Eighth Sunday After Pentecost: August 3, 2025 | The Rev. McKenzi Roberson

Readings: Hosea 11:1-11 | Psalm 107:1-9, 43 | Colossians 3:1-11 | Luke 12:13-21

Well hello there! It’s lovely to see some familiar faces, and I look forward to growing more familiar with each of your faces. As we’ve said this morning, I’m Father McKenzi and this is my first Sunday serving as your curate, which means I am serving as a priest under the close mentorship of Reverend Nat.

As part of becoming more familiar I need to know, how many of y'all like to go bowling? No really, raise your hands. Noted.

It might seem a little too playful, but thinking about these texts reminds me of going bowling with my grandparents as a child. My Papa took his bowling very seriously, regularly playing with his buddies and participating in competitions, and I…was terrible. Papa quickly learned to show me mercy and have the attendant pull up the bumpers in front of the gutters to guide my bowling ball to the end of the alley so that I would have a chance at hitting a pin or two. Papa played to win. I played because I wanted to be like Papa.

All of our texts today have interpretations that lead straight to gutter balls. In Colossians, we are told to “set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,” and to “put to death” any earthly desires we might have. It can be tempting to focus entirely on heaven so we don't have to worry about the well-being of our neighbors and the more than human world. While the kind of life described here is hard, it is also clear. It’s an obvious checklist that secures your place in heaven, and gives people a sense of control over their fate.

Looking at the whole of scripture, however, we see that this interpretation doesn’t work. Through laws that call for us to care for our neighbors and the strangers in our midst, as well as examples of Jesus eating good food and attending parties, we have examples demonstrating that a strict interpretation misses the nuance the whole of scripture invites, so we ought not follow it too far.

In the gospel passage, Jesus tells a story of a person who hoards wealth, and an obvious lesson from this parable is “don't do that.” Sure, practicing generosity and trusting God's provision are parts of Christian life. However, sometimes people hear this parable saying to give away any wealth that comes into your hands the moment you receive it.

Except this interpretation also misses part of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus tells his followers to be wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. We are invited to be creative about how we handle our resources and thoughtfully find the balance between financial responsibility and trusting in God’s provision, which means we probably ought not follow the simple interpretation to its end.

Holding these nuances in our scriptural interpretation is a way of pulling up the bumpers on our spiritual bowling alley. We might not get a strike and perfectly interpret the meaning of the holy text in our lives today, but at least we’re probably on the right track. That’s important.

But as I think further about this metaphor, I wonder, why are we playing the game? I think sometimes we play the game of “Correct Scriptural Interpretation” to win. We want to win the game of being right, of being correct about God and how we should live. Perhaps we want to get it right so that we can feel good about ourselves. I bowled a perfect game, I am so much better than my neighbors who only knocked down a few pins (if they knocked down any at all). There’s comfort in superiority, even if it’s cheap and unsustainable.

Maybe we play to win because we are afraid of an angry or disappointed God. There can be pressure, externally or internally, to perform Christianity perfectly. If we can bowl a perfect game, maybe God won’t send us to hell, maybe God won’t abandon us. The imagery of God being quick to send us to fire and brimstone has captured the American theological imagination for generations. Many of us are primed to succumb to this understanding of God’s character. The Old Testament language of God’s wrath has been weaponized as a tool for social control, to the point that some people reject the entirety of the Old Testament as no longer relevant to Christians because all they see is anger and violence.

But there is another reason to play, and it’s in Hosea itself that we find the foundation for the best reason to continue to engage with interpreting scripture and what it has to say about God and how we live.

In this section of Hosea, the prophet is relating God’s story of the relationship God has with the people of Israel. God is a parent, loving their child, helping to catch the child when they fall, feeding them when they’re hungry. As they grow, God gives the people of Israel space to figure out who God is and how to be in relationship with God. But like rebellious teenagers, God’s people continually turn away from God, right up until the consequences of their actions catch up to them.

And with a patience that beggars belief, God welcomes them back. “How can I give you up?” God asks. Yes, injustice provokes God’s wrath, whether it is inflicted by or upon God’s people. And, at the end of the day, God chooses love. God chooses the tenderness of lifting an infant and nuzzling them against your cheek. God offers a compassion that grows warm and tender.

God loves us, too. Broken, defiant, or trying so hard to please that we miss the point, God welcomes us into God’s arms. With a patience that transcends our ability to understand, God chooses us. God wants to be in relationship with us. God wants us to turn to Them with our joys and our sorrows and our frustrations. God wants to go bowling with us.

I keep circling back this bowling metaphor because playfulness is important in our relationship with God. When we play, we are unfiltered and fully in the present. Play is an unselfconscious place for healing and growth and connection. Grownups can be dismissive of play as something frivolous, but it is in fact quite serious. Play is a place to work out the feelings and experiences within us that are beyond words. Engaging in play can unlock parts of ourselves we cannot find any other way. Playing takes us out of the future and the past to ground us entirely in the present, and it allows us to build trust and love with the ones we play with.

It is important to spend this kind of time with God. What are the ways we can spend time in God’s presence that make time feel like it doesn’t exist? What are the practices that remind us of God’s presence and God’s character? How might we play with God? God made each of us uniquely, so each person will have their own answer to these questions. There are, of course, the traditional spiritual disciplines (come to church on Sundays, even when the weather is nice and the mountains are calling (*wink*) but the beauty of play is that it can look any number of ways. It’s a creative and messy and joyful space.

We continually return to engaging scripture, to prayer, to worship, not to seek control over God or how things might go for us, but for the sake of love. It isn’t about winning anything. It’s about prioritizing the relationship upon which everything else hangs. We wrestle with the divine revelation in scripture not with the drudgery of a chore but with the vitality of kids playing in the mud — fully engaged, fully alive.

Our relationship with God changes us and shapes how we live our lives, but that’s not the point either. Our moral actions are not ends within themselves, but the byproduct of a love so perfect that it makes all things new. In our baptism we commit to receiving and choosing God’s love. God brings us into Godself and clothes us with Christ, which frees us to fully be ourselves without the burdens of who society says we should be. God’s love frees us to play like children with their parent. God’s love frees us to flourish, and empowers us to be invested in the flourishing of our neighbors. God always chooses us, and day by day we are invited to choose God, too.