Go And Make Disciples Of All Nations
The last thing He said before He ascended. Neither of our Churches is doing it.
The command
“All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”
Matthew 28:18-20
These are the final recorded words of Christ on earth. Whatever else the Church is for, it is for this.
And He said it more than once. “Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). “You shall be witnesses unto Me… unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). “As My Father has sent Me, even so send I you” (John 20:21).
And He was blunt about hiding it
- "You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel." Matthew 5:14-15.
- "You are the salt of the earth: but if the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing." Matthew 5:13.
- The servant who buried what he was given, and returned it intact, was called wicked and slothful. Matthew 25:24-30.
- "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few." Matthew 9:37.
A faith kept safe, guarded, defended, and never handed to anyone outside is not thereby preserved. It is buried.
What the first Church did with it
It obeyed, immediately, at enormous cost, into hostile territory, in languages not its own.
Three thousand were baptized on one day at Pentecost (Acts 2:41). Philip went to Samaria and then to an Ethiopian on a desert road (Acts 8). Peter went into a Roman centurion’s house and concluded that God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34). Paul crossed into Europe, argued in the Areopagus at Athens, and wrote that he was made all things to all men, that he might by all means save some (1 Corinthians 9:22).
And our own fathers: St Mark went to Alexandria. Egyptian monks carried the faith south into Nubia and Ethiopia. St Thomas is held to have reached India. Ss Cyril and Methodius invented an alphabet so the Slavs could hear the Liturgy in their own tongue. Byzantine and Russian missionaries went to the Caucasus, to Siberia, to Alaska.
Neither of our families lacks a missionary tradition. Both of us have simply stopped.
The three pages under this one
And why this belongs on a site about unity
Because they are the same failure. He tied them together Himself:
“That they all may be one… that the world may believe that You have sent Me.”
John 17:21
Our unity was given as the evidence. A Church that cannot sit at one table cannot credibly invite anyone else to it.