This is made stranger still, given the preceding stories we explored the last two weeks. When the disciples urged Jesus to send away the crowds, Jesus filled with compassion, rebuked the disciples and made sure the crowd was fed. Far from settling for crumbs, Jesus ensured there were leftovers! When Peter wavered in his faith and doubted the command of the Lord, no great, persisting, unwavering faith was needed to change Jesus’ mind. Jesus immediately reached out and caught him. In his exchange with the Pharisees Jesus combats their critique about right food practice with the now famous words: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles – it is what comes out of the mouth that reveals the ways of the heart… and yet, what comes out of Jesus’ mouth in his words to the Canaanite woman seem to reveal something less than imitable. The strong dichotomy between these readings, all orbiting questions of feeding, faith, and compassion, seem to suggest Jesus is operating with a very particular outlook, privileging his people over the outsider.   
 
People often go one of two ways when approaching this passage. The first, which is probably a more recent strain of interpretation, is to argue that this passage reveals Jesus’ human bias, that Jesus has imbibed a certain ethno-centrism which is corrected in this passage. The Canaanite woman rightly challenges and in turn corrects Jesus, whose view of his mission is properly expanded to include more than just the household of Israel.  
 
The second reading positions Jesus as probing or testing the Canaanite woman, not to make her earn her daughter’s release, but to teach his disciples (and through its recording in the gospel the later readers). Jesus does not really think he is only called to Israel, nor that Canaanites are dogs, rather he is aware of the prevalence of this opinion by his compatriots and so allows it to be challenged and overcome by this woman’s great faith.  
 
The first of those readings raises some questions. What does it mean to say Jesus is without sin if he is capable of such deplorable attitudes and behaviours? What does it mean to imply Jesus needed correction in order to properly understand the task given him by God? But the second reading also raises questions. The Canaanite woman does not consent to be a teaching tool. She comes to Jesus in real desperation and what has she done to be put through the ringer to teach his disciples? Why does she need to prove her faith, when all Peter had to do was say “Lord save me”? Jesus didn’t make him wade through rhetorical riddles, so why must this woman who only wants her daughter to be well? I don’t know if either reading is entirely inappropriate, or cannot serve a helpful function, but I don’t know if either really gets us out of the various binds we have found ourselves in.
 
To do that, I want to compare this Canaanite woman to two different people in scripture. I don’t know if this will entirely solve the question of particularity vs universality, nor what to make of Jesus’ words in this story, but they may open some fresh avenues.
 
The first is Jesus’ mother. What might it look like to compare what the Canaanite woman does in this story, to what Jesus’ mother does at the wedding at Cana? There, we may recall, Jesus’ mother approaches Jesus to let him know the wine has run out. Jesus responds, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’  Following this, Jesus performs the sign of turning water to wine effectively beginning his ministry. There is something of a similar cadence in this story as with today’s reading. Jesus is asked to do something, he resists, initially, and links his reason to his messianic task: my hour has not yet come // I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then, in both stories, the women push past this initial rebuff and, in turn, Jesus responds by granting the request.
 
While the language to the Canaanite woman is harsher, the basic pattern remains the same. She, like Jesus’ mother, generates the scene by which Jesus’ messianic mission begins or expands. Their role then, in this great drama of God, is not to be diminished, it is perhaps all the greater for the fact that it seemingly moves Jesus to begin something he had felt it was not yet time to begin. Be that the first signs of his glory, or his ministry to the Gentiles.  
 
The other figure is that of Jacob. And this is a helpful as it was just two weeks ago we read about his incredible feat of wrestling with God. What we recall, importantly, from that text is that (a) Jacob had to wrestle until dawn and had his hip put out of joint, and (b) that his tenacity not only earnt him a blessing but also his new name, “Israel” – for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed. Here this woman, from beyond Israel, performs the same act: she strives and wrestles with the one fully God and human, and prevails. Like Jacob, she is relentless, and will not let go until she secures her blessing.
 
