Again and again, let us pray to the Lord, saying "Lord, have mercy."

The summer when I was nine years old, I had a very definite belief in the power of prayer.

Every Sunday, I approached the altar and received communion. And in the silence after communion each week, I knelt and prayed. Having just received the Body of Christ, I *knew* that at that moment, I was particularly close to God. So what did I do? I placed my order for next week. I told God what blessing God should give me when I next received communion. That's how it works, right? We pray, and God gives us what we want.

I can picture the stained glass windows that surrounded me that summer when I prayed, with pictures of the miracles Jesus performed. And I remember my fervent prayer, week after week, that the baby my mother was about to have would be a little sister. God, give me a little sister. A simple, fervent prayer, repeated over and over, week after week.

And then, that October, I was in French class. A note came from to the principal's office. I needed to leave class for an important phone call. It was my dad, calling from the hospital. I had a healthy… new… little… brother.

My belief in the power of prayer was shattered.

I don't even remember why I wanted a sister and not another brother. I just remember that I asked God for it, and God didn't come through. It was an arbitrary, almost whimsical request. I don't know why I focused on it, why I prayed for it all summer long. But perhaps it was a blessing to be disappointed in prayer for the first time about something not-so-earth-shattering, rather than one of the big ones. Please, God, let me get the job. Please, let the doctor say the test came back negative. Please, let her be ok. Because again and again we pray to the Lord, saying Lord, have mercy. And sometimes the Lord's mercy takes the form we're asking for. But sometimes it doesn't. And then… what?

My non-sister who was born 25 years ago last week has been an amazing blessing in my life. He's a wonderful human being, and I can't imagine my life without him. At the moment I heard about him, I was sure God had let me down, but I didn't know yet the blessings God had given.

We pray, and we believe that God is good, and that God is all powerful, and yet evil persists.

So what good is prayer?

So what good is prayer?

We are not the first people to wonder about this. The ancient Israelites wrestled with this. So did the people of Philippi.

There's a lot of prayer-related content in that first lesson from Exodus, so let's start where it ends.

The Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

Moses implored the Lord his God, and the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

Isn't that what we're hoping for so often when we pray? That's the jackpot. That's the big payout. We pray, and God changes God's mind about The Plan. We pray, and God intervenes and the course of history is altered: either big-H History of the World, or the little histories of each of our lives that are giant in our personal worlds. We pray, we alter the mind of God, and life unfolds differently.

And the Exodus story tells us that this happens. The mind of God is not set in stone, like the tablets of the commandments. God has a plan, but it can be al tered by prayer. Powerful stuff.

But that's not the only lesson from today's Exodus lesson about prayer, because this same story cautions us against counting too much on changing the Mind of God.

The Israelites asked Aaron to "come make gods for us." This cloudy, nebulous, unpredictable, uncontrollable conversation between God and Moses up on Mount Sinai -- who knows what will happen there. It's been going on for a long, long time. Will Moses ever come back? Will this lead to anything? We want a way to interact with the divine that we can understand and predict. That we can control.

We often think of this story as the Israelites rejecting the Lord (And when "the Lord" appears in all caps in Hebrew scripture, that means the Hebrew text actually contains the letters Yod Het Vav Het, the unspeakably holy personal Name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush). But the story of the Golden Calf isn't about the Israelites praying to a different divine power. In building the calf, Aaron says that the festival they will hold is a festival to "the Lord" -- that is, to Yahweh. And when building the golden sculptures for worship, Aaron attributed to the golden statues the great act of the Lord -- bringing the people out of slavery in Egypt. Aaron and the Israelites weren't rejecting Yahweh. They were rejecting the unpredictable, uncontrollable *interface* they had with Yahweh. They wanted golden statues that they could control -- mold in to shape, have them present right when they wanted them, and use as they saw fit.

They didn't reject the Lord. They rejected way of interacting with the divine that they did not control. They wanted a God they could carry around, a God they could manipulate, a God that was always where they wanted it.

And the Lord didn't take so well to that idea. The Lord got violently upset about performing on command. Our God is not a domesticated God. Our God is a wild force beyond our controlling. And if our prayer and worship assume that God is in our control, the story tells us that God is most displeased.

When we pray, again and again, Lord have mercy, we pray, confident that there is room in the divine plan for some of God's mercy to be released by our prayers. The great theologian Thomas Aquinas, in his master work Summa Theologicae wrote something that can be translated as “We do not pray to change divine decree, but only to obtain what God has decided will be obtained through prayer.” Now Moses gives us hope that perhaps, despite Aquinas's view, we *can* change the divine decree, but Aaron's experience warns us not to *expect* gods we can mold and manipulate. We pray in the hope, but not with the arrogant expectation, that the world will change as a result of our prayer.

To the Philippians, St. Paul writes:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.

Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.

Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

So what's Paul saying? Let your requests be known to God, and the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds.

St. Paul does not reassure us that whatever we ask for will be granted as we ask it. Moses implored the Lord his God, and the Lord changed his mind. Sometimes it happens. But Paul writes to the Philippians that if we turn our worries over to the Lord, and let our requests be known to God, God will not necessarily grant them, but will keep our hearts and minds in peace -- in the peace of God which passes all understanding. Turning our troubles over to God just might make them go away, but it might not. It will, however, give us an incomprehensible peace as we face them.

A god we can manipulate, a god that always takes the form we want and mechanically grants our requests is the golden calf so desired by the people in the Exodus story, and yet so offensive to the Lord. The dynamic, incomprehensible God of Mount Sinai is messier than that. We might want mechanical solutions: you pray for something, you get it as ordered. It's so appealing. But Paul tells us that if we pray, we will have not solutions to our problems, but peace.

An Paul continues: Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

We turn our concerns over to God in prayer, and then we keep on doing the things we have learned. We persist in feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, caring for the sick, visiting the prisoner. But in place of worry, in place of despair, in place of hopelessness, God gives us peace.

Sometimes we pray, and the world changes. Moses implored the Lord his God, and the Lord changed his mind. Often, we pray, and we don't get the things we asked for. Prayer transforms us internally, and we have peace while we persist in doing the things we have learned, but the bad stuff goes on in the world.

And yet, again and again, let us pray to the Lord, saying "Lord, have mercy."

Answer Key?

We just got a new dog this week. When you're first plunged into a new situation with profound responsibilities, whether a new pet, a baby, or a change in your own life, it would be great to have an instruction manual. A book with all the answers to help us navigate a scary and complex world. It would be a comforting and wonderful thing to have the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

And while Douglas Adams fans might tell you the answer is 42, others will look elsewhere.

The lesson from Matthew talks about "One who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, in another thirty." The lesson from Isaiah talks about "the word that goes out from my mouth" that shall not return to God empty, "but shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it."

