From the Daily Lectionary for Thursday in the Sixth Week of Easter (Feast of the Ascension)
Matthew 28:16-20
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’
This is the conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel. After the ordeal in Jerusalem, the disciples have returned to Galilee, as Jesus instructed them, the place where their ministries all began. Presumably, this is the same mountain upon which the Transfiguration occurred earlier in the narrative. Gods have a habit of showing up on mountaintops. This is the last resurrection appearance in Matthew’s Gospel, and the narrator says that even some of the disciples ‘doubted.’ Doubt is a part of faith. There’s no avoiding it, if we are honest. Paul Tillich argues that doubt is an essential dynamic of faith; that doubt leads to discovery; that perhaps acting ‘as if’ the vision of Jesus is true, doubts notwithstanding, leads to a more seasoned and stalwart belief and commitment. Indeed it is a deeply held theological premise of this writer that practice shapes believing.
Jesus exhorts his doubting disciples to go and make more disciples; to go and find allies to sustain the movement. Go and find reinforcements, others who seek after the truth, for the practice of compassion and empathy; for acts of kindness and healing; allies who are committed to the cause of justice… and then, they too, will know the risen Jesus, who Matthew tells us will remain with us until “the end of the age.”
Again, Matthew is speaking of authority… authority engendered through enlightened action. Throughout this Gospel the Jewish elite question Jesus’ legitimacy, his authority; and throughout the narrative Jesus bids them to note what they see in the movement, note their practice: “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead are raised.” In other words, to act for the truth, that is to say, loving one’s neighbor as raison d’etre, is to know the truth, and to sow the seeds of truth in the world. The linguistic root for ‘authority’ also gives us the words authentic and author. In the early Greek the word also means creator. Again, there is tension in Matthew’s narrative between worldly authority and God’s authority, authority at the source of our being. But for this writer the difference is clear: Jesus’ authority is not coercive. It does not insist on its own way. It is not violent. It is always poised to act for the good of the other. For Matthew this way of life is, in short, the truth; the truth that will set free the captives of our world; the truth that will restore and transform the brokenness that besets us. It is the authority of Love which is the creative force in the universe. And know this once again: Truth is not dogma, a premise, an absolute. It is not cast in stone. It is like life itself, ever on the move, evolving, self-giving; embracing the whole of life’s complexities. We just have to keep acting intelligently and imaginatively for it.
So we, good people, live for the truth under the auspicious rubric of Love. There is no other authority greater. If it is not Love, it is not of God. How could we choose to serve another?
A Prayer for the Feast of the Ascension (from Prayers for an Inclusive Church)
God unheld by word or wall; power of Love beyond all lords of war: lift us from dullness and cynical contempt; make us ready for your Spirit of transforming fire; and turn our hearts to the mending of the world; through Jesus Christ, the name above all names. Amen.
