Lighthouse: MISSION POSSIBLE

Lighthouse: MISSION POSSIBLE Matthew 28:16-20 Why make disciples of Jesus Christ? A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. William O. (Bud) Reeves First United Methodist Church Fort Smith, Arkansas February 19, 2017

A great story always has a great ending. Think of the great novels you have read or movies you have seen. If it s a western, the hero generally rides off into the sunset on his trusty horse. If it s a romantic comedy, the guy and the girl, having fallen in love and broken up and gotten back together, ride off down the road toward lifelong happiness. One of the best endings ever is in Casablanca, a classic movie from the 1940 s that is still watched today. In the final scene, Rick Blaine, played by Humphrey Bogart, and the French police captain Louis Renault, played by Claude Rains, walk off into a foggy night and Rick says, Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Once you ever see that movie, you never forget the ending. The Gospel of Matthew is one version of the greatest story ever told, and it has a wonderful ending as well. On Easter morning, after the resurrection, the risen Jesus gave instructions for the disciples to meet him in Galilee. When they got there, they met with him on a mountaintop. Some of them worshipped Jesus. Some of them were confused about what had just happened. But Jesus gave them his final words, which we have come to know as the Great Commission: 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. 1 This commission becomes the marching orders for the followers of Jesus. This is the ultimate job of the disciple: to make more disciples, to spread the word about Jesus, to tell the good news of salvation through Christ. In this sermon series, we are talking about finding our way as disciples. This is a lighthouse principle for everyone who seriously wants to follow Jesus. Make disciples, baptizing them into the way, teaching them to obey what Jesus taught, and living in the presence of the risen Christ.

Why did Matthew end the story this way? The other gospels end differently. Why is disciple-making so important? Why can t we just keep all this to ourselves? Sharing our faith is so awkward. Disciple-making is important because Jesus said it was. This wasn t the only place he mentioned it. He sent disciples out to preach and teach and heal. He told them to proclaim the good news from the housetops. The Christian faith is a missionary religion; that means part of it is trying to get other people to believe the way we do, to know Jesus Christ, to have faith in him. As the Christian movement spread beyond Galilee, others took up the task of disciple-making. Peter, the disciple who denied Jesus, stood up on Pentecost and preached the good news. Then he called the people to Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 2 Paul, the first great missionary of Christ, wrote to the church he started in Corinth: So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 3 If Jesus is truly our Lord, meaning he has authority over us, if he is our Master and we are his servants, then we want to do what he told us to do, knowing that it will go well with us if we do. We try the best that we can to obey. It s that simple. A deeper reason to make disciples is because lost people matter to God. God created every one of us, and God loves each one of us and wants to have a relationship with each and every one of us. If we have turned our back on God and refused his offer of grace, that matters to God. That breaks God s heart. Our job is to help people and to encourage people to know God, to love God, and to act like they were created to be children of God. Because we know Jesus, because we are already in a relationship with him, we know what we re talking about. Living in relationship with God really does make a difference. It gives us meaning, purpose, direction, a frame of reference on the world, a mission to perform, and

hope that extends beyond this life. Why wouldn t we want this for everyone? Pastor and writer John Ortberg tells about a guy he met at a civic club luncheon. John was sitting down already; there was an empty chair, then a very attractive woman was on the other side. This smooth character swaggered up to the table and said, Hey, gorgeous, what have you been doing besides turning the heads of everybody here? Ortberg said, Nothing much, just eating lunch. That launched John and this guy into an interesting conversation. In a few minutes of listening, he found out that the guy, whose name was Steve, had grown up in a Jewish home, but had not practiced his faith since his bar mitzvah at age 13. He d been divorced three times and had attended the Unitarian Church twice in his adult life. John could have easily written Steve off as a hopeless heathen, but he decided not to make that assumption. So he told him a little bit about his church and he invited him to come, never really expecting Steve to show up. The next Sunday, there was Steve on the front row. After the service, he asked John where they got their material. He had no clue about the Bible at least the New Testament! So John got him one. He began to read it daily and continued to show up for church and to talk to John. Before long he expressed a desire to become a Christian. It was a courageous move on many levels. But finally he made the decision and said yes to Christ. Some time later, John Ortberg ran into Steve and another man away from the church, and Steve introduced him to his friend this way: I want you to meet the man who helped bring me to Jesus. 4 And to think, John almost wrote the guy off. How would that feel to you, to be introduced by someone as the one who helped bring me to Jesus? Would that feel good? Would that make you feel like in some way you were accomplishing your mission on earth? Every lost person matters to God, and we can be the way they are found.

Making disciples matters because the world needs this good news. The world we live in is broken. Hostility and division, war and terrorism, sin and sickness and the worst kind of immorality they re everyday occurrences. The world needs to know love and joy and peace and kindness and gentleness and goodness and self-control. These are fruits of the Holy Spirit, and they come when someone knows God. They come when someone experiences the reign of God in their lives. They come when someone becomes a disciple of Jesus Christ. When disciples act the way we are supposed to, the world will take notice, because it is so different. The late Rodney Wilmoth was a United Methodist pastor in Minneapolis, and he told about an experience he had at the Minneapolis Symphony s outdoor concert series one summer. The symphony had commissioned a famous Austrian composer to write an arrangement of the hymn tune Finlandia Be Still, My Soul to us and hired him to come all the way to America to conduct the premiere performance of this piece. The concert was scheduled for a summer evening in a local park amphitheater. All the arrangements were made, all the tickets sold, all the rehearsals carried out, and on the night of the performance, the leaders of the symphony realized they had forgotten one catastrophic detail. When they booked the outdoor amphitheater several months in advance, nobody had remembered that there was a softball complex right next to it in the park. The loudspeaker for the left field bleachers was pointed right at the orchestra! Sure enough, as the time for the concert came, so did the announcements over the P. A.: Next batter for the Sluggers Billy Smith. All through the first half of the concert, every time there was a soft and beautiful point in the music, the loudspeaker would blare out or the crowd would cheer. It was awful! At intermission, the president of the symphony came to the guest conductor and offered to cancel the rest of the program. They were so embarrassed. But the

