To the Church: Go and Do

When I was in seminary, my New Testament professors would not let us translate from the Greek in the manner of today's gospel reading. "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..." We had to "resolve the participle" as they called it, meaning we couldn't just say "baptizing" or "teaching."

I once did a paper on today's gospel and resolved the participle thus. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, by baptizing them... and by teaching them to obey..." Jesus was surely not saying to make disciples, and while we're at it, do a little baptizing and teaching as well. 

Jesus' command, often referred to as the "Great Commission," has a lot of doing in it. It involves going, making disciples, baptizing, and teaching folks to obey. Yet very often, the church acts as though Jesus' command says, "Go and make Christians by getting them to believe in me."

One of the unfortunate stereotypes that non-Christians sometimes have about us church folk is that the only going we do is going to church, and our only doing involves condemning those who do not believe or think the same as us. That's clearly a false stereotype, but it has enough bits of truth to it to make it viable. There are indeed a great many Christians who do not do anything that makes them at all different from the world around them other than go to church. And so non-church folks could be forgiven for thinking that our only real doing is showing up at Sunday worship.

Today's gospel reading comes from Matthew, and one of its distinct attributes features Jesus speaking directly to the Church via the disciples. Any time Jesus speaks to the disciples in general, he is speaking past them to all the faithful. And in the very last words recorded in Matthew's gospel, Jesus says to the Church, "Go and do and do and do." And he's not talking just about showing up on Sunday, but about obeying "everything that I have commanded you."

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