Jesus' Kind of Welcome--June 9, 2026

Jesus' Kind of Welcome--June 9, 2026

"And as [Jesus] sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, 'Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?' But when he heard this, he said, 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.'"(Matthew 9:10-13)

So... when Jesus answers back to the Respectable Religious People who have criticized him for sharing a table with THOSE PEOPLE (the so-called "sinners"), is it good news... or bad news?

Well, I suppose at first blush it depends on who you are in the story. 

If you're one of the publicly pious Pharisees, who have in this scene declared themselves to be the guardians of morality and decency, Jesus' response is a withering insult. If you're there among the finger-wagging spiritual scolds, upset that Jesus has accepted a whole dinner party full of "unacceptables," this sounds like terrible news. If you were among those holding little protest signs with arms crossed outside the party of the outcasts among whom Jesus is celebrating, it is a shot across the bow to hear him quote back from the prophets, "Go learn what this means--'I desire mercy, not sacrifice'." 

But if you're one of the ones who's been told over and over that you are unworthy and unlovable, Jesus' words bring you back to life.

This is the thing we're going to have to face if we are really going to take direction in our lives from Jesus--whatever we think "the truth" really is, it is never our possession to weaponize against others. In fact, Jesus reserves the right to show us just how far off the mark we've gotten when we have failed to love like he does. He reserves the right to call us out when we've gotten up on our high horses and started looking down on other people. He reserves the right to show us from the Scriptures that God's will has always been to restore the lost ones, welcome back in the outcast, love the unloved, and to give a new start to people stuck in dead-ends. And Jesus insists that he has the authority to show us when and where we've gotten it wrong and missed the heart of God.

I think for me that's the most frightening thing about this passage which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday: the Respectable Religious people think that they're doing God's will by chastising Jesus for associating with the "sinners." (This is a reminder of the wisdom of Blaise Pascal's insight that "People never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.") They think they're "defending God's honor," or "speaking up for God's word," or "fighting for the truth," when Jesus shows them that they've missed the point. They think that Jesus, who claims to represent God, will taint God's good reputation by sitting at a table with the tax collectors and collective "sinners." They know, of course, that table fellowship communicates a great deal--especially in their culture. They know that sharing a meal with someone is a statement of acceptance, of welcome, and to some degree, of love--and so they understand that when Jesus shares a table at the dinner party in this scene, he is making a provocative claim: that these people others view as reducible to being "sinners" rather than human beings are accepted already. Not just "acceptable" in the hypothetical sense that someone might, possibly, theoretically accept them, but that they are already accepted by God.

You'll note that when the Respectable Religious people question Jesus (or rather, his disciples, because they are too afraid to actually confront him directly), Jesus doesn't respond by throwing the party guests under the bus. He doesn't say, "Oh, don't you worry, my fellow Guardians of Holiness--I don't actually accept these people as they are; I'm here to warn them of fire and judgment if they don't shape up! So don't get the wrong idea here--I certainly don't accept these people as they are." Jesus had that as an out if that were his perspective--that would have gotten the Pharisees off his back in this scene. But instead, Jesus doubles down on his choice to share table and break bread with the whole list of party guests. And he quotes a line from the prophet Hosea at them just to make it clear that Jesus' focus on mercy--on love for those others have deemed unlovable--is in fact God's own priority as well. When the Respectable Religious folks get all bent out of shape about how wide a welcome Jesus' table offers, Jesus has to speak a truth that is difficult for them to hear, but which comes from a place of love. And that love is both for the ones who have been ostracized and other-ized by the Publicly Pious People, and it is for the Pharisees, too--if they would listen to what Jesus says, they would be opened up to a wider and deeper love than they dared imagine. Jesus' response to this group of Pharisees here is a hard pill for them to swallow, but it is a truth that is meant to allow both the "not-good-enough" crowd and the "holier-than-thou" crowd to discover that they are all beloved.

It can be so hard for us to face stories like this because we never want to admit that WE could be wrong today, or that WE could be guilty of excluding people whom Jesus has included. It's scary to face the truth that the Respectable Religious People in Jesus' day were convinced they were on "God's side," only to have Jesus show them that whether they admitted it or not, the Reign of God was setting up shop at the parties where the outcasts gathered. And reading a story like this today forces us to ask, "Where have I been keeping people out whom Jesus has already welcomed in with open arms?"

