I accept the label 'Christian' as long as I can experience it as a flexible category continually awaiting definition by what is needed in the circumstance. I am uneasy with the instruction in Matthew 28:19, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” It feels wrong, too settled, absolute, orthodox, dogmatic. This is one of the troubling loose threads in the Christian story. I don't imagine we will ever tie a satisfactory knot in it but let's try. If we don't, the whole thing will continue to unravel. Let me ponder it. Something may come to mind. It would help me if you listen.
Words are imperfect, misunderstood, incomplete, unfinished conveyors of meaning. We will never be sure what they meant when first uttered and how their meaning has morphed in the generations that followed. To begin with, I think it unlikely that Jesus ever said such a thing as “make disciples of all nations.” He was a Jew with a Jewish mission. That is not a criticism of Jesus. He arrived on the scene when his tribe was in need of guidance, and that is what he offered. The mission to all nations was the next chapter with other authors writing according to their own understanding, attributing their thoughts to Jesus so they would be noticed. That is not a criticism of their use of Jesus' story. Rather, it is permission for us to revise the story for our time. Paul gave Jesus to the gentiles, and Constantine gave Jesus to the empire. Unfortunately, we have continued to get the good news wrong through centuries of creedal dissent, sectarian wars and religious imperialism, and there are more than ever plenty of preachers with their eyes on the collection plate. Perhaps it is our mission to give Jesus away less by speaking and more by being what we mean to convey.
How is it wrong to make disciples of all nations, and how might we reimagine the story for our time?
“Make disciples” implies superior knowledge of the truth, teaching the ignorant, coercion, manipulation, domination, and that can't be reconciled with the Jesus whom I intuit. For me, Jesus was and is more mentor than master, more exemplar than judge, more open to truth than knowing, more brother than son of God, more friend than king of kings, more mystery than metaphor. Don't ask me to sell a creed. I would rather sell vacuum cleaners.
Let us listen to each other as we discover how the words of our traditions speak to our situation now. I need you to listen NOT because I know the truth but rather to make my thoughts explicit in words. And perhaps you need to be heard as well. What you and I don't know about your philosophy could fill a lifetime. If I can restrain my enthusiasm for my own tiny understanding, I will listen as well as speak. Meanwhile, let me be a friend.
Dennisez 28:19. ”Go and listen so that others will discover the good that dwells in them as you are doing.”
Thanks Dennis for engaging in this dialogue with me (See facebook, Guelph Community of Christ)
ReplyDeleteI somewhat prefer the current interpretation of the Matthew Great Commission in our mission initiative "invite people to Christ" but I think many of us still "hear" the old "go and make disciples" directive and react just like you describe.
I've done some thinking about that scene where Jesus says "Go..." I'd like to imagine that he's not just talking to "us" but to everyone. (It's that old us v. them thing again). If we imagine Jesus speaking to everyone when he says "Go into all the world" we can hear him saying "get up, get moving, don't just sit there." And what happens next is that everyone, everywhere is on the move, working at projects and toward goals of kingdom building, the kind of kingdom he'd been teaching them about.
When I get up and go, I meet others who are also moving from their places, working on their goals and projects, looking for allies and helpers. And as we find each other and, yes, listen to each other, we all become better disciples. We get immersed (baptized?) in doing good in the world.
This really only works if we have the proper attitude: an attitude of openness, of welcoming, of invitation and hospitality. Our values and principles move us forward but also move us to be open to the ideas and values of others as we work together. For Christians, that's Jesus. For others it may be different, but that only makes the world richer.
I also very much agree with your idea that we need to keep re-interpreting those old words. We need to keep digging into the layers of meaning and trying on the new stuff. Because we've done it before; we've found new ways of reading and interpreting and imagining and acting out those old values.
Who knows where we'll go next?
I have turned off moderation of comments to speed up the pace of discussion. There have been few comments and they have always been respectful, which I appreciate.
ReplyDeleteGood words, Marion. I appreciate your emphasis on invitation and the idea that it should be reciprocal. I want to add the idea that we are engaged in an iterative process. We can think of it as the cycle of order, disorder, reorder that is experienced as life. If we get stuck in order (conservatism) or in disorder (progressivism), either alone is a kind of death. So I begin with "make disciples" and turn it into "listen" while you turn it into "invite". Meanwhile, you look back at the old text and reorder it by making Jesus into a universal principle that speaks to everyone perhaps using different names. I can go with that. Thank you. For my part I feel an urgency to turn this wheel faster because it appears to me that a conservative reading of the old words has led us astray once again, and the pace of change is getting ahead of us. Let's keep talking and listening.
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