One of my favorite pictures ever of our two boys was taken in the final month before I moved to Tennessee. The two of them are dancing in the sprinkler in my parents’ yard. The sun beams down on them. And I know that it sounds cheesy, but it looked like every children’s Bible illustration of the Holy Spirit shining down. But instead of a just-baptized Jesus and a dove it was our 6 year old and 3 year old joyfully frolicking in the grass. Though that was not going to save the world, it still looks like God is saying, “This is good. With them I am well pleased.”

Even four years later, that picture never ceases to make me smile. There is something so joyous and pure and good about it. It captures a memory on to which I try to hold as much as I can. It’s one of those moments that reminds me why EA and I do this parent thing even though it often drives us up the wall these days.

Many years ago, Paul wrote that our love must be sincere and we must hate what is evil. But he had a third piece of instruction that feels like the engine that drives the other two: hold fast to the good. For us to have a love that is authentic and the strength to push back on the injustice that inflicts wounds on all of us, we need to cling to whatever good we find in the world.

Tonight felt a little bit like the sun peaking through the clouds after a fearsome storm. Things will still not be normal for quite some time. The effects of the storm are ever present. To be honest, I don’t even know for sure if the storm has passed or we have just caught a break. I just know that right now there seems to be some daylight.

The last time that we met as a youth group was over five months ago. We filled the gaps where we could. We rode Zoom to the end of the school year. We made front porch visits in the summer. But like so much else in this year gone sideways, it was not the same. And today was still not the same. We met outside scattered around the church’s campus. We wore masks and kept our distance.

But we were together and, in the midst of chaos and the tumult of this year, that felt like a victory.

It also felt like a victory to create something new. Our youth and children’s ministries teamed up to put together a drive-in worship service for families. Beneath the late August sun, we sang and ran and danced and reminded those dear to us that we love them and God does too. It was gratifying to hatch this scheme with a great group of people, have no idea if anyone would show up, and then watch the parking lot fill with cars. That too felt like daylight.

Matthew 15:21-28 goes a little something like this:

Canaanite woman asks Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus ignores her. Canaanite woman persists. Jesus implies Canaanite woman is a dog. Canaanite woman points out that even dogs get scraps. Jesus is impressed with the Canaanite woman’s response and heals her daughter.

Pardon?

This is the gospel passage for the Lectionary today. People have to actually preach on it. It’s a crazy passage because on the surface it undermines one of the most fundamental things that Christians have long believed about Jesus: that he was the compassionate, sinless human embodiment of God. Yet in this passage, he coldly shoots down the requests of a mother with a sick child; all because she was not one of his people.

²⁵ But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” ²⁶ He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

That isn’t great! It’s disconcerting and troubling. It seemingly runs against a lot of what Jesus says/does when he encounters Gentiles in other passages. It seems to run counter Jesus preaching that we love our enemies. The problems are only amplified as we are presently having important cultural conversations about how certain people groups are discriminated against.

This is one of those weeks where I’ve written about five different versions of this post. I even recorded a rambling stream of conscious reflection while I drove home from getting lunch yesterday and almost published that. I’m not in writer’s block territory, but I’m driving through the neighborhood.

So let’s keep it simple.

Walking on water shouldn’t be possible. Anytime I was at the pool as a kid, I would hover my foot above water wondering if I could somehow catch something solid. But you go right through. Every single time. So say what you want about Peter, but that moment when he steps out onto the sea are one of the most inspiringly fearless moments in human history.

Or it could’ve been one of the most stupid moments. But honestly the margin between fearless and stupid is as thin as the water’s surface. And, yes, Peter got distracted. And, yes, he started to sink. But he hopped onto the waves when no one else would. There is something beautifully noble about this particular failure.

We’re going to talk about a Kanye West song for a second. We’re not going to talk about Kanye the person so don’t get distracted. But I really enjoy his song “Follow God” off of Jesus is King. It’s the only song on that album that has really stuck with me. It’s on my running playlist because it’s one of those jolt of adrenaline tracks. It also was the song that knocked Lauren Daigle off the top of the Christian Songs chart and sat at #1 for 8 weeks. Imagine going back in time a few years and telling someone Kanye topped Christian radio for multiple weeks. Their head would explode and it would be like the 73rd craziest thing you would tell them about our current world. But I digress.

