The Commissioning of the Risen Christ: Defining Our Identity Michael Goheen Geneva Society Vancouver, B.C

The Commissioning of the Risen Christ: Defining Our Identity

Michael Goheen

Geneva Society

Vancouver, B.C.

“I will build my church”• Jesus announces the coming of the

kingdom• Begins the gathering of eschatological

Israel• Restores them to their missional calling• Trains and teaches them how to live as a

contrast community• Invites them to participate in his

eschatological gathering• Ushers them into the age to come by

death and resurrection• Risen Christ commissions them and

defines their role in new era

‘Commissionings’ at end of gospels

• Matthew 28.16-20

• Mark 16.9-20 [disputed ending]

• Luke 24.44-49

• John 20.19-23

Two possible approaches

• Treat each in context of particular gospel’s story

Matthew’s Great Commission“...entire gospel is written from the standpoint of this pericope...” (Otto Michel)

“...summary of the entire gospel of Matthew...” (Günther Bornkamm)

“...climax of the gospel...” (U. Luck)

“...culmination of everything said to this point...” (P. Nepper-Christenson)

“...table of contents of the whole gospel...” (G. Schille)

“...threads woven in fabric of Matthew draw together here...” (David Bosch)

Luke’s ‘Great Commission’• Stated as more of a fact or promise

“Matthew’s entire gospel can only be read and understood from the perspective of the final pericope. The same is true of Luke’s gospel. From its first verse this gospel moves toward the climax at the end.” (Bosch)

Two possible approaches

• Treat each in context of particular gospel’s story

• Distill similar issues in all commissionings

Elements of Commissions

1. Sent to all nations• “of all nations” (Matt. 28.19);

“to all nations” (Luke 24.47)

• Nothing in Biblical story indicates that God’s people should be sent to nations

Prophetic Message“First, the ingathering of the nations is an eschatological event . . . Secondly, the ingathering of the nations is not the work of Israel. Frequently it is the nations themselves who will take the initiative. In a number of significant passages it is God who gathers the nations. . . . Thirdly, these prophetic passages all envisage the nations coming to Israel, not Israel going to the nations. The recurring verb is ‘come’: ‘They will come to you. . .’ (Mic. 7:12), ‘nations shall come . . .’ (Isa. 60:3), etc. This movement from the periphery to the center has been appropriately labelled ‘centripetal.’”

Charles Scobie

Five features of eschatological pilgrimage• God will reveal himself to the world (e.g.,

Isa. 40:5)• This disclosure will be accompanied by

his Word, which summons the nations to acknowledge him (e.g., Isa. 45:20-22)

• The nations will hear this summons and journey to Jerusalem, the mountain of the Lord (e.g., Isa. 2:3; 19:23)

• There the nations will see the glory of God and worship him (e.g., Isa. 66:18; Zeph. 3:9)

• The nations will join the people of God in a messianic banquet (Isa. 25:6-8).

Joachim Jeremias

Role of God’s people

A decisive element of the prophetic conception of the pilgrimage of the nations to Zion is that the Gentiles, fascinated by the salvation visible in Israel, are driven of their own accord to the people of God. They do not become believers as a result of missionary activity; rather, the fascination emitted by the people of God draws them close. In this connection, the prophetic texts speak mostly of the radiant light which shines forth from Jerusalem.

Gerhard Lohfink


1. Sent to all nations• Nothing in Biblical story

indicates that God’s people should be sent to nations

• Israel sent to periphery rather than nations journey to center

• Great change of direction

Great change of directionIn the movement to the nations lies “the distinctive turning-point, the great change of direction of the gospel, indicated and prepared for by earlier declarations of Jesus (e.g. Matt. 13:38, 22:1-14, 24:14, etc.), but now coming into effect.” (Johannes Blauw)

“When the centrifugal dynamic of the early Christian missionary movement finally got under way, it was indeed something remarkably new in practice if not in concept.” (Chris Wright)


1. Sent to all nations

2. Sending of a community• Not task assigned to individuals

but identity given to a community

Recovering commissioning words for ecclesiology

• Often interpreted in terms of 19th – 20th century missions

• Concerned with identity of church

Ecclesiological Statement

The “Great Commission is a foundational ecclesiological statement, for it is addressed to the disciple community, not autonomous individuals.”

Wilbert Shenk

“Mt. 28:18ff. bears primarily on the life of the church itself, and not on the practice of mission.”

Günther Bornkamm

Launching of the church

Jesus’ commission “is the launching of the church. It is a movement launched into the public life of the world. It has no life except in this sending. . . . the church . . . [is] a body thrust out in to the world to draw all people to Christ. The church’s being is in that sending.”

