In the wee hours of a February morning in Loveland, Colorado a pickup truck slid off the road. The police arrived on the scene, found the driver uninjured and determined that a slick, dark, tarry substance had caused the wreck. Immediately they called in the fire department’s HazMat team.

The team donned their protective suits and began to assess the material. They eventually realized that the road was flooded with molasses. A nearby factory processing sugar beets produced, among other things, molasses which was stored in a very large tank.

A valve froze and over 500,000 gallons of molasses flowed out and down the street. In some places it was over a foot deep. A half mile of road was closed for over two weeks as the sticky mess was cleaned up by volunteers and professionals.

Life is messy. Everyone knows that. Assessing life’s messes and our part in them takes discernment and wisdom. How we respond speaks volumes about us humanly and spiritually.

Israel was, according to the books of first and second Kings, a mess. Intrigue and political posturing galore. Various persons plotting to sit on the throne – some succeeding, others not, or not for long.

It was a far cry from Israel’s founding on the principles of God’s commandments. It was to be a theocracy. The core value was love for God and neighbor. Accountability to one another. Justice was to be equitable and restorative. But had that utopia ever existed? Perhaps not, especially under the reign of kings. But losing the thread can happen in a lot of different ways.

Elijah the prophet was very zealous. He said so himself when God found him hiding out after getting into an unwinnable and bloody conflict. Elijah had launched a crusade against people whose observance of the commandments he found deficient. Up to and including Israel’s King Ahab and his foreign-born Queen, Jezebel, along with her personal prophets of the sky god Baal.

God however, seems to have had reservations about Elijah’s zealotry. Elijah hadn’t stayed in his prophetic lane. He’d appointed himself as chief judge and executioner. Forgotten his prophet work to listen to God and bring God’s voice to people. He’d become a toxic prophet.

God instructed Elijah to anoint kings over Aram and Israel, and a new prophet in his own place. It was perhaps more like retirement with a note of censure. So Elijah was to cede his bloody campaign to kings, and settle his prophetic mantle on his successor Elisha.

Elisha, a hardworking, wealthy young man (twelve yoke of oxen?!) was receptive to prophetic work. His first act demonstrated great commitment. He used his livestock equity to provide food for his community. He left everything behind, becoming for a time the servant of Elijah, to learn the ways of God. He would be great, but also flawed in his own way. Because life is messy.

Jesus came precisely because life is messy. He came specifically to set people free from the messes of our own making. As with the Christians of Galatia. When did their liberation from sin become just plain liberty to do as they pleased without thought of anyone else?

Paul had a lot to say about that. A spirit of cooperation and generosity had given way to a spirit of competition and greed. Jesus may set us free, but when we use freedom to constrain and abuse others then we have lost the thread. And our spirits are not right within us.

The way of Jesus is compassionate, just, and peaceable. Who doesn’t want that? And yet, given the opportunity to follow him we can find any number of reasons not to. As the gospel says so well.

Luke assembled a number of Jesus sayings related to following his way. It’s unlikely they were all spoken at the same time. Luke’s gospel places them in the context of Jesus’s eventual ascension into heaven. He was moving toward God; his spirit returning to dwell within God.

Along the way, one Samaritan village chose not to host Jesus. Their rejection had nothing to do with Jesus himself or his message. It was the mess of ancient prejudices. It is hard for Jesus to speak to us when we feel our preferred ways of thinking and believing will be challenged.

Jesus’s own disciples’ reaction to the Samaritans was to reject and condemn them. Jesus quickly turned and got them behind him. The disciples’ assumption of power to purify and punish is painful to hear.

Because it still happens every day; destructive forces called down upon people in the name of God. And what does this say about the alignment of our spirits with God’s Spirit? The Spirit of life and health and hope.

Indeed, the reign of God may be far more than a future paradise. Perhaps it is also whenever and wherever we create holy spaces in the midst of our oh-so-human messes. Where we lay down all our weapons. Entering into a space where it is possible to rest, regroup, and refresh our spirits.

As for the rest of the gospel today, and all three lessons for that matter, we are reminded that God is with us in the world we make so disorderly. And in spite of it. We learn again the value of honest self-examination, confession, sacrifice, flexibility, compassion, and commitment. All of which are aspects of living with integrity. But you can call it following the way of Jesus too.