What might it mean, for someone outside Israel to exemplify what Israel is named for and called to exemplify? The conversation is her wrestling match, it is by this she gains her blessing. This conversation thus places the woman into the lineage of those who have wrestled with God and prevailed, who have secured deliverance through a tenacious faith. Focusing on this woman as a Jacob type, moves the story away from one of charity, where Jesus deigns the bless the outsider, to one of faith and belonging. The supposed outsider enters into the same sacred space of wrestling with God as those named after such a task. This perhaps, is what it means for God’s house to be a house for all people. Not that those outside have to sneak in quietly and accept crumbs, nor be treated with meek and mild paternalism, but are those who stand firm on holy ground and grab hold of what is also theirs by rights. They too get to come and grab hold of God and cling and cling and cling to secure a new future. Jesus’ harsh words, then, might signal something new. After all, in the same passage Jesus bemoans once again that his followers are so dull they have to ask what his parable means – Jesus is rarely short of harsh or blunt words for those close to him. Jesus thus treats her as someone ready and able to wrestle with God, ready and able to stand firm in their faith and expectation of who Jesus is, ready and able to exemplify what it means to be a covenantal people.
 
And this is good news for us Gentiles. Our lineage in the story of God finds its roots in this woman’s wrestling. If she were to gain a new name, like Jacob, it might well be Christian, for she has struggled with the one God and human and prevailed. This contest foreshadows who the church will become. That in Christ’s reconciling act the divisions of particular and universal will be broken down, and we will be one in Christ as we are, in our irreducible diversity. The work of Christ is one that opens fully the house of prayer to all people, not through an act of first becoming like another, but in having who we are swept up in the spirit of adoption. So take up the mantle: like Jacob before her this woman signals a core aspect of what it means to be part of the people of God, those who know, know so deep down in our hearts, that we do not need to settle for crumbs but can cling on for blessings. Because it is God’s will to gather all in and deliver us into an abundant life.

We’ve all had to prove our identity (or, increasingly, our humanity), we’ve had to produce documents, gather witnesses, or click every square with traffic lights. We have had to take steps in order to gain the trust and access of an institution, a website, an account, etc. You’ve probably also watched a film or television series where there’s a doppelganger, evil twin, or a malevolent character masquerading as our hero, and the tension involves whether the real will be recognised. There’s lots of ways this is ascertained – perhaps asking some esoteric question about a childhood memory, or creating a situation to test character (not unlike Solomon’s decision to cut the child in half to reveal the true mother). In Toy Story 2, the “real” Buzz Lightyear holds up his foot to reveal his child’s name written on his sole. All that is to say, that when faced with all these options, Peter’s choice: Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water seems ill-thought through.
 
Peter could have said, Lord, if it is you, tell me where we first met… or Lord, if it is you, how many loaves and fish did you just turn into a feast… or Lord, if it is you, save us from this storm. All of these would suffice, and might actually better reveal the character of Jesus. For Jesus has not asked them to do anything quite so drastic as walk on water. Lord, if it is you, ask the impossible!
 
Some strategy. Why is it Peter chooses this option? It intrigues me. Well, since I’m up here, and chose the reading, and to begin the sermon this way, I do have a possible response. But before I get to that, I wonder what you make of it? Why do you think Peter chooses this means of affirming Jesus’ identity? Discussion.
 
Here's what I have. The feeding of the 5000 represents a fundamental shift in the relationship of Jesus to his disciples. Because it is the first miracle of Jesus that involves the disciples. The disciples have seen Jesus heal, they have seen him restore a girl to life, they have seen him cast out demons, they have seen him still a storm. But in all of these instances they are witnesses, an audience watching what happens. Even when they were sent out, they were entrusted only (though it is no meagre commission) with the proclamation of good news. But when we come to the feeding of the 5000 something shifts.
 
The crowd is hungry and the disciples, not uncaringly, implore Jesus to send them away to find food. Instead, Jesus responds, you give them something to eat. The disciples object, pointing to the practical impossibility of the request; they have but 5 loaves and two fish between them. But Jesus takes this offering, blesses and breaks and then, vitally, gives it to the disciples who give it to the crowd. We are not alerted in the reading at what point or in whose hands the small amount of food becomes a large amount of food, but what is key is that it involves the disciples. The disciples are, for the first time, included in the miracle, they are participants with Christ in the miraculous feast. Christ is its centre, of course, but the disciples are called upon to act with him. They become something like a conduit through which Christ’s power flows, through the intermingling of his hands with theirs the little becomes a lot.      
 
