The world's a stage
Commentary
In his play As You Like It William Shakespeare wrote those familiar words: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." The expression would seem to leave the theater without an audience, although some would suggest that many persons of the human race are spectators rather than actors.
Be that as it may, the view that the world's a stage challenges us this Holy Trinity Sunday to consider the stage God the Creator built and then to discern among the cast of characters who plays which role and who has been seized by the manager for reaching out to the rest of the cast.
Genesis 1:1--2:4a
There exists no better description of stage construction than the account of creation in the first chapter of the Bible. Written by a group of priests, no less, this rather formal, even liturgical presentation of the Creator and the world is packed with majestic announcements and accompanied by a celestial choir. Among the majestic announcements is the goodness of the world, the source of light, and the cast called the human race.
The word "good" appears so repeatedly in the narrative that no matter how the cast performs, the theater and the stage itself obviously get rave reviews. God determines in advance what the function of each created phenomenon would be, and each performs according to its purpose. God announces, "Good!" just as a craftsman examines the work and declares his satisfaction with the same word (see Isaiah 41:7). And so God made the light to distinguish between day and night, the firmament to separate waters from waters, the ground to provide vegetation, the heavenly luminaries to give light and to distinguish between days and months and seasons. When each aspect of the stage had been completed and worked to satisfaction, the Builder said, "Good!"
As for the lighting, we could say that right from the opening curtain, it was "out of this world." That there was day and night for three acts without any sun indicates that God is the light of the world, an announcement that will occur again at the play's conclusion (Revelation 21:23; 22:5). That plot alone sends a clue to the audience that the action is not simply about theater construction; it is about the One who is Owner and Manager and Director.
As for the cast of human characters, the same Owner made them all to reflect his own image on stage. In the parlance of the scriptwriter's day, "the image of God" was usually reserved for the leading role, even the king of the land. But on this stage every human being, male and female alike, was cast in the role of God's image and assigned the task of caring for the whole theater and for everything and everyone in it.
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
This second letter to the Corinthians followed the first by a year or two (perhaps about A.D. 55 or 56), but it has quite a different kind of script than the first. First Corinthians was a letter clearly focused on the problem of disunity in the congregation and on specific questions addressed to Paul either in writing or in person. The second letter is primarily a defense by Paul of his apostolic office, particularly against various charges raised by some in the congregation.
It is not surprising that with the cast in some disarray, Paul here concludes the letter by encouraging them to get back to the script and stick to the plot. That appeal includes "put things in order, ... agree with one another, live in peace," exactly the opposite of the ways they are behaving. Then Paul announces the promise that within such harmony "the God of love and peace will be with you," similar to the promise from the Risen Lord to the apostles on the mountain in Galilee (Matthew 28:20).
Paul exhorts his readers to "greet one another with a holy kiss," a practice observed nowadays more in Islamic cultures than in Christian churches. Yet to come so close to another with "a holy kiss" (probably on the cheek) is to mend the fence that separates people in their quarreling and dissensions. The greeting of one to another extends throughout the church, for Paul sends greetings from "all the saints" to that contentious congregation.
Finally, the apostle ends his letter with the benediction that is reminiscent of the baptismal formula in Jesus' commission, emphasizing grace from the Son, love from God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit -- all to a group of Christians who have replaced grace with requirements, love with antagonism, and fellowship with divisive cliques. To contrast everything in their congregational experience with the blessings of the Triune God calls them to the meaning of the baptism and to the possibilities of life together.
The play, after all, must go on.
Matthew 28:16-20
The Great Commission deserves its name. It defines mission in worldwide terms and it does so in the name of the Triune God. In so doing, this pericope is a natural for this Trinity Sunday.