So I'm here to talk to you today about the efficacy of what Matthew calls "the Word of the Kingdom." I'm here to talk to you about the power of the Bible.

Before you get alarmed, yes, you are still at the same church. This is an Episcopal Church, one whose website bills its as "one of the most progressive parishes in Michigan." Despite all the baggage The Bible brings with it, I'm here to talk to you today about the power of the Bible.

I just spent a week out in Iowa celebrating my wife's aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary. On the way there and back, and while we were out there, we passed a lot of churches. A number of churches announced on their signs that they were "Bible Churches."

Now there are a lot of churches where you can spend most of the time gathered in church hearing about the bible. Maybe there will be a verse or two read up front, or maybe the preacher will talk about the bible and quote verses during the sermon, but the bulk of the service is hearing someone talk ABOUT the bible, or at least about what he -- it's usually a he -- thinks that the bible says, and how he thinks people ought to apply it to their lives.

But when you think of "Bible Churches," I want you to think of this one. Because for all the churches out there that call themselves "Bible Churches", I have a hard time coming up with a more bible-based church than the Episcopal Church.

Christopher Webber, in his book "Welcome to the Episcopal Church," points out just how much time we spend when we gather for worship not just hearing about the bible, but hearing the bible itself. Today, like almost every Sunday, we heard four different readings from the bible, from Isaiah, Psalms, Romans, and Matthew. We sang hymns, which largely draw their imagery from the bible. We pray prayers from our Book of Common Prayer, and many, many of these prayers take their language directly from the bible. At the peak of our liturgy, the celebration of Holy Eucharist, what do we say and do? We hear and recite words from the bible: Jesus' Words of Institution and the Lord's Prayer. Yes, there is some reflection that isn't directly from the bible (like this sermon), but the bulk of our gathering is spent not hearing second-hand about the bible, but hearing it.

Webber's book is a truly outstanding one; even if you've been an Episcopalian for years and years, I recommend it to read. He has a lot more to say about the role of the Bible in the Episcopal Church: how hearing it read in community is different than reading it alone. How much this repeated reading and singing and praying and listening to the word about the kingdom shapes our language and thoughts and prayers and the life of our church. If being Bible-based is about process: hearing, reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting before and while and after we take each of our actions as Church, it would be hard to find a more Bible-based church than the Episcopal Church. Our corporate action is strongly rooted in a tradition of reading and reflecting on the words in the bible.

But personal bible reading is a big piece of the story about the bible, too.

My relationship with this book is not an easy one. On the one hand, I read it. A lot. I got my first bible for Christmas when I was ten years old. Here it is. Now I was raised Roman Catholic, and traditionally, Catholics didn't read the bible much. But I was a voracious reader, and this thick book with thin pages was too fascinating to put down. You can see all the bookmarks I tucked into the pages when I found a fascinating passage. The proverbs, the law, the poetry, the Gospels, the epistles, the revelations.

When I was in English class my sophomore year in high school, I recognized many biblical allusions that came up in the poems and stories we read. My English teacher, a former Jesuit, guessed I must be a Protestant, because no Catholic would know the bible that well.

But the more I read it, the less comfortable I was with some of what it had to say.

The God described in some stories in the Bible didn't sound like a good God. Jesus said that all the law and the prophets hang on "Love the Lord your God with all your mind and all your heart and all your soul and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself," but when you read the law and the prophets, killing off all the inhabitants of the land, and the various prophesies of vengeance against the enemies of the Lord, that doesn't sound like love of neighbor. And God is a God of justice and mercy, we're told, but Abraham seems to be praised for the binding of Isaac, while I can't tell you how many times I re-read Exodus to no avail trying to figure out just what awful thing Moses did at Meribah that got God so upset that Moses couldn't enter the Promised Land.

So on the one hand, there's not liking the answers that the bible gives. But then, there's a deeper problem: even if you decide to suck it up and obey the bible's answers, they aren't internally consistent. Are we supposed to beat swords into plowshares or plowshares into swords? Are we supposed to love our enemies or exterminate them from the earth? Was humankind created before or after plants and animals? Are followers of Jesus supposed to wear sandals or not wear sandals?

These moral quandaries and factual discrepancies seem to produce two strong reactions: people who suppress the conflicts, harmonize the texts, and cling to the Bible as the definitive Book of Answers, and those who emphasize the conflicts, mock the texts, and reject the bible as a failed Book of Answers that can explain much of the zealotry and mayhem in Western Civilization. Less strident members of each camp still fall on the same axis: those who affirm the bible as the Book of Answers about faith, but not about history or science; those who don't reject the bible, but are mostly embarrassed by its uglier parts, so they either ignore it, avoiding talking about it as much as possible, or just focus on the parts they like -- the "Good Parts Version".

For much of my adult life, I fell into this last camp: I didn't reject the bible, but I was pretty embarrassed by its uglier parts. I'd focus on the Gospels and selected poetry from Hebrew Scripture, and ignore Paul's pesky letters with their apparent misogyny and reactionary social tendencies and the Pentateuch with its bloodthirstiness for both minor transgressors and those who didn't happen to be born in the right tribe.

But I'd propose that judging the Bible on whether it's a good or bad book of answers might be missing the greatest richness it has to offer. Yes, the Bible contains answers. But even more, it's a journal of millennia of humankind wrestling with the questions. For me, this realization turned the Bible from an embarrassingly dysfunctional book of answers to the holiest of gifts from God: a treasury of the process of humanity wrestling with the questions of the hows and whys of living one's life.

For over four hundred years, the people of Judah believed that as the Lord’s chosen people, they would be ruled by the house of David forever. This was no small claim for a fairly minor kingdom nestled between the great empires of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Assyria. Then, in 586 BCE, the sky fell in. The Babylonian empire conquered Jerusalem and forced many of its inhabitants to relocate to Babylon. This exile reduced to ruins not only their homes, their livelihoods, and their ordinary way of life, but also their very sense of identity relative to God and the rest of the world.

Years later, a miracle occurred: the Babylonians were defeated by the Persians, and the new king saw that unlike any other conquered people that the Babylonians relocated, they had not been assimilated. They were still Jews, not Babylonians. And King Cyrus told them they could go home.

So they were back in The Land that God promised their ancestors. But they weren't a kingdom of their own. And the question they faced was: "Now what?"

