Holy Trinity (A) / The Hated Verse / St. Matthew 28:16-20
15 June 2014 – Redeemer
There are a few Bible verses that I hate. The text is one of them. Now I don’t hate it because it is God’s Word. I hate it because it has been used to beat and bludgeon God’s faithful people and her pastors again and again into guilt over imaginary sins. I’ve got enough sins on my own without having to invent any.
Matthew 28:19-20 has replaced John 3:16 as the favorite Bible passage among us Lutherans of the Missouri Synod persuasion. If you have attended a Lutheran Women’s Missionary League event or supported the work of Lutheran Hour Ministries, been a convention delegate, gone to an evangelism conference you have heard Matthew 28:19-20 drummed into your ear. You have been repeatedly told “Go and make disciples.” Each one reach one and if you don’t the dying church will soon be the dead church. If your church isn’t more concerned about the community than your members you are not the church Christ wants you to be. This one verse has created more guilt than all the commandments combined because this verse has been preached and taught as the sin against God which will result in the death of His church.
So since I hate this verse I thought I’d better read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it so I could preach it. Before us then is Matthew 28 and since these are the Words of our Lord we should love them and keep them.
The first problem that we encounter is the title that is given to this passage of Scripture. You’ve heard this title many times – this is called the “Great Commission.” Please realize that titles placed above paragraphs in Scripture are man-made titles. They don’t appear in the scriptures. That title “Great Commission” didn’t come about until the mid-1800s. Research indicates that either a Baptist or Methodist preacher first came up with the title – and that is telling. Both of those Christian denominations diminish the Word and Sacrament, both make the Christian life a combination of Christ’s work and your work. The historic Christian church looked upon this section of Scripture as the institution of Holy Baptism and as the institution of the preaching office – Pastors who baptize and preach all things Jesus has commanded.
This man-made title is significant because it changes the nature of the church from something God does – bestowing His gifts in baptism and His Word, to something we do – going and making disciples. This title changes the church from the place where Jesus gives His gifts for salvation (which is the Gospel) to a place dependent on you to do your work to keep the church alive (which is the Law). It is no wonder that this description has left us battered, beaten, and guilty – if the church depends on me and you we’re in trouble and if it is dying it’s entirely our fault.
Now into the text itself. We’re going to look the grammar of the text so you’ll need to imagine you are in middle school and learning about sentence structure. “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, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
There is a little word that always seems to get overlooked in this text. And it’s not “go.” It is “therefore” “Therefore” is a conjunctive adverb (Don’t I sound smart – I got that off of Google). It joins together two clauses or sentences. “Go and make disciples” is therefore connected to the verse beforehand where Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
There can be no dispute that that verse is all Jesus. He entered the battle for your soul against all who had power over you. Upon His flesh has been heaped the filth of your life. Into your fiery hell He was cast. He stood before your Father as your perfect brother and said, “Don’t take it out on him. He cannot bear it. Give it to me Father.. He gave up all authority and power and might in the most unlikely plan ever concocted. It was no earthly plan, but a heavenly plan, the plan of the Father worked in His Son and delivered by His Spirit. This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God … God raised Him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held by it. Now Jesus lives, subject to nothing. All rule and honor and power and might in heaven and on earth are His. The greatest news of all – He uses all His authority for you. His forgiveness of sins, His eviscerating the devil, His triumph over the grave, His life, ascension, and rule is for you.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations. What is not apparent in the English translation is that this verse begins with a participial clause. Participial clauses aren’t the main point in sentence. If I say, “While I was driving to church, I saw a fire.” no one is going to ask, “What church were you driving to?” That isn’t the point. That’s a participal clause. What I’m going to be asked is “Where was the fire?” That is the main point of the sentence. Jesus said, “Going therefore make disciples of all nations.” The main point is not the going, but the making of disciples.
Since making disciples is the main point that makes the second and third participles – baptizing and teaching more important than the going. Through the simple and common use of grammar the passage clearly is about the gifts of Christ through His Church and has very little to do with your work. You don’t make disciples by going. Disciples are made by the Holy Spirit delivering the gifts of Jesus through baptism and the Word. It wasn’t given to you to baptize and teach – that gift was given to the Church when Jesus sent out the Apostles with the command to baptize and teach.
Baptizing and teaching deliver Jesus’ gifts to you so that you are under His reign. You have been plunged into the waters of baptism, immersed into Christ’s death for your sins and into His resurrection declaring you right. Therefore repent of your sin and die to your selfish nature. You are no longer subject to any of the unholy trinity of sin, death, and devil. Christ rules over all things and you are His and He is yours. Be confident – He is with you always – He lived for you, He suffered for you, He died for you and now He lives and reigns for you. He is always with you – in Baptism, in Word, and in Supper.
So the big words grammatically and textually in this passage are “therefore make disciples baptizing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to guard everything Jesus spoke.” The apostles heard those words from Jesus along with “go” and so they went. Wherever they went they took the reigning Jesus in His Church. They took Jesus in baptism and the Word. They took Jesus to the world, by planting churches wherever they went – even in Saint Cloud.
God’s Word is clear that we who are baptized into the name of the Triune God should confess the saving name of Jesus wherever we go in the world – and we are in the world about 99.5% of our time. (Even if you’re here for 2 hours, you will still have 99 percent of your time in the world.) But wherever we go we must always invite people to come to the Church – for while Jesus is everywhere He isn’t everywhere with the gifts that make disciples. He isn’t preaching in a boat anymore or sitting in your living room like He did for Mary and Martha. He is where water is splashed in the name of the Trinity, where His Word is taught according to all that He said, and where His body and blood are distributed according to His Words. There He is for you and the world and that shouldn’t leave you beaten, battered, or guilty, but rather forgiven, alive, and free. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Pr. Bruce Timm
14 June 2014 anno Domini