There is
agony when we realize that the threat of death is real. If Gethsemane teaches
us anything, we should recognize that even Jesus experiences the agony that we
all experience before someone lays down their life for another. No greater
love, right? The scriptures remind us that “greater love has no one than this:
to lay down one’s life for one’s friend. (John 15:13)” The act of love that was
demonstrated in Gethsemane seems so distant, so handled, and we believe that
this moment is simply a Jesus moment; beautiful, heartwarming, and done. What
if you found out that there is enough agony for all of us? Would you be a
disciple of Christ if you knew for certain that the invitation to follow Christ
was an invitation to Gethsemane?
This week we
study the Great Commission. This title was given to the verses at the end of
Matthew that describe the resurrected Jesus addressing the eleven remaining
disciples on a mountain in Galilee. It was 1908 when the first bible that
titled these words “The Great Commission” came out. Since then, the words “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.”, have been formed
into justification for the colonization of the world God loves, beaten into
clichés like, “it’s the great commission not the great suggestion”, and pressed
into the service of framing the work of a disciple of Christ as guiding the
world to embrace” the right way” of thinking about God. Is it any wonder that
some of us read these words and quiver; thinking this is precisely what makes
me uncomfortable with the life of faith?
Read the
words of Jesus about this great love as it is paraphrased by Peterson.
John 15:13
The
Message (MSG)
11-15 “I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might
be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another
the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the
line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you.
I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their
master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let
you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father.
We can see
that Jesus is demonstrating the greatest love in the very moments of
Gethsemane. Even though the agony of Christ is obvious, Jesus foreshadows the
story by helping us understand that these acts of sacrificial love are the key
to the Joy of Christ – complete joy; a joy that is not meant for Christ alone;
but also, those that would be Christ’s friends.
Does this
help us see the Great Commission in a different light? The disciples had just
been told that the tomb was empty. The resurrected Jesus has appeared and
instructed his disciples to go to Galilee where Christ will meet them. When the
moment comes and the disciples are in place, Jesus appears again in Galilee and
something surprising happens. The disciples fall down in worship, but some of
them held back because they weren’t sure about this worship – completely giving
themselves over – surrendering their lives.
There it is
– Gethsemane! To love one another the way that Christ loved us, don’t we need
to go to Gethsemane? Don’t we need to face the agony of laying our lives down
for another in order to have the Joy that is made complete by new relationship
with God? Remember, we are to be friends not just servants. We know the secret
and the secret is in the garden.
God knew
that the world, in the midst of its profound suffering, needed a new
relationship with God. This relationship would come out of love; not just any
love – the greatest love of all. To make this new relationship real someone had
to lay down their life. If God had come into the world and demanded new lives
from God’s chosen people, it would have been God demonstrating that the lives
that needed laying down were the lives of God’s subjects. Power would simply be demanding obedience,
but that is not what happened. Power demanding obedience was the old
relationship. The new relationship would be based on deep and amazing love.
Instead of the subject laying down the subject’s life, God would be the one to
lay a life down; demonstrating that we knew God, but now we would know God
differently, we loved God, but now we would love God differently. What was
would be no more; the new life of God, the new relationship would reshape
everything.
Does it make
sense that the resurrected Jesus would gather the eleven disciples and charge
them with a commission that would force them to compel the world that God loves
to lay down their lives and conform to the “right way” of thinking about God? I
think not.
Instead,
Jesus gathered his friends and said, welcome to Gethsemane. You can tell by the
reaction of the disciples (some fell down in worship, others held back, unsure
of their ability to commit) that the threat of death was real. They had just
seen it done. They knew that death is never the final word. They were promised
that God’s very presence would be with them always – until the end of the age.
This is in fact the agony of discipleship. To love others the way that Jesus
loved us would require us disciples to lay down our lives. At the same time,
agony is not the only take away from the carrying out of this commission. Jesus
promised Joy, and Joy complete.
To
illustrate the point, we should look at examples of sacrificial love. When a
couple decides that they will declare their love for each other, it is more
than words. To say I love you to another adult means that life is no longer
about me. Each situation I encounter will now be experienced as something
happening to us. My life is laid down and our life begins. When we have the
opportunity to welcome children into our lives, is it not a life changing
experience? Whether we knew it or not
going in, loving this child would require us to lay down our lives. The life to
come would be something we could never imagine on our own. “Unless a seed falls
to the ground and dies, nothing will grow.(John 12:24)” There is a world around
us that suffers profoundly. It is a world that would that needs a new
relationship with God. Who will God send?
Richard Rohr
describes this act of loving in his book, “The Immortal Diamond”. He says “to
love is to die.” This means that we often “live” in a state of
self-preservation as if our present state of security is all the happiness we
will ever need or have. We want to maintain our view of the world, our image of
God, and our understanding of life. We want to rely on, this income, this group
of friends, this daily/weekly/monthly ritual, and this pattern of life. In so
doing, we hope to guarantee that our “life” does not deteriorate. This says Rohr is the “false self.” The “true
self” is understood on a deeper level of consciousness – the level that
acknowledges our connectedness. To love we need to re-imagine life in complete
connection to the other. To love is to die.
When we seek
to meet the world around us with love; when we boldly accept the Great
Commission, we become worshipers of God. Not people who simply celebrate the
great accomplishments of God in times gone by; but instead people that commit
to a life of compassion – Loving the other the way Christ first loved us. We
hear the words, “welcome to Gethsemane” and we struggle with our faith. At times we are able to worship and respond
with a committed, “send me.” Our lives are laid down and we are filled to
overflowing with Joy – the complete joy that comes from being a friend of God
and not just a servant.
We are
commissioned to live; but first, we must die.
Enjoy God,
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