Some folks thought that the lesson of the exile was that they hadn't been following the commandments closely enough, so they should double their zeal for the Law, and be extra-careful not to break any of the rules. Some thought that foreign ways had corrupted the people, leading to God's displeasure, and purging foreign blood and foreign influence from the Jewish people was the solution. Some thought the lesson of the exile was that the world is far bigger than just the Jewish people, and that they were to serve as an example to draw the whole world to God. Some saw the exile as a reason to focus not on the particulars of their own tradition, but on universal wisdom and good conduct. And some saw the chaos and tumult they endured as a sign that the world was inherently so evil and incomprehensible that all one could do was endure it and wait for God to one day step in and make it right. As the survivors of the Kingdom of Judah returned to the land, they wrote down and compiled the oral traditions of their relationship with their God, and collected the earlier writings they could find, and complied it into a giant reading list to help them sort out the great question: "now what?" But rather than searching for the one tradition that was "right," they included it all. Purify. No, embrace the rest of the world. No, just focus on the law. No, focus on universal wisdom. No, cling to God through the chaos. And in compiling what we now know as the Hebrew Scriptures, they included "all the wisdom that's fit to print." Which is a chaotic jumble that contradicts itself and tells the same stories multiple times, and yes, includes many, contradictory answers to some questions. It's a book about a process, a process of "Israel" -- which means wrestling with the Divine. They immersed themselves in their writings of past wrestling with the divine so that any decisions they made going forward would be informed by that past.

Which brings us back to our favorite Bible Church, the Episcopal Church. I would argue that our use of the Bible is in its most powerful tradition. We hear the bible, constantly, together. We read, we pay attention to particular parts that jump out at us, we learn. We inwardly digest it. And it becomes a part of us. And then, everything we do is done by the "we" that is formed by this hearing, reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting.

The Bible isn't an answer key. It's more of a guide to past questions and attempts at answers, and reflections on how those answers turned out. And therein lies its power and its beauty. Because we have the gift of the Bible, we are not, like Garrison Keillor's Guy Noir, alone trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions. In our search for how to live, we have the accounts of millennia before us. And that indeed bears fruit and yields, in on case a hundredfold, in another sixty, in another thirty.

Amen.

Ascension

The Prayer Book lists Ascension Day second on the list of Principal Feasts of the Church. It ranks up there high enough to have a psalm reserved for this special occasion (Psalm 47), and to get its own version of “Hail thee, festival day!” And yet it falls on a Thursday, so many churches around the world don’t gather to celebrate this highest-importance feast. But what’s the big deal? What are we celebrating (or forgetting to celebrate) on Ascension Thursday? Why does this day matter?

There’s a fundamental tension in Christianity. We believe in an incarnate God, who was born and dwelt among us. We believe in a bodily resurrection, where Jesus came back from the dead not as a spirit, specter, or ghost, but as an embodied soul, a living human being, with physical scars from his crucifixion and breath in his lungs, who ate and drank and embraced his followers. A living human being who can never die again, who can never become an disembodied spirit. If Christmas is about the incarnation and Easter about the resurrection, they both celebrate a world in which God, in the person of Jesus Christ, walks around us still wholly God yet also a human being with a physical body.

So where is Jesus? If incarnation and resurrection are at the core of our belief system, and they are indeed, then the incarnate, resurrected God should be here. Like Thomas, we should be able to touch his hands and his side, and embrace our Lord and God. We too should be able to walk by sight, and not by faith. Because if we can’t, it rather puts a damper on this bodily-resurrected, incarnate God of ours, no?

Despite our faith in Christmas and Easter, we live in a Pentecost world, a world marked by God as Spirit. We walk by faith, and not by sight, and depend on the gifts of an unseen Holy Spirit to perform our ministry in the world. In this Pentecost world, we are called to see Christ in the least of us, and to be the hands of Christ to one another. This understanding of God is no less real, but more spiritualized — the ordinary people, things, and institutions of the world are imbued with the Spirit of God to take on divine significance. In this Pentecost world, the Body of Christ less resembles a particular literal human body and becomes more elastic, more conceptual. The Body of Christ can be the Church, a consecrated loaf of bread, the poor, a particular person in need, a particular person doing God’s will — all at once, and in many places simultaneously. That’s a different reality than seeing a person called Jesus standing on a particular hillside outside Jerusalem.

Which is why the Feast of the Ascension isn’t optional. This isn’t something we can afford to skip. This is the bridge between the Pentecost reality we live and the Christmas and Easter faith we profess. At its core, Ascension is an acknowledgement of this juxtaposition: Jesus used to be a person who walked around on the earth like other human beings, and continues to really be present with us, but our experience of Jesus’ presence isn’t the same as the disciples’ experience. Encountering Jesus after the Ascension is not the same experience as encountering him before the Ascension. He was with us then, he is with us now, but something is different.

And really, that’s the heart of this feast. Artists have tried to capture the moment over the centuries, but the fact is, it’s a mystery. We don’t understand how Jesus “went away” while simultaneously remaining with us. All we know is that that the Body of Christ, to Mary, was a baby she gave birth to. The Body of Christ, to Joseph of Arimathea, was a dead human body he took down from the Cross and laid in a grave. The Body of Christ, to the women at the tomb on Easter morning, was missing from the grave, until they recognized that the man, alive, speaking to them, was, in fact, the Jesus they were seeking. To all of them, the Body of Christ referred to a particular human body. And the Body of Christ to us today is just as real as it was to them, but it’s not one particular human body. It’s a much more elastic concept. Something is different.

Our lessons for Ascension Thursday give us not one but two accounts of the Ascension event. These two accounts, like many accounts in the Bible, conflict with each other. But these particular accounts’ conflict is especially jarring because they are attributed to the same author. The Gospel according to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles both come from the same writer or school of writers. The central message of the stories is the same in both accounts: Jesus was “there,” and then, rather abruptly, he wasn’t “there” in the same way anymore. One might even be tempted to say he was gone. On that fundamental, the stories agree. But why would Luke tell two different accounts of the story?

In the gospel account, this is a happy ending. The disciples get it. Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures. They walked out of Jerusalem with him, he blessed them, he disappeared, they praised God and worshipped Jesus, then went back into the city with great joy, continually blessing God in the temple. And they lived happily ever after. What a spectacular finish to the Good News according to St. Luke.

And then there’s the Acts account. The author of the Acts account claims ownership of the gospel account, but retells the story with some key differences. Again, the disciples gather with Jesus, but this time, rather than having divinely granted understanding of scripture, they show Jesus they clearly don’t get the meaning of scripture. After everything: all Jesus’ preaching, and healings, and passion, and resurrection, they still don’t get what it’s all about. They ask, “Now is it time to restore the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus’ exasperation must have known no limits at that point. After all they’d seen and been through, they still expected he was about to build a royal palace. That the Kingdom of God would look like the Kingdom of David. And then, Jesus ascends. In the Acts account, the disciples respond not with joy, but with confusion. It takes some angelic explanation so they can figure out not to just stand there staring at the sky wondering where Jesus went, and the angels assure them that Jesus is coming back.

