Sometimes the strongest prison we could ever know is our own opinion. There is a well-worn path in the human community to take one’s own experience and normalize it for everyone. To say, in the midst of conflict or controversy, that our experience should be the way it is for everyone else is a dangerous and divisive mindset. In addition to being, on its face, untrue; it denies the reality that other people can have a claim on the “Truth”. In fact, there is no one person, or community, or cadre, or tribe that can lay claim to the fullest truth of the human experience.

When it comes to faith and spirituality the same can be said. The totality of God’s being cannot be understood, explained or exemplified in one person, one life or even in one generation. I could not possibly hope to know and understand the fullness of God by looking at my own life and experience with God. However, if I’m willing to see God in the lives of other people, the boundaries of faith and theology begin to expand. Especially if I am willing to see and embrace how other people (particularly people who experience the world differently than I) experience the grace of God in their lives, I can always learn new things about God.

The text about Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 is an example of this truth. Jesus takes the disciples outside of their cultural comfort zone. He confronts their parochial biases by seeming to play into them and opens the door for a “non-person” to express a faith and understanding that they themselves have not, as of that moment, demonstrated for themselves. We have a lot to learn.

If you want to walk on water, you first have to get out of the boat. An obvious fact, to be sure, but no less daunting a task. To accomplish something exceptional often requires us to stretch our self beyond what is known, what is comfortable, and what is easy. We may begin such an endeavor with the best focus and best intention, but life is what happens when you make plans. It is exceptionally easy to lose our focus. When pressed by the circumstances of life that swirl around us distraction goes with the territory. When pressed with adversity, what is it that keeps us grounded?

The apostle Peter has a reputation for being bold and brash. Sometimes he speaks and/or acts impulsively. That may very well be, but bold action that is open to the presence of Christ also helped him learn more, grow in understanding and deepen his confidence and trust in who Jesus is. Through all of our encounters with Peter, each one of these moments as the next step into a ministry that changed the world. We can learn a lot from Peter’s example. The days we live in provide us with new challenges to our ministry. With all that might make us fearful, when we hold on to the trust and confidence in who Jesus is (the bringer of grace, healing, life and hope), we realize that we have all we need to be faithful, even in a time such as this.

Seeking out a face to face encounter with our own shortcomings, mistakes and choices is not the easiest thing to do. Even though there are some of us who seem better disposed to do this hard work, I don’t know anyone who actually looks forward to the experience. And yet, if we are to become the people that God has created us to be, it is absolutely necessary. Faithful discipleship requires us to look at motives, biases, blind spots and outright prejudices that get in the way of grace. These things, some of which we don’t even realize that we have, often are tremendous obstacles to experiencing God more fully in our life. They close us off from one another, creating distance ourselves and the world around us. At their worst, they can lead us to acts that cause actual damage to others.

Some of these things will not go easily. This is where our concluding text from the life of the Patriarch Jacob becomes helpful. I can imagine Jacob’s wrestling match with God as both real and spiritually metaphorical. Jacob’s habits and ways of seeing the world aren’t going to be removed quietly. It will take no small amount of effort. Let the wrestling match begin. These wrestling matches are hard (I know this from experience), however the healing, clarity and liberation that comes at the end make the hard work worthwhile. The subsequent step from these moments is the next step into a new and fuller experience of grace.

In every good hero story, there is a moment of conflict and crisis where it seems like the hero’s mission sits on a knife’s edge. It is usually portrayed as a moment when there doesn’t seem to be a good or easy way out. To navigate that moment of crisis will exact a price on the hero. This moment is typically when the hero is born. A hero whose previous life was marked by less than honorable choices typically reaches a critical tipping point where he/she doubles down on the past or steps out to choose a new way.

As we continue our review of the life of the patriarch Jacob, we have reached such a point. After years of his Uncle/Father-in-law Laban’s abuse and manipulation we have reached a point in which the conflict is about to break out. On the verge of all-out clan warfare, Jacob is caught in an impossible situation: Capitulate to Laban and continue the abuse, or head home, into the hands of a brother whom you believe to be seeking your life. Not much of a choice. Into this maelstrom God will step in and help Jacob find his path.

This is an important story for us today. With all the ways that we feel boxed in now and the fraught choices that lie before us, God is present to help us find our way into a new way.

In times like this, we draw strength from the consistent Scriptural promise of God’s providential presence in our life. It is like a warm blanket on a cold night. It is a source of comfort and strength. This message is the core of most every witness to faith, within in the body of Scripture right up to the present day. If we stop at that top-line truth, we fail to see the deeper import of it. The Jacob story we’ve been sharing during this series gives us insight into the deeper message. God says to Jacob, in his dream at Bethel, that God will be with him until God accomplishes God’s purpose. The promise of God’s presence isn’t just a singular gift for us in a particular moment, it is the next step in God accomplishing the creation, healing and renewal of God’s beloved community, the Kindom of God. This gift of grace is a critical component of God’s eternal presence.

