Episode 439 The Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20)

This week BibleWorm finishes our exploration of Matthew’s Gospel with the Great Commission Jesus gives to his disciples in Matthew 28:16-20. We discuss the role of doubt in the life of faith, noticing that Jesus addresses both those who worship him and those who hesitate, seeming to make no distinction between them. We talk about the disciple’s commission to baptize and teach the nations, inaugurating people into an alternative way of life to that on offer from the Empire as given by God in the Torah and by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. And we wrestle with the concept of Jesus’s authority over the earth, which sounds an awful lot like the claims the Empire makes to justify its power over the people. What might it look like to envision an alternative form of authority grounded not in power over others but in  the liberating power of life for all?