There are, of course, other commissionings in the New Testament, and they should all be considered as part of the mission of God in which our Lord commands us to participate. The earliest Gospel, Mark, places the commissioning of the Twelve quite early in the ministry of Jesus. There Jesus ascends "the mountain" and invites those whom he wanted to join him. Twelve he appointed "to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons" (Mark 3:13-15). The parallel passage at Luke 6:12-13 likewise portrays Jesus as ascending "the mountain." Typical of Luke, the first purpose of Jesus' ascent is "to pray," but when the praying is finished Jesus summons his disciples to join him and from there he commissioned them to be apostles. (Luke does not mention the functions the apostles are to play, as Mark does.) In these accounts Mark and Luke continue the tradition from the Old Testament in which God invites to "the mountain" those who are to play a role in the history of salvation and commissions them: Moses to Mount Sinai/Horeb in Exodus 3; each and every Davidic king to Mount Zion in Psalm 2; Elijah (without invitation) in 1 Kings 19.
In Matthew's Gospel the mountain parallel with Mark and Luke takes an interesting turn. Matthew has Jesus go up on "the mountain" at about the same point in the story, but without invitation the disciples gather to hear Jesus' sermon, and by the time the sermon is concluded, the "crowds" express their astonishment at his preaching and teaching with authority (Matthew 5-7). No commissioning takes place to correspond to that of Mark 3 and Luke 6. Matthew reports that parallel chapters later (10:1) without reference to a mountain at all. The function of the commissioning there consists of "authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness," precisely what Jesus had been doing according to the previous paragraph at 9:35. As the commissioning unfolds here, the functions fall under the rubric, "The kingdom of heaven has come near" (v. 7), and the recipients of this good news are solely "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (v. 6).
It appears that Matthew has been saving his "mountaintop" commissioning for the punch line of his Gospel, the Great Commission, which takes place on "the mountain to which Jesus had directed them" (28:16). The mountain setting comes as a complete surprise here, because no recorded words of Jesus had directed to the mountain. The instructions Jesus had given to the women fleeing the empty tomb were simply, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me" (28:10). One gets the impression that Matthew, in spite of his variations on the theme earlier, cannot complete his Gospel without including a commissioning on the mountain, even if he did not adequately prepare the reader for that site.
In any case, arriving at the mountain, the disciples, when they saw Jesus, "worshiped him; but some doubted" (v. 17). Here Matthew reports briefly the not unanimous response to the Resurrected Lord, probably a reality among the early representatives of the church. It is the same doubting response that comes to more dramatic expression in John's account about Thomas (John 20:24-29). Surprisingly Jesus does not deal with the difference between worshipers and doubters in our pericope. He commissioned all eleven with one set of words.
Perhaps that reality itself can become the focus of a sermon. Faith and doubt always seem to exist side by side, both within the community of believers and within a believer. As each baptized Christian faces various circumstances in life, faith or doubt rise to the surface. Some people in grief over the death of a loved one or over a divorce experience faith rising to new heights while others doubt the message of the church entirely during such periods. As some people are flying high, others within the same worshiping community wallow in doubt. At any given point, the high flyers might be grounded, and the doubters might soar. Yet, within that tension of faith and doubt the same Risen Christ comes to one and all, offering his presence regardless of circumstances and commissioning the family of the baptized without distinction.
As for the words of Jesus themselves, it is essential to note that the words of the commission are based on the first sentence Jesus utters: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." The issue of authority began with Matthew's report of the Temptation by the devil in chapter 4. For the third temptation the devil took Jesus "to a very high mountain" where he showed him all the kingdoms of the world. He offered them to Jesus in exchange for worshiping him. The devil's offer was based, of course, on the devilish assumption that the kingdoms of the world belonged to him, and with the authority of his ownership he could give them away (Matthew 4:8-9). Jesus, of course, proved faithful to the Lord God, even though that fidelity would lead down the road of suffering to Golgotha.