The hard part is that this isn't just a once-and-for-all question to ask, but that we are called to keep asking, to keep looking for what tables Jesus has pulled up a seat at, to keep letting ourselves be open to how Jesus will stretch our understandings to be big enough to get at least a glimpse of God's Reign among us.

So, is it good news or bad news to hear Jesus say that the tax collectors are sinners are embraced in his mercy? Well, for the ones who had been told they didn't belong, it's unquestionably good news right off the bat. And for the Respectable Religious Crowd, it might have stung as bad news at first and turned their old thinking upside down, but it really is good news even for them. To discover that God's welcome is not based on anybody's impression of our "worthiness" but simply and wholly grounded in God's grace changes us. It frees us. And it makes us come alive. The question for us is whether we will let Jesus surprise us with joy, or make us scowl in judgment.

What will we do with the Good News of wide welcome that Jesus speaks right now?

Lord Jesus, enable us to rejoice at your welcome of the ones we thought unworthy, and allow us to be transformed with the breadth of your love.

Without Conditions--June 8, 2026

Without Conditions--June 8, 2026

"As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. (Matthew 9:9)"

Did you notice the lack of fine print here?

Did you catch that there are no conditions here?

Did you see that Jesus makes no mention of prerequisite steps Matthew must take in order to be eligible to belong to the community of Jesus' followers?

None of those things show up in this verse, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday.  And their absence is important, because it means Jesus doesn't invite people merely to apply or audition in order to see if they make the cut to belong.  He just outright calls to us: "Come.  Follow me."

Implicit, then, in that short summons is Jesus' choice to receive us as we are.  And maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal when we are talking about the call stories of the decently respectable fishermen like Peter, Andrew, James, and John.  To hear Jesus call them and say, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people!" sounds pretty tame, actually.  There's nothing scandalous about being a fisherman, and nothing that would cause a stir of gossip among the neighbors to see Jesus going around with a bunch of fishermen as his followers.  But a tax collector is a different story.  In Jesus' time and place, tax collectors are almost universally despised, both for suspicion of being extortionists and cheaters, squeezing people for their own personal gain with the help of some intimidating imperial muscle, and for selling out their own people and passing along the collected tax money to the very empire that was occupying their land, harassing their people, and brutalizing their neighbors. Everybody's got a reason to view tax collectors with disgust--and maybe a fair amount of it was deserved.

That's the thing about Jesus' invitation to Matthew the tax collector here: it is in exactly the same unconditionally brief form it was spoken to Peter and the rest of his fishing crew.  Jesus simply says, "Follow me."  There is no catch. There is no implication that this is only a trial period to see if Matthew really proves to be "good enough." There is no indication that Jesus is going to give ol' Matty a six-month window to make some personal changes in his lifestyle, stop associating with the "wrong crowd," and get a more respectable job before Jesus is willing to be seen in public with him.  No, none of that.  There is only the unashamed call, "Follow me," which both implies that there is no question of worthiness or acceptability from Jesus' perspective, and that Jesus wants Matthew the--gasp!--tax collector to be a part of his found-family of disciples right away.

And this is the take-home for all of us as well: Jesus does not tell the people deemed outcasts, "You would be acceptable to me if only you would make these five changes in your life first." He simply calls them--and us--as we are. It is his calling to us that makes us acceptable and indeed, already accepted.  We are the ones who keep imposing conditions, restrictions, and our own religious litmus tests on who we think is "worthy" to belong, but Jesus brings no such fine print.  He doesn't for Matthew, whom all the Respectable Religious People would have deemed unacceptable, and he doesn't for us.

When we finally get it that Jesus isn't holding tryouts, for which we have to make ourselves look "good enough" in order to make the cut, but rather calling us as we are to belong in his community right now, things change for us.  Maybe we stop seeing the need to make ourselves into gatekeepers for grace.  Maybe we start to see our own selves as worthy and beloved rather than inadequate and unacceptable.  Maybe we can finally quit putting up hurdles that keep other folks out from following Jesus, but instead help clear the way for everyone he calls.  And maybe we will be less concerned about being seen with "those kinds of people" in our churches and instead just grateful that Jesus has called us all into belonging.

And maybe, at long last, we'll be done looking around for fine print that isn't there.

Come, dear one, just as you are.  Jesus calls you--in all of your you-ness--to belong.

