July 19, 2026
Pentecost 8a
Genesis 28:10-19a; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Epiphany, Winnipeg
There is something gentle and something beautiful about that story of Jacob’s ladder that we heard before. There’s nothing gentle and beautiful about Jacob’s life, though. You might know the details, or maybe not, so here’s the quick snapshot. Jacob is a grandson of Abraham and Sarah – the childless seniors to whom God promised uncountable descendants, and a land of their own. Jacob’s life is messy. He comes out of the womb grabbing his older twin brother’s heel, as though he’s always going to try to trip his brother and get ahead. That’s what he does. He tricks his brother Esau out of his inheritance, and he steals their dad’s blessing. His brother chases him down and vows to kill him. About forty years later they reconcile.
Over all the years of his life he’ll make more messes and other people will make messes for him. Jacob’s uncle will trick Jacob into marrying both his daughters, and all that takes seven years. Jacob will make a very successful scam to get the very best of his father-in-law’s livestock, and he’ll end up running from him too. Jacob and his family will never be settled and they will be divided too. You’ve heard about Joseph and his brothers? His descendants will end up being slaves.
There’s more deception and family dysfunction and trickery and tragedy than you could fit into six seasons on Netflix.
But early on in that whole story, when Jacob is fleeing from his brother, he lies down to sleep, out in the wilderness, and he has that dream. There’s a ladder stretching to heaven, and there are angels going up the ladder and coming down the ladder, and God comes and stands with Jacob and says, “I plan to keep that promise that I made to your grandparents, Abraham and Sarah. I’ll never leave you; I’ll be with you until that promise comes true.” When Jacob wakes up in the morning he says, “Wow, God is in this place and I didn’t even know it.” So he sets up a stone marker and calls the place Bethel, which literally means “house of God.” Right there in the early days of Jacob’s messy life that will keep on being messy, Jacob realizes that God’s house is in that place in this world.
The ladder in the dream isn’t a ladder for Jacob to climb to heaven. The ladder opens Jacob’s eyes to see that God’s home is in this tangled and messy life. There’s a long night and a crazy dream, and when the dreaming is done, Jacob wakes up and realizes that God is in this place.
When your life, our life, the life of the world just get messy and heavy, take a stone and put it right where you are and say, “Wow. God is in this place and I didn’t even know it.” This place, with all its strange ways and troubling news, is Bethel, the house of God. And God promised to go with us all this time in this world and this life that is Bethel – the house of God.
There is something gentle and beautiful, about that book of Romans that we heard a piece of a few minutes ago. The book we call Romans is actually a long long letter, written by Paul to the church in Rome, a place he had never been and a people he had never met. The church in Rome is a new church, and in that church there are lots of Jews, and lots of Gentiles. Now, as often happens, when you have two different groups of people in one larger group, even in a church, each might be tempted to think of itself as better than the other. It’s a bit like this: the Jews (and Paul, by the way, was a Jew) might be thinking that they’re better than the Gentiles, because they have a long long history of being God’s chosen people – maybe as long as two thousand years. They might look at the Gentiles among them as young upstarts who don’t know much and who maybe aren’t really as important, and who don’t really understand about being children of God, and maybe who don’t really belong.
On the other hand, the Gentiles in the community might think that they’re the ones who finally got it right, and that these Jewish members of the community are stuck in some old ways that they’d be better off just leaving behind. So Paul looks at this new community that is already in danger of pulling apart, and he sets out to convince the Jews that the Gentiles really do belong even if they don’t follow in the same way, and he works to convince the Gentiles that the Jews aren’t old fuddy duddies who need to leave the old ways behind – they’re God’s chosen ones and they always will be.
Paul wants to do all he can to make sure that the church isn’t divided, so that it can be a sign for the world of how the risen Christ can make all kinds of people into one united people.
We know all about division. We see how hate can run so deep, or how that ancient belief that “My side is better than your side” can be so strong. And Paul talks about all creation – the birds and trees and rocks and seas and rivers and animals – waiting eagerly, groaning with fear and with hope, for that time when we see that we all are part of this household of God, and that we belong in this household together.
Isn’t that kind of cool? We pray each week in some way that all of creation will be healed. And Paul turns that around and says that creation prays, and if we could hear the creation pray it would pray with sighs too deep for words that we would finally see that all God’s children are all the children, all the people God has called, and we all belong. Creation prays for us, because we’re part of creation too.
So try this: after you’re done setting down a stone and saying, “Wow, God is in this place,” listen for the sound of creation: wind, a squirrel, rainfall, a whitethroated sparrow, whatever you hear, and imagine that maybe that’s the sound of creation at prayer, praying for us, members with them of this whole community of creation.
Finally, there’s something gentle, something beautiful, about that parable Jesus tells, about workers in the field when they find out that weeds have been planted in the midst of all the wheat. Their intentions are good when they ask the landowner if they should go out and pull up all the weeds, but the answer is just a straightup “No. If you’re pulling up weeds, you’ll pull up the wheat too. Leave the sorting to the one who owns the field.”
It’s not too hard to see that sorting the weeds from the wheat never ends well. Any time we’ve taken it upon ourselves to separate it all out it hasn’t taken long for it to go all wrong: Inquisitions, witch hunts, excommunications, closed doors, take the back seat of the bus, holocaust, take away the children, occupation, arrest, shunning. And the ones who get hurt the most are the ones who, as Jesus calls them, are the least.
We’re not called to sort out the good ones from the bad ones. In fact, we’re told not to. That’s good news for us, and it’s really good news for the world. We’re just called to care for the field; to care for one another. To feed hungry people, that’s all. To welcome the stranger and clothe the naked. We care for the least, we make a home for the child, we have a meal and everyone gets to come. Any sorting that we do amounts to this: we find out who is the least among us or the least in the world. Who’s been left out? Whose voice seems to matter the least? Who seems weakest? That’s where our life is.
We’re not called to sort. And there’s nobody sorting us out here. There are no weeds and wheat in this place. Or maybe I could get all Lutheran and say that Luther made it clear that we are all saints and sinners. Each of us, all at the same time. So I guess we’re all wheat and weeds. Christ dies and rises for wheat and weeds, and now we see that we’re all simply beloved children. That whole “wheat and weeds” thing just isn’t in God’s playbook. What God seems to have done is prepared a welcome for wheat, for weeds, for all, and now we’re all just called beloved children. That’s what creation cries out for and prays for and waits for. That’s where that whole old story about a brother named Jacob fleeing from a brother named Esau ends. There aren’t wheat and weeds any more. Just God’s beloved children.
That’s the love and life of the one who will heal creation. That’s the love and life of the one whose house is here; who is with us always.