The reading from Genesis speaks of perseverance and devotion in the face of nearly unimaginable challenges.

Jacob is on the lamb, as it were, hiding from Esau -- out to kill Jacob for his trickery in stealing his birthright from their Father, Isaac.

As all seems at an end, he goes to work among the herds of Laban and comes across Rachel, for whom he enters into service for her hand, only to be deceived into taking Leah, Laban's older daughter first. But he persists for Rachel, even to working another seven years.

Imagine Leah in the midst of all this. She participates in the deception that gets here married to Jacob, yet has to live with him for seven more years, as Jacob slaves and pines for another. Maybe Leah feels out of it -- maybe she had aspirations to be with Esau, and she could have been as disappointed as Jacob.

But they find themselves together, and in time, perhaps in circumstances not unlike our own.

All of us at one time or another find ourselves in relationship with what we perceive as two different people. We find ourselves with the one who is the person we struggle to make our own forever, and at the same time, with the person we do not really know -- with the person we never bargained for. An at the same time we find ourselves in that inner conflict, our partner often finds him or herself in the same predicament -- longing for the person they fell in love with.

But the challenge to covenant relationships is not only rediscovering passion -- it's a matter of also learning how to stay in love, by growing into the love for the person you or I never bargained for. It's a matter of learning not only to be in love but to stay in love. To love without condition, knowing the person we cherish is still there in the midst of the stranger, while this other person rears his or her peculiar head from time to time. Knowing too the invitation to grow in love with this other, less captivating, less interesting character.

We seek to discover the qualities of the lesser-known other in a person, keeping mind all the while that the person we cherish is still there, and more than that, there most of time with all those qualities we cherish. And that it is in this quest of the lesser-known person we discover more to be admired. And also, in the search, we discover more about ourselves.

This image can be transferred into the life of Faith in Christ through the Church.

I know from my own experiences, passages, and shortcomings, I have not generally allowed myself to grow closer in my journey within the Episcopal Church.

I had few illusions of what I was getting myself into. But as a result, I have allowed my cynicism to get into the way of the excitement and mystery community life in the Faith was meant to be. I have written off those elements and people in the Church that have caused me grief or disappointment. I have become less a man for being merely, "Right."

As I have said more than once,

"The journey is not about being right. The journey is about being true." Being true to oneself. Being true -- being THERE -- for others. Being there for the elusive moments of grace, which really only manifest themselves in the midst of great sacrifice and trial, because only in trial do we fail. And only in failure do we reach out for fellowship and help. Only in failure do we recognize the purpose of community and fellowship.

As a parish or as a component of that which we call the Church, we can only celebrate fellowship that endures, not merely the fellowship that "feels right."

If Jacob merely stewed about how he was ripped off by Laban in the additional seven years servitude following his union with Rachel, both unions would have suffered greatly. While we know nothing of the details of that hiatus, we know from further reading in Genesis, things were far from perfect with Jacob and his Father-in-Law, Laban. And the tension between Leah and Rachel persisted. But Jacob tried his best, and his efforts (and the unknown maturation in Esau) resulted in a reconciliation between brothers.

Progress in spiritual growth can occur even when the portents do not seem advantageous. Indeed, spiritual growth often occurs precisely when it shouldn't.

Perhaps it is in looking for the good to be had, rather obsessing on the injustices of the faults that beset us, particularly in the relationships that matter in our lives, that then both ourselves and those we care about can grow and be fruitful.

Which brings me back to the Church, the mission of Christ and our will for its growth.

There has been a lot of consternation during these days of the Lambeth Conference by those who could not sully and compromise the Great Commission by eating and drinking with sinners at the table of the Lord at Lambeth -- that to do so would be condoning a permissive attitude within the Church.

Now for the hard stuff of today's Gospel -- tacked on after some rather forthright and familiar imagery about the Kingdom as Mustard seed, yeast, treasure and pearl. And that is the net. We might take the image at mere face value.

The net is cast. All the fish are hauled to shore, and the angels sort through the good from the bad. Now what's so tough about that, particularly when we all presume that those of us hearing this are the presumed beneficiary of the angels' good taste and discernment.

Even if we have such presumption, (which we might have at the peril of our own souls. But I digress), nonetheless it means allowing ourselves to be in the midst of the mire. If we merely hold ourselves a good arm's length from what we perceive as the perversions of life and their adherents, we run the risk of being outside the cast of the net.

(You can refresh my memory, but I don't recall the image of fishing in the old testament as an image of selective fishing, (the use of a hook, if you will.)

Evangelization can be very hard work, because we are called to cast the nets -- nets that bring to shore what might appear to us to be the best and the worst of life. In some way, I think some of us have been content that we've baited a hook, dropped a line, fastened a bell, and are hoping for the best.

This does not work in spreading the gospel, and it certainly does not work in relationships.

In both relationships and the spreading of the gospel, we have to presume everything and everyone is for Christ -- that on a personal level and on an ecclesial level, it is not for us to do the sorting out. It is for God's angels. (Now unless you're hiding wings under your shirts and blouses, your aren't them.)

Thus we are left with a challenge and a blessing, all rolled up in two phrases that form the crux, in my opinion, of the whole body of the writings of Paul:

[The first:] We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose Rom8:28

[and Second] I am convinced 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 Rom8:38