The authority issue surfaces repeatedly in Matthew's Gospel. At the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount the crowds, having heard Jesus' words, "were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes" (7:28-29). The difference, of course, is that the scribes "were" authorities on the Torah, but they did not "have" the authority with which Jesus spoke the entire sermon. That authority is divine, for what Jesus said from the mountain on that occasion fulfilled, even reinterpreted, the law given centuries earlier by God to Moses and the people at Sinai. The centurion stationed at Capernaum assumed Jesus' authority to cure his servant when he compared Jesus' word of command to his own situation as "a man under authority, with soldiers under me" (8:9). When some of the scribes accused Jesus of blaspheming when he forgave the sins of the paralyzed man, Jesus acted to heal him as well "so that you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...." Again the crowds were filled with awe "and they glorified God, who had given such authority to human beings" (9:2-8). Obviously the crowds were able to discern the source of Jesus' authority far better than the scribes who asked him on another occasion, "By what authority are you doing these things?" This was a question on which Jesus allowed them to dangle (21:23-27).
At the conclusion of his Gospel, Matthew reports the authority issue is settled once for all. Using the theological passive common in the New Testament, Jesus announces that, having been raised from the dead, "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." That divinely bestowed authority over heaven and earth is the basis for his commission: "Go therefore...." The words that define the apostles' role in God's mission stretch their earlier commissioning to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (10:6) to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...." Matthew already hinted at the worldwide scope of the mission in the second chapter of his Gospel when he reported the visit of the "wise men from the East" to the child Jesus (2:1-12).
That the commission included, in addition to baptizing, the command to teach "to obey everything that I have commanded you" takes us back to the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is portrayed as the Teacher with authority who expects from his disciples a "righteousness" that "exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees" (5:20). Obedience is the mark of the disciple, just as such righteousness led Jesus himself to be baptized by John (3:15). Likewise the righteousness of obedience will distinguish those who are baptized in the name of the Triune God.
Finally, Jesus acts as a chip off the old block when he promises to be present with his disciples as they pursue this mission. It is the same promise that God gave to Moses when the Lord commissioned him to deliver the Israelites from the bondage in Egypt (Exodus 3:12), to Gideon when the Lord called him to lead the Israelites against the Midianites (Judges 6:16), and to Jeremiah when the prophet-to-be protested his calling on the basis of his immaturity (Jeremiah 1:4-10).
The presence of the Risen Lord with the whole church is likewise the promise that enables us to participate in God's mission to a broken world. Indeed, it is the world that God created that God loves, and so it is to the world that God sends the church.
If "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," then God has opened the curtain for those members of the cast called the church to transform characters and audience into disciples and bring all the theater to its Owner.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Genesis 1:1--2:4a
This priestly account of God's creation of the world has been called the most theological chapter in the whole Bible. Written down in the sixth century B.C., its every word is carefully thought through. But it is not intended to be a scientific account of how God made the cosmos. The endless creationist attempts to make it into science and to foist it on our schools are invalid.
Rather, this passage is intended as a confession of faith. Some of its language is borrowed from other ancient Near Eastern religions. But the borrowed words and phrases of the time are only utilized to set forth a soaring faith that arises out of Israel's historical experience with her God. Because God has had the power to roll back the waters of the Reed Sea and set his people free from slavery; because he has had the might to kill and to make alive, to overcome the mightiest empires, and to make for himself a chosen people, Israel has confessed that the Lord has sovereignty over all things and persons as their Creator and Sustainer. We must not ignore the faith exhibited in this passage in favor of some sort of ignorant "science."
God's creative act in this text consists in bringing order into the darkness, evil, and death of chaos, symbolized here in the form of the watery deep. In the beginning, says our text, there was only tohu wabbohu, formlessness and void -- the all-
engulfing powers of nothingness. And God's act of creation consisted in putting bounds on chaos and holding it in check, so that the life and light, order and goodness of creation become possible for humans and all things (cf. Psalm 104:5-9; Job 38:8-
11; Isaiah 45:18-19). Thus, God creates light to hold back the darkness, and separates the chaotic waters by dividing them with the solid arc of the firmament. He puts bounds on the chaos to let the dry land appear, and captures the chaos below the solid earth. Then there is room for God to bring forth by his word plants and trees, sun and moon and stars, animals of every kind, and finally human beings.