With this gift, there is yet another deeper revelation, an “ah-ha” moment that becomes solid ground for such a time as this. God has been preparing us to live and serve faithfully in this time. We may have not yet discerned what the new ministries of this time will look like, but rest assured that with all that we have received by God’s providential presence, we will find our way forward.

Where do we fit into God’s ongoing work of bringing justice and restoration to creation and the human community? The need is obvious these days. We know that there are many who have been called to specific aspects of this work. They are carved into statues and busts across the church. Pages of history have been written about their life and faith. Their names are remembered in hushed tones. They are the heroes of the faith.

They become elevated in our awareness and conception of the church. And yet, Scripture cautions us again and again against disqualifying ourselves relative to other people. God continues to call, equip and transform failed and flawed folks to be partners in God’s work. We are reminded time and again to avoid characterizing ourselves as too much sin, or not enough righteousness. In fact, the story of Jacob the supplanter, Jacob the schemer, Jacob the cheat reminds us that God doesn’t wait around for us to get our act together. Even in our own uncertainty God breaks in to call us and equip us.

We respond to God’s in breaking by turning toward God, engaging God in Scripture and prayer, and then, taking the next step forward to work toward God’s purpose in the world.

As the pace of change accelerates it would be understandable to feel swept away by them. To many, these fast moving currents might feel like social or political rip currents. Into the maelstrom of these currents God infuses the grace that redeems us and welcomes us to the safety of the shore, the realization of the beloved community.

As with escaping a rip current in the ocean, the way out of the currents we find ourselves in isn’t binary. We don’t simply give in and be swept away, nor do we fight fire with fire as we try to resist. Escaping a rip current means that we take another course. We swim parallel to the shore until the current subsides and we can make our way safely to shore. The way of grace, the way of self-giving love is that third way. It is the act of swimming parallel to the shore.

No matter how strong the currents are, God’s work is always to lead us home, into the safety of the beloved community.

The small acts of attentiveness have always made a difference. In these difficult days, these small acts of generosity shared with our neighbors can change one person’s day. This small act can change the world. This is the core of the Gospel witness.

Hospitality is a radical act. It is a subversive act. It actuates a Gospel view of the world. It is an act that reflects the radical equality we share in God’s vision of all that God has created. Hospitality is an act of welcome. It is the act of opening a door for another to invite them into homes, churches and lives.

This foundation is born out time and again in the Gospel stories of how Jesus welcomed people of all walks of life. He welcomed them to table. He welcomed them to join him on his mission. He welcomed tax collectors, sinners, common folks, the broken and the needy. Without regard to how the “good folk” thought, he practiced radical hospitality. Two thousand years later, this is still the path that the followers of Jesus are called to follow. When we walk this path, we become a blessing to a world in need.

In times of great crisis and upheaval we lean on the witness to the many ways that God’s grace sustains us through the fire and flood. When we find ourselves with our backs against the wall, from where will our relief come. When our days are the darkest, how do we know that we are not alone. Within in our community of faith, so many of us have known the redeeming grace. So many people with whom I have shared ministry have shared their stories with me. The cumulative effects of these stories bolster my hope, to be sure.

The times in which we find ourselves, facing the COVID 19 pandemic and the reckoning that is coming around the scourge of systemic racism, require us to be considerably more reflective around how God’s grace is at work. The fact that grace covers a multitude of sins doesn’t absolve us of recognizing and accounting for the ways that we contribute to the chaos that swirls around us.

In the Genesis story we reflect upon in this sermon, Abraham and Sarah seem to be given a pass on the ways that they make it necessary for God to step in and care for Hagar and Ishmael. To simply celebrate the providential grace of God without reckoning with our own actions and attitudes, cheapens that grace. If we are to weather this pandemic and create a new world of justice and reconciliation for all we must engage in this challenging work together.

You very likely have said it at some point in your life: I want patience…and I want it now. This statement usually brings smiles, the stray giggle and/or the knowing wink. It is almost as if this is the worst kept secret in all of human history. We struggle with patience. The more unpalatable a situation may be, the shorter is our supply of patience. This truth is in tension with an equally intractable reality: There are somethings that are beyond our control. Somethings we just have to wait on.

As we endure the twin pandemics of COVID 19 and systemic racism, the hard work of dealing with the challenges before us are taxing our patience. We may be discovering that we just don’t have the emotional or spiritual resources to do what is before us. Where COVID is concerned this waning patience could be expressed in a clamor to ‘get back to normal’. This is one of those times when we have to realize there is no going back. The world has changed. Like the response to the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, something has shifted and there is no going back.

Our faith witness reminds us that it is in these times that God continues to journey with us. The best way we can respond to the change is to continue the work of living faithfully, sharing love, mercy, hospitality and generosity with those we encounter. When we do, we encounter the God who is present. Our patience may be finite, but the grace we receive from God is infinite.