By Ed Foley, OFM Cap., June 24, 2026
Many of us can recall, often with a touch of nostalgia,
the unvarnished joy of the neighborhood sandbox.
It was a staple of backyards, schoolyards, and public parks
throughout many a childhood.
In these magical little arenas castles were built,
roads constructed
and young imaginations ran wild.
Over time these largely disappeared:
victim to maintenance hassles, stray animals,
and the messy reality of sand tracking through the kitchen,
which always horrified my OCD mother.
Interestingly enough
the sandbox – a symbol of both design and delight –
has experienced a 21st century revival.
Its contemporary reconception has emerged as a useful tool – a digital playground – where software engineers and online educators
can tinker and test without cost or consequences …
that is until, as recently revealed,
the digital sandbox has been exposed as
a minefield of hidden vulnerabilities,
a springboard for unwelcome exploits,
and a porous containment field
from which rogue agents are capable of escape …
even threatening the very security of the companies
they are meant to serve.
While it might seem somewhat inappropriate – possibly even sacrilegious –
to suggest that discipleship with Jesus
was some kind of spiritual sandbox,
I yet believe this metaphor is appropriate
in light of today’s Gospel
in which the Prince of the Apostles seems to go rogue.
In these few verses from Matthew,
we hear an admittedly disturbing case
of an apostolic agent
intentionally abandoning the holy sandbox that
Jesus fashioned for training disciples.
Just moments before this scene,
Simon Peter reached the summit of his spiritual insight,
declaring the itinerant preacher from Nazareth to be:
the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus was rightly impressed, dubbed him “Petros,” and
handed over the keys to the Kingdom – way to go Rocky!
Unfortunately, however, immediately following this epiphany,
as Jesus explains the operational parameters of His mission:
the trek to Jerusalem,
suffering at the hands of the elders,
public execution,
and a third day resurrection,
Peter not only goes rogue,
breaching the Jesus containment field,
but in his most audacious move ever –
with “does not compute”
looping through his Galilean brain –
Rocky presumes it is time to reprogram the Master
calculating that his own blueprint for
liberating Jews from Romans,|
boosting the Jesus ratings,
and maintaining a firm grip on those freshly minted keys,
clutched tightly in his hands,
is better than that of God’s chosen one:
what holy chutzpah to claim the victory without the cross.
While certainly a cautionary tale,
it is also true that going rogue is not always a tragic mistake
or spiritual misstep.
Virtually every great saint metaphorically went rogue
from the sandbox or scrap heap of the world
– depending on your point of view.
Francis of Assisi strayed from his societal sandbox
when he stripped naked in the public square,
rejecting his father’s fortune in order to marry Lady Poverty.
Katharine Drexel did the same
when she abandoned her multi-million-dollar inheritance
and high-society status
to serve oppressed Native and African Americans.
Holiness itself might be considered
a journey out of the world’s playground
into the crucible of God’s own sandbox.
We see echoes of this same maverick nonconformity
in the modern story of Arthur Brooks.
For a decade, Brooks sat at the very epicenter of political power
as president of the American Enterprise Institute,
thriving inside a high-stakes bubble
built on maximizing influence
and vanquishing your ideological rivals.
By every worldly metric he was winning the game.
Then, on a cross-country flight,
he overheard a world-famous American hero
– an Apollo astronaut who had actually walked on the moon –
miserably confessing to his wife that his life no longer mattered as he faded from the spotlight.
At thirty thousand feet,
Brooks caught a chilling glimpse of his own future,
while the world’s handbook was eating his humanity alive.
So, Brooks went rogue at the peak of his career,
shocking everyone by abandoning his privileged D.C. perch and devoting his life to a teaching career focused on
love, community, and genuine human happiness.
Now you need not fret about Mr. Brooks,
who did not join an ashram in India
or enter the Capuchin novitiate,
but is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Business School,
and a highly sought after speaker …
whose fees start at $50,000 …
I know, because I tried to book him for an event without success.
His continued academic and financial achievements, however,
do not diminish the life turn or dramatic career pivot
he ventured in his mid-50’s.
