DIDN’T
He could have done so in simply human terms and in more ways than one. He could have simply disappeared. Did I not just say that there were two million people in Jerusalem? How easy to slip away in the crowds. To be away in the hills and the caves. Wanted men were always doing it, simply melting away into the desert to return when they saw a better chance. He could have raised an army and fought the enemy off. Thousands had followed him in the wilderness. They had wanted to make him a King. And who knows, he might have been able to beat the Romans at their own war game. And there was more he could have done, for though we could begin on human terms, we do not need to finish there. It is Matthew who records a few verses earlier how Jesus checked armed resistance in the garden with the words, “Do you not think I could beseech my Father and that he should even now send me more than twelve legions of angels?” But he did none of these things. He could have stepped out of the whole affair, and he did not. He went into it, knowing what he was doing, and he stayed in it and saw it through.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR US?
First and most simply this—we cannot back out of life, or death for that matter. We are in it, we are committed, like the ski jumper who has left the security of the top of the slope and must now make the jump whatever fears he may have. We are in it because we have to be, and he is in it with us because he chooses to be. The great verse in the Old Testament that has sustained untold generations of Jews in indescribable hardship and terror is this—“When you pass through rivers, I will be with you, and the floods they shall not overwhelm you. Yea though I pass through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” We are never alone, even when we feel as if we were.
But we can make this more precise. What is it that we cannot do? Neither Judas nor we can put the clock back. That remains true. What I have done, I have done and there is no pretending that I have not done it. Yet there is the possibility of a new beginning. “You must be born again.” “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; old things have passed away, new things have come into being.” And the new beginning is all the more significant because we do not forget how the old beginning was ruined by our treachery.
Our dreams fade into the daylight; we must face reality. Yet there are dreams that can come true. Dreams that are not quenched but quickened, by the true story of the Cross; the dream of the man or the woman that I ought to be, the dream of a world purged of its selfishness and transformed by love. The burden of responsibility, responsibility for the crucifixion, the burden of guilt that Pilate and I must have. Of course we cannot bear it, Pilate and I. And he has born it for us. He has taken away the sin of the world.
In a sermon on this passage, Luther faces the question—What was the difference between Judas and Peter? How is it that Judas in despair went out and hanged himself, whereas Peter survived to receive a new commission—feed my lambs? Was Judas’ betrayal so very much worse than Peter’s denials? No indeed, it wasn’t. What then was the difference? Peter remembered the word of Jesus—the promise and the offer, the word of forgiveness and renewal— this is what transforms the story, and transforms us.
“PRESENCE AND COMMISSION”—Matthew 28.16–20
[Preached fourteen times between 1/23/92 at Trimdon to 7/2/06 at Crook]
I have seen this Gospel of Matthew described as a two-faced Gospel. I should not choose that expression myself, it is too ambiguous. But I understand what is meant by it. Go back to an earlier point in the book, where Jesus is sending out his disciples on mission. “Don’t go anywhere among the Gentiles, any non-Jews,” he says, “don’t even go into a Samaritan village; you are to preach only to Jews, and the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But here we have, “Go to all the nations, the Gentiles, there are no limits; go into all the world and bring them in.” Two faces.
Again, a little way back in the book people, struck by the extraordinary things Jesus was doing and saying said, “What’s your authority for all this?” He answers, “I’m not telling you anything about my authority, I’m just doing what I have to do”; no explanations, no claims. But here, “all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. I have God’s own authority.” Two faces.
Or just look at the story itself. What is Jesus doing here at the very end of the book? It reminds you of Luke and you interpret it in terms of the story of the Ascension. It is Jesus’ farewell to his friends. But what an odd farewell! “Goodbye, I’m going to leave you, and. . . . I will stay with you forever.” It is worthwhile looking for a moment at these surprises because they point us to something that Matthew and all the New Testament writers want us to see. This is the decisive importance of the crucifixion and resurrection.
THE CRUCIFIXION AND RESURRECTION
This is what makes the difference, is the universalizing of Jesus. We have a good example here. Jesus, a real man in history, had to begin where he was. It was no good his saying one day in Nazareth, “There are an awful lot of barbarians out there in Britain; let’s do nothing for them.” Not only was it, in those days, an impossible distance away, no one could understand until Jesus had worked out his life and teaching within the framework of the Old Testament, in a place where the Old Testament was used, and to some extent understood.
When Jesus said, “Don’t go to the Gentiles,” it was not because he didn’t love them; they had to wait until they could approached with the whole divine action, including death and resurrection, that fulfilled the whole divine promise, then the time would come; and it did come. And there could be no claim to authority until he had made it clear that for him, authority did not mean throwing your weight around and making other people kowtow to you, but loving and giving, even up to death. And now, only now was it possible to say what earlier would have sounded like nonsense; I am reigning as Lord in heaven, and I am with you on earth, and sharing in all your struggles and suffering and perplexity.
Universalized; yet still the same. Do you notice the three extraordinary, astounding words that Matthew slips in? The risen glorious Jesus appears, and, of course, they worshipped him. But Matthew adds, “but some doubted.” Even then! You see there was no compulsion. Not even then would he compel worship, acceptance. He does not use his authority that way. You look, listen, think, decide, and you are free to decide wrong. You see what the right decision is. It is obedience. How did the disciples come to see Jesus” glory? They went to the mountain that Jesus had directed them to. “If you want to see me again”—he had sent the message by the women who went to the tomb on Easter Day, “you must go to such and such a mountain in Galilee.” It was no good saying, “ah but it will be much less trouble and much more suitable if we stay in Jerusalem.” You go where you are sent, and there you see him. That leads immediately on to the next point. What use does Jesus make of his authority? First, he has for his people a commission.
A COMMISSION
“Go and make disciples of all nations.” You see at once the scope of this commission. It is like his authority—universal. It is given to all his disciples and it is for all the world. No one is omitted. There is no question now of leaving out Gentiles or Samaritans. And what are these disciples of his bidden to do? To make more disciples, more like themselves, disciples of Jesus. There is a mistake lurking there that the Church has too often made. We are inclined to think, or at least to act as if we thought, that we had to make disciples of ourselves. “Come and be my disciples, learn from me, join up in my own little group, or big group as it may be. Join my congregation.” But this is an error. If I am a disciple of Jesus, it is not for me to ask you to become a disciple of CKB; my job is to persuade you to become a disciple of Jesus.
What is a disciple? To answer that question you must go back to the Gospel story. A disciple is a learner,
