August 17, 2026
27 years ago today, I made Tammy a cake that she will never forget.
And by never forget, I mean possibly the worst cake that has ever been made in the history of the world.
I had never baked anything before, but I knew what good cake was. And I knew who made good cake. That would be my mom. I guess probably some other people in here think their mom makes the best cake in the world.
You're wrong.
And so I got my mom to send me the recipe so I could make this cake for Tammy. I had it on the note card. I made the cake and I said, “Oh, you've got to taste this batter. The batter is always so good.”
And she tasted the batter and she was like, “Mhm.”
I was like, “Maybe I'm misremembering.”
Because our brains do that, right? When something doesn't go right, our brains start to try to convince us that what we're doing is still right, is still okay.
I said, “You know what? Actually, I was wrong. The batter isn't good, but once the cake bakes, it's going to be fabulous. You're going to be so excited.”
Poured the batter into the dish, put the dish into the oven, baked the cake, whipped up the icing, and iced the cake.
And I said, “All right, now the coup de grâce.”
I didn't say that. I had no idea what a coup de grâce was when I was 20.
But I cut a piece, and Tammy tells me she had prepared herself to make the best face possible.
It didn't matter how the cake tasted.
She was ready. She knew it might not be good because she tasted the batter.
And she took a bite, and she put it into her mouth, and it immediately fell back out of her mouth.
You see, the thing about making a cake, about baking, is you need to at least have some clues about what's right and what's wrong.
Turns out a half a cup of salt is a smidge too much salt.
Just a little.
Too much salt.
The note card that I had said two cups of flour, two cups of sugar, half salt.
There was no measurement after the half.
Well, I was doing things in cups.
Probably a good thing she didn't eat it.
She obviously forgave me. It was 27 years ago.
I've made some good cakes for her since then. I've made some bad cakes. When grabbing vanilla extract at the grocery store, it is important to make sure that it is vanilla extract and not anise extract. If you don't know what anise is, that's licorice.
It wasn't as bad as the half a cup of salt, but it also was not good.
It's a story we tell most years around her birthday, and really probably just about anytime I start to get out baking ingredients, because that's part of our lives.
If your life stories don't include those stories where things went wrong, you may be trying to paint a picture that isn't true. We may be looking towards a form of perfection that is not true, and it is also not of God.
Perfection is something we talk about in the faith as something we move toward, not something we have already achieved.
But the reality is, I think that with God, perfection looks even different from that. Because even as we try to move towards perfection, we all already want to have it right.
We already want to not get anything wrong.
Anybody in here like making mistakes? Like doing things wrong? Like being told you are wrong?
When we're in the classroom, in school, do you raise your hand when you don't know what the right answer is?
No. We raise our hands if we think we know the right answer. We raise our hands when we are sure of ourselves. We raise our hands to show that we already know.
But learning and growth, which is what Jesus calls us to, come not from being right, but from messing up, from getting things wrong. From putting a half a cup of salt into the cake.
It comes from going, “Oh, that's terrible.”
Here's the thing. If Tammy had actually managed to compose her face, I may have never found out how terrible that recipe was.
I may never have learned that I didn't know what I was doing and I actually needed to learn and grow and change.
We don't like to hear that we're wrong. We don't like to tell other people that they're wrong.
And it costs us.
We are disciples of Jesus Christ, which means students. We are called to be those who are learning and growing, who are moving and learning and growing.
That doesn't mean we're not already loved or good as we are. It means that we are continuing to receive the nutrients of the ground so that we can grow.
We don't tell a tree that, as it grows, it was terrible before it got bigger.
Instead, we appreciate each stage.
For some reason, we don't expect to get the same opportunity ourselves.
But this morning's story invites us into a whole different way of being disciples.
Jesus tells us, right before he goes off to Tyre and Sidon, that it is what comes out of the mouth that shows what is going on in the heart.
But then Jesus turns around and calls an entire people group dogs.
And I got to be honest, we don't want to deal with that.
We don't want to deal with Jesus saying a group of people is dogs.
I don't know what was going on in Jesus's mind that he would say, “You don't take the food for the children and throw it to the dogs,” when talking about the Syrophoenicians or the Canaanites or any other group.
We don't like to talk about that. We don't like to think about that because we think perfection means getting it right rather than perfection meaning that we can learn and grow.
Jesus may have been making a point to the disciples. He may have heard the disciples, in fact, as they headed to Tyre and Sidon, talking about, “Why are we going to the land of the dogs?”
Or maybe Jesus was actually fully human, as our theology states, and he was raised within a particular society and he learned things.
Perfection in the way of Jesus doesn't look like we never have any wrong ideas. Y'all, we are all raised the way we are.
It means that we are willing to learn and to grow, to have the experiences of others impact us and show us a different way, whether Jesus was making a point to the disciples or Jesus himself grew up with some biases.
And again, y'all, I want to be 100% clear. If you think you don't have biases, you're saying you're not human. Biases are the way our brains function.
But we can learn.
