Daily Lesson for May 10, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Matthew chapter 28 verses 16 through 20:

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. 18And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

Today is the Day of Ascension in the life of the church and we remember that final moment Jesus spent with his disciples before being taken up into heaven. 

I love this seen because it is so honest. Jesus stands before the disciples as they all apparently worshiped him. Yet, the Bible says, some doubted. It does not so who doubted — though apparently it was more than one and probably many. What truth and honesty here; we can worship and still doubt. We can see and still not fully believe.

There is no chastisement of doubters here.  Jesus does not rebuke the doubters for their unbelief. For rebuke and chastisement no more make a doubter believe than they do a blind man see.

What Jesus does instead is give them a job: 

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

The disciples are to go out and live this Way Jesus has taught them. They are to live and teach and walk and live the Jesus Way. They are to do what He did and say what He said. And in going out there into the world and living out the faith with courage and conviction, then they would discover that he really was standing before them and really would be with them — even unto the end of the age.

I quote Clarence Jordan all the time: “The proof of the Resurrection is not a rolled away stone but a carried away church.”  If Jesus is alive today He’s alive in the living witness of His Church. 

It’s by the disciples’ witness that the world comes to believe; and it’s by that same witness that the disciples believe also. 

An additional thought:

Seeing is not believing; being is believing.