The thing about these two stories is that despite the fact that they say different things, they could both be true. The Ascension story occupies a liminal place in Luke’s account of Christian ministry. It falls at the end of the Gospel. It is also the first story in Acts. This story is the end of something, and the beginning of something else. It marks a fulfillment of one kind of presence of Jesus, and the beginning of another. And yes, it is the source of both consolation and confusion.

If the two accounts emphasize different reactions by the disciples, it is perhaps because both are true. The disciples simultaneously “got it” and were completely baffled. The disciples rejoiced at the fulfillment of Jesus’ earthly ministry and were utterly in awe and confusion about what they were to do next. It’s not unlike other liminal moments in life: graduation, the birth of a child, getting a job. There’s joy and fulfillment and celebration that at last, things have come together and finally make sense. And then, the bewildered realization that now you have to live in that different new world. Now you have to find what comes next after graduation! Now you have to actually take care of this new baby! Now that you've got a job, you actually have to figure out how to do it! Now that Jesus has ascended, he isn't standing there talking to you any more! What comes next beyond the comfortable world you knew? The disciples praised God at the conclusion of the Gospel, and stared into space, lost, at the beginning of Acts. Because this transition from the Christmas/Easter world to the Pentecost one is both awe-inspiring and terrifying.

And so, with great rejoicing and great bewilderment, we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension. We mark the transition from the obvious certainty of a physical person Jesus in the presence of the disciples to a presence that requires a leap to faith to find. We celebrate the fact that Jesus is no longer confined to a hillside in Palestine, but is with us everywhere, even to the ends of the earth. And we wait, with the assurance that again the day will come when we, with our physical bodies, will see the physical person Jesus at the resurrection of the dead. Even so, come Lord Jesus!

The questions

Two weeks ago, my wife and I were walking when we looked across the street and saw a hen run out into traffic. We immediately were filled with questions. Would the hen make it? What was it doing here. Whom did it belong to? Would there be a car accident? Would it make it past that jeep? Past that VW? Why, why, why was it in the middle of traffic? And then, with palpable relief as it emerged unruffled onto our sidewalk, we turned to each other and laughed as we simultaneously voiced the question we had suddenly come to truly get for the first time in our lives? Why DID the chicken cross the road?

Sometimes our moments of clarity aren't answers; they're just a newfound appreciation of the question.

There's an image of a person making a moral decision that's popular in cartoons: a little angel perches over one shoulder, urging a person to do good, while a little devil perches over the other shoulder, urging the person to do evil. The two make their cases, and then the person decides whether to do good or to do evil.

In reality, though, it's rarely like that. People, I believe, do a pretty good job choosing good over evil. When there is a clear choice between right and wrong, people tend to do what's right. Where it gets more complicated is when there's a choice among goods. It gets more complicated when there is a choice among options that all have good to them, but none of them seem quite perfect. That's when moral decision making gets harder.

In our first lesson today, God tells Adam "if you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall die that day." Our reading skips a few key verses after that, when Eve is created. At some point, either Adam or God must have shared the message with Eve, because when Eve is talking with the serpent, she says "if we eat from that tree or touch it we shall die."

Like a game of telephone, the message changes as it gets passed along. Now the serpent says this is all nonsense. "You won't die," he says. "If you eat from the tree, you will know about good and evil, like God does." Eve touches the fruit. She eats the fruit. Guess who was the only one telling the truth? That's right, the serpent. Humankind acquires knowledge of good and evil. They are expelled from the Garden. But did they die that day? No.

In the garden of Eden, when it was a choice between obedience and disobedience, there was never any struggle. Obedience equals life; disobedience equals death, and Adam and Eve stayed away from the tree. Indeed, it seems that Adam amplified God's original prohibition on eating from the tree so it included not touching the tree just to play it safe.

But then the serpent enters the mix, and makes the situation more complicated: it's not a choice between obedience and disobedience. It's a choice between obedience and wisdom. Wisdom is a good thing, right? Adam and Eve never embraced disobedience for its own sake. It was only when Eve observed that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that it was to be desired to make one wise that she and Adam touched and ate the fruit of the tree.

Did they make the wrong choice? Even that isn't an obvious call. The highest feast in the Christian year, the Great Vigil of Easter, begins with a song known as the Exsultet that proclaims the feast. The song is ancient, and the 1979 Prayer Book reintroduced it to the Episcopal Church. The version we use, though, is shortened in a few sections from the original. One of the parts we omit begins "O felix culpa" -- Latin for "O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam which gained for us so wonderful a Savior." Christian tradition often refers to the story we heard from Genesis as "The Fall": the introduction of sin into the world. The serpent represents the devil, the fount of temptation. Adam and Eve did wrong, but by doing so, they set the stage for Christ's redemption of the world later, so perhaps they did the world a favor. Jewish tradition rarely refers to the events in today's story as a "Fall" at all. In this telling, Adam and Eve's actions are not sin (indeed, story of Cain and Abel contains the first sin in this account) but rather a coming of age: Adam and Eve, in choosing wisdom over blind obedience, move from an infantile relationship with God to a more mature one.

Choosing between obedience and disobedience is easy. Choosing between obedience and wisdom is a much more ambiguous choice. Millennia later, we still don't have it all sorted out. Our Gospel today tells of Jesus in the wilderness. He faced three temptations. In each case, the answer wasn't obvious. With wealth, with fame, with power, Jesus could have done a lot of good. The tempter didn't offer Jesus obvious bad things.

Turning stone to bread could feed many hungry people. And later on in his ministry, Jesus did miraculously produce food in the wilderness. Moses and Elijah miraculously produced food. What made it right in those cases, but wrong when the tempter asked Jesus to? Yes, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,' but the offer from the devil wasn't to ignore God's word; it was to produce bread, too. And on other occasions, Jesus was quite willing to offer both bread and words from the mouth of God. The second temptation, to leap from the pinnacle of the temple, knowing that his fall would be cushioned by angels, would look to the assembled crowds like he descended from the heavens in glory. With a miraculous entrance like that, he could have surely attracted a greater following. More people would have heard his Sermon on the Mount. More people would have the chance to be his disciples. More people could have drawn near to the Reign of God earlier. This is a good thing. But Jesus replied that it wasn't the right thing. Counting on God to keep him safe through these apparently unnecessary theatrics would be putting God to the test. Relying on God's miraculous help would have its time, and that time wasn't to be rushed. Finally, the devil offered him power over all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would just bow down and worship the devil. Just some mere words, and Jesus would have the power to end all sorts of wrongs and injustices. Untold human suffering could come to an end, for all the kingdoms of the world would have a wise and just ruler in the Prince of Peace. And offering worship to the devil wouldn't change the fact that splendor and honor and kingly power all belong to the Lord God, who created everything that is, and by whose will they have their being. A few mere words of flattery, and Jesus could have the power to make all kinds of changes in the world.

