Matthew 28:16–20
The Great Commission in Matthew 28 offers a promise of life to the whole world in the name of the Trinity, as Jesus sends his disciples out to “all nations.”
Following on from our liturgical celebration of Pentecost, where people from all nations come to receive the Spirit, the Great Commission promises God’s presence from the mountain where Jesus appears to “all nations” and to “the end of the age.”
This text has been used, too often, to prioritize one culture over another. To insist that “baptizing all nations” means turning diversity into uniformity of cultural practice. To the sorts of theologies that led to colonization and racism, and to what Pope Leo XIV, in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas this week, described as the logic of the tower of Babel: “a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion.”
Instead, he proposes a model for rebuilding based on the book of Nehemiah, “through the shared responsibility of all: men, women, priests, artisans, heads of households and young people all play a part. It is an undertaking with God at the center, which rebuilds relationships before rebuilding with stones. Thus, ancient Jerusalem rediscovers a common language — not one of uniformity, but one of communion, namely the harmony that arises when all persons assume their own role and recognize that their strength comes from the Lord.”
What if the Great Commission is read not as a call to proselytization, but instead as a call to this kind of rebuilding in communion? If the promise to baptize all nations is instead a promise that participation in divine life and the Reign of God can come from any place or culture, regardless of divisions of language, borders, or geography?
That, perhaps, is a commission that supports Migration With Dignity, recognizing that borders cannot stop the movement of God’s presence, and that every culture, people, and nation find a dignified place in the Reign of God.
Hannah Bowman is a member of the Episcopal Migration Caucus who lives in Los Angeles, the founder of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons, and the author of Abolition Ecclesiology: A Spatial Theology for a Church Against Prisons (forthcoming from Fortress Press in November 2026)