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Did Jesus Speak in the Imperative? |
Matthew 28: 18 - 20 |
This is another of my sermons on the "familiar" words of Jesus, things that Jesus is quoted as saying that most church folk know in some form by heart. As I indicated one other place, I preached on these to try to put the words into a less familiar focus. Either "what did he really say" or "what might he have meant by those words." Here the text is what many of us grew up calling the Great Commission: "Go ye therefore into all the world and make disciples of all people." All said in as stern an imperative as we can say it. The has been taken to be the Christian Church's mandate to convert the world to Christ, to missionize everything and everybody. This sermon, though, attempts to clarify the translation of the key words, however, since there is no imperative in the sentence, but instead only a lowly participle. It is an exploration of that participle, then, which the sermon undertakes. So many biblical texts have been so badly handled, even mishandled over the years. In this regard, I recommend my book with Robert Kysar, Greek for Preachers. A lot of sermons would be made a lot better if preachers were to pay even the slightest attention to exporations of textual meaning. This sermon is an example of that. |