Lord Jesus, let us hear your call to each and to all, and to rejoice in your wide welcome.

Love Is Our Superpower--June 5, 2026

 

Love Is Our Superpower--June 5, 2026

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you." (2 Corinthians 13:13)

It is quite possible that these words are so familiar to our ears that we might miss just what is being said.  Not only did many of us hear these words this past Sunday as part of our second reading, but they are also used every week in worship in what is now called "the apostolic greeting." So for a great many Christians all over the world, every week they are welcomed with these same words: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all."  (And a great many of us, too, have learned a response that now comes like second nature to us: "And also with you.")

But if we are willing to hear these words again with fresh ears, we might notice something very particular is being spoken into our lives.  But to get that fresh perspective, we might need to take a detour into the realm of classic comic book characters.  Will you indulge a preacher and follow me for a bit?

So, there was a classic superhero from DC Comics who originally went by the name "Captain Marvel" until there came to be a dispute with a Marvel character by the same name, and who has been rebranded "Shazam." This hero is a boy named Billy Batson, who is granted powers from a wizard (because, of course), so that whenever he says the secret word "Shazam!" he is transformed into a superpowered adult with special attributes.  And in the comics, the attributes go like this: "the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury."  And in case you didn't catch it, the initials of each of those mythic figures (Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury) spells out "SHAZAM."  How's that for an origin story?

Anyway, what I want to zoom in on here is the particular kinds of traits that the superhero Shazam has, and where those powers are supposed to come from, and how they compare to the kinds of traits that the apostle Paul invokes over us.  In comic book logic, you get specific powers from a god or a mythic figure who has that power--like Mercury is known for being fast, or Atlas was known for having the strength to carry the world on his shoulders, and so on.  And apparently, the folks at DC Comics think that the particular powers that are worth having are about physical prowess, smarts, and strength.  This is the sort of list of abilities you would have in mind if you see most problems in the world as things you can solve by punching, kicking, or zapping people.  In the minds of the comic book writers, the most impressive abilities that can be bestowed on a person are things like muscle-power and might, and so the particular gods and heroes associated with those kinds of abilities are called upon to lend their attributes.

But the Christian community is blessedly weirder.  As the apostle Paul closes out this letter to the church in Corinth, he also invokes the attributes of the divine--but he doesn't think in terms of brute force or bench-pressing ability.  Paul doesn't believe in Zeus, Mercury, or Atlas, but he does believe that the living God is the source of all power, goodness, and virtue.  And yet, we don't hear Paul saying, "Now may the power of Jesus, the wrath of God, and the fury of the Holy Spirit be with you." He doesn't invoke the "ability to send plagues like God sent on Pharaoh in Egypt" or "the power to smite people with lightning bolts" or even "the command of the heavenly angel armies." Paul doesn't seem interested in getting might, muscle, or firepower from God.  Rather, the gifts he thinks are worth asking for are grace... and love... and communion.  That might not sound like it would make for a riveting superhero adventure, but it is what we most deeply need.

In Paul's mind, Christians don't go around praying for "the strength of Samson," the "armies of David," or even the "riches of King Solomon" because what we really most deeply need isn't money, ammunition, or muscle-power.  What we need is, well, "the grace of the Lord Jesus," as well as "the love of God" and the fellowship or "communion" which comes from the Holy Spirit.  Love, you might say, is our superpower. Love, in all of its richness with the extravagant unconditionality of grace and the mutual care of communion, is what we most deeply need from God, and that love is what carries us through this life.  It is given to us, not by reciting a secret word or a magical incantation, and not by our impressive shows of piety, but as a gift of grace itself which we did not earn.  

But since we have indeed been given these divine attributes--the grace of Jesus, the love of God, and the communion of the Spirit--we will indeed make a difference in the world every bit as dramatic as the adventures of a superhero, and without resorting to CGI effects for explosions.  We make an impact, not by punching supervillains, but by embodying that love which was first given to us. We will leave our mark on history, not by zapping or intimidating people, but by the ways we reflect the character of Jesus.  We will change the world, not through brute force, but by sharing grace.  And these gifts have already been given to us.

All this time, we have been hearing these words week by week and perhaps missing the real power of what was being spoken into our lives.  We don't need to play around with seeking the "strength of Hercules" or the "courage of Achilles," because we have been given already the very character of the living God: grace, love, and communion.  These are the things with which we have been equipped to be witnesses in the world, because they are the very beating heart of God.  

