“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.”
Words from the 28th Chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew. V
“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.”
” teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
So said our Lord to his disciples. ” everything that I have commanded you.” Now, you are all familiar with the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from the mountain. If you would all stand up now and recite them together – I should be very impressed. The Ten Commandments. Ah, yes. But where in the New Testament will you find a document entitled The Commandments of our Lord’ or The Commandments of Jesus of Galilee’? To save you racking your brains I shall put you out of your misery. There is no such document. To be precise, there is no occasion on which our Lord announced that he was handing over a replacement set of, for example, ten commandments. We may therefore reasonably ask ourselves, to which Commandments was our Lord referring? One simple answer would run as follows. Jesus speaks with the voice of God. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. Therefore the Commandments that our Lord referred to are the Ten Commandments. It is a simple answer but it does not convince. It raises the question as to the nature and purpose of our Lord’s ministry if the Ten Commandments given to Moses were sufficient. The New Covenant would be no different from the Old Covenant. Therefore we reject that explanation.
If you are thinking about commandments given to us by our Lord, you may by now be thinking back to the great Gospel reading from St John which we hear every year on Maundy Thursday. Remember that the word Maundy’ comes from the Latin word Mandatum meaning a mandate, a command or a commandment. We call it Maundy Thursday, the Thursday of the Mandate or commandment because of the following words spoken by our Lord to the disciples at the Last Supper: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” That, in all its powerful simplicity, sums up our Lord’s earthly mission and his commandments to his followers. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Keep those words in mind as you then hear the words from today’s Gospel reading: ” teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” In these few words, our Lord summarized the way in which he wanted us to behave towards one another and the way in which he wanted us to behave towards God, the two being intimately linked. Contained within these words is the vital point that it is unacceptable to declare one’s love for God but to hate one’s fellow men or women. It is, if you will, a package deal. If you embrace the love of God through Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit, you do not have the liberty of despising other people. That love must show itself in compassion, tolerance, understanding and sacrifice. It must show itself in a refusal to stigmatise or ostracise others because of their race, appearance, disability or sexual orientation. It requires us even to love those whom we frankly dislike. It requires us, explicitly, to love our enemies. It asks a lot of us. But there it is. That is what the love of God implies: ” everything that I have commanded you.”.”
You will also recall from Maundy Thursday another mandate or commandment given to us by our Lord at the Last Supper. It is from that night that we trace the Christian celebration of the Eucharist. Do this in remembrance of me’. This is why we attach such importance to the Eucharist. It is not just a nice tradition or an arbitrary way of expressing our faith. It is an act of worship and remembrance which our Lord ordered us to undertake in his name. The Eucharist re-enacts and re-presents the great sacrificial act of our Lord who gave his life that we might live eternally. It encapsulates the greatest love ever known.
It is right that we should always bear in mind whose commandments we are obeying. If we are ever in any doubt as to the authority of some line of scripture, we should do well to reflect that authority’ must be the greatest if God is the author. As human beings, we do our honest but inadequate best to interpret God’s words for ourselves. We must always be chary of accepting the words of other human beings as the truth. They are manifestly not the Gospel truth’. This matters especially when those words plucked from the Bible are as so often seems to be the case directed against some group or other, however defined, usually reproving them or, at worst, excluding them from the Christian community. All too often we hear words directed against some outgroup’ from within the self-satisfied ranks of an ingroup’. By contrast, our Lord’s ministry was, to use a modern word, inclusive. He did not condemn those who might be seen as marginal members of society: in fact, he went out of his way to welcome those who did not conform to the norms of what thought of itself as polite society. Maybe some words of warning are in order. Beware of mere mortals who make out that they are holier than thou. Beware of presumptuous unmarried people who lecture married people on how to behave. Beware of conformists who attack those who are different just because they are different. Beware of the ignorant who quote St Paul in the belief that they are quoting our Lord. Beware of those who, whilst mouthing words of love, preach hatred and intolerance. Perhaps, for good measure, you should beware of people who advise you to beware of people. Remember what our Lord said: ” teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
It is simple, really. We are Christians. We follow Christ. It is Christ’s commandments that we must obey. Our Lord ordered us to love one another. He also told us keep the tradition of the Eucharist. In the Eucharist we receive the gift of God’s love anew. Love is God’s great commandment. Whenever we come together in the Eucharist, and whenever we meet to worship God in the Holy Spirit and through our Lord Jesus Christ, let us remember those words. Jesus told his disciples, “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.” Amen.