In short, the confession of faith here is that God is not only the Creator of all, but that he also sustains the life and order of everything. The chaos can return (cf. Genesis 7:11; Job 3:8; Jeremiah 4:23-26), and it is only because God holds it in check by his faithfulness that it does not engulf the creation. We are dependent on the Lord for the very structure and sustenance of our universe.
There therefore is no deism here. God does not just wind up the world like a watchmaker and then let it run by itself according to what we call natural laws. No. It is by the Word of God that plants and trees, animals and human beings can bring forth fruit according to their kind and propagate the earth. Nature's processes continue because God speaks their continuance, and then adds his special blessing to allow their ongoing existence (vv. 22, 28; cf. Genesis 8:22).
Two kinds of light are created according to our text. There is the light of verse 3 that is given by the Word of God. And then there is the light shed by the sun and moon and stars (vv. 16-18). Throughout the Bible, the light furnished by the Word of God is given only to the faithful (cf. Exodus 10:21-23; Job 29:2-
3; Psalm 36:9; Isaiah 2:5; Matthew 5:14; Romans 13:12; etc.), and finally finds its incarnation in Jesus Christ, who is the light and life of human beings (John 1:4, 9). The other kind of light, furnished by the heavenly bodies, is given to all persons (cf. Matthew 5:45). And in a little phrase, the text makes fun of those who follow astrology and worship the stars. "He made the stars also," says verse 16 -- just a little afterthought on God's part, who rules over all the heavenly bodies.
The high point of creation, according to our text, is the creation of human beings, both male and female. And they are distinguished from all other creatures by the fact that they are made in the image of God (vv. 26-27). In the Old Testament, only the priestly primeval history asserts that fact (cf. Genesis 5:1; 9:6). And in the Old Testament as contrasted with the New, the image does not signify moral perfection. In the New Testament, only Christ bears the uncorrupted image (cf. Colossians 1:15; 2 Corinthians 3:18), but in the Old Testament, all human beings bear it, even after the fall (cf. Genesis 9:6).
Once again we have a confession of faith. Our text is saying that we all stand inextricably related to God and are responsible to him. We cannot fully be understood, except there is included that relationship to our Creator and Lord. Therefore, in everything that we do and say and think, we are doing and saying and thinking it in relationship to the Lord who made us. There is no way we can stand outside of the relationship or escape from it, try as we may in our sinful attempts to run our own lives.
We are given the image of God in order that we may have dominion over the earth (v. 26). The dominion is the result of the image, not the content of it. But contrary to some criticisms that have been leveled by ecologists against this verse, our dominion or rule is always secondary to God's. Human beings never own the earth. "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof" (Psalm 24:1), and we are but God's stewards of his creation, his "passing guests," as Psalm 39:12 so beautifully puts it. In our care of the earth, we are responsible to God, and our existence is to point to God's supreme rule. As Gerhard von Rad has put it, we are like those statues of themselves that Roman emperors used to spread around their empires in order to show that the territory belonged to them. So, analogously, God has placed us, his little images, across the face of the earth to point to the fact that the earth is his. Indeed, even when we go to the moon, we are not claiming it as our territory. We are taking God's image to the moon to show it belongs to him.
It is a strange note in this text that God at first gives only plants for human food (v. 30). However, in Genesis 9:2-3, meat is added, as a fuller gift of God, and Paul in Romans 14:1-3 describes the vegetarian as one of weaker faith.
God completes his initial creation on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2), and then he rests, thus setting aside the seventh day as one devoted to rest -- a sanctified period that will then be encoded in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15). We should note carefully that the seventh day is set aside, not as a day of worship -- there are many other passages that call us to worship -- but rather the seventh day is a time of rest from labor, not only for us, but for animals and servants and even land that is to lie fallow in the seventh year. Thus, one day of rest in a week is intended as a gift of God's merciful grace. He gives us our labor. But he also gives us our rest.
Finally, and importantly, Genesis 1:31 states that "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." No evil was laid on the world by God, and if there is wrong in the world, it did not come from the Creator. God did not create the disruptions and distortions of his good creation of which we read in the morning headlines. God created his world good. It is only in the following chapters of Genesis that we read that we human beings introduced evil into our world.
