06/04/2026
SERMON: “Commissioning and Call, Pt. 1”
SCRIPTURE: Matthew 28:16-20
Friends, I come to you today to talk about commission and call – two of the foundational instructions given to the Disciples by Jesus; instructions that have, in turn, been handed down through the ages to new generations of Christians. When I say these words, “commission” and “call” – what comes to mind?
What does it mean to be “commissioned”? As far as I know, and someone may have a better answer, to be “commissioned” means that you’ve not only been given instruction to do something, but the tools and authority to do what’s been assigned to you. We hear about “commissions” in the art and commercial worlds – a commissioned salesperson, for instance, or a piece of art sold or bought on commission, with specific instructions or requests attached. A commissioned officer, in say the military or the police, is someone assigned to a specific duty. Commissioning means you have a mission, a duty.
Commissioning is at the heart of our scripture lesson today – a lesson taught by our Christ Jesus, the great teacher and great nominator Himself. His words for us today have been afforded a special title: “the Great Commission.” In today’s short passage, Jesus sets out the bare bones of what would become serving the church: he trained his Disciples and, in training them, measured their capacity to teach not just the Good News, Christianity’s history and scripture, but the deep values that go along with it. After having taught His people, testing them and straining them, He believed them ready to carry on His work: to do what He did, and to do so in new settings and new places.
So for thousands of years, we’ve commission our folks: pastors, lay ministers, chaplains, deacons, and missionaries all receive some sort of ceremonial commissioning. Some churches commission their students when they go to college or trade school; other churches commission and bless soldiers departing for combat zones. As part of these moments, good Christians are reminded that even as they’re entering a new part of their life, even as they enter the unknown, they are commissioned to carry on the Christians values they learned from their fellows.
But commissioning can’t exist without its partner: “call” – a call to service, a call to preaching, a call to what-have-you. A call, if I can give you my understanding of the idea, represents one person’s yearning to be in relationship with God, to live out their lives in a way that reflects that relationship with that God. And every person feels it differently. For some, it’s a mystical experience in the outdoors – one in which they feel touched by God, pushed by God to live out a Christianity that incorporates the natural world. For yet others, they might receive their call – that inkling feeling of purpose – while working with or serving other people; it might arrive while they’re working with the dispossessed or feeling dispossessed themselves. Some might feel called to pastoral ministry, or to evangelism, sharing the Gospel, and set out on that path from a young age; others, trying to avoid the pull of their own call, perhaps even embarrassed or fear of that call, choose to run far and fast from God – but if I am any example, God often manages to catch up. Call is a complicated and individual concept, and I’ve never really read or heard of another person’s “call” that is quite like my own.
For me, there’s a piece of this idea, this “calling,” that I think our modern church struggles with a bit. Though we have examples like the Great Commissioning at the root of our faith, we modern Christians still struggle with an essential pillar of call and commission, a connecting piece between these two elements – and that is invitation. Human invitation to live out ones’ call. And this is a particularly egregious tendency, considering what a call really represents to most people who feel it: a summons from our God, to serve in His name. But this matter of invitation, how we turn a call into a commission, often falls apart on the human side of things. We struggle to match God’s invitation, and that bleeds into how we do church.
Oftentimes, people feel a pull toward ministry, or work with the church, but have no idea how to get themselves started; how to ‘break into’ living out their Christian lives, for fear of doing it wrong or, God forbid, doing it too publicly or performatively. They feel an individual call to a specific kind of work, or community, or even a special church, and they respond as best they can… but without a hand up, without a human invitation, they might never know that others believe in them enough to be called, let alone commissioned unto something special. So here’s my challenge – and yours, too, if you’d like to take up the torch.
Consider this: how can we grow in who we commission, how can we grow in who takes ownership of the church and its legacy, when we struggle to recognize and affirm one anothers’ calls? When we struggle to talk out loud about personal spiritual experiences, or affirm those experienced by our fellows across the church bench? Think on that – and for those thinking, I have a short story I’d like to tell about how I first had my “call” affirmed by someone – so maybe, just maybe, it might help you affirm someone else’s.
