence. But if you would learn a new way, speak up, caller! You’re through.