There is one line on “Follow God” that always jumps out at me whenever I listen to it: “Wrestlin’ with God / I don’t really want to wrestle.” My reaction is always something to the effect of “Same, Kanye. Same.” If we’re honest with ourselves, it is such a universal feeling. All of us feel like Jacob in the Bible sometimes. We find ourselves grappling with God over something that doesn’t make sense. When friends are diagnosed with cancer or we see someone we care about suffer, we wrestle over why bad things happen to good people. Or we read the news and see corruption flourish and we wonder why good things happen to bad people.

The mustard seed was not a welcome addition to a garden. Yes, it was a tiny seed that grew to be a shrub so great that it was like a tree. But it was like a weed. You couldn’t get rid of it easily. Pliny the Elder said that when you tried to kill the mustard seed plant it would release more seeds into the ground. It kept coming back.

And those birds of the air that came to make nests in its branches? They would eat the crops of one’s garden or field. So if you were a farmer or gardener—a person with means—the mustard seed was not necessarily an enticing image of God’s community. It would actually be unsettling because the mustard seed plant brought disruption.

That Jesus would compare the kingdom of heaven to such plantarchy might be confusing to some. Within the cultural imagination the church is a prim and proper model of order and the status quo. Faith is a tidy little garden within one’s life that a person maintains on Sundays and maybe Wednesdays. It is an asset in becoming a better, more successful individual. It is an institution that advocates for how things have been.

Yet Jesus is implying something different here. God’s community takes everything over. It disrupts. It provides a home for the orphans of the air. It invites everyone in. People will try to uproot it and yet it keeps coming back. To borrow a popular phrase about truth-telling, it afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted.

God has this knack for showing up in the places we don’t expect. For Jacob, it was in the middle of nowhere when he was on the run. He dreamt of a ladder (or a stairway or a ramp) going to heaven. Messengers of God were ascending and descending. The God stood beside Jacob and reminded this wayward man that the Almighty would be with him wherever he went. “I will keep you,” God said. And I think all that most of us really want is to be kept.

So instead of dissecting this passage or providing some sort of devotional thought, I am just going to share a few of the ladders that have popped up in my life recently. Without any real explanation, these are the places, the moments, and whatever other unexpected things that have reminded me that God is with me. I encourage you do to the same. Write them down even. Where have been those spots where you have felt God with you?

Esau comes in from the field. He’s hungry. Famished. Starving so much that he’s near death, he says. Anyone who is a parent will roll their eyes at that familiar line. His brother Jacob is cooking up a stew. “Let me eat some of that red stuff.” That’s what it says in the NRSV translation: red stuff. Esau doesn’t always come off as the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Jacob on the other hand is probably too sharp for his own good. Jacob says he’ll give his brother the red stuff if Esau sells off his birthright. We go from red to Burgundy because, boy, that escalated quickly. Yet Esau is unaware of the elevated stakes. Again, he just thinks he’s about to die and thus sells off his birthright for some of the red stuff. Esau sells off his leadership of the family, the carrying on of Abraham’s responsibilities for a quick meal.

Red stuff. That’s a really evocative image. Red connotes power, passion, and violence; that’s stuff for which people will readily sell out who they are. Red is the easy shortcut. Red is the stop sign we fly past. There are these things that in the moment seem like they will make life so much easier, they will satisfy us, but they never do.

2020 is just over half over and it has been a lot. I don’t have to list it out for you. You’ve felt it. You’ve experienced it. It is unbelievably overwhelming. Just thinking about the rest of the year can seem daunting.

We don’t know when this pandemic is going to turn in the right direction, but we’ve got to keep trying to do the right thing even as the others do not. We do know that there is a long road we must walk in fighting white supremacy in our country. And who knows what else this year might throw at us? All of which does not even mention all the personal heartaches and sicknesses and fears that each of us face as individuals. It can sometimes seem like too much to bear.

So hear this word from Jesus:

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

The psalms give us a language for praise and lament. Usually when I read a psalm of praise, my heart surges because I feel that praise towards God. When I read a lament it is because my own soul is downcast because others have hurt me or I have strayed in some way. Sometimes I will try to get in the mind of the psalmist. I’ll think about what that person was experiencing when they composed their cry to God.

But when I looked at this week’s psalm, it did not connect to my own experience and I did not find myself wondering what the psalmist might have felt. I immediately thought about the family of Breonna Taylor. She was murdered over three months ago and justice does not seem near.

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?