And yet despite all this Jesus said no. How do you know when you're rejecting temptation and when you're missing out on an opportunity? Is it only temptation when the devil offers it? And if so, how do you know when it's the devil talking? In our lives, the tempter rarely has horns, a red cape, and a pitchfork. The angel giving good advice doesn't wear a white robe and a halo. Like Adam and Eve, like Jesus, we're faced by many decisions where good and evil are far from obvious. As I said earlier, sometimes our moments of clarity aren't answers; they're just a newfound appreciation of the complexity of the question. The disposable diapers send more waste to the landfill, but the cloth diapers pollute more water. Stopping to help the person whose car broke down aids someone in need, but it means being late for your niece's violin recital. Volunteering to organize the dinner for the homeless shelter feeds the hungry, but takes time away from caring for your own family. In all manner of things large and small, we face decisions on a daily basis where there isn't just one clear good choice and another clear evil choice. How can we hear the word of God in the midst of all this?

What hope do we have of finding which way we should go? If good masquerades as evil, and evil as good, how can we mere mortals hope to recognize, let alone do what is right? Jesus in the wilderness gives us a threefold example of how to listen for the still, small voice of God amidst the fever of life: fasting and prayer, scripture, and the community of God's followers.

Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness fasting. He removed himself from the busy-ness of his life. As we observe a holy Lent, by self examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word, this should sound familiar to us. By making more places for God to enter in to our lives, by silencing some of the distractions, and by spending more time in prayer to listen to God, Lent offers us a chance to listen for God's words to us. Lent gives us an opportunity to try to discern what God is calling each of us to do. To pray over what are the temptations and what are the opportunities.

Jesus' second example from today's lesson is scripture. How can we know what God is calling us to do? We have an amazing gift: holy scripture. Now it might be nice if we had all the answers bound together in one neat volume. And at first glance, the bible looks like it might be a book full of answers. There's all those laws in Exodus, and Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. There's all those pithy sayings in Proverbs and Wisdom. There's all those stories with morals, from Genesis to the Gospels. There's letters giving instructions to various churches. And there's visions of direct encounters with God, from the prophets to the Revelation to St. John. Lots of people look to the Bible as a book of answers. How do we know whether something is a temptation or an opportunity to serve God? Look to the Bible and see if it has the answer. The trouble with the Bible as a book of answers is that its answers aren't terrible consistent all the time. Isaiah 2:4 calls for the faithful to beat their swords into ploughshares. Joel 3:10 calls for God's people to beat their ploughshares into swords! Mark 6:9 calls for Jesus' followers to wear sandals, while Luke 10:4 prohibits their use. Matthew 5:44 calls God's people to love their enemies, while Joshua 6:17 calls for their swift slaughter. The Bible as a book of answers can be disappointing and contradictory.

But Holy Scriptures are an even greater gift than that: Just as Adam and Eve had to move past an infantile relationship with God in the garden and had to discern good from evil without simple commands to guide their every step, so our faith matures also. If Holy scripture is not a book of answers, it is, even better, an account of thousands of years of humanity wrestling with the questions. We are not alone in our struggle to discern the will of the divine. The scriptures contain a treasure trove of accounts of humans wrestling with God. By reading the accounts of those who have gone before us, we can better listen for God in our lives.

Finally, our testing of God's call to us can be confirmed by the community of believers. When Jesus rejected temptation, the angels came and ministered to him. Likewise, when we try to listen for God's voice in our lives, we are not alone. We have the witness of those who have gone before us, yes, but we also have those who struggle alongside us today. We can help one another listen for the voice of God in our lives, and help each other tell temptation from opportunity.

Perhaps the greatest gift, though, is to live with the certainty of uncertainty: to recognize that listening for God's voice is always an ongoing process. That however sure we are of who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, where we hear angels and where we hear demons, what is opportunity and what is temptation, we never know the answers for certain. We need to always stop and listen and pray to find how God speaks to us. Which may be why the Church has this gift of the forty days each year. May we all have a blessed, quiet Lent to listen to God.

Amen.

Come and see

A little less than twelve years ago, I had just graduated from college. I was Roman Catholic, which was very relevant to my formation, but in terms of my practice at the time, it mainly meant that it was Roman Catholic churches that I occasionally tried to attend – maybe once every few months or so but didn't quite feel I belonged at. I knew I wanted God to be in my life, but didn't quite know how that worked in my new-found adulthood.

My fiancée told me about a small church on Fourteen Mile Road where she had attended an Earth Day program a few months earlier. She read about the program in the Oakland Press, attended, and thought that the church seemed like a place with warm, welcoming people and a very real sense of the presence of the Holy Spirit. She suggested we could try going there together.

I was a little wary of this "Episcopal Church." When I was younger, I went to my piano teacher's funeral at St. James in Birmingham. I mainly remembered that they used odd, old language; all the verbs seemed to end in "eth": abideth, comforteth, endeth... Growing up, the Catholic Church I attended was called "St. Thomas More," and I had the vague awareness that its patron was killed by some predecessors to the Episcopalians. I told my fiancée about my apprehension that the Episcopalians might end up chopping off my head also. She didn't think it was likely. I asked, "Really?" She said, "Come and see." I came here. My eyes were opened. It changed my life. And so far, my head still seems attached to my shoulders. So thank you.

We find ourselves here today in the midst of the Epiphany season. Epiphany comes from the Greek word for "appearing" or "becoming visible." Back in December, I talked to you about faith. If faith is about believing even when we can't see, Epiphany celebrates the times we do begin to see God in the world.

This whole season is about God's presence in the world coming into focus. We start with those Magi: wise folks from far away, outside the Jewish tradition, who recognized that something great was going on, and came to see the newborn Jesus. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Epiphany is a three-fold celebration. First, it celebrates the Nativity: Jesus' birth, and appearing to shepherds and magi. Second, it celebrates Jesus' baptism, when Jesus' divine nature became more widely known (how much more widely known varies by which Gospel account you read). Third, on that same day January 6th, they celebrate the Wedding at Cana, Jesus' first miracle, that let more people see that awesome power was at work in the world.

In the Episcopal Church, we stretch these readings out over an entire season between Christmas and Lent, and add even more examples that reveal the awesome power of God in the world, starting with the star and the Magi, and ending with the Transfiguration right before Lent. Splendid accounts of God making Godself known not only to the faithful, but to all sorts and conditions of people.