Lesslie Newbigin

Church as contrast society

The “primary issue is not the private holiness [or evangelisic endeavours] of the individual Christian. The point is that an entire people give witness to God’s plan for the world. . . . The entire New Testament sees the church as a contrast-society which stands in contrast to the world.” (Gerhard Lohfink)

The people of God sent to “manifest God’s presence in its midst by its life together and its relationship to others.” (Richard Bauckham)

Mission: Centrifugal and Centripetal

• Centrifugal: Communities of God’s people sent to live among all peoples and nations

• Centripetal: Attractive life that is to draw nations into covenant with God



2. Sending of a community

3. Eschatological Israel sent

Sent to continue mission of Israel

• Eschatological Israel sent to fulfill calling

• Need to read Old Testament in missional way for understanding mission of people of God today

• Utter neglect of Old Testament

Sending of gathered and renewed Israel

• Israel’s role (Gen. 12; Ex. 19)• Israel’s failure• Prophetic promise: Gather and

restore Israel; Gentiles drawn to reconstituted community

“Israel, the people of God, becomes an eschatological concept: Yahweh will once again be Israel’s God, Israel will once again be Yahweh’s people.” (Hans Küng)


• Israel’s role (Gen. 12; Ex. 19)

• Israel’s failure

• Prophetic promise: Gather and restore Israel; Gentiles drawn to reconstituted community

• Jesus’ gathering and renewal of lost sheep of Israel

Jesus’ Gathering• Appointment of 12 as new, eschatological Israel: Symbolic

prophetic action

The Twelve are chosen out of a much larger number of disciples. They represent the twelve tribes; they are the beginning and center of growth for the renewed, eschatological Israel. All discipleship is thus aimed at Israel and at the gathering of the whole people of God. With the disciples begins the eschatological re-creation of Israel, and in the re-creation of Israel the reign of God is revealed. (Lohfink)

• The eleven in Galilee “embody and represent the Israel of the end of time. These ‘eleven’—according to Biblical arithmetic!—equal ‘twelve,’ for even in their incompleteness they account for the totality of Israel.” (Karl Barth)

Through this mission the community of Jesus becomes manifest in his resurrection as the universal community. It is the eschatological Israel, the Israel which receives into its life and history the chosen ones from among the Gentiles. In fact it had never been anything else. Even during his life before death Jesus had never given it any other foundation than which now became apparent: not as a special community within Israel, and hence not as a new form of the previous Israel in history, but as the Israel of the end of time, fulfilling the destiny of the historical Israel, as “a covenant to the people, a light to the nations” (Is. 42:6, 49:8). (Karl Barth)


• Israel’s role (Gen. 12; Ex. 19)

• Israel’s failure

• Prophetic promise: Gather and restore Israel; Gentiles drawn to reconstituted community

• Jesus’ gathering and renewal of lost sheep of Israel

• This community that is sent

Significance?

• “. . . fulfilling the destiny of Israel . . .” (Barth)

• Light to the nations

• As a community that embodies God’s creational intention (backward), eschatological purpose (forward), standing against idolatry of nations (outward)

Elements of Commissions1. Sent to all nations2. Sending of a community3. Eschatological Israel sent4. God’s people take new form

“. . . the renewed-Israel people, now transformed through Jesus and the Spirit into a multi-ethnic, non-geographically-based people charged with a mission to the whole world.” (NT Wright)

New kind of people with same mission

• No longer embody own culture designed by God’s revelation

• Now part of cultures of the world

• Diaspora people• Contextualisation issue

intensifies: Embrace gifts of all cultures, stand against the idolatry of all cultures

Clash with surrounding society

It must be said forthrightly, with pained regret, that, as Christ warned his disciples, to the end of the age there will be alienation and even hostility between the church thus understood and the surrounding society. For that surrounding society lives by other values; it has other goals, and it worships other gods. (Wolterstorff).

Need for Cultural Analysis

• Difficulty of situation of living amidst the nations: Danger of syncretism

• All cultures shaped by idolatrous core

• Need to understand culture• Redemptive-tension• Problem myths: Christian culture and

secular/pluralistic neutrality

Importance of Tension

The deeper the consciousness of the tension and the urge to take this yoke upon itself are felt, the healthier the Church is. The more oblivious of this tension the Church is, the more well established and at home in this world it feels, the

more it is in deadly danger of being the salt that has lost

its savour (Hendrik Kraemer).