Love, indeed, is our superpower.

O God of all good gifts, give to us what you see that we need, even if that doesn't look like what the world associates with power.  Give us your kind of love, now and always.

The Importance of the Plural--June 4, 2026

 

The Importance of the Plural--June 4, 2026

[Jesus said:] "And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:20)

So... in the end... where is Jesus?

Well, in his own words, the risen Jesus says, "with you." And of course, he adds the vitally important adverb, "always." That is to say, he doesn't just pop in for a minute, make his appearance for the photo op, and then beam up to heaven. But presumably, with Jesus at least, always is always. And that means Jesus has made the promise to all of these disciples to be with them all... always.

Now, before we even get to the billion or so followers of Jesus who span the globe today, let's just start with those eleven up on the mountain. Where is Jesus promising to be? Who is he riding along with? Which one of them is Jesus going to be with first as they head down the mountain... and then where does he go after that?

I bet you can see where this is going: the disciples are headed in different directions from here, right? I mean, sure we know the Pentecost story from Acts that they all hung around in Jerusalem for a while until the Spirit was given to them (although, interestingly, Matthew doesn't tell us that story). But basically, it wasn't going to be long before each of those disciples was headed exactly where Jesus had sent them: "to all nations." Some stayed in Judea, and others went out to Samaria, or further across other boundaries. Tradition says that Thomas eventually headed east to India, and eventually, other traditions put Simon Peter in the heart of the Empire in Rome itself. In other words, even when it was just a relatively small group of eleven, Jesus had just promised to be present in places on opposite sides of the map... at the same time... always.

And yes, that really is the promise Jesus intends to make. It is one of the upshots of the resurrection that Jesus is no longer bound to being in one place at one time. Me, I've got to decide how to divide my time like you do. I can be in Place A or in Place B at once, but not both at the same time. I can give my attention to Situation X or Y, but if I try to give myself to both at the same time, I'll be giving everybody short shrift. I can only be in one place at on time, and I can only spend my time one way, but Jesus can be present here and there, all at the same time. He really means it. He really can be with us, even going to "all nations," at the same time. Always, in fact.  When he says, "I am with you always," the you in question is plural.  It is to "all of you," or as they say in the South, "all y'all."

That is both a source of encouragement, and also a challenge we are going to have to wrestle with. On the one hand, I hope the encouragement is clear. We aren't in this alone. We never have been, and we never will be. We are sent out into whatever corner of the world we are in with the living and risen Christ at all times. And that means, further, that there is no spot in creation that is so disreputable, so messy, so dirty, so broken, or so unexpected that Jesus isn't already there with us. You can't go anywhere that Jesus will be afraid to enter. And that also means we don't get to have the excuse, "But Jesus wouldn't want me to talk to those people..." or "But Jesus doesn't want to be associated with the likes of them..." Jesus, it turns out, made a habit of hanging out with all sorts of people the Respectable Religious Crowd didn't like, and that never stopped him before.

So, we're not in this alone, and we never will be. Whatever is on your agenda today, you go with the living Jesus who makes "always" kind of promises, and who can back up those promises with the actual ability to be with you where you are, with me where I am, and with countless other people in countless other places. That is good news everyday of the week.

But here's the additional challenge we can't escape. If Jesus is with each of those followers, both the eleven from Matthew 28 and the billion or so today, then none of us gets to turn Jesus into our private possession or corporate mascot. I don't get to say that Jesus is only with me, or only with my town, or my county, or my state or country. He's not. He's with all of us... always. He said so. Jesus deliberately made a point of saying he's not just "mine" or "ours" here where I am, however I draw the lines. Jesus insists that he is with Simon Peter in Rome while he's with James in Jerusalem and with the eunuch down in Ethiopia and with Paul in Athens... and he's with you as well as disciples half a world away. He is with "us all"--it's just we don't often consider just how wide the scope of "us" really is.  But the "you" is always plural.

