In the beginning, there was God.
And God was creative.
That's how our story starts. It’s
the first thing we learn about God. At least, if we start learning about God by
reading the Bible.
But if you don’t start with the
Bible, the very beginning of the Bible, as we did this morning, (and many of us
don’t start there) you probably learn something else about God first.
In most cases, the first thing we
learn about God is relationship. That's because, much of the time, God initiates
a relationship with us before we even read the Bible.
It happened in the story we just
heard, where God defines humanity “in the image of God,” in relationship with
God, before humanity even exists.
It happens generation after
generation: when our infants grow into relationship with God from long before
they have words because of God’s relationship to them, and their families’ relationship to God.
It happens when God initiates a
relationship with us later in life, usually through the human relationships we
have. Someone tells you about God. Or God draws you in by the life of someone
you know – something about their life that would fit a deep yearning or
curiosity inside you.
Often, of course, God does all of
those things: creates us in relationships, uses our families to teach us about
God, from before we can remember, and uses the lives of others to draw us into newer,
deeper, relationship again and again.
So for many of us the first thing
– the very first thing – we know about God is relationship: God is with us, before – often long before – we are with
God.
That’s the story of creation, the
story we heard this morning.
It’s the story of the Trinity, of that odd but essential doctrine we officially
celebrate today: God as Father, Son, and Spirit is above all, God in
relationship.
Did you hear in the story of
creation, that unexpected little plural: Then
God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…’
Us. Our.
God in relationship – within
Godself – is the model and source of our own relationships.
That relationship is the story of
our lives.
The story we heard this morning
again in the story of Jesus.
At the very end of the gospel of
Matthew the risen Jesus takes the disciples up a mountain, and says to them: “All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make
disciples among the nations, among the peoples of the world, baptizing them – immersing
them – in the being of God, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, and teaching them what you know. Because you know, I am with you
always.”
I am with you always.
God is with us long before, and
long after we are with God.
And Jesus is sending out his
disciples – sending us – to take that relationship to others; to take
this relationship with God to all the peoples of the world.
There’s just one little problem
with this instruction, this commandment to “Go, and make disciples among all
peoples…”
We can’t do it.
Are you ready to go out and convert all the people of the world,
starting now? No?
There was no way the eleven
people with Jesus on the top of that hill – some with hearts full of doubt,
even in the middle of worship – no way those few people were going to make
disciples among ALL the peoples of the earth. Among dozens of city-states with distinct identities in the Roman
Empire, among tribes and tribes and nations known beyond those borders…. And
beyond the boundaries of that known world, among still more hundreds and thousands of peoples in the Americas, across
Africa, Asia, and island after island through the seas.
With eleven people? who are you
kidding, Jesus?
Jesus knew the job was too big
for them. It’s too big for those of us gathering here this morning, for all of
our congregation put together. Converting the world, bringing everyone into
relationship with Christ, is a job probably too big even for all of the
faithful disciples left in an increasingly secular Christendom.
No one group of people listening to
Jesus can do this.
But Jesus can. God can.
And because God can do it,
we can act on it.
Because, as Jesus tells us, all authority, all power, in heaven and earth is
invested in Jesus, Jesus will accomplish this.
So we are sent out as carriers of that action. We are sent out to be the visible,
tangible presence of God’s action, among all
the peoples of the earth.
Among every nation, every
culture, language, race, tribe or faction, God draws people into relationship, like
God did with you and me. And God uses people like you and me to help. God uses
the things we say, and the ways that our lives, in faith, hold what someone
else may be yearning for.
What Jesus commands you and me to
do is to go out, making ourselves available, among every kind of people, for God
to act.
What Jesus commands us to do is
to go forth and listen. Go forth and look, pay attention to how God is drawing
the people around you into relationship. Pay attention to family, friends,
colleagues, neighbors (the ones in your physical neighborhood and your internet
neighborhood and your global neighborhood). Pay attention, and see how God is
drawing people around you into relationship.
And when you see it, hold out a welcoming
hand.
Let your light – your own
relationship with God, God’s enthusiastic relationship with you – let that
light shine freely. Don’t be embarrassed by it, don’t ignore it, even when it’s
awkward. Feed that light inside you by
paying attention to how God keeps drawing you into deeper, livelier, more loving, more joyous relationship, right now, and
always.
God does so much of the work in
these relationships that sometimes it's easy to take our relationship with God
for granted. But we can't. We can't ever
neglect the relationship that God has created with you, because it is, above
all, what you were created to be. Because that light within you is God’s power
at work to create new and abundant life for others, and for you.
Every time you do something as
simple as hold out a welcoming hand to new relationship,
God’s power is at work in the
world.
Every time you open yourself to
go deeper in a relationship, difficult or joyful, you make visible the image of
God within you, and nurture that gift which is our relationship with God, the
image of God created in us.
Although this relationship is
often easy for us, Jesus’ command to us to go forth means we can’t take it for
granted. We must invest in it, rejoice in it. And when we are filled with that
gift; when we know all power in heaven and earth is invested in Jesus, in God
who is relationship above all, then we must go forth, into all our
world, to carry that gift.
Jesus’ command to us to go, to
baptize and teach, is to recognize and help
deepen relationships that God is making. We go forth
to let God position us to help, as God keeps drawing people into relationship,
among all peoples, at all times, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will
be forever. Amen.
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