While Brooks was not a dancer – though a professional musician–
his veering out of the corporate sandbox
– as one dancer theologian suggests –
is analogous to an exquisite yet devilishly difficult ballet step
known as the renversé,
a movement that completely defies human instincts.
In executing a renversé, the dancer
appears to throw their entire body off-balance,
arching backward into empty space.
For a terrifying second the dancer seems to be falling.
While the body bends backward into vulnerability,
the dancer’s head strains forward to restore equilibrium.
Only at the last possible moment
does the entire body snap forward to complete the rotation,
gracefully landing on a new center.
We can say with some surety that Arthur Brooks
successfully executed his own renversé,
gracefully landing on his new happiness centered career.
Unfortunately, at least in this instance,
Peter did not … and executed the equivalent
of a crash and burn, or in balletesque language,
not a pas de deux but a pas de debacle.
He was fighting the dance,
wanting to march forward into dominance and security,
but Christ demands of him and us that terrifying pivot,
a spiritual renversé,
falling back into complete vulnerability.
In his provocative tale of Alice’s romp through the looking glass,
Lewis Carroll offers a counterintuitive choreography that
illustrates the importance of the personal and spiritual renversé,
seeing the world topsy-turvy if we are to reach our true goals.[1]
In Chapter 2, Alice spots the Red Queen whom she wants to meet.
A nearby talking rose offers her paradoxical advice,
advising her to walk the other way to achieve her goal.
Assuming the rose is speaking nonsense, Alice ignores the advice,
marching straight toward the Queen.
Instantly, she loses sight of her target
and finds herself right back at the front door.
Realizing that the straight path is a trap,
Alice then turns her back on the Red Queen,
deliberately walks in the completely opposite direction,
and quickly ends up standing face-to-face with the Queen.
It’s a geometry that Simon Peter was yet to learn.
Our world usually runs on a simple, straight-line trajectory:
- advance to win
- accumulate to secure
- control to survive
But, in the Jesus sandbox, the geometry is inverted.
The straight path of human self-protection
leads straight to a spiritual dead end.
When Jesus thunders “Get behind me, Satan!”
He is not excommunicating Peter.
Rather, He is resetting his posture,
calling him back into alignment,
positioning him for the ultimate renversé,
affirming that the way of the cross
is the only authentic way for a disciple to go rogue.
Saint Paul names this exact choreography:
“Do not conform yourselves to this age,
but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”
Jeremiah as well felt that same agonizing tension,
trying to step out of God’s sandbox,
only to find the truth burning like a fire in his bones
until he surrendered in his own renversé.
We all know the bone-deep weariness of playing by the world’s rules
guarding our territory,
pushing to the front of the line
and fleeing from the sacrifice that dares to put others first.
And then, straight-talking Jesus shows up,
spiritually whacks the prince of the apostles back into line,
and reminds him and us that the ultimate rogue move
for the redemption of ourselves
and the salvation of the humanity we are called to serve
is not the way of the “keys” but the way of the Cross.
So this coming week, when tempted
to abandon the Jesus sandbox for that of the world,
hold fast, stay generous, and remember this blessing:
When we feel the urge to push forward at all costs,
to ourselves and to others
may we be blessed with the quiet grace to yield.
And in that moment,
may our spirit find the courage of the renversé —
to lean back into empty space,
to yield our tight grip on the keys,
and to trust the unseen hands that catch us as we fall.
When tempted to go rogue in the ways of the world,
may we hear the merciful voice of the Master
who urges us to step behind him,
to trust the divine geometry,
and dance back into a holy alignment.
And may the sacred frame of the Cross become for us
not a place of defeat, but a sanctuary of freedom;
not a stumbling block of despair but a stepping stone to hope;
not a tomb of lost dreams, but a cradle of radical rebirth,
so that we might land gently in that most sacred of hearts
the heart of the one who sacrificed so much
that we might live
and the world might be renewed in his peace
through Christ our Lord.
[1] N. T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 2: Chapters 16–28 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 16-20
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