We can grow.
We can find out that thinking that group of people or this group of people is all bad isn't actually true.
And Jesus shows us the way today. Shows us how we can learn, how we can grow, how we can actually receive the mercy of others.
Because here's the thing. The beautiful thing about the Canaanite woman is she doesn't get caught up in the fight.
If somebody called you a dog, would you just take it?
“I would bark at them.”
Many of us, myself included, I'd be ready for a fight.
You start denigrating me, y'all. Uh-uh.
I'm not having it.
You start denigrating people around me, I'm not having it.
This woman shows what true faith is. She grants mercy to Jesus.
She continues to say, “I know that you can do this thing. I will continue to call you Lord. And eventually, as I call you Lord, as I recognize who you are, you also will recognize who I am.”
And he does.
And he says to her something that he has said to none of his disciples: “You of great faith.” Of great faith.
Because rather than getting caught up in the fight, rather than getting caught up in the stuff, she says, “No, you don't get to dictate the terms of this conversation. I am here and I have need, and you will recognize that I am here and I have a need.”
And Jesus recognizes it.
Y'all, we don't like the idea that Jesus maybe got something wrong.
I'll be honest, I'm uncomfortable saying it here in front of you.
But the scripture is clear. Not just Jesus.
In the book of Exodus, Moses convinces God that God was wrong.
God says to Moses, “I am going to destroy these people because they have made a golden calf.”
And Moses says, “That's not the best idea. Let's don't do that.”
And God says, “I repent of the thing that I was going to do.”
If God can be wrong and receive mercy, if Jesus can be wrong and receive mercy, so can we.
And this is really one of the most beautiful things about the gospel.
We don't have to have all the answers.
We don't have to have it all right.
Instead, we have to be willing to say, “I need some mercy right now. Goodness gracious, I just put a half a cup of salt in your mouth.”
Maybe not the whole half a cup, but y'all know what I mean.
We have to be willing to say, “That's on me.”
I'll be honest, back then there was still a part of me that was like, “No, I didn't mess this cake up. This isn't my fault. I didn't do anything wrong.”
And then I took a bite of the cake.
Sometimes the evidence is too strong.
But oftentimes we get defensive.
We tell ourselves, “No, I'm right. No, I'm okay.”
And we get stuck where we are, rather than being able to learn and grow and truly be disciples of Jesus Christ, to receive the mercy that we need.
Because without the mercy of God, we've got nothing, without the goodness of God and the goodness of those around us.
Think about it.
In the last week, just the last week, how many times have you received mercy?
This is what nourishes us. This is what helps us to grow.
And it is what we see with Joseph and his brothers.
Y'all, it's been 25 years since the last time I had a big blowup fight with my older brother, and we still don't talk about it.
We argued over our card game.
And we've barely healed from it.
Moses got sold into slavery in Egypt, and his brothers left him for dead, and it only took him 20 years to forgive them, maybe even less.
Moses's mercy—or not Moses, Joseph. That guy.
One of those patriarchs.
Joseph's mercy heals him and heals his brothers, and it provides the way of life.
Joseph, in his speech to his brothers, shows to them, but not just to them, the way that we flourish together.
Look at what God has done in my life.
And now I'm going to do it in your life.
And you replicate it.
And you replicate it.
And the more that mercy, the more that grace, the more that love replicates, the more life flourishes in the world.
I got to be honest, I'm not sure I'm a big fan of Joseph's choice.
Bitterness seems easier.
Bitterness seems better.
How do we get retribution? How do we make sure people understand what they have done?
But the way of Jesus Christ, the way of God, is so different.
Joseph knows that his brothers will be healed and will become better, fuller people when they're fed, when they're nourished, when they don't sense that there is scarcity, when they know that mercy is possible.
They may learn to extend that same mercy to others.
Joseph simply wants what is good for them in spite of everything they had done to him.
That is the way of the gospel.
It is the same thing we hear Jesus say from the cross:
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
If we can learn to want goodness for all people, for each person, we will learn the way of the gospel.
But we've got to be clear. We've got to be 100% clear.
It's not going to come natural. It's going to be something we have to learn. But the way we learn it is by receiving it.
We have to allow ourselves to be transformed by mercy, to be perfected by mercy.
Are we willing to do that?
Are we willing first to say, “I know I need to learn and grow. I know I am in need of mercy. I know that I've got to change”?
It is only in that work that we will learn how to be transformed and to share mercy with others, to really and truly be a part of how this world is changed.
We've got to start by saying, “I don't always like it. There are some people I don't necessarily want to be merciful to.”
And it's not just the person who cuts me off in traffic.
We've got to be honest with ourselves about where we need mercy and that we can only become our truest, fullest selves when we have received it.
If even God, if even Jesus at times needed mercy, how much more do we?
But it is when we receive that mercy that we become perfected.
When we receive the goodness, the nourishing love of God that we know through Christ Jesus, it is then that we become fully who we are made to be.
Let us receive that mercy and be transformed by it.
Amen.