Do you ever find it hard to be in relationship with someone different from you? I see people so easily doing this, and I also see people who won’t even consider it. I find myself somewhere in between. I am often distressed by my inability to wholeheartedly live as Christ in my own family, church, and friendships, much less in the wider world. Relationship requires a lot of letting go of self-illusion and control, and then risk-taking faith, and ultimately trusting in God’s grace.

I know the path I want to be on in life. The one Jesus walked. Where he let everyone know that they are loved, they belong, and their lives matter. The path that leads to inner freedom and beloved community. The path that is created with compassion and opens ever before us as we forgive. The path that leads to healing and joy and celebration of every soul.

In this Sunday’s gospel, Jesus is walking along and encounters a variety of people.* He meets each person where they are and invites them to experience the mercy of God. I hope I can leave whatever holds me back from the fullness of life when Jesus as to Matthew says, “Follow me.” I hope that I can sit and learn at the table where all are welcomed by Jesus. I hope I know when I need help as the grieving father or the woman in pain and have the humility and courage to seek it out. I hope that I like the little girl can awaken to new life.

Jesus is always inviting us to recovery and restoration as God’s one beloved creation. Messy relationships are where we participate in its revelation. Where we are invited to care for each other, be kind, exercise compassion, practice forgiveness, grow, heal, and bring that love to all those we encounter.

In Matthew 28:16–20, the resurrected Jesus gathers his disciples on a mountain in Galilee.*  This final commissioning begins not with certainty but with ambiguity: “When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.” Even here, at the threshold of resurrection life, doubt remains present alongside devotion.

This intertwining of doubt and commitment feels deeply familiar to many of us. The call of discipleship has never rested on having complete clarity — beyond the initial invitation. Rather, living into call has simply depended on our stepping forward into a life of love, justice, reconciliation, and community.

Recently I began re-reading the life of George Müller, and I have been struck by the radical simplicity of his trust in God’s provision. Müller operated orphanages serving thousands of children without fundraising campaigns or financial guarantees, trusting that what God called into being, God would also sustain. Müller’s witness invites us to imagine what is possible if we truly believe that God is already at work ahead of us, preparing the way. The Great Commission is our first lesson that the call of discipleship is less a call to clarity and more a call to trust.

Equally important, Jesus sends the disciples not simply to spread beliefs, but to form communities of transformed living: “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” The Great Commission is not a command to build institutions for their own sake. It is an invitation to follow Jesus into the world — fortified by prayer, inspired by compassion, driven by courage, accompanied by ambiguity.

The clarity we receive as Jesus departs is not a blueprint but a promise: “I am with you always.” Institutions change. Resources ebb and flow. Yet the sustaining center remains the living presence of Christ among ordinary people trying to live faithfully together. That promise is enough.

When Jesus speaks of leaving his peace* with the disciples, he is talking about something much deeper than the absence of violence. Throughout his ministry, he demonstrates that peace is about wholeness, about healing the brokenness that results in the physical, mental, and spiritual illness of individuals; and for mending the brokenness that comes between individuals and communities through mutual forgiveness. After the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit is given to the disciples so that they may offer this healing, this peace, this forgiveness, to others.

Paintings of the reception of the Holy Spirit in the form of tongues of fire dancing around the heads of the disciples as they gathered in that same upper room where they had shared a last meal with Jesus before his crucifixion, have historically included only men. Recently, however, some artists have been noticing that women, who are central to so many of the stories about Jesus both before and after his death and resurrection, are absent from these images. As iconographer Mary Jane Miller writes of the second of two Pentecost icons she has painted,

In the second version I have included women. I believe they too were there as witness and recipients, receiving the holy spirit and advocate in full measure. All of them present have their feet firmly placed on the earth. We are a collective species having been given a world to love and cherish. Our Earth abounds with all that is necessary for abundant life and the spirit of God has been given in full to humanity. Let us live in peace.

As you look at Miller’s two paintings, what else do you notice about them? Who else has been left out of your mental images of Jesus’s disciples? Who do you need to ask for forgiveness because you have kept them out of the picture?

“Oh Lord, keep them safe” I murmured as the train lurched into motion and family began to slide away, into the past. Stiff and still, they stood in a close group: parents, two sisters, grandparents, great aunt, and a boyfriend. College beckoned across the continent. Unsaid was my hope that they would miss me.

While I knew they were not in fact any safer when I was with them, my prayer was an awkward hope that there was another dimension of caring in the universe which would hold all of us in some invisible network of connection. And that someday I would be free enough to let them go.

Because John’s gospel for this week* is so full of theological language, of glory and transcendence, it’s easy to miss the ache in Jesus’ heart as he prepares to leave his beloved disciples. “Protect them in your name,” he prays, “that they may be one as we are one.” That they would trust the unity Jesus felt with the Holy One and share that good news with others.

And now, as I prepare for my 65^th college reunion, I know that grief and prayer are simply the other side of love and we already belong in that invisible network. From the beginning, we have been held in God’s love like a gravitational field. Safety is no longer the issue. Trust is.