This sermon was delivered at Yale Divinity School in 2020 for the class Sacred Moments in African-American Preaching.
I begin with a simple observation. Of the four canonical gospels, Matthew is the only one that ends with the words of Jesus. Mark, Luke, and John all end in the narrator’s voice, but Matthew closes with the words of Jesus. Mark ends at the tomb, with the women fleeing in terror and amazement. Luke ends with the disciples in Jerusalem, praising at the temple. John ends on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, with a dialogue between Jesus and Peter. And here Matthew ends with the disciples in Galilee, meeting Jesus at the mountain where he had directed them.
Matthew gives Jesus the last word. But before we get to those last words, there are three other words in this passage that I call to our attention because I find them astonishing. Let me read verse 17 once more. “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” But some doubted. Matthew just drops those three words in there with the nonchalance of a shoulder shrug and then moves straight on to Jesus’ commissioning of the disciples.
By the way, if your Bible includes subheads, the subhead for this passage is probably something like “The Commissioning of the Disciples” or “The Great Commission.” But what I want to lift up for us today is not just a commission but an omission. I want to focus not only on what Jesus says but what he doesn’t say. For that reason I’m calling this sermon "The Great Omission."
The disciples meet Jesus on a mountain. Matthew doesn’t say, but I’d like to think that Jesus has called them back to the place where he gave his most famous sermon earlier in this gospel…the Sermon on the Mount. In that case, it’s a homecoming, of sorts. The disciples are on familiar ground. And yet, at the same time, they are utterly disoriented, because standing before them is their teacher, their friend, the one whom, just three days earlier, they had abandoned in the garden. The one they had run from. The one Peter had three times denied even knowing. The one who was arrested without cause. The one who was given a show trial in which trusted authority figures gave false testimony. The one who was executed by the state, his broken body left out in the open as a public spectacle and to serve as a warning.
This same Jesus, raised from the dead, now stands before his disciples. I can only imagine what they must have been thinking, for none of them expected this, no matter how many times Jesus had tried to tell them that this is how it would be. Maybe they thought they were dreaming or hallucinating or seeing a ghost. It must have seemed unbelievable. And for some it was. Matthew tells us that upon seeing the risen Jesus, the disciples worshiped him, but some doubted. For some—Matthew doesn’t say who exactly—it was too good to be true. They couldn’t believe the evidence of their own eyes. For some the truth was not self-evident.
Self-evident. We’re familiar with this word. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Those words are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the nation’s founding document…the same document that regarded as unequal the natives who called this land home before European settlers arrived…the same document that did not grant the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to those who were ripped from their native land and brought here as property. This great omission of anyone whose skin was not white from the promises and protections of liberty is a sin for which this nation has yet to fully come to terms with, let alone atone for.
That is one great omission. There is another in the gospel reading. You see, in both secular and sacred scripture, what is omitted from a text can be just as revealing as what is included. In telling his version of the risen Jesus’ encounter with the disciples, Matthew includes this curious detail that “some doubted.” This is not doubt like we see in the Gospel of John, in which Thomas refuses to believe in the resurrection until he can see Jesus in the flesh. Here in Matthew Jesus is standing right in front of the disciples, and yet some of them still doubt! These aren’t the scribes and Pharisees whose biases against Jesus predisposed them to doubt him. These are the disciples, Jesus’ hand-picked followers! My god! What will it take to convince them? He has already been raised from the dead! What more does he need to do?
Surely Jesus must be shaking his head. He must be angry with them, frustrated, or at least disappointed. Surely their doubt is going to get in the way of his mission. How can Jesus send his disciples into the world to make disciples of all nations if they are plagued by doubt? What good is a disciple who doubts? And yet, if Jesus is at all bothered by their doubt, he doesn’t say so. Not a word. He doesn’t single out those who doubt for their lack of faith. He doesn’t lament, “O you of little faith!” Matthew omits from this gospel even a single word of rebuke from Jesus.
Let me tell you why this great omission is good news. It’s good news because we all have our doubts. Some of us are full of self-doubt. Like Moses at the burning bush, we doubt whether we are equipped for what God calls us to do. Like Peter after he denied Jesus, we doubt whether our sin can ever be forgiven. If you’re in your first year at YDS, you may doubt whether it was a good idea to come here in the first place—pandemic or not. Maybe what you learned in Old Testament has raised doubts about the historical nature of some of those cherished narratives. If you’re in your final year at YDS, you might have doubts about what awaits you after graduation. What will it be like to seek to serve a church in the middle of a pandemic? Will churches even want to call pastors under these conditions?
