I am ashamed to tell you that over the last century or so we have spilled more ink on Matthew 28:18-20 than just about any other text. We have given it not just a name but a compelling one. It is the Great Commission. Yet for all the words written about these words and for all the commands laid out in the Lord’s name to make the Church grow, Christianity here in America is in the midst of a great decline. It is because in no small part we have not heard Jesus’ words at all but have presumed to have heard them and acted on them in ways that make sense to us.
We see Jesus urging us to put a franchise of the Church on every corner of America and, while we have the buildings there, most of them are empty. We see Jesus urging us to do something and so we have created programs and schemes to satisfy Jesus only to have the world ignore them all. We see Jesus telling us to market the Gospel so that it will have many buyers, many great reviews on Amazon or Google, and become a force in our culture – except that Jesus was not urging on a committee or a task force to do any such thing. We see Jesus telling us to gain followers for Him except that Jesus is in reality calling us to follow Him.
The truth is that I despise numbers. I hate counting people in the pews and reporting to District and Synod or counting offerings and reporting to District and Synod or reporting success to District and Synod. What does Jesus know of statistical reports or spreadsheets? What does He care? Our Lord did not set apart people to be His Church so that we might have a nice little entrepreneurial little enterprise. No, He gave the name that is above all names, the name of our salvation, so that we might do with that name what He has commanded: baptize and teach. The Church is not a business nor is it a franchise. The Church is not a social club nor is it a voluntary institution. The Church is His body and the Church exists to preach and teach His Gospel and to baptize the lost into Christ our Savior.
We do not do this because we like to or because we have been ordered to. Indeed, we have translated it all wrong. Jesus never commands us to go but instead tells us that as we are going, baptize people into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teach them all the things He commanded to be taught, and He would be with us always. Instead we forsook the gift of the Name of God, turning Jesus’ words into license to build the Church on our own terms and way.
What a terrible task we have assigned to ourselves. We think that we are God’s press secretaries, sent to make sense of His gobbly gook of words. We think that we are God’s builders who have been charged with the construction of His kingdom. We think that God has given us the Triune name so that we can make sense of it to a skeptical world. How foolish we are. The Lord does not need us to explain Him or defend Him or do His work. What He needs us to do is the speak the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit over the water that gives life and to instruct those baptized in the Gospel of Christ crucified and risen. His promise is that where we confess this Triune Name in water and catechize those baptized, Christ says He will do the rest. His is the heaviest of heavy lifting.
The Triune Name of God has become a burden to Christianity when it should be blessing. It has become a command and a duty laid upon us that we must do and upon which we will be judged instead of the joyful activity of God’s people led by the Holy Spirit. How sad it is that the growth of the Church has been reduced to statistics and numbers! In Matthew 28, our Lord insists nothing of the kind and just the opposite, as a matter of fact. He insists that the giving of the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is manifest grace and blessing. God has given us the privilege of His name and not enlisted us into an unpleasant duty and responsibility.
By taking what God gave as gift and turning into a law or commend laid upon us as a heavy yoke, we have conveniently made us into the managers of God’s local franchises, the leaders who will decide for God what should be done to grow His Church, and the judges who will decide when that Church has grown. It is nothing less than the arrogance of sin that took the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and turned it into justification for making a name for ourselves by being able to crack the mystery of the Trinity or fill the pews with people.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, when Jesus gave us the Triune Name and attached that name to water and endowed us with the Gospel to be taught and instructed into the minds of those baptized, our Lord was showing us how the Church is to grow and promising that He will make it grow. If only we could hear it in this way, we could enjoy the freedom and grace that this name bestows – first upon those so baptized and then upon the world as the baptized proclaim Christ crucified and risen to the world. Our work is not the beating heart of the Church but the work of Him who saved us, who placed on us the name of the Triune God.
Honestly, I wish I had known as a young pastor starting out what I have learned over the years. Chief among those lessons is that leadership is not getting out in front and ahead of God but making sure we do not get in the way. That leadership does not mean fixing what God has given to us but keep it faithful to Christ crucified and risen. That the mystery of the Trinity is not something to be explained but the Name to be confessed in the water of baptism and in absolution of God’s people. That our job is not to make the Church grow but to be faithful to the Word of God and to faithfully administer the Sacraments of Christ so that God can do the rest.
The Name of the Triune God is given to us in our baptism because by that baptism into Christ we are no longer our own. We belong to Him into whose name we were baptized. The Name of the Triune God is given to us so that we might know it is the will of the Father that we should be saved and the work of the Son to save us and the work of the Holy Spirit to believe this. The Name of the Triune God is given to us so that we might confess it before the world as we tell of what this God has accomplished for us and for our salvation by the cross.
As we confess the name of the Trinity in the Athanasian Creed, we are saying as much about what the Trinity is not as we are explaining who God is. Even more, we are placing that name in a context, in the context of worship, where we confess with “Amen” of faith all that God has done for us and insist that this is what we believe, teach, and confess and nothing else.
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