Bible reading: Matthew 28:16-20.

Message.

Many pieces of music end with a coda; a tail-piece or final section which brings the music to its end. Codas may be short, just a few bars, or they may be long and complex: for instance the full coda for the Beatles’ song “Hey Jude” is very nearly four minutes long, in fact it’s longer than the main part of the song!

The Bible passage we’re looking at today is the coda to, or the ending of, Matthew’s Gospel. It’s a very familiar passage: you’ll have certainly heard it if you’ve ever been to missionary meetings, or else you’ve been made to feel guilty by preachers who have stressed the duty of every Christian to evangelise. You may have heard people explaining that, when Jesus was telling his disciples to go to every nation, he wasn’t thinking of modern nation-states but every people-group, ethnicity or tribe (which is clearly far more comprehensive). This “Great Commission”, as it is often called, has been taken seriously and obeyed sacrificially by many Christians over the centuries, which is why we have a world-wide Church today.

However, as we think more deeply about this passage, we begin to realise that it’s actually quite odd. For instance it feels rather “tacked on” to the end of its chapter, which up to this point has been telling us about the events of Easter Sunday and the story that the disciples stole Jesus’s body while the guards at his tomb were asleep. There’s a big jump, with no obvious link, from that story to these closing words.

There’s also a jump in location. The rest of this chapter takes place in and around Jerusalem; but Jesus and the disciples have moved to Galilee, about 75 miles away, or several days’ journey, for this final scene. This isn’t impossible – after all, the story of Jesus’s appearance on the beach and the breakfast he cooks for his disciples takes place in Galilee, so there’s no inconsistency there. But we can definitely see a clear disconnect between the beginning of this chapter and its end.

That leads me to a third oddity, which is this: Luke firmly sets the Ascension story in Jerusalem and nearby Bethany; indeed, Jesus commands his followers to remain in Jerusalem until the Spirit is given. Does this mean that the men, having got to Galilee, trudged all the way back south once more? That would have been a journey of several days in each direction; yet we know that only 40 days elapsed between Jesus’s resurrection and his return to heaven.

Finally, in this list of odd observations, we get the impression that Matthew wants us to treat Jesus’s as his “famous last words” which would remain in his disciples’ minds. They certainly have that “feel” about them; yet it’s his words in Acts, where he tells them that they’ll be his witnesses “to the uttermost parts of the earth” that are actually his final ones. The meaning of both sets of words is similar; but they’re not the same. Matthew and Luke are clearly drawing from different sources; which isn’t to say that one is correct and the other isn’t!

Having got all that out of the way, let’s look at what Jesus said – I suspect that what we have here is a highly-condensed version of a much longer speech. What I find interesting are the similarities and differences between this commission and the one we find in ch.10, where Jesus sends out the Twelve on a short-term mission. For there he very specifically tells them to go to “the lost sheep of Israel”, they are banned from taking their message to Gentiles or even Samaritans. Here they are instructed to go to people of every tribe and nation.

That’s a huge difference; but there’s a similarity, too. For here Jesus says that the disciples go with the authority that has been given to him; in ch.10 Jesus offers his disciples the authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. That’s a close parallel. We don’t know how much time elapsed between these two sendings-out – perhaps a couple of years. Surely, though, the eleven remaining disciples would have made the links, noted the differences, and obeyed – although it took the persecution after Stephen’s death to really spread them beyond Jerusalem and its hinterland.

I find the order of what Jesus says interesting. For he first tells the disciples to “go … and make disciples” –not “converts” who stick up their hand in a meeting or say the “sinner’s prayer” and are never heard of again, but people who are serious about following Jesus for the long-term. This is no “easy-believism” – which wasn’t a possibility at the time. And we are certainly a very long way from the colonialists’ appalling “forced conversion at the point of the sword” of folk who had little or no understanding of the Gospel but who naturally wanted to stay alive! Even today we should probably make a distinction between “churchgoers” (who may of course be perfectly decent, moral and honourable people) and “disciples” who are consciously taking up their crosses daily to follow Jesus. Which one am I? Hmm.

What comes next is intriguing; for Jesus tells his followers that they are to baptise and teach the new disciples – in that order. It’s intriguing because Baptist churches often ask people to go through a lengthy preparation course (rather like Confirmation classes in the Anglican churches) before they are baptised. Mind you, that’s nothing compared to what was done in the fourth and fifth centuries, when baptismal candidates went through a lengthy and rigorous process of instruction, accompanied with special prayers, exorcisms, and other rites. The actual baptisms, carried out on Easter Sunday, were quite an event, too, involving a vigil during the previous night, an anointing with oil, a renunciation of the devil, a public declaration of faith, the laying on of hands, and white clothing. It’s not surprising, perhaps, that most folk never actually got baptised in the end as the process was just too rigorous and off-putting.

But that’s not what Jesus says here; he says, “baptise and teach”. In other words, baptism marks the beginning of someone’s Christian journey; it’s not a milestone or attainment target which has to be reached after a certain length of time. The apostles understood this as they wasted no time in baptising 3000 converts on the day of Pentecost (I’ve always wondered how they did that). Of course they were all Jews or converts to Judaism, so they had some notion of God. But did they know anything more about Jesus than what they heard from Peter that day? For those who’d come from a distance, that sems unlikely. Yet they weren’t asked to prove themselves or wait: they were baptised within hours. I think that the apostles would be heavily criticised if they did that today – but they were obeying Jesus.

And this brings me to my final point. Jesus told his disciples to baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the clearest statement of the Trinity we get in the New Testament. And it’s fitting that baptism and the Trinity should be so closely linked, as by faith we believe in Jesus, we are brought into God the Father’s family, we are given the Holy Spirit. As the theologian Jurgen Moltmann wrote, “Trinitarian theology is baptismal theology. It has to be”. In baptism we are declaring our faith in this enigmatic, even incomprehensible, God who is three yet one. No metaphor we can devise actually does justice to the Trinity; let’s simply accept its mystery.

They (whoever “they” are) that a good sermon should lead its hearers on a journey, that it should trace a definite path from beginning to end. I don’t think I’ve actually done that this morning as I’ve touched on several different points: some oddities in the Bible passage, some questions about Jesus’s “Great Commission”, some remarks about baptism. You probably won’t remember half of what I’ve said (although my messages can usually be read on our church website a day or two into each week). But perhaps there has been one point which the Holy Spirit has brought home to you, one thought you can’t get out of your head, one matter on which you need to act. If that’s the case, then I am happy. After all, it’s often those last few bars of music, the coda, which listeners often leave the concert hall or arena humming. And don’t forget: even though the music will fade, Jesus has promised to be with us.