I have spent years quoting the Great Commission found in Matthew 28:19-20:
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (NIV)
Yet I never noticed the emphasis on the very end of the text, “I am with you always…”
Carl Raschke, in GloboChrist: The Great Commission Takes a Postmodern Turn (The Church and Postmodern Culture), notes “The Great Commission, as many close readers of the Gospel text itself might have emphasized, is not really about getting the message out…It is about manifesting and making real the meaning of the paradox of the incarnation and the miracle of Christ’s reception.” (48)
In addition: “The Great Commission, when all is said and done, rests upon the great postmodern preposition – the ‘with’ of divine relation as contrasted with the ‘is’ of doctrinal propositions. God is never what he is ‘in himself.’ God is always mit uns (with us) or für uns (for us), as Luther insisted. He is what he is in relation to us…It is not divine revelation so much as it is divine relation, a relationship that is ‘with us always.’ It is a relation that must be propagated until the ‘end of time’” (48)
I really like this thought. What are your thoughts?
















