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?

There is so much going on in the world right now and it all can feel kind of overwhelming. Let us keep it simple and straightforward.

Jesus is with you. Always.

It’s Trinity Sunday and I am not going to strain any of our tired minds diving into the deep end of what that means. Don’t get me wrong. It’s great. Sit under the stars some evening and talk about the three-in-oneness of God the Creator, Son, and Spirit.

Here is what I find life-giving about this mystery way of being called the Trinity: it shows that God loves community. God is always in community, this divine dance. It is not good for anyone to be alone and God proves that within God’s own being.

I can’t remember if the question was “Where is God?” or “Where is heaven?” But it was a question that the pastor of the church I grew up in asked frequently and he wanted the congregation to physically respond by pointing to the ceiling. I remember one time him encouraging folks to hold their fingers aloft when not enough initially responded. He cited this week’s passage—the Ascension of Jesus—as the reason for the belief that heaven is up.

I never pointed up. This is probably my dad’s fault. He drilled into my siblings and me that words and specifics matter. If Jesus ascended to a heaven that was literally up then it would posit that somewhere out in the vastness of space was heaven. It would also be an up that was up from the Middle East at a certain moment in earth’s daily rotation and revolution around the sun. Odds are the up-pointing of a 1990s congregation in upstate South Carolina was lightyears in the wrong direction from the literal up of Jesus’ ascension (this is giving you some insight on what a strange kid I was).

I am not sure whether our pastor believed that heaven was literally up out there in space or in some kind of sky bound pocket dimension or what. It wasn’t a malicious act, but it bugged me. Beyond the logistics of literalism, it galled me that everyone was told to point up as if heaven was some kind of fixed point that we could comprehend. Much later, I also realized that casting heaven as the sky neglected a major theme of what Jesus preached throughout his ministry: that heaven is also breaking through here on earth.