4. God’s people take new form

5. People sent on the basis of resurrection and gift of Spirit

Prerequisite before nations can be gathered

“From all accounts, it is clear that the resurrection as the crowning of Christ’s work, is the first and great presupposition and condition for the proclamation of the gospel among the nations. The second is the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Johannes Blauw)

Resurrection and Pentecost• Resurrected/Exalted Christ:

Authority over all nations (Matthew)• Backdrop: Daniel 7.14• “Mission is the summons of the

Lordship of Christ.” (Blauw)

• Spirit (Luke and John)• Universal work of risen Christ• Gives life of age to come to God’s

people

The mission of God’s people is “the actualization of the universal power imparted to the Risen One (Matthew) [and] the implementation of the energy of the Spirit emanating from the Resurrection (Luke and John).”

(Blauw)





4. God’s people take new form

5. On basis of resurrection and gift of Spirit

6. Sent to continue the mission of Jesus

Sent to continue mission of Jesus

On basis of sending their “mission has all the dimensions and scope of Jesus’ own ministry.” (Lucien Legrand)

Reading gospels to understand our mission

• Enables us to know how to read the gospels!

• Evangelicals not sure what to do with earthly ministry of Jesus

• Understanding the church’s role as the resumption of Jesus’ own cause shows the “meaning of the gospel accounts in [their] function of [teaching us about] mission.” (Legrand)

Sent to continue mission of Jesus• Explicit in John: “As the Father has sent

me, I am sending you.”• Jesus was sent to . . .

• Embody kingdom in his life• Live in communion with the Father• Live in power of Holy Spirit• Announce kingdom with words• Demonstrate kingdom with deeds• Pray for coming of the kingdom• Form a community to embody kingdom• Teach them how to live for sake of nations• Lifestyle of suffering and selfless love• Minister to poor and marginalised


• Explicit in John: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

• Matthew: Make disciples

Make disciples!

• Sent back through Matthew asking:

• What is a disciple?

• How did Jesus make them?

What is a disciple?• Responds to the message of the

kingdom with faith and repentance disciple

• Centres his life on Jesus, learning to live in loving communion with him, and modelling his life on Jesus’ own

• Learns costly obedience to every word of Jesus

• Participates in the mission of Jesus by making the kingdom known in word and deed

• Learns suffering love

How did Jesus make disciples?

• Invited them to follow him • Summoned them to complete

commitment and obedience to himself

• Taught them how to live as contrast community

• Called them to participate in his mission

• Taught them to pray

Make more of yourselves!

“Make them what you yourselves are! Have them learn here, with me, where you yourselves have learned! Call them into the twelve of the eschatological Israel! Let them share in its place and task in the world!” (Karl Barth)

Jesus “commissions his own disciples to go out and replicate themselves by creating communities of obedience among the nations.” (Chris Wright)


• Explicit in John: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

• Matthew: Make disciples

• Luke: Preaching repentance for forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name

Forgiveness in Luke

• Often narrowed

• Imprisonment metaphor: Liberation and release from bondage

• Wide range of meanings that gives expression to all-embracing nature of God’s reign

Forgiveness or liberation

Term ‘forgiveness’ (Gr. aphesis) “includes a wide range of meanings, from the freeing of bonded slaves to the cancellation of monetary debts, eschatological liberation, and the forgiveness of sins. All shades of meaning of these terms give expression to the all-embracing nature of God’s reign . . .” (David Bosch)

Forgiveness in Luke• Often narrowed • Imprisonment metaphor:

Liberation and release from bondage

• Wide range of meanings that gives expression to all-embracing nature of God’s reign

• Closely associated with repentance and salvation

Repentance and salvation• Repentance: Turning from idolatry

to serve living God• Salvation: All embracing

• Six dimensions: economic, social, political, physical, psychological, and spiritual (E. H. Scheffler)

• ‘Salvation involves the reversal of all the evil consequences of sin, against both God and neighbour.’ (Bosch)

• ‘If human distress takes many forms, the power of God does likewise.’ (Bosch)

Missional identity?

• Continue Jesus’ mission (John)

• Make disciple community just like Jesus did (Matthew)

• Make known an all-embracing salvation and call to repentance to know it in the way of Jesus (Luke)

Differences

• Jesus: to lost sheep of Israel; Church: to all nations

• New contexts

Creative contextualisation of Jesus’ mission

“Jesus did not leave to his disciples a detailed program of action, or a treatise that would serve to guide them later on in every circumstance, or precise rules for their future organization. He left them free to give responsible form to their mission when, after their Easter experience, they would face new circumstances, needs, and problems.” (Hugo Echegaray)

Documents

The Commissioning of the Risen Christ: Defining Our Identity Michael Goheen Geneva Society Vancouver, B.C