“Called Regardless”
May 31, 2026
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
We are now “After Pentecost”—the season beginning with Trinity Sunday. You know, Trinity, 3 in 1, 1 in 3. “The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” of baptism fame. A very tricky and mysterious theological construct that we are going to only give a nod to this year. Because what sounded in my brain wasn’t about that. It was earlier in what has been called “The Great Commission.”
Now if I am being honest, if you had said to me “what is the great commission?”—I would have said, it is the end of the gospel of Matthew. And I see it in my mind’s eye, the disciples gathered on a mountain, receiving directions from Jesus after the resurrection. Jesus talks about having all authority. And then Jesus tells them to go [the choir will be singing my favorite paraphrase of this—written by Natalie Sleeth--a little later in the service—“Go ye, go ye into the world and make disciples of all the nations. Go ye, go ye into the world and I will be with you there! Go ye, go ye into the world and take the Gospel to all the people, Go ye, go ye into the world and I will be with you there.”]
They are to go; they are to make more disciples; they are to baptize; and they are to teach. And the promise is that during all that Jesus will be with them. And since it is called the great commission, you can almost see the disciples streaming off that mountain into the highways and the byways of the world—doing exactly what Jesus commanded.
And here is where our tendency to enmesh the Scriptures becomes a stumbling block, at least to remembering accurately what each gospel says. We see this most intently at Christmas where the kings of Matthew join the shepherds of Luke at the manger of the newborn Jesus. In our reading for this morning we would do well to hear the story that the writer of Matthew is telling.
In this story the commission is given in the environs of Galilee instead of Jerusalem. In fact, this story finishes the gospel itself--it doesn’t precede a story of Pentecost as does the Luke-Acts version.
Let’s remember what happens after Easter in the four gospels.
--In Mark (the original ending), the women see the empty tomb and go away and say nothing.
--In Luke—Acts the women are told by an angel that Jesus is risen, and then run to tell the disciples (who feel it is an idle tale). But Peter runs to the tomb, and is amazed at what happens. Luke continues with the Emmaus story—Jesus appearing to two disciples returning home from the eventful Passover time in Jerusalem. And then Jesus appears to the disciples, there in Jerusalem, and then he is carried up into heaven. (The Book of the Acts of the Apostles then starts with the retelling of the Ascension story and goes on to chronicle Pentecost.)
--John has the story of Mary meeting the gardner/Jesus, running to tell the news, returning with Peter and the beloved disciple. John has the most famous stories of the post-resurrection appearances—the story of Thomas, and the story of the breakfast on the beach.
Okay, that’s the way it is in the other gospels. In Matthew, the two Marys go to the tomb, encounter an angel who tells them the news, and as they are going to tell the disciples they meet Jesus and get to hold his feet and worship him. The next thing we hear is the plan of the chief priests to suppress the story of what has happened. “Let’s say they stole his body!” is what they put into the rumor mill. And then the scene cuts to Galilee, and our reading for today.
So, in Matthew there is only the story of Jesus meeting the women on Easter morning before we are pushed onto that mountain and hearing Jesus’ “great commission.” When Magdalene and the other Mary see Jesus they bow before him, they touch his feet, and they worship.
When the disciples see Jesus on the mountain, they worship him, And here is what caught my attention, it says “But they doubted.”
Can you blame them? They haven’t been told the news by angels. They haven’t met Jesus along the way. They haven’t seen or felt his wounds, or eaten breakfast with him. They don’t get to experience that rush of wind and tongues of flame and gifts of the Holy Spirit. In the Matthew tale, they are still raw from the shock of an empty tomb and what that might mean. They have been told to go to Galilee. Back to home base. Back to the familiar territory. Back to where it started. And they do. There, on a mountain (for mountains are so important for Matthew), Jesus gives his commission to that little band. That band that doubts.
What does that mean for us? The way that Matthew tells the story? Well, it says to me that we don’t have to be the energized, pumped up, people of Luke-Acts to be sent out. We don’t have to have all the answers, or even know all the questions to be commissioned. Jesus takes what he is given, and God calls us, even the flawed and unsure us, to be sent out into the world.
And that reminds me that the Bible is full of people who try to squirm their way out of the call of God. Remember Moses (who said he was tongue-tied), or Jeremiah (who claimed he was just a boy), or Peter (the one who denied him), or Paul (the one who spent time bringing charges against those in the church), or even Magdalene (from whom Jesus cast seven demons Luke tells us). None of what could have been excuses means that God says, “My mistake, I’ll call someone else.” No, they are called regardless.
The fact that the disciples, the eleven, the ones we call the apostles, doubted makes it possible for us to see ourselves on that mountain. The fact that they doubted says to us, God says come just as you are, I don’t need you to be perfect, I don’t need you to be more than you are, I don’t need anything but you—your body, your voice, your heart, your hands, your feet.
For there are those in need. There are those who are lonely and don’t know that they are already loved. There are those who are sick who do not know the comfort of a gentle touch, a caring heart, a listening ear, the presence of someone who is willing to walk whatever road they have to walk. There are those who are hungry—and could use food for the body and food for the soul. There are those who we hear about in Matthew 25 that have need of us. And Jesus says “what you do for the least of these my brothers and sisters you do for me.”
I can imagine how those disciples felt, because it is how we feel. God didn’t really mean us, right? There must have been a misunderstanding. We don’t feel ready. Look how small a group we are. And we need some more tools, we need some more time, we need some more people! The funny thing is that Matthew doesn’t continue the story (as the writer of Luke does in Acts). It’s almost as if the fact that people are hearing the story, are probably hearing it in a community of believers, tells you the end of the story. Tells you what happened after that commission. And maybe the story of Pentecost was so incredible, so pervasive, that it only needed to be told once in the Bible.
So, here is the good news. Our Christian year is created as both a chronological line (from Advent to Epiphany, Lent to Easter to Pentecost) and also as a spiral (where we tell and retell the stories of Jesus being with the disciples). So we can look forward to a whole summer and fall to listen again to the Jesus of Matthew, to hear of his healings, to ponder his parables, to walk the walk with him once more. So that we too can deepen our understanding. We too can have more insight, have our lives turned upside down and inside out. But none of that lets us off the hook for how we are to behave out there, how we behave when we leave this place.
That is what the great commission is all about. Out there in the world. Out beyond the confines of our safe sanctuary. We are called regardless of how prepared we feel we are.
We are called regardless of our youth, our experience, our strength, our weakness, our abilities, our limitations. We are called into a life with God, a walk with Jesus, a relationship with the Holy Spirit. Regardless. No one gets to take a pass. No excuse is good enough. The end of the gospel of Matthew (unspoken) must be that the disciples went out into the world. And so, that is what our commission is as well.
We are like those disciples. We have been to the mountain with Jesus, we have been to the valley, we have stood at the empty tomb. And now we hear those words from long ago, that are spoken again to us--we are called regardless. We are sent out into the world. We are sent to use those gifts that we talked about last week, gifts only we have because there is only one of us. We are called to be the people God has dreams for us to be. As the familiar hymn says, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, Yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”
Jesus, at the end of Matthew says, “I am with you always.” Not in a vague way. Not in an intellectual way. Not even just in a feeling way. The story of Pentecost, the experience of meeting the Holy Spirit, who proceeded from the Father and the Son (as we say in the Nicene Creed), is the way that Jesus is with us always. The Holy Spirit is our Advocate, our Guide, our Comforter, the Presence of God with us now. So we do not go into the wide world alone. We go together, hand in hand, and surrounded by, infused with, propelled in the Spirit of the One who first loved us.
May we answer that call. Alleluia, Amen.