SCRIPTURE READING | Matthew 28:16-20
16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
FAITH OF OUR FATHERS – NEW CHAPTERS
Pastor Thanael Certa-Werner
Today we come to the end of our sermon series as we celebrate All Saints Day and appropriately end our series looking at some of the saints who have gone before us and truly changed the church and the world.
We started this journey by looking at Paul. Through his life, we can see that the church is for all people, of all ages, races, genders, and backgrounds. We then moved to Saint Patrick, who went back to the land which enslaved him to share the gospel story. His life helps us to remember that God is our strength and that we can follow God, even to hard places, because He is our strength.
Martin Luther, who went through great lengths to reform many aspects of the church, translated the Bible from the language of the Church into the language of the people. His life reminds us how valuable scripture is to our lives and the lives of those around us. It is so valuable; it is worth dying over and certainly worth reading through ourselves.
Finally, we talked about John Wesley last week and his story as he crossed over from England to America. Through defeat and discovery of a lack of faith, we followed along as John dealt with doubt in his faith. Through his life, we can see that doubt is not the enemy, but that giving into doubt is. In moments when we feel like we don’t believe, our job is to continue seeking and to ask for help from other believers.
And now, we get to continue as the story shifts from the past to the present. But before we do, we need to practice our memory verse!
Memory Verse: Turn your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding. Proverbs 2:2 NIV.
Over the last four weeks, we have explored the lives of four wonderful people. As we talked about last week, these people were far from perfect, but rather are perfect examples of God working through terribly imperfect people to do His wonders. The crazy part of them all is that we barely scratched the surface of their stories. If this sermon series continued until next year, we still would not have covered everything we could in regards to these lives. What’s even crazier is how different all these people really were! When they lived, where they grew up, what they did was different from person to person. But what tied them together was their love of God and their devotion to seeking after Him.
What is even more incredible is that they are just four in a sea of millions and billions of faithful Christians who have gone before us declaring the Good News of Jesus Christ. These billions of people are who we celebrate today, and in our liturgy, we call them the Communion of Saints.
The Communion of Saints is made up of people from around the world. What is so incredible is that each person lived a life glorifying God and sharing the Good News. Each one had a different starting point, each one came to believe in God because of different things, and each one gave the world a testimony of that Good News which inspired them and gave them new life. In fact, we have a whole book filled with those kinds of testimonies. Right here, in this Bible, we have a collection of witnesses to the power, love, mercy, and justice that is our God.
But this sermon isn’t about how important scripture is, we just talked about that two Sundays ago, rather it’s about what we do with all of this. We’ve talked about a lot over the last four weeks and we’ve experienced a lot. The question at the end of each sermon, at the end of every verse in the Bible, at the end of every conversation centered in Christ, is always, “Now what?” How do we live into what we read about, or what we talked about? What do we do now?
This is exactly the question which the disciples had to grapple with in our text for today. Jesus has already died and risen again, but He’s been hanging around – popping into the lives of His disciples and giving them instructions and encouragement. But the time has come, and after three years of being together and learning from Him, Jesus is leaving His disciples and ascending to heaven. This is the ultimate, “what now?” moment. So, Jesus tells His disciples of that time and His disciples of this time what happens now.
He says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
This is a section of scripture which many Christians know. It is called the great commission and it is the base work for every “what now?” moment which happens to us throughout our lives. In fact, this is our mission as a church: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
Jesus is calling us to live into what we have learned and to give this knowledge to others. The amazing thing is that the Bible doesn’t end with Jesus’ last words. The story could have stopped right there, because that’s when Jesus ascends into heaven. He’s not teaching on earth anymore, so there’s no need to record anything! Right? But that’s not what happens. We see that the disciples continue to write. They detail the stories of how Christ continued to change their lives and what God did throughout their lives. The added new chapters and new books to the story and by the end of it, we have 27 books in the New Testament. We could have had only four.
But Jesus’ call on our lives is to share what Jesus has done in our lives and to tell others why this faith we have is so important to us. In fact, that is the whole reason we celebrate today. It’s not because we’re sad that people have died. It’s not because it’s the right thing to do to remember the fallen. It’s not because these people deserve to have a special day all to their own. NO! It’s because they were faithful followers of God and they added their chapters to the story of Christianity. The reason we celebrate All Saints Day is because someone else gave us their reason for faith and helped bring faith to our lives because of it. And so, our challenge this week is to do the same.
You’ve seen the kids that are a part of our church and many of you were there when we took our vows as a church to support them in the faith. Look and see how important it is to not leave people guessing what’s important in your life why it is important. I have been to many funerals for incredibly faithful people put on by incredibly faithless children as if their parent had no faith at all. Our job is not to force others to believe like we do but to allow others to see into our faith, to see the good times and the bad times, to look at our core of being and to know why God is there at the center.
So, our next step for this week, and there will be only one, but it may not be easy for you, is to do that. Have that conversation with your kids, or grandkids, or sisters, or brothers, or whoever needs to hear from you. Set them down and just ask, have I ever told you why I am a Christian? Even if they have, tell them one more time. The beauty of our faith is that this wonderful Good News of new life in Jesus is shareable. It’s not something you have to apply for, not something which has prerequisite courses, but is something which can be ours just because someone told us about it.
And for that, thanks be to God. Amen.