We cannot overlook this shift. It is a shift which, of course, will not be completed until after the ascension of Christ and the sending of the Spirit. But it signals that Christ’s power is one that will be shared, Christ’s followers will be sent, Christ’s ministry will have a church. The disciples will not remain passive observers of Christ’s glory, they will be active participants in Christ’s work. To be a witness, they will come to see, will be a role of word and deed, of proclamation and action, of following fully in the steps of their Lord.
 
And while this shift will not be complete until later in the story, Peter has just had his first taste of it, his first experience of what it means to bear true witness, by participating with Christ in the holy work of God. And one gets the sense he wants more.
 
So when he hears Christ’s calming assurance he says, well Lord, if it is you, command me to do the impossible again. Just like when you told me that I could feed crowds with a packed lunch, tell me I can walk on water like solid land. Command me Lord, to do as you are doing, to share in this power again, to participate in your glory once more. Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. And the one who told him to give the crowd something to eat, in full awareness of how little food they had to spare, now tells him to come.
 
There are times when Peter just gets it. Times when he is struck with such clarity of who Jesus is and what he is called to do. In just a couple of chapters Jesus will ask who do you say that I am? And Peter will famously declare, You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And this here, on the choppy seas, sometime before dawn, is another of those times. Peter has a streak of clarity of who Jesus is and what he is called to do and makes just the right request. For in the wake of one’s first taste of the kind of power, meaning, and purpose that comes from being a participant in the work of Christ, one does not make small requests, one does not ask safe questions to verify identity. No, in this moment, Peter is right, if it is you… and if you are who I am starting to believe you to be… then command me to do the thing that I will only be able to do if I am right.
 
Of course, we all know how the story goes. Peter steps out (in what we must admit is tremendous faith) only to feel the full force of this ferocious wind. We all know a bracing wind is something of a wakeup call, it sharpens your sense of the moment. And that’s what happens to Peter. The wind awakens him to his surrounds, to what an onlooker would say is happening here: a man has hopped out of a boat in the dark, in the middle of a tempest, and, well of course he will begin to sink. All Peter’s confidence in the shift, all the afterglow of his participation in the miraculous feeding vanishes, and he begins to sink. He begins to sink not only into the sea, but into the past, into the reality before the feeding, into his role of mere observer, of an audience to the work of Christ. He starts to sink into the past before he was someone who took part in the impossible. Of course, he does not sink entirely. He does not sink entirely into the sea, nor into the past, he does not sink to a reality before he saw Christ heal, and raise, and deliver, and calm the storm. And we know he does not sink that far back because his instinct is still to shout, Lord, save me! He still knows this is Jesus, even if perhaps he has forgotten who he can be with Jesus.
 
And Jesus remains true to Peter as well. Jesus immediately reaches out and catches Peter. I love the detail of immediately, because of course this is who Jesus is. He is not a tester or trickster but a friend and saviour. Peter has tried something incredible and does not need to be punished because he wavered. It is true that Jesus’ response, You of little faith, why did you doubt can sound harsh - like an admonishment - but I don’t think it has to be. To me the line sounds parental, something you might say to a kid who has climbed up high with the intent to jump into your arms, but, losing their courage at the precipice, asks to be lowered down instead. When you reach out and bring them to you, you may say, “you could have jumped, I would have caught you” but this does not signal their failure, but that they had the right idea, and when they trust themselves and you next time, they will soar and be safe!
 
I mentioned before that there are times that Peter gets it so right, and this is one of those. And we also know that those moments are often followed by ones where Peter doesn’t get it quite so right. But it is how we understand this dichotomy is important.
 
In many translations the second part of Jesus’ response to Peter’s sinking is not why did you doubt, but why did you waver. This feels like a more accurate description of what happens to Peter, a wavering within a general trajectory of faith. Like those graphs where the line keeps trending upwards while still containing dips, the life of faith is not some steady incline. We all have those highpoints where we feel the fire of conviction and the focus of a holy purpose. And then we all have times where we feel colder, where the hope brought on by Jesus’ promise feels thinner, where the material realities of our surroundings feel more determining than the work of Christ we are called to participate in. That is to say, we all waver, we all have doubts, we all have moments where we sink back a little. But what we also have, importantly, is not just ourselves. We have Jesus, the Lord, who even as we waver, even when we doubt, even when we start to sink, reaches out immediately and catches us.
 
