#40. “Go” is Not the Only Verb in the Great Commission
Are home duties a rival to the Great Commission? Will building an overflowing home waste resources that could otherwise be spent telling the world about Jesus? This is the question which troubled me most as I fumbled around in the early years of motherhood. The word that evangelical Christians often focus on is “go”. It’s hard to know what to do with that when so much of raising children is not going. This focus on taking the gospel to new people in new places pickles many of us in guilt. The time of small children is not full of new people and new places. We’re trying to work out how to be with the same few people in far fewer places than we used to circuit. The slow smallness of invested mothering can look, on the outside, like apathy about Jesus’ mission, or an impediment to it.
This is Matthew’s account of the Great Commission Jesus gave before he ascended back to heaven:
‘Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” ‘ Matthew 28:16-20
A few points to consider:
Mums are not apostles. Jesus is addressing the eleven disciples, the apostles of the church, in his final terrestrial instructions. Jesus’ mission will continue until the “end of the age” and that timeline implies that people beyond the first eleven disciples will be involved in it. The comfort of Jesus’ nearness will be for disciples right to the end. Even still, this particular instruction was set in an historical moment, first given to individuals who were not us.
We are beneficiaries of the apostles’ mission. Twenty-first century Christians are those from other nations who have been made disciples of Jesus, who have been baptised into the name of the triune God. We are them who are being taught to obey everything Jesus commanded. The apostles are still teaching us how to obey Jesus through their authoritative apostolic writings in the New Testament. Through the Bible, those first apostles are still making obedient disciples of all nations. We need to see ourselves as recipients of the Great Commission before we can understand our place in the ongoing mission.
While there are people who still need to hear about Jesus, a lot of the “going” commissioned on that day has now happened. We are a long way into the “all nations” project (I doubt many of us are Palestinian Jews). The initial “going” which the first disciples were commissioned for is ancient history. We see it unfolding in the book of Acts as the gospel was preached in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, to Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Going was essential, and still is, but when each place is reached, the kingdom is meant to find permanent, planted expression. That’s a mission for every believer—learning to be Jesus’ obedient people in every part of our existence, in the place where the gospel finds us. As we do that, and tell the truth about the Lord Jesus as opportunities come, new disciples will be made.
“Go” is not the only imperative in the Great Commission, but it seems to be the one which gets the most attention in my part of the world. We spend lots of time strategising for evangelism and very little time on teaching disciples of Jesus to obey him in the particular situations he has placed us. Too much time given to figuring out obedience to Jesus is cautioned against as a distraction from the Great Commission. In order to stay focussed, we truncate the mission. We turn it into all going, but going is actually rather occasional compared with the constancy of being made an obedient disciple.
Wherever Jesus’ lordship is welcomed, it burrows down and grows new, settled, mature life. Given long enough, the smallest seed becomes the largest tree in the garden. By expecting that everyone ought to always and directly prioritise pioneer evangelism to new people in new places, we start to resemble tumbleweed, tossed across the surface of things. Tumbleweed covers territory faster than the tree. But over time, as a tree matures into flower, fruit and seed, it does travel beyond itself. In the long outworking of the kingdom into all places, across all times of history, there will be people who are gifted and called to go to new people and new places. That is not the call of every believer all the time. If all of us pioneer new territory, we’ll leave a trail of ghost towns behind us.
Discipleship and learning obedience are just as much part of the Great Commission as going. Making disciples and teaching obedience to Jesus take longer than an evangelistic event. Investing deeply in these slower parts of the Great Commission can feel inefficient. But if we don’t attend to the bits other than “go”, we eventually undermine the whole mission.
What we make of the Great Commission will affect how we do motherhood. If we see the mission only as a hurried work to relay a message to as many people as possible, then the duties of mothering will be a bottleneck of frustration. We’ll have tense rivalry between what we think God wants from us and the demands mothering makes of us. We’ll either feel very ineffective and guilty because mothering is so absorbing or we’ll take shortcuts through our maternal duties in order to get the gospel to new people. We’ll sacrifice our great centre of influence and responsibility.
The reality of motherhood which frustrates us is under the authority of Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth. It doesn’t make sense to resist and resent what he has authored for us because we think it will hinder his mission. As we acknowledge Jesus as Lord in our mothering, as we give more consideration to discipleship and obedience as a mum, a new harmony emerges. The perceived barriers of motherhood become the means of doing the mission. We realise the barrier is actually a bridge. As we see the breadth of the Great Commission, it’s easier to see that motherhood is very well suited to getting it done—not so much the going, but the slower work of discipleship and teaching obedience to Jesus. After all, motherhood runs deep in one place for a long time, much more like a deep-rooted tree than tumbleweed.