But today's lessons put _us_ on the spot. Today's lessons remind us that we have a role in this process of Epiphany. We are baptized into the body of Christ, which means that sometimes that hands and mouths and hearts that do God's work of revealing Godself to the world are our hands and mouths and hearts. Sometimes it is we who are called to show Christ to the world. The lessons today talk about this. Come and see…

In the Isaiah lesson, the Narrator, who bible scholars often call "Deutero-Isaiah," is speaking not to the exiled people of Judah, captive in Babylon at the time the story is set, but rather to other peoples: the coastlands, and peoples from far away. We most often think of Prophets in Hebrew Scripture primarily playing the role of calling the Hebrew people back to God. Indeed, calling God's chosen people back into covenant is a primary function of the Prophets. But Deutero-Isaiah's message is that the Babylonian exile is a pretty huge thing, and God wouldn't waste an opportunity like this to do something as "insignificant" as merely restore the house of David to the throne of Kingdom of Judah and bring the survivors back home. Now to any ordinary listener, that would be a pretty spectacular accomplishment, but Isaiah says God has something even bigger in mind. Judah will no longer be "merely" a people with a special relationship to God. Now, God intends for his followers to be "a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." No longer is it enough that God's people live in covenant with God. Now, the new task Isaiah prophesies is to be a light to show the way to God to the entire world. Live so that you tell the world "Come and see the Lord of Heaven and Earth!"

In the Gospel lesson, John the Baptist begins by announcing "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." He announced it to the crowds. The next day, John announced it to two of his own followers. They left John and followed Jesus. One of them, Andrew, went and found his brother Peter, and announced "We have found the Messiah!" Andrew brought his brother Peter to Jesus.

Isaiah, John, and Andrew all acted as a light to the world. They all illuminated the way to God, and invited others to come and see. In this Epiphany season, when so much of the lighting up of the way to God comes from miracles, whether a star, or a lot of good wine, or a shimmering mountaintop experience, today's lessons remind this isn't the entire story. A big part of the lighting up of the way to God comes from the actions of God's servants: Isaiah, Paul, John the Baptist, Andrew, us. It is our task also to invite others to "Come and see."

Evangelism can be pretty close to a dirty word among Episcopalians. I know I personally find it really challenging to be a salesman. I'm no good at asking people to buy something. I don't like being pushy; I don't want to impose on people; I don't want to assume that my way of seeing the world is better than what they've already got going for them.

The first thing we have to remember is that this isn't sales at all -- it's sharing. If we truly believe we've got something great and we care about others, we want them to have the opportunity to have it too. As today's Psalm tells us, " I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD." Andrew knew Peter would be excited to hear about the Messiah. My fiancée knew I'd be excited to find a church.

But evangelism isn't just asking the unchurched if they've heard about Jesus. Epiphany, and our role in it, isn't about telling people what to do, or even telling them about our great God. It's about showing them. "I will give you as a light to the nations," says the Lord, "that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth". "_Behold_, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world". "Come and _see_".

When we live God's presence in the world, Epiphany can be a shining forth of the Light of God that is within us. A sharing of what God empowers us to do, and can empower others to do also. A glimpse into the world to come through our life as if it is already arrived.

Isaiah wrote about salvation reaching the ends of the earth. John proclaimed the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Evangelism isn't about inviting people to change the name of the God they worship, so their prayers are now aimed at the "right" God. Making visible God's salvation in the world points to a reality most clearly illuminated by the cross.

John pointed to Jesus as the Lamb of God. That might be muted for us, as people who hear those words every week, but in calling Jesus the "Lamb of God," John points toward his death. The salvation of God comes in the triumph of the Cross: the empires of this world threw all the evil they had at Jesus. They mocked him and tortured him and killed him. Jesus stood before the evil of the world, and somehow, through amazing grace, he didn’t use his infinite power to drive it off.

He let evil do its worst, and it did not prevail.

The good news that our lives are called to illuminate is that evil can’t win. We are called to live the reality that we do not need to repay evil with evil, because evil cannot win. To witness to Jesus’ facing all the terrible suffering that the mightiest empire in the world could throw at him, and not resisting it precisely because the worst they had to give was incapable of destroying him. The man who said “Love your enemies. Do good to those who persecute you. Bless those who curse you.” didn’t need to add a clause “unless they’re about to kill you; then, smite them with the hosts of heaven.”

Isaiah bore witness to the same truth that loving service needn't fear the mightiest powers on earth. He wrote "Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, "Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you."

The triumph of the cross is that Love is greater than all the forces of coercion and fear. Evangelism – spreading the Good News, revealing God's salvation – is living our lives to reveal the incredible gift we have that, when we believe in it, empowers us to love and serve without fear. We can do good without fear because Jesus showed that the worst that can happen to us cannot stick. It enables us to live as if the Reign of God were already fully present. And when we live in the Reign of God, we are light to the world, so others can come and see the Reign of God also. Amen.

Faith and foolishness

Faith is one of those good "churchy" words we hear frequently – so frequently that perhaps we start to tune it out. The idea of "faith" is central to understanding the lessons we heard today, but all those good churchy words start to run together so that they all sort of mean something vaguely good. And then we miss the point. So what is Faith? To get there, I want to start with a related term: belief.

Belief is living as if something is true. Belief can be pretty mundane stuff. I believe Nativity is on 14 Mile Road; consequently, I'm not surprised to find it here, and that's where I go when I'm looking for it. Faith, on the other hand, is belief that persists even through doubt. Belief even in the absence of sensory confirmation. Belief despite a lack of proof, a lack of logical reason to believe. If you can see colors, it takes no great faith to believe that the banner hanging there is blue. But if I were to tell you that this sermon will last for about 12 minutes, so if you wanted go get a cup of coffee, and not miss the creed, you'd have to take it on faith. You haven't seen my prepared text. If you accept my word for it, that's faith. Still pretty minor, though. When the doubts get bigger and the consequences of being wrong get more important, the faith necessary to sustain a belief grows.

Let's take a look at the role of faith in the first lesson. Isaiah, a prophet, is speaking with Ahaz, King of Judah. Ahaz is descended from the great King David, and Matthew tells us that Ahaz is also a step-ancestor of Jesus. But every family has its bad eggs. Despite this pedigree, Ahaz was known as a bad king. We have a clue that the selection from Isaiah we heard started in the middle of the story, because the lesson begins "Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz." So perhaps we need some context to figure out what this is all about. A remarkable thing about the Jewish people from the time of the Passover up to the rule of Ahaz was that they were truly an independent people: they were neither subject to an emperor, nor did they rule over another conquered people. At the crossroads of a region of the world characterized by large empires ruling over vassal states, the survival of a people who were free, without taking freedom from others was something of a miracle.

Back in the Good Old Days, when David was king, the royal house of Jerusalem ruled a kingdom that included the Twelve Tribes of Israel. David’s grandson Rehoboam was an oppressive ruler, and the ten northern tribes rebelled and formed a separate kingdom known as Israel, leaving David’s descendents ruling Judah from Jerusalem. Relations between Israel and Judah were at a low point during the rule of Ahaz.

