"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations...." Some of you have a story, a capital S story, the story, which gives special meaning to your lives. You may have shared your story ... or it may remain under the lock-and-key of your heart. It may be a glad story or a painful one ... but the story is so "you," that you have memorized the memory. Many of you know my story, my "Go therefore and make disciples ...." story. I was sixteen years old and one evening I prayed, "God tell me what you want me to do with my life?" I closed my eyes and flipped the pages of the Bible and stuck in my finger (in those days the index finger was state-of-the-art digital computing), I stuck in my finger and landed on, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations...." Every three years on Trinity Sunday the source of my capital "S" story is read in churches in the four corners of Christendom. This story is the underpinning of my life, so much so that I plan to retire on Trinity Sunday six years from now, or maybe nine. My capital S story is so central to who I am, I figure that preaching on that text on my last Sunday in the pulpit will be a nice bookend for my life as a pastor. But you know that old saying as well as I do: "You want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans!"

Today is an extra special day in the lives of ten special young men and women: maybe this will be the capital S story day in their lives, I truly believe God has grand and glorious plans for each and every one of them. Maybe God's Holy Spirit will tap one of the ten on the shoulder and say, in one way or another, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...." If my pastor had said something like that on my confirmation day, I would have been the last one in the entire church to believe that God had me pegged as a pastor. Me? Never! Make that the second last person: my pastor would have been the last person: Tim? Never, ever! And here I am. There are worse ways to spend your working lives; to my way of thinking, there are no better.

But you know what? These sending words of Jesus, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations...," are not addressed to pastors only ... they are spoken to each and every Christian. The church calls these words The Great Commission ... and however it is that you spend your time in the workaday world, homemaker, cabinet maker, teacher, student - whatever it is that you do - it is your mission to be a part of a sowing circle: sowing the words of Jesus like so many Johnny Appleseeds, letting your words fall on the ears and hearts of a world crying to hear Good News. Dying to hear Good News.

And, just what is it we are commissioned in Baptism to tell the world? Our God is a God of love. When you boil it all down every thing we know about our God, revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ, at the heart of it all it's so simple, "God loves you." Boil it down: God is love. Everything else is commentary on that basic fact. A colleague tells of a family discussing his Sunday sermon over lunch. Now, to be sure, that warms the heart of a pastor. In the midst of the conversation, their fourth-grade daughter chimed in. "Oh, pastor's sermons are always the same. You know: blah, blah, blah - love." And my colleague writes, "Hey, this little girl really got it ... the message, the repetition, the core, the redundancy. Blah, blah, blah - love." At the end of the day, if that's all folks remember from any sermon preached from this pulpit, "Blah, blah, blah - love," well, that indeed is the heart of the Gospel.

And so this morning on some mountain in far off Galilee, Jesus says farewell to his disciples, as he send them into the world. Almost all of them left Judea and Galilee, the Biblical lands, and made their way into an unfriendly world, armed only with the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The grand news that "God so loved the world." God the Father, Who created us - so loves the world. God the Son, who died for the world, so loves the world. God, the Spirit, who comforts us - so loves the world. "Blah, blah, blah, God so loved the world." I hope these verses speak loudly and clearly to ten young Confirmands this morning ... and perhaps each of them might consider the call of Jesus to go into the world in his name. As my pastor might tell you, one ought never say "never, ever."

The disciples are in Galilee - and they must have been scratching their heads as Jesus spoke: "Go into all the world? I've never been more than eighty miles from home my whole life." And now they were being sent to make disciples of all nations, for Christ's sake. Aha - there is the key. It was for Christ's sake - and that made all the difference. These disciples of Jesus would do anything for him. Why not? Just weeks ago Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried - on their behalf. Jesus went to hell and back ... on their behalf, and for the sake of the world. If Jesus could go to hell and back, then they could certainly attempt the journey into "all the world," on his behalf ... for the sake of the world.

But hold on now. The disciples caught the enthusiasm to adopt their Great Commission Job Description, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing...;" they caught the enthusiasm but where did they get the courage? I could ask the same of you. How is it that you, with all of the burdens and responsibilities of making a living and supporting a family, how is it that you can give so generously to the work of the church? Where do you muster the courage to share your faith in the classroom or the workplace? Where do you find the time and courage to make worship a priority and your own ministry a reality?

When Jesus commanded the disciples to "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations...," there was only one word, and one word alone that could have prevented the disciples from collapsing in laughter or racing away in fear at the enormity of the mission. Only one word that could have strengthened their resolve and sent them out to the vast and forbidding world carrying only the gospel. According to the great preacher, Tom Long, "It was the word Jesus spoke: "And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." The promise of Jesus are words of comfort to every man, woman and child who has ever followed Jesus Christ.

Whatever else these young men and women learned about God from the knees of their parents, or the lips of their Sunday School teachers, or from the mouths of Confirmation Guides and Instructors, I hope they hold tight to the word of Jesus. A word which can change their worlds - the word of Jesus promising, "I am with you always." Those very words were not spoken in the liturgy of Baptism, but the unspoken promise was nevertheless implied. "Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked with the cross of Christ forever." Their Baptism was the opening chapter of their capital S Story, "Marked with the Cross of Christ forever." Just another way of proclaiming, "And remember, I am with you always...." And THAT is just another way of shouting from the roof tops: "blah, blah, blah - God is love!"