Now we come to a greatly disputed part of this passage. Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

To understand it, we must ask two questions. First, What is this authority Jesus is passing on to his disciples? And second, What are we to do with it? Many churches hear Jesus telling them that the duly appointed leaders are to stand in for Jesus himself. They tell folks of their communities that they must not only obey the rules to be accepted by Jesus but also believe in the community’s doctrines in order to be found acceptable to God. As a result, many good people are being put outside the communities of God.

Notice, however, that this is not at all what our passage is saying. It clearly says this instead: Make disciples of all people and teach them to obey my commandments. And these commandments are clear: We are to love our enemies, not to judge them. We are to understand the generosity of God’s love for us and imitate the same generosity toward other people. Fred Craddock, the founder of the congregation I attend, used to say, “We only turn away those whom Jesus turned away,” meaning nobody. Our job is to love God and our neighbor as ourselves, to extend God’s grace everywhere. Separating the wheat from the chaff is most certainly not our job. A disciple’s task is to live according to the teachings of the teacher. This is the authority Jesus holds out to us—the authority not to identify and reject the unworthy but to know that in the presence of God’s love, we are all equally worthy.