A new threat to the balance of power loomed to the east: the Assyrian Empire sought to place all of the known world under the rule of its emperor at Ninevah. The two kingdoms to the north of Judah, Israel and Syria, were afraid of the approaching empire. They formed an alliance against the Assyrians, and they wanted Ahaz and the Kingdom of Judah to join them in the fight. Ahaz, following the advice of the prophets in his court, refused to join in. So far, so good: Ahaz seems to be doing what God told him to do, not provoking trouble, and all is well. But then the folks to the north aren't so happy about his refusal to join them. They want to overthrow Ahaz as King of Judah and put someone on the throne who will join their alliance against the Assyrians. They lay siege to Jerusalem, with the intent of changing the leadership there. And at this point, Ahaz gets upset. It's one thing to have faith and avoid joining in a conflict a thousand miles away. When faith means ignoring an army camped on your doorstep and believing they aren't a threat, that's a lot harder. But that was the message our story tells us God sent to Ahaz: you're doing the right thing. This invading army can't really threaten you. Just wait, and they'll leave you alone.

Ahaz is wavering here. On the one hand, he wants to do what God told him. On the other hand, he wants to be prudent. A wise king takes care of his subjects. Sure, God said everything will be okay, but you have to be realistic. So Ahaz hatched a plan to send letters to the Emperor of Assyria asking to form an alliance with him to get rid of these armies trying to overthrow him. Yes, there would probably be strings attached, and the Assyrians would likely want tribute, or demand that the people of Judah worship the Assyrian gods, or other unpleasant matters, but the Assyrians were far away, and this threat was here now. A shrewd king like Ahaz might be able to play the various powers off of each other and keep his people safe. A risky plan, but less risky than doing nothing and waiting for his enemies to just decide to go home. Right?

It isn't easy to live as if a whole bunch of people with sharp swords who have camped out around your city aren't really a threat to you. To have faith that everything will be okay in this context is tough stuff. And that is where our story begins: God offers Ahaz some help with the hard part. God offers Ahaz a sign. What is role of signs and prophesies in the faith process? If the signs were proof that the words spoken by a prophet are true, there would be no need for faith. But signs and prophesies aren't proof; they're reassurances. They don't replace faith; they help it along. Like an unnamed person in Mark's Gospel said, asking Jesus for help, "Lord, I believe; help me in my unbelief." They make it easier to live as if something you might doubt is actually true.

God tells Ahaz he can have a sign as big as he wants. And then Ahaz says he wants nothing to do with it. No sign for me, thanks. Why not? Because he has a rational, prudent course of action already planned. A sign might tempt him to trust faith and do nothing about the threat. A sign from God lead him to act in the foolishness of faith and not with the prudence of practicality. Faith leads people to do irrational, ridiculous, foolish things.

Isaiah responds by getting upset with Ahaz, and telling him that he’s getting a sign, whether he wants one or not. Isaiah then gives a sign that forecasts the future. Prophets, whether religious like Isaiah or secular like stock analysts, are folks who claim to have some sort of direct line to Wisdom or the Divine. They frequently predict the future, but predicting the future isn’t the primary function of a prophet; prescribing present behavior is far more important. Prophets predict the future to help build credibility: “Listen to me because I’m someone with insight into how the world works.” If the prophet really understands the workings of the world, or is bearing news from a higher power that does, then it follows that the prophet can make potentially falsifiable claims that turn out to be true. On the basis of this track record, people need a smaller leap of faith in order to believe the words of a prophet – to live as though they are true. If a prophet or prophetic tradition has a record of making true claims in the past, it becomes easier to believe new claims.

So Isaiah makes his claim: It’s okay to ignore the threat from the northern Kingdom because they’ll go away soon. Look at that young woman over there. She’s pregnant. The child she will give birth to will eat curds and honey before he comes of age. Curds and honey aren’t siege food. Curds require pastures, and honey requires bee hives and fields of flowers surrounding your city, not besieging armies. If the unborn child will grow up in a land of milk and honey, he’ll grow up in a land where the current war is just a memory. Isaiah is making a claim here, risking his reputation. He’s saying that King Ahaz doesn’t need to make any alliances to end this conflict; it will take care of itself, and he just needs to ride it out.

Ahaz was no fool. He refused to follow Isaiah’s counsel. He did the prudent thing. He invited in the Assyrians. They demanded tribute, and they demanded that the people of Judah worship their gods. Ahaz, in realistic prudence, insisted on doing something when the voice of faith called him to patience. And an era of foreign entanglement emerged from which the Kingdom of Judah never really recovered. What Isaiah called Ahaz to do in faith was foolishly naïve. It also happened to be right. And as a post-script, the child born to the young woman in the royal court indeed ate honey and curds before coming of age: the northern kingdom of Israel was soon destroyed and the siege ended.

Fast forward seven hundred years: another case of a messenger calling someone to live as though something foolish were true. Joseph is engaged to marry a young woman, but, as our Gospel lesson today delicately puts it, “before they lived together, she was found to be with child.” Joseph was a righteous man – the King James Version called him “just.” He clearly wished Mary no ill. His plan was to quietly end their relationship. No fuss, no vengeance, no repercussions, but what else would be a reasonable response? His fiancée was pregnant with a baby that wasn’t his. Now we think of prudence as good, and we think of righteousness as good, and they are. But faith called Joseph to respond beyond what was righteous, beyond what was prudent. Faith in the angel’s message called Joseph to believe – to live as if the baby his fiancée carried was the child of God. Outside the realm of normal experience? Certainly. To believe the angel’s message took great faith – this was no small commitment to raise as his own a child biologically unrelated to him. Unlike his ancestor Ahaz, Joseph responded in faith. Joseph believed – he lived as if what the angel told him was true. And the Holy Family came into being.

Ahaz’s failure to choose faith over prudence directly led to the end of the sovereign Kingdom of Judah, where the Law of Moses alone governed the people of God. Joseph’s embrace of foolish faith over prudent righteousness led to the beginning of the new Reign of God, which continues to arrive about us, even as we gather here. Choosing between good and bad is fairly easy. Choosing between two goods – that’s harder. Prudence and righteousness and wisdom and order are good things. But while they can keep the brokenness of the world at bay for a time, they cannot heal us; they cannot restore our world to God’s glory. Only through the foolish leap to faith can we dare to love without bounds, to trust without reason, to do what we have no reason to expect we can accomplish – and thereby serve as the hands of God to renew this broken world. Sometimes that faith is a call to patience – to wait for God’s time. Sometimes that faith is a call to service – to take on more than we can reasonably hope to do, trusting that God will step in where our abilities end. Sometimes that faith is a call to listen and reflect and wonder just where our unseen God leads us.