If we take that seriously, that will mean we don't get to assume that Jesus is cheering for my land or my territory or my little world just because it is mine--Jesus is with me, but he isn't only with me. And I don't get to assume that Jesus is only rooting for my immediate interests--even if I pray hard, even if I wish upon a star, even if I really, really want something. Jesus doesn't just root for my home team--it turns out there are people on the other team who are asking for his help, too. Jesus doesn't only want my town to get the new factory, either--it's not that Jesus rewards the towns that pray the hardest with the new job openings, or that Jesus only cares about the place where I live. From the beginning, Jesus has insisted that he is with me, sure, and yet also that he is with all of his people, scattered all over God's green earth, into, as Jesus himself puts it, "all nations."

And that means then end of trying to baptize the tired old "Me and My Group First!" thinking we often try to wrap up with Jesus. It is awfully tempting to say, "My side/my group/my team/my country should be put first, because we have Jesus on our side!" as though Jesus had not also promised to be with those on other sides/groups/teams/countries, too. It is diabolically easy to try and prop up "My Group First!" by assuming Jesus is our exclusive possession--as though the risen Jesus is here with me, but NOT with you over there.

That's just the thing: we keep drawing new dividing lines and assuming Jesus is exclusively within "my" side of them. (And of course, we assume Jesus would never step a toe over the line, right?) You hear it as "My country first..." because we assume, I guess, that Jesus isn't as fully "with" people from some other nation. Or when that seems too wide, we make it my state first, my county first, my town first, my skin color first, my immediate family first, and on and on, unless it's just me on an iceberg alone, convinced that Jesus is mine and mine alone.

But that was never the promise. When Jesus promises, "I will be with you always," it is spoken not just to me, or just to the folks around me, or just to the people who look like me, or just the people in the same tax bracket or demographic group. Jesus is with me, while at the same time, Jesus insists on being with "us all" even in to "all nations." That was always the promise, and that was always how Jesus envisioned it.

So today, go into the world, wherever Jesus has placed you, knowing that his promise still holds and Christ himself is indeed still with you. But at the same time, we go knowing that Jesus is not any of our exclusive possession, and that he insists on being with us all at the same time... always. For Jesus and the people who follow him, there is no more "Me and My Group First"--there is only the promise spoken in the plural, "I will be with you--all of you--always, to the ends of the earth."

Lord Jesus, be with us, and let us see today just how wide that "us" really is.

Straight from the Top--June 3, 2026

Straight from the Top--June 3, 2026

[Jesus said to the disciples on the mountain:] "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." (Matthew 28:19-20a)

The instructions come all the way from the top.

Jesus himself is the one who directs his followers to cross boundaries and invite everyone to share in the Jesus Way of Life. That's important to remember. The disciples didn't make this call on their own.  It wasn't ever that Jesus set a policy of strict restrictions not to allow "outsiders" or "THOSE people" into his little group, but then Simon Peter and Andrew decided to overrule him after he ascended into heaven.  It has always been Jesus--and then the Holy Spirit following Jesus' ascension--who was leading the charge to welcome outsiders, foreigners, strangers, and the ones labeled "those people" to join in the community of disciples.  We are the ones who are constantly dragging our feet and needing to be pulled along in the movement God was leading.

And to be clear, it really would have been a scandalous thing to hear Jesus say "all nations" here in this passage that many of us heard this past Sunday.  Because "the nations" is another way of saying "the Gentiles."  In the worldview of first-century Judaism, there are really only two kinds of people in the world: "us" and "them."  There are the in-group members of the people descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob... and then everybody else is "the Gentiles." In fact, just about everyone in the New Testament you see the phrase "the Gentiles," the literal words in the Greek are "the nations." It's anybody else in the whole world--they're all outsiders.  And, of course, it was terribly easy to envision those Gentile outsiders all as wicked, decadent, sinful and abominable people.  As long as you don't have to picture the actual faces of real people, you can imagine them as cartoon caricatures of the worst possible stereotypes.  And being Gentile was also, of course, something you just are. It's not a sin you can repent of like robbing a bank or coveting your neighbor's donkey.  It's who you are.  So it was just very easy for "insiders" to look down on "outsiders" as hopeless doomed and outside the realm of God's acceptance.  They were bad people who couldn't stop being bad, because it was in their very make-up--so went the conventional wisdom of the day. That's why it's such a huge thing for Jesus to now so clearly and explicitly overturn the old conventional wisdom and say, "The very ones you thought were unacceptable are the very ones I am sending you to. Go welcome them into this new life in my love and my way."

