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Draw the Circle Wide: Reflections on Matthew 28.16-20
RCL Trinity A
4 June 2023
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
Order matters.
More than twenty years ago I was invited to attend a meeting of the national House of Bishops. We were, in those days, deep in what I call ‘the troubles’, the debate about the place of LGBTQ disciples of Jesus in the life of the Anglican Church of Canada. At the meeting I attended, the Bishops were discussing the history of the Anglican marriage rites. I had been invited to offer some historical perspectives on how Anglican attitudes have changed over the centuries.
Before I gave my first presentation, one of the Bishops gave a lengthy statement about the ‘unchanging’ theology of marriage throughout Anglican history. This set the stage for my comments.
I began by reminding the Bishops that Anglicans have always responded to the cultural context in which we live and serve. One of the ways we see this is how Anglicans list things in liturgy. There is a general rule of thumb that, in liturgy, what is listed first is considered more important than what comes next and so on and so on. I then illustrated this by looking at the marriage rites in the Prayer Books of 1662 and 1962, then the Book of Alternative Services of 1985.
In 1662 the marriage rite states that the purposes of marriage are (i) the procreation and nurture of children, (ii) a remedy against sin, e.g., extramarital sex, and (iii) the ‘mutual society, hope, and comfort . . . both in prosperity and adversity’ that the partners share with one another. Three hundred years later, Canadian Anglicans married (i) to receive a blessing on their union, (ii) for the procreation and nurture of children, and (iii) for ‘mutual society, hope, and comfort . . . both in prosperity and adversity’. Just twenty years later, our current liturgy says that we marry (i) ‘for . . . mutual comfort and help (and) to know each other with delight and tenderness in acts of love’ and (ii) for procreation, care and nurture of children. In the case of procreation, the option is given to omit it.
What a change three centuries make. What was last in 1662 is first in 1985. What was first in 1662 is an optional second in 1985. Order matters. Order in lists such as these tell us what our priorities are.
Make disciples of all nations.
On this Trinity Sunday it is important for us to hear the order in the direction Jesus gives to his disciples. They are to (i) ‘ . . . make disciples of all nations’, (ii) to baptize them and (iii) to teach them to follow the way of Jesus. Make disciples. Then bring them into the covenant. Nurture them in the way of Jesus. In that order. Steven Eason, a Presbyterian pastor and teacher, writes:
Jesus did not send the church out to perform the ritual of baptism. The world will not be fixed by merely getting everybody wet. Saying the words ‘Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’ is not magic. The more difficult task is that of making disciples. (Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 3, 115)
It’s tempting to see disciples primarily as students. One writer describes students as being like interns who ‘ . . . are watching, practicing under supervision, asking questions, making mistakes, and learning from them . . . . ‘ (Eason). It’s not a bad image, especially if we understand that all disciples – new ones, old ones, skilled ones, struggling ones – are interns and that being a disciple of Jesus is a life-long process of learning, perhaps even re-tracing our steps from time to time to figure out where we made a wrong turn.
Make friends for Jesus.
But I want to lay a different image before you of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. It’s an image that I spoke of just a few weeks ago. To be a disciple of Jesus means becoming a friend of Jesus. Becoming a friend of Jesus begins, I think, with becoming a friend of the friends of Jesus. Even those unusual folk who may claim to have become a friend of Jesus without associating with other Christians still had to rely on those friends of Jesus who translated the Bible into languages that we who do not understanding Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic understand. They still had to rely on the existence, even if it wasn’t on their radar, of communities such as ours who have kept the message, ministry and mission of Jesus alive and well for two thousand years.
I have found myself drawn to a verse in Paul’s letter to the Christians in Galatia. In its original context the verse is about how we discern the Spirit at work among us, around us and in us. But I also think that it is a passage that describes the qualities that characterize a good friendship.
. . . the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5.24 NRSVue)
When I think about my friends, those whose relationships I treasure and whose absence I feel when we are parted by distance or other barriers, they are the people whom I love, who bring joy and peace, who are patient with me, who show kindness and generosity, who are faithful and gentle, who tend the needs of their friends rather than claim everything for themselves. If these are the fruits of the Spirit and if the Spirit shows us that Jesus is the path to abundant life with God, then friendship is built on these foundations.
Our primary purpose is to make friends who will walk with us on the path of self-giving love shown to us in Jesus of Nazareth. We make such friends when we ourselves embrace the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control Paul talks about. When someone who has perhaps never entered a place of worship or who has, for one reason or another, found themselves alienated from religious faith, joins us, will they find themselves embraced by the friendship Paul describes? While the richness of our worship life is not to be dismissed as unimportant, the purpose of our worship to embody in ritual, word, song and silence, the friendship we have with one another in the communion of God in Jesus and through the Spirit.
In our current marriage rite, the primary purpose of marriage is ‘ . . . for (the) mutual comfort and help (of the two persons marrying), that they may know each other with delight and tenderness in acts of love’. Surely, every time we gather as a community of faith, we gather for mutual comfort and help to know each other with delight and act tenderly to one another in acts of love that reveal the love of God for us and for all creation, human and non-human, terrestrial and cosmic.
Keep first things first.
When Jesus gave his final commission to the disciples in Galilee, he chose to reject the religious and imperial ideologies that dominated his world. The community that Jesus commissioned brought Jews and non-Jews together despite the social and cultural forces that might pull them apart. Rather than the coercive power used by religious and imperial authorities to mould people into subjects, Jesus offered a vision of a community guided by ‘ . . . compassionate power, healing mercy, inclusive community, and life-giving words to proclaim (God’s vision of reconciled and reconciling creation).’ (The New Interpreter’s Study Bible).
Jesus asked us to form a circle of friends whose friendship transcends time and place and any other human category used to build walls rather than forge bonds of love and shared vision. This circle is the first item on Jesus’ list. Let it be the first on ours.
Draw the circle wide.
Draw it wider still.
Let this be our song,
no one stand alone,
standing side by side,
draw the circle wide. [1]
Draw a circle of friends. Perhaps this is what will fix our world.