Be that as it may, the view that the world's a stage challenges us this Holy Trinity Sunday to consider the stage God the Creator built and then to discern among the cast of characters who plays which role and who has been seized by the manager for reaching out to the rest of the cast.
Genesis 1:1--2:4a
There exists no better description of stage construction than the account of creation in the first chapter of the Bible. Written by a group of priests, no less, this rather formal, even liturgical presentation of the Creator and the world is packed with majestic announcements and accompanied by a celestial choir. Among the majestic announcements is the goodness of the world, the source of light, and the cast called the human race.
The word "good" appears so repeatedly in the narrative that no matter how the cast performs, the theater and the stage itself obviously get rave reviews. God determines in advance what the function of each created phenomenon would be, and each performs according to its purpose. God announces, "Good!" just as a craftsman examines the work and declares his satisfaction with the same word (see Isaiah 41:7). And so God made the light to distinguish between day and night, the firmament to separate waters from waters, the ground to provide vegetation, the heavenly luminaries to give light and to distinguish between days and months and seasons. When each aspect of the stage had been completed and worked to satisfaction, the Builder said, "Good!"
As for the lighting, we could say that right from the opening curtain, it was "out of this world." That there was day and night for three acts without any sun indicates that God is the light of the world, an announcement that will occur again at the play's conclusion (Revelation 21:23; 22:5). That plot alone sends a clue to the audience that the action is not simply about theater construction; it is about the One who is Owner and Manager and Director.
As for the cast of human characters, the same Owner made them all to reflect his own image on stage. In the parlance of the scriptwriter's day, "the image of God" was usually reserved for the leading role, even the king of the land. But on this stage every human being, male and female alike, was cast in the role of God's image and assigned the task of caring for the whole theater and for everything and everyone in it.
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
This second letter to the Corinthians followed the first by a year or two (perhaps about A.D. 55 or 56), but it has quite a different kind of script than the first. First Corinthians was a letter clearly focused on the problem of disunity in the congregation and on specific questions addressed to Paul either in writing or in person. The second letter is primarily a defense by Paul of his apostolic office, particularly against various charges raised by some in the congregation.
It is not surprising that with the cast in some disarray, Paul here concludes the letter by encouraging them to get back to the script and stick to the plot. That appeal includes "put things in order, ... agree with one another, live in peace," exactly the opposite of the ways they are behaving. Then Paul announces the promise that within such harmony "the God of love and peace will be with you," similar to the promise from the Risen Lord to the apostles on the mountain in Galilee (Matthew 28:20).
Paul exhorts his readers to "greet one another with a holy kiss," a practice observed nowadays more in Islamic cultures than in Christian churches. Yet to come so close to another with "a holy kiss" (probably on the cheek) is to mend the fence that separates people in their quarreling and dissensions. The greeting of one to another extends throughout the church, for Paul sends greetings from "all the saints" to that contentious congregation.
Finally, the apostle ends his letter with the benediction that is reminiscent of the baptismal formula in Jesus' commission, emphasizing grace from the Son, love from God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit -- all to a group of Christians who have replaced grace with requirements, love with antagonism, and fellowship with divisive cliques. To contrast everything in their congregational experience with the blessings of the Triune God calls them to the meaning of the baptism and to the possibilities of life together.
The play, after all, must go on.
Matthew 28:16-20
The Great Commission deserves its name. It defines mission in worldwide terms and it does so in the name of the Triune God. In so doing, this pericope is a natural for this Trinity Sunday.