Jesus very clearly tells his circle of first disciples--all of whom had the ancestry and lineage of belonging in that group of "insiders"--that he was the one directing them to cross the biggest boundary they could imagine, the one that separated "insiders" and "outsiders."  The community of Jesus' followers was not going to be homogenous, made up of identical people who all ate, dressed, spoke, and thought alike.  From the beginning--and by Jesus' explicit direction--this was going to be a new kind of community.  This was going to be a found family of people who did not share the same DNA, but instead shared a common life of discipleship learning the way of Jesus.

This is really important, because sometimes Respectable Religious folks forget that Jesus is really the one who put us on this trajectory.  Sometimes church folk will say, "You can't really accept THOSE PEOPLE into your church, can you?" each with their own personal list of who they have deemed unworthy, unacceptable, and abominable. And then sometimes you'll hear folks say, "This idea of welcoming everybody is just some pushy modern impulse!" But of course, the moment we read Jesus' actual final instructions to the disciples here in Matthew 28, it becomes clear that the directions come all the way from the top.  It is Jesus, the one to whom all authority in heaven and on earth have been given, who dares his followers to push past old boundaries, cross old border lines, and invite everybody they meet to share in this new life in Christ.  In other words, if we have a problem with the notion that EVERYBODY really is welcome in the found family of Jesus (yes, even "those people" we had been told were unworthy and unacceptable), then our problem is really with Jesus himself, who has been sending us to "all nations" scandalously for the past two thousand years. It's not us in the modern day who are pushing the envelope; it is Jesus. Jesus is the one being radical; we are the ones who will have to get accustomed to his bold vision and wide welcome.  

I wonder how that might change the way we live out our faith today.  I wonder who we have been looking down our noses at, closing our hearts and doors to, or writing off as unacceptable, whom Jesus would send us directly out to.  I wonder where we have gotten things all backward and thought we were defending the cause of righteousness in the name of "keeping the riff-raff out" because we thought that's what God wanted, when it turns out Jesus has told us very clearly, "These are the folks I want you to reach."  Who might you be sent to today? Whom might we be led to welcome, to invite, to love?

Because the instructions don't come from me, from some present-day bishop, or from some religious-trend-analyzer.  They come straight from the top: from Jesus.

Lord Jesus, enable us to follow your directions and reach out to everyone we meet, across whatever boundaries we have imposed in between us, so that all will know your love.

We Are the Evidence--June 2, 2026

We Are the Evidence--June 2, 2026

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...." (Matthew 28:18-20a)

This is one of those times where what Jesus doesn't say carries as much weight as what he does say. These words, often called the Great Commission, begin with a pretty hefty claim on Jesus' part: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me."  That's not the sort of thing one jokes about or brags about--unless one really can back it up. Here the risen Jesus effectively tells his circle of disciples that his resurrection from the dead is evidence that he is Lord over all things, even over the now-broken power of the grave, and with it, everything else in all creation.  But that, of course, is just the beginning of the sentence.

What is surprising to me (or maybe, knowing Jesus' character, not really all that surprising after all--just different from the world's way of doing things) is the way Jesus completes this thought.  The rest of Jesus' declaration is: go make disciples of everybody else you can find, wherever they're from, and whatever their background.  Jesus is interested in building a community, not in burnishing his reputation or inflating his status. Or to put it differently, the proper response to recognizing Jesus really does have "all authority in heaven and on earth" is for our lives to be formed in Jesus-shaped ways.  Jesus is interested in making us into a certain kind of people, whose lives reflect what he says about how the world really works.

In other words, if we really believe that Jesus is Lord of all things, we will take him seriously when he teaches us to love our enemies, share our abundance generously, speak truthfully, avoid making a show of our piety, and welcome others lavishly. If Jesus is right when he says all authority has been given to him, then he knows what he is talking about when he says thigs like "Blessed are the peacemakers" and "Blessed are the merciful."  If Jesus truly is sovereign over all creation, then "When you did it to the least of these, you did it to me" is not just an optional suggestion, but a description of how the world really is.  The risen Jesus doesn't give any hint of changing the policies or priorities he taught and spoke about during his ministry; if anything, he doubles down on them and now tells the disciples to teach everybody--insiders and Judeans like them, and outsiders and Gentiles as well!--to practice this same way of life.  The authority of Jesus will be visible, Jesus says, in the way people live their lives as they become his disciples. (Or, as John's Gospel says it similarly, "By this will all people know you are my disciples: if you have love for one another.")

