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We gathered with a little group of folks at sunrise on Easter Morning, April 9, 2023, on the beach in Rehoboth. The following is what I attempted to share with that group:
We are gathered here to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. We live every day with the awareness, but we take this one day, get up at the crack of dawn, in the cold, and stand on this beach… to celebrate.
This morning I don’t want to specifically discuss the resurrection, but an idea Jesus communicated after the resurrecton, and just before he left this earth.
Before we get to that, we have to back up a little.
As many of you may know, our daughter Katherine just gave birth to our second grandchild. When I shared that on Facebook, I mentioned the word “tribe”. Our tribe had just increased in number, and it is about to increase again when Sarah has her child. I was thinking about this and the word “tribe” at about the time we were considering having this gathering.
So “tribe” is what I want to discuss.
The term “tribe” is familiar to us because of the 12 Tribes of Israel. The 12 Tribes were the descendants of Abraham, and were a nation of people God promised to Abraham. Throughout the Old Testament, we see God dealing with this group of people. The people themselves identified with one tribe. The concept of tribe was important to them. Like we would do, they probably viewed their closest connections as their immediate family, then their extended family, then their tribe, and finally the whole nation of Israel.
That is the Old Testament concept of “tribe”.
Fast forward to the New Testament. The concept of “tribe” doesn’t seem to be mentioned as much in there. Instead, the focus seems to be on a few basic divisions of people – the Jewish People, their religious leaders, and everybody else - referred to as the Gentiles. But I suspect the concept was never far from their minds.
And along comes Jesus.
Jesus lives among His people and at about the age of 30, His public ministry begins. Then the trouble starts. The trouble starts because what he preaches isn’t what His people are expecting to hear, especially the religious leaders.
Jesus is eventually killed for what He is preaching. Then, to everyone’s surprise, He is resurrected from death. Safe to say Jesus had a record of being misunderstood. He spends a short time here on earth after the resurrection, and then He gives what we call “The Great Commission.” It’s found in Matthew 28.
The Great Commission, Matthew 28
16 But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. 17 When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful. 18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 [a]Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you [b]always, even to the end of the age.”
Now there’s been plenty of teaching about how his followers were to go about this “Great Commission”. I don’t want to discuss any of that teaching. Instead, I want say in different words what I think Jesus was getting at.
I think Jesus was basically re-defining the concept of “tribe”.
What do I mean by that? Part of the problem with God’s people in the New Testament was their insistence on holding onto old things. They remembered the 12 Tribes in their hey-day, when they were a powerful nation. In the New Testament, they are no longer powerful, but under the thumb of the Roman Empire. They were waiting for God to restore their power, and once again make them 12 powerful tribes of Israel.
That’s not what Jesus had in mind at all, and that’s basically what got Him killed.
What He DID have in mind was something between God and mankind based on relationship. He wasn’t abandoning the idea of “tribe”, but He was expanding upon it.
In the Old Testament, people had learned what it meant to be part of a tribe. They learned what it felt like to be part of a community, to be cared for and blessed by God, to have a direction. But Jesus came along and said “all that served a purpose. It taught you something, but it wasn’t the end goal. The end goal is for ALL mankind to come to know God, not just a select group of people.”
And how would this be done? Easy, just look at what Jesus did. He lived among His people. He ate with them. He shared in their grief and their happiness. He walked alongside them. He showed them how to be kind and compassionate. He sat with people others would NEVER sit with.
And then He gives this thing we call “The Great Commission”. What was He saying?
Basically, I think He was saying “Now go out and find your new tribe”. In other words, go out and live among people just as I have been living among you. Just as you saw me, be that way to your tribe. Go out, and remembering that love I had for you, and that love you had for your old tribe, give it to your new tribe.
What does this look like? It means that God will bring us people who become part of our tribe. We devote ourselves to that tribe. We live among them, we walk along side them, in the good and bad times. We share our lives together and learn from each other. We become a huge family.
I think we have a history of misidentifying who our tribe is meant to be. It isn’t just the people who we like, or the people who think exactly like we do. Just like the Jewish people in the New Testament had to do, we have to put aside our old thinking. The longer we’re at this, the easier it becomes for us to see who our tribe is.
And once we see that these folks are part of our tribe, we very naturally, or supernaturally, begin to treat them as such. We treat them as Christ would. We find ourselves involved with all kinds of people, just as He did.
Which brings us back to why we are all here this morning. Yes, it is to celebrate what Jesus did at the Cross, but it’s also about what He asked US to do in response to Him.
My encouragement to you is to go out and consider who your tribe is. And then devote yourselves to those people. We can’t devote ourselves to every single person and every single situation… it’s just not realistic. But I believe that if we are open to the idea, God will bring people into our lives who He intends to be in our tribe.
I don’t know all the specifics of the Great Commission. But I do know this… as we walk in it, Jesus promised to be with us, always.
