Matthew 28:16-20

28:17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.

How can doubt and worship go together?

So often we live our lives with the expectation that we ought to be more convinced, more certain, more assured. We fear that our doubts are obstacles to God and “if only we were better Christians…” Yet God comes to us in the reality of who we are, knows our lives.

On the way down from the Mount of the Transfiguration in Galilee, when the disciples could not bring healing to an epileptic boy, it was the boy's father who responded to Jesus statement “All things are possible to those who believe” with the wonderful statement of faith “Lord I do believe, help my unbelief!”

A couple of weeks ago my friend Neil, training for the Church Army, phoned up with a last minute homework. “I need to ask someone how and when they meet with God.” At first, I felt like completely the wrong person to be asking, my job was coming to an unhappy end, I felt lost and confused. But as I talked, I remembered more and more of the times and places I've met with God in the past.

I told Neil how I'd been inspired by the songs and prayers of Taizé

28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

The great thing with God is that He doesn't leave it all up to us. “Jesus came to them!” How alone we'd be if God had just left us to it, waited for us to reach Him. Paul writes to the Romans

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless,

Christ died for the ungodly.

Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person,

Though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this:

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5 vv 6-8

Here we are, in our place of weakness, powerlessness, far from God. God is not weak but the gap between Him and us is unbridgeable without a supreme sacrifice. Paul, writing to the Phillipians, urges us to look at Jesus

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Phillipians 2 vv 6-11

It is this authority that the Risen Jesus possesses, the authority of the suffering servant. Matthew told of Jesus quoting Daniel in His answer before the Sanhedrin

The high priest said to him, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”

“You have said so,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

Matthew 26 vv 63-64

With the words ”All authority”, Matthew now returns to complete Daniel's prophecy

In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Daniel 7 vv 13-14

28:19 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.

This authority, given to Jesus, He now gives to His disciples. The statement “All Authority” shows that the mission of Jesus has by now expanded beyond its initial scope of Galilee and the surrounding villages, has expanded beyond the “lost sheep of Israel”. The mission of Jesus, and therefore the mission of the Disciples and soon His Church, is a global, a universal mission.

A few years ago at the Taizé European Meeting in Stuttgart, I attended a mass celebrated by the then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. The cardinal spoke in his homily on the message of the angels of how Jesus was sent into the world and how we are sent into the world.

John, the beloved apostle, tells us “God loved the world so much that He sent His Son.” Later in his Gospel, the same apostle tells of the risen Jesus appearing to His disciples and telling them “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” If Jesus was God's love gift to the world, then so are you!

Jesus has given the perfect model of discipleship, sharing not just His words, but also His life with the Twelve. Having loved His own, He loved them to the last! Jesus showed the way of servant leadership and called His disciples to exercise the same. The disciples were now being sent out to make disciples.

The entry point to this walk of discipleship was baptism. Jesus was revealed to the world at His baptism by John in the Jordan River. John had said “I baptize you with water…He will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire!” John's baptism was for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus takes this powerful symbol of initiation and makes of it something deeper and more powerful.

Jesus commands His disciples to “baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Baptism is already an initiation, but for Jesus it is not an initiation into a religion or a movement. Baptism becomes an initiation into a relationship. Through baptism, we are welcomed into the mystery of communion which is the Trinity. Jesus promised His disciples ”I will not leave you as orphans, but will send another comforter, the Holy Spirit.”

So often in those times of doubt or darkness, we can feel alone, we don't know how to pray or even why and yet the Holy Spirit is there, praying within us. Paul tells us

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God

Romans 8 vv 26-27

We are not alone!