The very first time I talked about how I felt God was not a momentous, grand time: it was a simple, one-on-one conversation. It happened in a big church sanctuary at Providence's Beneficent Congregational Church, a room with enough seats for hundred of congregants – but that day, it was just two of us: me, clueless in my early 30’s, and a lady named Joyce Drake. We were waiting for the rest of our mid-week Sanctuary Service crew to arrive. We sat in chairs facing each other, and I remember how strange the light was that day – how a beam of the sun had managed to pe*****te through the tall buildings surrounding Beneficent, had slipped through a slat in the closed window shutters; how it glinted on Joyce’s painted nails.
I’d met Joyce just after her 90th birthday, I think; she was the first person of that age group I’d say I considered a friend, if only because I’d never had the opportunity to get to know older people with the work I’d done and the life I’d led. I spent time in young settings, so I knew young people; I had no idea what I’d been missing by knowing people older and smarter and more experienced than me.
Joyce, who had outlived nearly all her children, who had outlived her cartoonist husband, was a special point of connection for folks at Beneficent. Per some of the church’s LGBTQIA+ congregants, Joyce was the parent they never had – the parent that would never kick them out, would always pick up the phone and hear their story, would always affirm that God loved them. She was also a visiting home companion to those experiencing Alzheimer’s and dementia. she did that until she was 92, and only stopped because of a pandemic. Amidst all of this, Joyce went out of her way, too, to welcome me.
To give you some idea of how Joyce could go about getting things done, imagine this. Just three or four days prior, Joyce had seen me smoking a cigarette outside of the church. (Downtown Providence is a different world than Slatersville, my friends, and your pastor was a younger man. Don't smoke, it's bad for you.) Joyce, she stormed out of her last remaining son’s car, all hundred pounds of her, and just hollered at me, waving her hand in my direction: “What are you doing that for? Oh, no. No, no, no. No. Put that out.” Now, I was smoking a cigarette with another congregant – but Joyce wasn’t yelling at them. She was coming right for me. "How are you going to do anything if you’re dead? Don’t you sing in the choir?” she asked me. “You are too good for that.”
She started to walk inside, but stopped and came back over to me. I was terrified. “I’ve got something for you; I’ll give it to you after service, but only if you promise to stop doing that. Oh, my God.” Joyce left, and a few afterward, later I put out my cigarette and went into church.
An hour later in coffee hour, Joyce came over to me as I sat at a table with some of my peers; she put her hand on my shoulder with a grip more firm than I had anticipated, leaned forward, and whispered: “Don’t you dare do that again. I don’t want to hear it. These are to help you quit.” And when she removed her hand, in its place was a cellophane bag full of mint candies. Joyce, in her own way, was clearly looking out for me. When I think of mints, I think of Joyce.
A few days later, that same lady would be the first person to hear me talk about my call – about this unescapable feeling that I had about church and faith, and pastoring and preaching, none of which I felt comfortable with. But Joyce had welcomed me; she'd cared for me, like all her other kids and grandkids, so I chose to confide. And after I told her that I was thinking about international mission with our denomination, she didn’t say anything; she just sat and thought. Eventually, she asked: “Do you think you’ll want to work at a church afterward? And go to seminary? Pastor school?” I said I wasn’t really sure what seminary entailed; she said I’d figure it out. And then she stood up, and tottered over to me, and gave me a real big hug. “That sounds just right,” Joyce said. “That sounds perfect. You should do it. Don’t let anybody get in the way. I’m proud of you.”
Hearing that affirmation melted me; when I stopped melting, I pulled myself together, sent a few emails, and got the biggest ball of my life steadily rolling. Joyce had seen me; she’d acknowledged and affirmed my call; she magnified it. And with her help, I finally responded to that call - to service, to life working with the church.
I went to Egypt with Global Ministries, conducted what I could of my mission amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and returned back to the US – back to a church, Joyce's church, one that supported me as I started the rest of my journey. Years of relationship continued, though at a pandemic distance; they continued, too, when I finally followed up on Joyce’s initial suggestion to consider “pastor school.” But shortly after the start of my studies with Chicago Theological Seminary, Joyce began to ail. We continued reached out to each other to talk on the phone - and even in our last conversations, I remember her absolute support. "You are doing something that is so important and so special, and I am so happy for you." She was always affirmative of me. Always, always.
Joyce Drake passed on February 17th of 2023. She knows more about Heaven than I can ever claim to; she understands God, now, after years of ushering folks through church life and me toward seminary. Thank you, Joyce.
God, help us to be like her: not just open to our fellow Christians, but more willing to make each other feel supported and comfortable enough to talk about our calls and gifts. Help us all to be a little bit more like her. Amen.
