Finding the Right Path Through the Stories of Scripture: 9th Sunday after Pentecost- Proper 12, Year A
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Last year as we had been talking about Vacation Bible School, we had discussed a topic of great interest to our participants the previous summer: the show Avatar: the Last Airbender.
The focus of this VBS was going to be on one character: Zuko. Going parallel to the lessons I planned out, I’ll tell you why now.
When we first see Zuko in the show, he’s the primary villain. Though Zuko was really standing up for what is right, his father, the Emperor of the Fire Nation, uses his fire bending abilities to give his own son a permanent scar right around his eye and exiles him unless he can complete what was really supposed to be an impossible task: find the Avatar, the one person who can bend all four elements, who has been missing for 100 years and bring him back to the Fire Nation.
Then the Avatar resurfaces, and Zuko chases after him with Uncle Iroh always at his side. While Uncle Iroh supports Zuko’s work, he also spends time trying to teach Zuko that there is another, better way to go about things.
For a time it seems like Zuko is listening. Then he comes to a fateful moment where he betrays the Avatar and his friends, whose trust he recently gained, as he leaves them all for dead. He even allows his uncle to be imprisoned by the Fire Nation as Zuko returns to his father’s side.
Yet all that Uncle Iroh taught Zuko continues to gnaw at him until finally Zuko decides to go the path his uncle would. He leaves his father to go and join the Avatar and his friends in their mission to restore balance and peace to the world.
One of the ways Uncle Iroh reaches Zuko is through his stories of the past. Through this he shows Zuko that he is not so different from the Avatar. In fact, he points out that Zuko is even related to the previous Avatar, who was a member of the Fire Nation too.
That really gets at the crux of our lessons today. Though we struggle, though we are weak as Paul reminds us at the start of our reading from Romans, God is still there to teach us and guide us. God is there to restore us, justify us, even forgive us.
God is there to show us a new way too. As we learn in our Gospel today, the Kingdom of God is new and glorious, often coming from something small that still has great value. That treasure, that new life we have in Christ Jesus, is coming out of both what is old and what is new.
This is why our journey through Scripture for this Season is so important. We learn that which is new from our steady movement through the Gospel according to Matthew. Yet we also learn it through our journey in the older stories of Genesis as well.
Today, we see Jacob with his uncle, Laban. Now from this passage, we see that marriage practices were clearly different from how they are now, and thankfully these things have changed for multiple reasons. Part of what we see too, though, is where Jacob gets his crafty and tricky nature we have seen these past two weeks. He gets it from his mother Rebecca’s side of the family because Laban pulls a fast one on Jacob just like Jacob did against his own brother.
We tell these stories not just because it is important for us to see the forefathers of our Faith weren’t perfect. We tell them because we can learn from them. This is why we have been making this journey through the Tanakh, the Old Testament. Our focus has been on these readings because we can gain a lot from them. They act as a warning for us. Often times, we can see ourselves in the stories of old, and in seeing ourselves, we can learn to take the better path forward. We can take the path the Spirit wants to lead us to, even in our weakness. We can gain the Truth and treasures of the Kingdom that our Lord Jesus Christ wants us to see.
Like Zuko, we sometimes struggle following the right path. We sometimes struggle taking the best way forward. The stories we hear here each Sunday can help us with that. If we can internalize them and listen, then maybe, if not today then at some point in the future, we can use them to go in the way the Spirit is trying to lead us. If we give ourselves the time, then maybe eventually we will walk the path forward that Christ Jesus is leading us. Take the time to listen. See yourselves in these stories. In doing so, take the best way forward so that you can move closer and be present in the Presence of our Lord and our God.