Show Notes
Genesis 25:19-34 | Psalm 119:105-112 | Romans 8:1-11 | Matthew 13:1-9,18-23
Chapters
- (00:00:00) - Seeking the Unplanned Rhythms of Grace
- (00:08:23) - What's Ubuntu?
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] May I speak in the name of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:00:07] When standing in the shadow of such a majestic cathedral outside, I can't help but be transported back to a time I witnessed and prayed with friends in Tanzania. And so they taught me this song.
[00:00:48] Loosely translated, it means, move, move, move, God, and let us see you.
[00:00:58] And so I share that wonderful, playful song. Because if you were here last weekend, and even if you weren't, what happened last weekend, what scripture stirred in us?
[00:01:08] Because we remember, right? The book of nature tells me what I'm made of. The book of scripture tells me what I'm made for.
[00:01:15] We talked about rest, grace given first freely before any of us did anything to ever it.
[00:01:25] And so we asked, and we invited each other to this week carry that home. And we called it as scripture, named it, Unforced Rhythms of Grace.
[00:01:37] And so this weekend, we are given the next piece, the next beat in that rhythm.
[00:01:45] Because I think, and I wonder what you think.
[00:01:48] Rest that never turns into anything else just becomes stillness with nowhere to go.
[00:01:57] I think what comes after real rest is play, not leisure. I've earned not one more activity I can measure.
[00:02:08] But play is joy without a scoreboard, even though I really like the scoreboard given away extravagantly without calculating the ROI or the KPIs first. And I think Esau here for you and me is a cautionary tale about play done badly.
[00:02:37] Because our first reading gives us a very wonderful, uncomfortable place to start. Esau comes from the field, starving, and Jacob is standing over a pot of stew. The fragrances, and he names his price. Your whole birthright for a meal.
[00:02:57] Esau is so exhausted.
[00:03:01] Essentially, what I hear him say is, what good is a birthright? I'm dead of hunger. I'm tired. I need it now.
[00:03:11] And so he swears an oath, he eats, and he walks away.
[00:03:17] And the future of a people are traded for 20 minutes of relief.
[00:03:24] And so sometimes, I guess, the seduction could be because I do this. The story wants to simply have me pray Jacob's cleverness and shake my head of judgment at Esau, right?
[00:03:37] But yet today I see a man confusing appetite with play. He wants relief now, without patience, without any sense that a slower, larger joy might be waiting if he could just hold the hunger a little longer.
[00:03:57] Because that's not play. That impulse, I think, is wearing plays clothes. Real play, I think, can wait because it's not grasping. Esau is grasping, and he's lost everything because he was grasping.
[00:04:14] Sometimes it's just exhaustion making a bad trade.
[00:04:20] And Then Paul is writing to Romans, the church in Rome, and he talks about the Spirit leading us into the open, into a wide, spacious freedom.
[00:04:33] Spacious, not cramped, not calculating. Esau's whole tragedy for me fits into one cramped moment. His world had shrunk so much. It was all about his hunger. Are you with me?
[00:04:53] And so I think Paul describes the opposite of life.
[00:04:56] Roomy enough that you're not terrified of wasting a single seed.
[00:05:02] And then we shared in the psalm, right, where joy is the actual word for faithfulness. Because even the psalm tucked between these readings is God's decree is called what? The joy of the heart.
[00:05:20] Not a burden fulfilled, but a delight taken, Play, hiding inside devotion.
[00:05:33] And then the sower brings it home for you and me.
[00:05:38] Reckless generosity as the shape of grace.
[00:05:42] And I've watched enough. Hgtv, right? I'm a savvy tech user.
[00:05:48] No farmer, no competent farmer scatters seed on a hardened footpath on shallow rocks into thorns that will strangle anything trying to grow. By every rational measure, the sower is reckless, wasteful, and what a wonderful point to drive home for you and me today.
[00:06:16] The sower isn't rationing the way we ration.
[00:06:22] Maybe that's just me. Carefully, anxiously, only when I know the roi is guaranteed, he throws the seed with holy abandon.
[00:06:34] Some of the birds take it, some shoots up fast on rock and dies just as fast, no root beneath, sure, but some gets choked by the thorns, worry the endless appetite for more. It's never enough, just a little more. And some lands on good soil and multiplies beyond anything reasonable.
[00:06:56] This is the gift, I think he doesn't know in advance which handful lands where he throws it all. Anyway, that's not incompetence for me.
[00:07:10] I wonder if that's what real trust looks like.
[00:07:15] For me, that's the shape of grace. Extravagant, unrationed, willing to look wasteful, but because the abundance on the other side is worth more than the caution would have protected.
[00:07:28] And for me, that's real play. Perhaps for you and me this week when we come down this mountain.
[00:07:37] Where in my life this week will I not gamble everything on a bowl of stew because I'm starving and I can't wait.
[00:07:47] Nearly the opposite from the gospel.
[00:07:54] Give yourself away generously.
[00:07:57] Your time, your attention, your joy.
[00:08:03] Trusting the good soil to do what good soil does, and refusing to let the fear of waste shrink the gesture.
[00:08:12] Esau's hunger couldn't wait. And I get that.
[00:08:17] And the sower's generosity doesn't need to calculate.
[00:08:23] And so I'M really struck, especially today, chewing on this gospel, on a philosophy, a way of looking at the world where I grew up in southern Africa.
[00:08:38] A person is a person through other persons.
[00:08:44] And I think a Sower knew this already. In short, we call it Ubuntu.
[00:08:51] He wasn't farming one guaranteed row, he was scattering into a whole field, trusting an ecosystem of soil and weather and time he did not control and could not fully see.
[00:09:07] Ubuntu is like that for me, I think. You cannot calculate in advance who you bump into, what act of generosity, which afternoon given away freely becomes the harvest for you.
[00:09:23] You just scatter generously, trusting the soil.
[00:09:30] So if last week rest was about receiving what's freely given, how in your life, in my life, will we dare to play enough to give ourselves away just as freely without needing every seed to land in good soil?
[00:09:54] To what, make the gesture worth it?
[00:09:59] So I'm going to work on not being Esau, training my future for whatever quiets my hunger fastest being the sower, maybe scattering the seed, some of it will fail, but throw anyway.
[00:10:18] Last week Jesus says, come to me and you will find rest. I think Jesus says to you and me this day, come play with me.
[00:10:28] Not everything has to earn its keep.
[00:10:31] Some of it just meant to be thrown freely into open ground and trusted.
[00:10:59] Move, move, move, God, and let us see you.
[00:11:05] I dare you to play in that.
[00:11:08] Amen.