There are, of course, other commissionings in the New Testament, and they should all be considered as part of the mission of God in which our Lord commands us to participate. The earliest Gospel, Mark, places the commissioning of the Twelve quite early in the ministry of Jesus. There Jesus ascends "the mountain" and invites those whom he wanted to join him. Twelve he appointed "to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons" (Mark 3:13-15). The parallel passage at Luke 6:12-13 likewise portrays Jesus as ascending "the mountain." Typical of Luke, the first purpose of Jesus' ascent is "to pray," but when the praying is finished Jesus summons his disciples to join him and from there he commissioned them to be apostles. (Luke does not mention the functions the apostles are to play, as Mark does.) In these accounts Mark and Luke continue the tradition from the Old Testament in which God invites to "the mountain" those who are to play a role in the history of salvation and commissions them: Moses to Mount Sinai/Horeb in Exodus 3; each and every Davidic king to Mount Zion in Psalm 2; Elijah (without invitation) in 1 Kings 19.
In Matthew's Gospel the mountain parallel with Mark and Luke takes an interesting turn. Matthew has Jesus go up on "the mountain" at about the same point in the story, but without invitation the disciples gather to hear Jesus' sermon, and by the time the sermon is concluded, the "crowds" express their astonishment at his preaching and teaching with authority (Matthew 5-7). No commissioning takes place to correspond to that of Mark 3 and Luke 6. Matthew reports that parallel chapters later (10:1) without reference to a mountain at all. The function of the commissioning there consists of "authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness," precisely what Jesus had been doing according to the previous paragraph at 9:35. As the commissioning unfolds here, the functions fall under the rubric, "The kingdom of heaven has come near" (v. 7), and the recipients of this good news are solely "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (v. 6).
It appears that Matthew has been saving his "mountaintop" commissioning for the punch line of his Gospel, the Great Commission, which takes place on "the mountain to which Jesus had directed them" (28:16). The mountain setting comes as a complete surprise here, because no recorded words of Jesus had directed to the mountain. The instructions Jesus had given to the women fleeing the empty tomb were simply, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me" (28:10). One gets the impression that Matthew, in spite of his variations on the theme earlier, cannot complete his Gospel without including a commissioning on the mountain, even if he did not adequately prepare the reader for that site.
In any case, arriving at the mountain, the disciples, when they saw Jesus, "worshiped him; but some doubted" (v. 17). Here Matthew reports briefly the not unanimous response to the Resurrected Lord, probably a reality among the early representatives of the church. It is the same doubting response that comes to more dramatic expression in John's account about Thomas (John 20:24-29). Surprisingly Jesus does not deal with the difference between worshipers and doubters in our pericope. He commissioned all eleven with one set of words.
Perhaps that reality itself can become the focus of a sermon. Faith and doubt always seem to exist side by side, both within the community of believers and within a believer. As each baptized Christian faces various circumstances in life, faith or doubt rise to the surface. Some people in grief over the death of a loved one or over a divorce experience faith rising to new heights while others doubt the message of the church entirely during such periods. As some people are flying high, others within the same worshiping community wallow in doubt. At any given point, the high flyers might be grounded, and the doubters might soar. Yet, within that tension of faith and doubt the same Risen Christ comes to one and all, offering his presence regardless of circumstances and commissioning the family of the baptized without distinction.
As for the words of Jesus themselves, it is essential to note that the words of the commission are based on the first sentence Jesus utters: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." The issue of authority began with Matthew's report of the Temptation by the devil in chapter 4. For the third temptation the devil took Jesus "to a very high mountain" where he showed him all the kingdoms of the world. He offered them to Jesus in exchange for worshiping him. The devil's offer was based, of course, on the devilish assumption that the kingdoms of the world belonged to him, and with the authority of his ownership he could give them away (Matthew 4:8-9). Jesus, of course, proved faithful to the Lord God, even though that fidelity would lead down the road of suffering to Golgotha.
The authority issue surfaces repeatedly in Matthew's Gospel. At the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount the crowds, having heard Jesus' words, "were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes" (7:28-29). The difference, of course, is that the scribes "were" authorities on the Torah, but they did not "have" the authority with which Jesus spoke the entire sermon. That authority is divine, for what Jesus said from the mountain on that occasion fulfilled, even reinterpreted, the law given centuries earlier by God to Moses and the people at Sinai. The centurion stationed at Capernaum assumed Jesus' authority to cure his servant when he compared Jesus' word of command to his own situation as "a man under authority, with soldiers under me" (8:9). When some of the scribes accused Jesus of blaspheming when he forgave the sins of the paralyzed man, Jesus acted to heal him as well "so that you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...." Again the crowds were filled with awe "and they glorified God, who had given such authority to human beings" (9:2-8). Obviously the crowds were able to discern the source of Jesus' authority far better than the scribes who asked him on another occasion, "By what authority are you doing these things?" This was a question on which Jesus allowed them to dangle (21:23-27).
