Service sheet, with readings and hymn suggestions
“Put things in order, says the Apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians.
The opposite of order is chaos. This past week, these past months, we have seen both order and chaos around the world.
We need order in life. I don’t mean being rigid. I mean having order as opposed to chaos. We need order so that life fits together and makes sense (as much as life can), so that we have a firm foundation and can keep body and soul together.
The Bible even starts with having order as opposed to chaos. Our Old Testament reading was the story of creation from the very beginning of the Bible. This is a very orderly story about how God created the universe out of chaos. We hear how over the course of six days, God created first one thing, then another. God didn’t create the plants before creating the dry land and the water, because without dry land, there would have been nothing for the plants to grow in. We start with chaos, a formless void and darkness, and we end with an earth set in the midst of the heavens, with moon and sun and stars, and the earth has dry land and water, and we have plants, and animals, and human beings. We have order.
This Sunday in the church year is called Trinity Sunday. We celebrate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, that God is Three in One: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This in itself suggests an order in the universe, an order in the eternal nature of things, in the very way things are put together: God the Creator, who became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, and who sends the Holy Spirit to be God active among us still today. God is among us as we follow Christ and let the Holy Spirit work in us, so that life fits together and makes sense, and so that we have a firm foundation for our life and can keep body and soul together.
But such order in life is not very popular these days; it is not the “in” thing. Better, more exciting, people think, to be edgy, to defy order. These past few months, we have seen the potential for utter chaos because of a virus. And so governments have needed to make order in response to an unexpected and very difficult situation. People suddenly have had to make changes to the way we live and to make order where there could be chaos.
I have been struck the past weeks and months by the number of people who have commented to me on events in my native land. Before Covid-19 and often during it, chaos has begun to reign, order has been tossed aside, often in the name of supposed freedom. People think that freedom is the ability to do whatever they want. This is not freedom at all. It is chaos, because it does not take into account the well-being of other people, or even the well-being of oneself. People have given up God, order, and cooperation with one another, in the interest of a supposed freedom, and instead have ended up with chaos and violence.
In contrast, St. Augustine prayed to God, “To serve you is perfect freedom.” To live a religious life, a spiritual life, means subjecting oneself to a discipline, an order. People think “religious” and “spiritual” are opposed to one another: that religious means dry and boring, and spiritual means rosy and uplifting. But to try to be spiritual without an order to it, without being part of a tradition or a discipline, is to descend into self-absorption and spiritual chaos.
In our Gospel reading today Jesus gives us the foundations of an order in life. This passage is called the Great Commission, because it tells of Jesus sending his disciples with instructions on what to do now. Basically, he is giving them an order to follow, meaning not a commandment but rather a way of life. He gives them a way of life to follow. And these are the ingredients of that way of life:
Make disciples of all nations.
Baptize them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Teach them to obey everything Jesus has taught.
This means that followers of Jesus are to go out to the world — all the world — and tell people about Jesus. Teach them how to follow Jesus, how to love God and love their neighbors. Teach them to pray as Jesus taught us. Welcome them into the Christian life. Be with them, together.
It means that those followers themselves also must live the life that Jesus taught and gave to them: to pray, to cooperate with one another, to forgive, and to trust in God.
And Jesus adds to these instructions two reminders to help his followers as they go out to follow the Great Commission:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” he says. There’s an order to that, no chaos at all. All authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Christ.
And, he says,
“Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Jesus has authority over all things. And, he is with us always. He is both as big as big can get, and he is also right there with us, one on one. He goes with us as we do his work.
To follow what Jesus teaches here, to follow what Jesus teaches throughout the Gospels, means having an order to our life, lest we descend into chaos. It gives us a firm foundation for our life and helps us keep body and soul together.
To repeat what Paul said to the Corinthians:
“Put things in order, listen to my appeal [which can also mean ‘encourage one another’], agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.”
And then he concludes with words that have become to us a way to end meetings, to close worship, to draw us together before we disperse, to remind us of our unity together within the unity of the Holy Trinity. Those words are these:
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all.”