conductor reassured them, It s OK. I came all the way from Austria; we will play our music. So as the conductor raised his baton to begin the piece especially commissioned for that night, evidently somebody hit a home run, because the crowd at the softball game went wild. The conductor patiently waited for the noise to die down, then gave the downbeat, and the music began. Maybe it was the night air or the difficult situation, or maybe it was the beauty of the piece itself or the skill of the conductor, but whatever it was, the symphony had never sounded like it did that night. In a matter of seconds the softball field was forgotten, and everyone s attention focused on the music itself. The notes rolled and danced and swelled and spoke with incredible beauty. Even the conductor at one point spoke out loud and said, That s the spirit! That s the spirit! At the end of the magnificent composition, the crowd in the amphitheater leapt to their feet in a thunderous ovation. When they stood up, the concert-goers could see the softball field just beyond the orchestra, and an incredible thing was happening. The fans in the left-field bleachers were turned around and facing the amphitheater. They, too, were standing and applauding the symphony. The players had come out of the dugouts to stand and applaud as well. The pitcher on the mound had taken off his glove to clap, and the batter was standing at home plate, his bat between his knees, applauding! 5 That s also what happens when disciples act like disciples, when churches act like churches, when the good news of Jesus Christ is truly made known. The world that is so starving for what God has to offer will stand up and take notice. That s why, finally, disciple-making is so important because the work is not yet finished. There is so much left to do. Jesus started with 12 guys on a mountaintop in Galilee. Thanks to witnesses like Peter and Paul, within four centuries Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire. (Whether or not that was a good thing

is still up for debate.) Today Christianity is by far the world s largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion believers, nearly a third of the population of the planet. 6 Still, there are many who don t know Christ. There are areas of the world where the Christian population is less than 5% of the people. The work is still unfinished. That s not to say that that we don t respect other faiths and sincere believers. But we do believe that the best way to know the love of God and the only sure way to salvation is through faith in Jesus, and we will not rest until everyone has a chance to respond to this gospel. The rest of the work is up to us. Giacomo Puccini was one of the great opera composers in the early 20th century. He wrote La Boheme, Madam Butterfly, and was writing Turandot when he discovered he had cancer. He wrote furiously, although his students and friends begged him to conserve his energy. He said to his musical disciples, If I don t finish Turandot, I want you to finish it. Puccini died in 1924 with the work still unfinished. His students, however, took up the challenge. They studied every detail of Puccini s work and put together the rest of the opera. The world premiere of Turandot was held in Milan in 1926, with one of Puccini s best students, Arturo Toscanini, as the conductor. The opera went beautifully until Toscanini came to the part in the third act where Puccini had ended his work. He silenced the orchestra, laid down his baton, and turned to the audience. Thus far the master wrote, said Toscanini, until he died. A great hush fell over the audience. People hardly breathed. Then Toscanini picked up the baton, and with a smile on his face and tears running down his cheeks he added, But his disciples finished the work! 7 Jesus Christ has given us a great work to finish, a great Gospel to share, and a Great Commission to fulfill. He is still with us. There is nothing greater we can do than to finish the work he began.

Last year I preached on the Great Commission, and I gave you a challenge. I d like to renew that challenge today. You can t be responsible for the four and a half billion people in the world who are not Christians. But you can influence someone for Jesus in the next year. I want you to pray for God to give you one family to help reach for Jesus this year. It may be a single person, a couple, or a family. But you know someone or maybe you will meet someone soon who has lost their love for Christ or has never known a relationship with Jesus. You can be an influence in bringing them to God and getting them involved in the community of faith. This is not a quick process. You have to pray for them, nurture a relationship of trust, share your faith, invite them to church (maybe many times!), then help them understand the meaning of discipleship. It s not easy, and it will take time and energy. But there is nothing more important that you can do as a disciple than to introduce someone to Jesus. We know what he wants us to do. It s right there in the closing moments of Matthew: 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. 8 We want to obey our Lord. We know that lost people matter to God. We know the world needs this good news today. And we know that the work of salvation has been completed, but it is not finished. Go therefore. Go and be disciples who make disciples for the transformation of lives, your community, and the world.

1 Matthew 28:18-20. 2 Acts 2:38. 3 2 Corinthians 5:20. 4 John Ortberg, Three Habits of Highly Contagious Christians, Willow Creek Community Church, on PreachingToday.com. 5 From a sermon by Dr. Rodney Wilmoth, Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. 6 http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/04/02/397042004/muslim-population-willsurpass-christians-this-century-pew-says. 7 From my sermon Go Make Some Disciples, 1/31/2010. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/turandot. 8 Matthew 28:18-19.