At the conclusion of his Gospel, Matthew reports the authority issue is settled once for all. Using the theological passive common in the New Testament, Jesus announces that, having been raised from the dead, "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." That divinely bestowed authority over heaven and earth is the basis for his commission: "Go therefore...." The words that define the apostles' role in God's mission stretch their earlier commissioning to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (10:6) to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...." Matthew already hinted at the worldwide scope of the mission in the second chapter of his Gospel when he reported the visit of the "wise men from the East" to the child Jesus (2:1-12).
That the commission included, in addition to baptizing, the command to teach "to obey everything that I have commanded you" takes us back to the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is portrayed as the Teacher with authority who expects from his disciples a "righteousness" that "exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees" (5:20). Obedience is the mark of the disciple, just as such righteousness led Jesus himself to be baptized by John (3:15). Likewise the righteousness of obedience will distinguish those who are baptized in the name of the Triune God.
Finally, Jesus acts as a chip off the old block when he promises to be present with his disciples as they pursue this mission. It is the same promise that God gave to Moses when the Lord commissioned him to deliver the Israelites from the bondage in Egypt (Exodus 3:12), to Gideon when the Lord called him to lead the Israelites against the Midianites (Judges 6:16), and to Jeremiah when the prophet-to-be protested his calling on the basis of his immaturity (Jeremiah 1:4-10).
The presence of the Risen Lord with the whole church is likewise the promise that enables us to participate in God's mission to a broken world. Indeed, it is the world that God created that God loves, and so it is to the world that God sends the church.
If "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players," then God has opened the curtain for those members of the cast called the church to transform characters and audience into disciples and bring all the theater to its Owner.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Genesis 1:1--2:4a
This priestly account of God's creation of the world has been called the most theological chapter in the whole Bible. Written down in the sixth century B.C., its every word is carefully thought through. But it is not intended to be a scientific account of how God made the cosmos. The endless creationist attempts to make it into science and to foist it on our schools are invalid.
Rather, this passage is intended as a confession of faith. Some of its language is borrowed from other ancient Near Eastern religions. But the borrowed words and phrases of the time are only utilized to set forth a soaring faith that arises out of Israel's historical experience with her God. Because God has had the power to roll back the waters of the Reed Sea and set his people free from slavery; because he has had the might to kill and to make alive, to overcome the mightiest empires, and to make for himself a chosen people, Israel has confessed that the Lord has sovereignty over all things and persons as their Creator and Sustainer. We must not ignore the faith exhibited in this passage in favor of some sort of ignorant "science."
God's creative act in this text consists in bringing order into the darkness, evil, and death of chaos, symbolized here in the form of the watery deep. In the beginning, says our text, there was only tohu wabbohu, formlessness and void -- the all-
engulfing powers of nothingness. And God's act of creation consisted in putting bounds on chaos and holding it in check, so that the life and light, order and goodness of creation become possible for humans and all things (cf. Psalm 104:5-9; Job 38:8-
11; Isaiah 45:18-19). Thus, God creates light to hold back the darkness, and separates the chaotic waters by dividing them with the solid arc of the firmament. He puts bounds on the chaos to let the dry land appear, and captures the chaos below the solid earth. Then there is room for God to bring forth by his word plants and trees, sun and moon and stars, animals of every kind, and finally human beings.
In short, the confession of faith here is that God is not only the Creator of all, but that he also sustains the life and order of everything. The chaos can return (cf. Genesis 7:11; Job 3:8; Jeremiah 4:23-26), and it is only because God holds it in check by his faithfulness that it does not engulf the creation. We are dependent on the Lord for the very structure and sustenance of our universe.