But like I say, it is also striking what Jesus does not say here.  Jesus' claim to have "all authority in heaven and on earth" doesn't conclude with, "So therefore build statues of me to impress the nations." The Lord of all creation does not say, "Therefore erect monuments in my honor with my name engraved in big, impressive letters." The Risen One, unlike Caesar, doesn't even want his face stamped on a coin. All of those kinds of gestures were the Empire's standard tactics for claiming to have "authority," along with occupying armies, bread-and-circus distractions, and gladiator battles in the Emperor's honor.  Jesus will have none of those things; instead, he is interested in seeing people taught and shaped to live in his particular way of love, justice, and compassion.  Emperors like Caesar always want to project their own sense of self-importance with monuments, statues, and hoopla to cover up their own raging insecurity and nagging awareness that they will one day be consigned to the dustbin of history. Jesus, however, would have us recognize his authority by practicing his kind of enemy-embracing, outcast-welcoming, abundance-sharing love. We are the evidence that Jesus is Lord, not a building, sculpture, parade, or propaganda.

It is worth admitting, of course, that over the course of the past twenty centuries, we who name the name of Jesus have not always done a great job of following Jesus' instructions here.  There have certainly been eras in which "being a Christian" was reduced to "reciting a creed and then going on your merry way unchanged." There have certainly been times when we built monuments and statues of Jesus carved out of marble and covered in gold leaf rather than building our lives on Jesus' teachings or shaping our choices on his priorities.  We have not done a fantastic job, by any stretch of the imagination, of "making disciples of all nations" so much as we have more frequently just "added church members to official rosters" or built humungous edifices. We easily slip into the Empire's same old list of "looking impressive" rather than what Jesus has specifically directed us to do.

But still his words remain, and they still call us to take him seriously.  For us who dare to believe Jesus' claim that "all authority in heaven and on earth" have been given to him, then we are indeed called to both live the Jesus-shaped way of life and to apprentice others to share in it.  It is a joyful life--with loaves and fish abounding, towel and basin passed around as we wash one another's feet, outcasts and "sinners" treated as honored guests and friends, and the lowly lifted up.  There is every reason for us to spend our whole lives letting Jesus train our hands, feet, and hearts to live in his way.  But ultimately, Jesus is entirely uninterested in the world's trappings of authority--power, monuments, wealth, pomp and circumstance--and wholly invested in making disciples out of us... and making more disciples through us.

You might well know the old line of Gandhi's; when he was asked what he thought of Christianity, he responded: "I like your Christ; I do not care for your Christians--your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Jesus is much more interested in making us to reflect his character and to shine his light than in the standard displays of power and might that the world obsesses over.  What if today we let Jesus' shape us in his likeness, and to see if that isn't a better way of pointing to his authority?  What if we let our practice of Christ-like love be the most compelling evidence that he really is Lord?

Lord Jesus, let our lives reveal to the world that you hold all authority. Let us love in ways that embody your love.

At the Very Same Time--June 1, 2026

 

At the Very Same Time--June 1, 2026

"Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted." (Matthew 28:16-17)

We don't get to divide the world into two separate piles of "wholly devout, unwavering believers" on the one hand and "impious, incredulous doubters" on the other.  At least not if we take the Gospel seriously.  We are always simultaneously both: the faithful and the fickle, the devout and the doubtful, the trusting and the skeptic.  And that means our belonging in the family of Jesus isn't a reward for being staunch believers with unquestionable and unquestioning faith.  Our belonging comes because Jesus has claimed us, knowing full well that even in our best moments our sincere worship is laced with honest doubt, too.

That's a detail we sometimes overlook here in these final verses of Matthew's Gospel, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship.  Often we are quick to skip ahead to the so-called "Great Commission," when Jesus charges his disciples to go and "make disciples of all nations," which sends us galavanting off to share our faith with others, tell people the Good News and to "bring a friend" to church with us (if we dare to do any of those things).  But before we get to that high-minded mission, let's spend a moment with the introduction Matthew gives us to this final scene of his movie.