Amen.

How can I keep from singing?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My life flows on in endless song above earth’s lamentation
I hear the clear though far-off hymn that hails a new creation
No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that rock I’m clinging
Since love is lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?

When Mary heard Elizabeth’s proclamation in today’s Gospel that she was blessed by God, her response was to sing God’s praise. In response to hearing that God’s love and power were manifest in her, Mary could not keep from singing.

God is mighty. God is good. God’s promise to look out for us will be kept. God’s in his heaven; all’s right with the world.

Those are great thoughts. It’s good to know that God will take care of us.

Except when things aren’t going well.
Except when God seems absent.
Except when it seems like everything is falling apart.

Earth’s lamentation is all too real.

Mary knew about Earth’s lamentation. As an engaged young woman who unexpectedly found herself with child, she could have been stoned to death, according to the law.

Elizabeth knew about Earth’s lamentation. As an aging childless woman, her place in her society and her livelihood were anything but well-established. Her husband Zachariah continued to serve as a priest in Jerusalem, and so her family had a steady income. But it was a long and dangerous commute between their home in the hill country and the temple where he served from time to time. Were he to die, a widow in that society without grown children to provide for her would have no guarantee of even enough to subsist on.

The hungry, the lowly, and the outsiders knew about Earth’s lamentation then and know it today.

Last Tuesday, 270 hungry people needed meals at the soup kitchen in Morristown. The international non-profit organization Bread for the World indicates that 35.5 million people in the United States—including 12.6 million children—live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger. This represents more than one in ten households in the United States. Globally, 1.02 billion people are hungry. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes.

In Uganda, homosexuality currently carries a penalty of up to life in prison, and legislation is pending that could increase the potential sentence to include the death penalty.

Betsey Hall of Homeless Solutions, Inc. in Morristown estimates that demand for housing in Morris County’s five homeless shelters is up 20% from this time last year, and even more remarkably, 54% of people entering the shelter her organization runs are employed full-time when they become homeless.

In Detroit Michigan, where it looks like God is sending me for the next chapter in my life and ministry starting two weeks from now, the official unemployment rate is at 17%, and local analysts estimate that the total number of people involuntarily out of work or involuntarily working part-time approaches 50% of the workforce.

Major depression afflicts approximately 15 million American adults each year.

I could go on and on, but I think it’s fairly obvious that Earth’s lamentation is real indeed. The poor, the sick, the outcast, the marginalized, and the lowly suffer greatly.

There’s one reading of this Gospel that’s been all-too-common through the years. This reading of the Gospel says that the suffering of the poor and outsiders is nothing to be concerned with, because God will provide for them in heaven. The labor organizer and songwriter Joe Hill accused street preachers of the early 20th century of promising the poor that they’d “eat pie in the sky when they die” but doing nothing to help them eat now.

Life is a vale of tears, we suffer through it now, and then God rewards us in heaven. We don't need to worry about suffering. There’s no need to *do* anything to improve the lot of the poor and outcast. God will take care of it.

Indeed, to alleviate the suffering of the poor is a bad thing, in this telling, because it deprives them of the opportunity to store up treasure in heaven. It is this kind of religion that Karl Marx was correct in calling the “opiate of the masses.”

And that is certainly one way we could hear Mary’s song. God will take care of the poor, so neither those of us who are poor nor those of us inclined to stand in solidarity with them need to concern ourselves with suffering because God will take care of everything.

There’s earth’s lamentation, and then there’s the song that lets us tune it out, because God will provide in the world to come. You'll eat pie in the sky when you die.

But the Good News is that the Kingdom of God is not in some heaven to arrive in an age to come. Mary’s song the Magnificat is not in the future tense. The reign of God is at hand. Now is the acceptable time. Now is the day of salvation.

The presence of misery in the world means that we cannot claim that good has already triumphed, that suffering and death are no more, and that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

To push God’s reign off to some future world to come, where all that is wrong now will be made right, such that we needn’t even trouble ourselves with present injustice numbs us to human suffering.

So we are left with the present: even now, as we worship here, the Kingdom of God arrives.

In the Magnificat, Mary sings of God’s great reversals. The hungry are filled with good things, but the rich are sent empty away. The proud are scattered in the imagination of their hearts – the self-delusion that they are truly great and important – and the lowly are lifted up. As the collect says, things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

That’s a powerful message. Scary. Dangerous. I’ve found a number of writers who have claimed that the military dictatorship of Guatamala banned public recitation of the Magnificat in the early 1980’s because it was considered revolutionary. In my research in the past week, I haven’t been able to track down whether this is historical fact or pious legend, but in some ways, the historicity of it isn’t really what’s important. These are dangerous, transformative, revolutionary words. They do turn the social order on its head.

And it gets even more exciting when we consider that this isn’t an account of what has already happened to produce the utopia we live in now, nor is it a prophecy of what will happen in a mythical far-off age to come. The song we sing animates the work we do here and now.

In economics, we have an idea of what discourages people from contributing to solving public problems. There’s this notion that people would be happier, and better off if society solved big problems like poverty, injustice, crime, disease, hunger, but the problems are so epic in scale, it discourages people from jumping into them. Economists call this the “drop in the bucket” problem – the problems are like giant buckets, and anything any of us can do is just a tiny drop, and doesn’t make the bucket noticeably fuller.

And that’s where Mary’s song meets us. God’s kingdom is arriving, and we’re participating in it. Every moment we live in the presence of the arriving Kingdom of God, we help make that kingdom more present. 1.02 billion people are hungry in the world. But 270 of them got meals last Tuesday because of volunteers at the soup kitchen from this church.

Just a drop in the bucket of hunger? Of course. But the leap of faith is that while alone, this isolated act doesn’t do much for the problem of world hunger, as a part of something bigger, it can.

As Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, You have to do your work as if everything depends on you, then leave the rest to God. We can persist in doing God’s work not because any of us accomplish great things, but because God, moving through all of creation, can and does.

Our song isn’t a song that good has already triumphed and evil is no more – just look around. But neither is our song a passive longing for some far-off paradise that will someday fall from the sky.

We sing the mighty power of God that animates us and heartens us and gives us grace and strength to serve, even in the face of dishearteningly huge challenges.

Our song calls us to mission, and reminds us that while each of us alone can do very little, the hand of God working through all of us together can do all things.

Mary and Elizabeth remind us that our small acts of saying “Yes” to God’s call to us provide the opportunity for abundant grace to enter the world. Each of our voices alone are tiny, but we are called to join in the heavenly choir with all the angels and saints.

For love is indeed lord of heaven and earth. How can I keep from singing?

Requiem

Requiem