There therefore is no deism here. God does not just wind up the world like a watchmaker and then let it run by itself according to what we call natural laws. No. It is by the Word of God that plants and trees, animals and human beings can bring forth fruit according to their kind and propagate the earth. Nature's processes continue because God speaks their continuance, and then adds his special blessing to allow their ongoing existence (vv. 22, 28; cf. Genesis 8:22).
Two kinds of light are created according to our text. There is the light of verse 3 that is given by the Word of God. And then there is the light shed by the sun and moon and stars (vv. 16-18). Throughout the Bible, the light furnished by the Word of God is given only to the faithful (cf. Exodus 10:21-23; Job 29:2-
3; Psalm 36:9; Isaiah 2:5; Matthew 5:14; Romans 13:12; etc.), and finally finds its incarnation in Jesus Christ, who is the light and life of human beings (John 1:4, 9). The other kind of light, furnished by the heavenly bodies, is given to all persons (cf. Matthew 5:45). And in a little phrase, the text makes fun of those who follow astrology and worship the stars. "He made the stars also," says verse 16 -- just a little afterthought on God's part, who rules over all the heavenly bodies.
The high point of creation, according to our text, is the creation of human beings, both male and female. And they are distinguished from all other creatures by the fact that they are made in the image of God (vv. 26-27). In the Old Testament, only the priestly primeval history asserts that fact (cf. Genesis 5:1; 9:6). And in the Old Testament as contrasted with the New, the image does not signify moral perfection. In the New Testament, only Christ bears the uncorrupted image (cf. Colossians 1:15; 2 Corinthians 3:18), but in the Old Testament, all human beings bear it, even after the fall (cf. Genesis 9:6).
Once again we have a confession of faith. Our text is saying that we all stand inextricably related to God and are responsible to him. We cannot fully be understood, except there is included that relationship to our Creator and Lord. Therefore, in everything that we do and say and think, we are doing and saying and thinking it in relationship to the Lord who made us. There is no way we can stand outside of the relationship or escape from it, try as we may in our sinful attempts to run our own lives.
We are given the image of God in order that we may have dominion over the earth (v. 26). The dominion is the result of the image, not the content of it. But contrary to some criticisms that have been leveled by ecologists against this verse, our dominion or rule is always secondary to God's. Human beings never own the earth. "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof" (Psalm 24:1), and we are but God's stewards of his creation, his "passing guests," as Psalm 39:12 so beautifully puts it. In our care of the earth, we are responsible to God, and our existence is to point to God's supreme rule. As Gerhard von Rad has put it, we are like those statues of themselves that Roman emperors used to spread around their empires in order to show that the territory belonged to them. So, analogously, God has placed us, his little images, across the face of the earth to point to the fact that the earth is his. Indeed, even when we go to the moon, we are not claiming it as our territory. We are taking God's image to the moon to show it belongs to him.
It is a strange note in this text that God at first gives only plants for human food (v. 30). However, in Genesis 9:2-3, meat is added, as a fuller gift of God, and Paul in Romans 14:1-3 describes the vegetarian as one of weaker faith.
God completes his initial creation on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2), and then he rests, thus setting aside the seventh day as one devoted to rest -- a sanctified period that will then be encoded in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5:12-15). We should note carefully that the seventh day is set aside, not as a day of worship -- there are many other passages that call us to worship -- but rather the seventh day is a time of rest from labor, not only for us, but for animals and servants and even land that is to lie fallow in the seventh year. Thus, one day of rest in a week is intended as a gift of God's merciful grace. He gives us our labor. But he also gives us our rest.
Finally, and importantly, Genesis 1:31 states that "God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." No evil was laid on the world by God, and if there is wrong in the world, it did not come from the Creator. God did not create the disruptions and distortions of his good creation of which we read in the morning headlines. God created his world good. It is only in the following chapters of Genesis that we read that we human beings introduced evil into our world.
