June 15, 2022
The Almost Daily will be on Summer Vacation until August 8th. But fear not! You will receive a devotional each Monday through Friday from the excellent Mockingbird Devotional entitled Daily Grace. Enjoy! - Paul Walker
“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...” (Matthew 28:19)
I once read this verse and concluded that in order to be faithful, I had to buy a plane ticket, learn a foreign language, and convert as many Muslims as possible. Of course, evangelization is a big part of the Christian faith, but I’m no longer sure that that’s all the Great Commission is about. There is a lot here that does not necessarily demand our patronage of the airlines. In fact, when we read this passage through the lens of a personal burden, we may be distracting ourselves from a more startling idea.
The setting: a mountain in Galilee. The resurrected Jesus has met his disciples there. He does not tell them, “Make disciples of the teachable, the intelligent, the people with magnetic personalities.” He says, “Make disciples of all nations.” In the Greek, “nation” relates closely to “ethnicity,” which was especially notable for a time when gods were associated with specific places and people groups. The Jews had their own God, and the Romans had theirs, and the Persians had theirs. Each god, or pantheon of gods, dealt with an exclusive group.
But Jesus means to take everyone under his wing, and he will not be stopped by the boundaries of ethnicity or geography. In the Great Commission, Jesus describes his ideal group: everyone. “The disciples” are not an exclusive class. No one is left out, not the poor, the sick, the young, the old, the weird, the excessively normal. Not even you, with your failures, and ugly secrets, and all of those dumb things you said at the party last night.
Every day, we sort ourselves into little nations based on political beliefs, wealth, clothing, body type, taste in music. So today, when you encounter a stranger from a strange land, bear in mind that they, like you, are God’s beloved. God wants that person to be included. And remember, too, Jesus’ final promise: that no matter which nation we come from, He is with us always, to the end of the age.
[CJ Green, Daily Grace - Mockingbird Devotional Vol. 2]