When Jesus had appeared at the empty tomb at the beginning of Matthew 28, back on what we call Easter Sunday, the risen Christ told the women at the tomb to pass along the message to the disciples to meet him in Galilee, and now here they are assembled at the particular spot Jesus had told them about.  They see him--and in Matthew's telling, this is the first time they have seen him alive and risen from the dead--and their response is two-fold: "they worshiped him, but they doubted."  Both, presumably at the same time.  And perhaps that is completely understandable, because this moment must have been simply overwhelming.  The last these disciples had seen Jesus was either the night of his arrest in the garden before they abandoned him, or from the cross as he died--and now he was alive!  It seemed quite literally too good to be true.  They were overjoyed and dumbfounded at the same time. They were beginning to realize that if indeed Jesus was risen from the dead, he wasn't simply a good man, a wise rabbi, or a new prophet.  Maybe he wasn't even merely a human messiah coming to set up a kingdom. It was beginning to dawn on them that this Jesus really had been "God-with-us" all along, and the thought blew their minds.  It was an impossibility that was happening right before their eyes--either Jesus really was the presence of God in their midst, and therefore worthy of their utter worship, or it was all an illusion.  So they do two things at the same time: they worship, and they doubt.  They believe, and they question. I suspect you and I would do the same thing as well in their sandals.

And honestly, I think that's part of the point of why Matthew tells his story this way.  He's not trying to get us to sort each other into piles of "good Christians" who only believe and "bad Christians" or impostors who only doubt.  I think he's reminding us, as he's shown us throughout his gospel's account, that we are always both believers and doubters--"ye of little faith," as Jesus so often calls his disciples in Matthew's storytelling.  This is an important part of getting the translation correct in these verses for today, because other English translations (including the one I grew up with in church, and maybe you did, too) tried to segregate doubt and worship into different categories of people.  I grew up hearing these verses saying, "they worshipped him, but SOME doubted," as if there was a subset of doubters.  But the Greek of Matthew's Gospel doesn't say that.  There's no word "some" in there, and the verb "doubted" presumably takes the same subject as the verb "worshipped."  In other words, the clearest reading of this passage in Matthew's original Greek is saying that the same ones who are worshipping Jesus are the same ones who are also doubting, in that very same moment.  

Thta's important to be clear about, because that's us. We are always wobbly-faithed, struggling to believe, hesitant to trust, wrestling with the impossibly good news right before our eyes, doubtful-believers.  We are Peter, simultaneously calling out to Jesus, "If it is you, Lord, call me out onto the waves to walk on the water to you," and starting to sink the moment we see that we are doing it.  We are the disciples all swearing up and down that we will never abandon Jesus and then bailing out on him when the authorities come to arrest him in the Garden.  We are the ones confessing that Jesus is the Messiah and the very Son of God, only to rebuke him for insisting that his way of being those things is to lay down his life on a cross rather than conquering the world in triumph. We are always struggling to believe Jesus' good news that he is welcoming sinners, outcasts, and mess-ups into the Kingdom of God and then doubting it could be true as we scowl and shoo away the folks we think are "too bad" for God to love.  This is us: the faithful followers and double-talking doubters, all at once.

It is always a temptation in church life to want to weed out the folks we don't think should make the cut: the ones who can't articulate their faith with the precision we might wish for, the ones who don't show up on Sundays as often as we would like, the ones whose families, style of parenting, or politics don't match our own, or the ones who, we tell ourselves, "just don't fit in." It is always alluring to want to draw a line between the good and dedicated True Believers (and we always put ourselves in that category, don't we?) and the unworthy, uncommitted Reprobates, Sinners, and Doubters.  We do that because that lets us believe that we've earned our spot in God's good graces because of our excellence in believing, the strength of our faith, and the high quality of our devotion, rather than admitting it's not something we've achieved.  We want to tell ourselves we deserve our spot in heaven, because we believed the right things, and we believed the fervently enough, rather than hearing the real Good News that God's trustworthy grip on us is what holds us, rather than the strength of our grip on God.  But that's how it really works for the followers of Jesus: our grip on him is always rather precarious.  

Ultimately, though, we don't put our trust in the strength of our belief in Jesus; we put our trust in Jesus himself.  And Jesus himself is the one who holds us, who won't let us go, and who still holds onto us at our points of deepest devotion and committed worship as well as our points of greatest doubt and deepest disillusionment.  Even when those are all happening at the very same time.

Lord Jesus, hold onto us today--all of us--in this mix of doubt and faith, struggle and worship, where we find ourselves today. Assure us that no matter what, you will not let us go.