Our country right now is riven with doubt. We have a president who is actively trying to sow doubt in the outcome of the upcoming election and who has called on white supremacists to “stand by" if the outcome doesn’t go his way. We have state legislatures gerrymandering districts to reduce the political power of African American voters. We have governors seeking to restrict voting in Black and brown communities, closing polling stations, limiting ballot drop-off boxes, and reducing in-person voting hours. They want to make voting so burdensome that people will doubt whether it’s worth the effort or whether their vote will even count. We have a Supreme Court that has made this possible by chipping away at the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as if voter suppression were a relic of American history and not a dormant beast waiting to arise from slumber.
In the midst of all this doubt there is a temptation to withdraw from our God-given calling as citizens and as Christians. That was what the disciples did before they got word of the resurrection. They withdrew. They locked themselves in a room and huddled together, fearful of a knock at the door. They feared that their life with Jesus had all been for nothing…all the teaching, all the miracles, all the talk of the coming kingdom of God that Jesus was to usher in. Theirs was a broken community. And even after the risen Jesus appeared to them on Easter morning, some of them were still gripped by doubt.
History tells us of another community of Jesus’ followers who were beset by doubt one Easter morning. On Easter Sunday 1964, with Martin Luther King Jr. imprisoned in the Birmingham city jail, King’s friend and fellow activist Andrew Young planned to lead a march to the jail. Setting out from New Pilgrim Baptist Church, some five thousand people came out, straight from Easter worship, the men dressed neatly in suits and the women in colorful Easter dresses and matching hats. They set out in a festive mood, the celebratory Easter hymns still ringing in their ears, but the atmosphere quickly took on an air of danger as the marchers saw that the road before them was blocked. Standing in their way was the Birmingham Police Department with batons on their hips and attack dogs at their feet, along with the Birmingham Fire Department with their hoses at the ready. Standing in front of them both was the notoriously racist city commissioner Bull Connor. “Turn this group around!” Connor ordered through his megaphone. The marchers froze, unsure whether to continue on or to turn back. They waited for instructions from their leaders.
I’m going to read you an excerpt from Andrew Young’s book An Easy Burden that recounts what happened next:
Wyatt Walker and I were leading the march. I can’t say we knew what to do. I know I didn’t want to turn the march around....I asked the people to get down on their knees and offer a prayer....Suddenly Rev. Charles Billups, one of the most faithful and fearless leaders of the old Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, jumped up and hollered, “The Lord is with this movement! Off your knees! We’re going on!”...Stunned at first, Bull Connor yelled, “Stop ‘em, stop ‘em!” But none of the police moved a muscle....Even the police dogs that had been growling and straining at their leashes...were now perfectly calm....I saw one fireman, tears in his eyes, just let the hose drop at his feet. Our people marched right between the red fire trucks, singing, “I want Jesus to walk with me.”
...The policemen had refused to arrest us, the firemen had refused to hose us, and the dogs had refused to bite us. It was quite a moment to witness. I’ll never forget one old woman who became ecstatic when she marched through the barricades. As she passed through, she shouted, “Great God Almighty done parted the Red Sea one mo’ time!”
We began by exploring three words in this passage that are often overlooked: “but some doubted.” And it was three different words shouted by the Rev. Billups one Easter morning that were all it took to move a community frozen in doubt: “We’re going on!” And we are going on, brothers and sisters, because the risen Jesus calls us to go. He calls us to go even in the midst of our doubt because he sends us not by our authority but by his. “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” he says. “Therefore go!” Jesus is even more economical than the gospel writer or Rev. Billups. He uses just two words: “Therefore go.” Go because Jesus’ authority is stronger than our doubt. Our imperfect faith is no obstacle to the mission of God. Therefore go.
Where there is broken relationship, go and reconcile. Where there is indifference to suffering, go and show mercy. Where the vulnerable are being taken advantage of, go and work for justice. Where there is cynicism and despair, go and proclaim hope. Where a stranger is being ignored or mistreated, go and welcome. Where people are held captive to fear, go and proclaim liberation. Where violence and hatred abound, go and witness for peace. And go knowing that you do not go alone, for the Lord is with this movement…always, to the end of the age.
Comments
Post a Comment