RCL Proper 17A [i]
26 July 2026
Saint Helen’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
Not hiding the flaws
I may have shared with you in a sermon sometime over the past seven months the Japanese art form known as kintsugi. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken porcelain objects by using metal, often silver or gold, to attach the broken pieces back together. When finished, the object does not hide the flaws, the fractures, but reveals the beauty of an object that has been broken yet now repaired and functional once more.
Unlike our desire to have things put back together so that they are ‘as good as new’, kintsugi is not afraid to show the cracks. I wonder if kintsugi is the source of the chorus in Leonard Cohen’s sung, ‘Anthem’:
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
Even an imperfect situation, a flawed individual or community or family, can become a vehicle of God’s grace.
Over the past several weeks and in the weeks to come, we have heard and will continue to hear the stories of a flawed family, a family that gave rise to three great religious communities – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – the family of Abraham and Sarah and their descendants. I imagine that there have been a few Sundays when we’ve all wondered what to say and to think after the reader finishes and says, ‘Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.’
John Holbert, the emeritus professor of preaching at Perkins School of Theology in Nashville, writes: “What are we to make of this story of trickery, deception, and clever dealing? No character here is to be emulated: the Bible does not say ever ‘be like Jacob’ or ‘take Laban as your model for living.’ What the Bible instead implies is: just how is the great God going to make anything out of these rascals?” [ii]
Well, let’s take Leah for just one moment. She ends up being the wife of a man who does not want her and who is treated so badly that even God notices and decides to give the gift of many sons to ease her pain. [iii] Two of those sons, Levi and Judah, will become important for those of us who see ourselves as Abraham’s descendants through our faith that Jesus is the Messiah. Why? Levi is the ancestor of John the Baptist. Why? Judah is the ancestor of Jesus of Nazareth.
Jacob, Laban, Leah, “ . . . these are the characters through whom God is advancing his covenant to save all the nations of the earth . . . . We need the earthy, gritty, and yes at times the unsavory reality of it all to sink in. Sunday school gives us plastic saints. The Bible gives us real people with foibles and flaws and faults.” [iv] And yet, these are precisely the people through whom God’s grace flows into the whole messy project we call human history.
Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.
Friends, you and I are real people with foibles and flaws and faults. That is the ‘bad news’. But the ‘good news’ of God in Jesus is this: we are precisely the people who need God’s grace in our lives and who also become conduits of God’s grace in this world of ours. God does not wait “ . . . for us to clean up our own acts perfectly before or until God will work in us and through us.” [v]
Of all the writers in the New Testament, Paul was keenly aware of his own foibles and flaws and faults. He speaks of them often. But he is also able to affirm that “(we) know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” [vi] He knows, and I hope that we know, that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” [vii] -- even our foibles, our flaws, our faults.
Unlike those who want to pretend that ‘everything is as good as new’, we are unafraid to show our cracks and flaws, because like the silver and gold of kintsugi vessels, God fills those cracks and flaws with the light of love and compassion, the silver and gold of hope and perseverance.
[i] Genesis 29.15-28; Psalm 105.1-11, 45c (BAS); Romans 8.26-39; Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52.
[ii] John Holbert on Genesis 29.15-28 at https://pcpe.smu.edu/blog/what-goes-arounda-reflections-on-genesis-29-15-28 accessed on 24 July 2026.
[iii] Genesis 29.31-35: “When the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. Leah conceived and bore a son, and she named him Reuben, for she said, “Because the Lord has looked on my affliction, surely now my husband will love me.” She conceived again and bore a son and said, “Because the Lord has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also,” and she named him Simeon. Again she conceived and bore a son and said, “Now this time my husband will be joined to me, because I have borne him three sons”; therefore he was named Levi. She conceived again and bore a son and said, “This time I will praise the Lord,” therefore she named him Judah; then she ceased bearing.
[iv] Scott Hoezee on Genesis 29.15-28 at https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2023-07-24/genesis-2915-28-3 accessed on 24 July 2026.
[v] Hoezee 24 July 2026.
[vi] Romans 8.28 (NRSVue).
[vii] Romans 8.38-39 (NRSVue).
No comments:
Post a Comment