Today's passage is Matthew 28:11-20.
When the guards report what happened at the tomb, the chief priests bribe the guards to say that the disciples stole Jesus' body. Jesus meets the eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee, says he's been given all authority, transfers some of it to the disciples, ordering them to go to all nations, baptize people and teach them to obey what he taught. His promise is that he will be with them always.
In chapters 10 and 11, Matthew talks of 12 disciples. After that there is no number given to them until today's passage in the last chapter when he says the 11 disciples worshipped the resurrected Jesus but "some doubted".
With only 11, there is a broken unity, a sense of things not being complete, of things remaining to be done.
Jesus completed his work of teaching, healing, dying and rising from the dead.
There is no incompletion on his part.
The incompletion lies in me.
The righteousness of God that I dress myself in by faith for my redemption is God's free gift.
I remain a sinner and have no righteousness on my own, nor can I earn any. It's all from God's completed action.
My situation is that I am both a sinner and redeemed at the same time.
In God's view I am saved. In my view I continue to sin. I live in tension.
Today's passage shows me that tension. I am not 12 disciples, I am 11.
I am not perfect in my faith, I continue to have doubts and I continue to sin even though I go to the Sermon on the Mount and read and re-read what Jesus taught.
I struggle to obey.
Without Jesus' promise to be with me until the end, I would have no hope.
But I do have hope in his promise.
And I trust that his grace will be sufficient to guide my thoughts and actions.
Today at breakfast, God opened the oppotunity for me to share with my assistant principal.
By his grace I walked into that opening and shared some of my sin, the change God has made in me, what missions I and my wife have been on, and how God has blessed Wooridle Church and the recent seminar for pastors from other churches.
She watched me do my QT yesterday at the airport while we waited for our flight.
And today she asked about my QT.
All this is clearly God's doing, the giving of grace to go to "all nations" both within myself and and outside myself to others.
Lord, let me not despair in my weakness and failings, but trust ever more deeply in the promise of your presence to the end. Give me your grace to do your will and to obey your commands. Amen.