I come back to the old prayer, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. This is the prayer fitting for the one who stepped out of the boat only to sink, who recognised Jesus as the Messiah only to miss the meaning entirely, who followed Jesus until the end, only to deny him as the cock crowed. But it is also the prayer fittingly prayed to the one who saw Peter waver but caught him, who heard Peter misspeak but drew him near, who knew Peter denied but sought him out and told him, once again and rather fittingly, to feed his sheep.  
 
No one who wavers is lost, no one who wavers is denied their commission and calling, no one who wavers is demoted back down the ranks in the kingdom of God. It didn’t happen to Peter and it won’t happen to you. What we celebrate in this story, ultimately, is that Peter gave it a go, and this is what we want to celebrate in each other, for we have all been called to participate with Christ, and take part in the work of the kingdom. And we celebrate those moments we step up to the precipice in the full confidence that there will be times we all waver, but that each of these times, we shall be caught.

Jesus, we hear at the beginning of today’s reading, has withdrawn to a deserted place. This was not done out a general frustration or exhaustion. Jesus has just heard of the death of John the Baptist – his cousin, his baptiser, the prophet who helped make the paths straight for his arrival. The death stings for both a personal reason, someone dear and near has been wrongly killed, and a prophetic one – the killing of John signals the violent death coming to Jesus at the hands of the same despotic system. With John’s death, the walls close further in on Jesus; and while he predicts this coming end, it is no less a cause of anguish.
 
It is in this state that Jesus finds himself once again followed by crowds. It is in this state that Jesus sees them and has compassion. It is in this state that he cures their sick. It is in this state that he hears his disciples’ advice but refuses to send the crowds away to find food. And it is in this state that Jesus takes the five loaves and two fish, blesses, breaks, and distributes through his disciples to the hungry crowd. It is this state, unbeknownst to many on that day, which makes what we read all the more profound. Despite his grief, loss, growing anguish and approaching death, Jesus is the compassionate one who devotes his power to cure and to feed. The miracle of this meal is made all the more miraculous when we consider where Jesus is spiritually and emotionally.
 
Jacob wrestles with an angel… or a figure divine and human… or some such thing holy and mysterious enough to lead Jacob to conclude that what happened to him is most aptly described as: For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved. I love this story – even when we read just this section it is filled with drama and intrigue and meaning. Even in isolation, Jacob’s performance to cling and strive and ultimately prevail is stirring. It is the kind of heroic performance that leads to a new name, a name that will be carried by the people after him to denote the holy work of wrestling with God. And yet, as with the gospel reading and the Piers concerto, it is a performance only more marvellous when we consider all that is going on around this moment.
 
For there is a reason Jacob is alone. There is a reason he has sent his household ahead of him. There is a reason he is even here in what he shall name Peniel. For Jacob has a blessing already – even before he wins one from his combatant. He has a blessing he stole from his brother, a blessing gained through deception, a blessing he had to flee with in order not to meet a violent end. But having spent a long time in a foreign land, Jacob has been called home. The only problem is, his brother Esau is waiting for him. Jacob is rather unsure (in fact he is downright petrified) of the kind of welcome he shall receive. As Jacob prays: I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children.
 
Jacob is sending his household ahead of him, along with a sizeable gift for Esau, in order to try and secure a safe (perhaps even warm) welcome. For he thought, ‘I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterwards I shall see his face; perhaps he will accept me.’ The present goes ahead of him, along with his family, and Jacob spends the night alone, fearful, insecure, and uncertain of what awaits them all.
 
It is in this state that Jacob wrestles the mysterious figure until daybreak. It is in this state he demands a blessing. It is in this state his hip is put out of joint. It is in this state he prevails. It is in this state he limps out of Peniel to face the one he wronged.
 
I wonder how this emotional background shapes these stories for you? Do you hear them differently, or find something fresh in their events? Does it reveal something more about Jesus or Jacob? Something deeper about God? What perhaps, we might wonder, does it mean for us, who hear these stories not in isolation, but amidst the extended context of our lives? What have you just come from that is weighing you down? What awaits that is causing you concern? In what state do you come to these readings, this service, and, in a moment, this table?
 
I offer all of this, not only as a reminder of the value of reading around a passage, and not only as an encouragement to think about these texts and this service within the fullness of our own lives, but also to offer these two bits of good news:
 
From this story of Jacob we learn that even when we feel pinned in on all sides, even when we feel up to our gills in past mistakes, we do not have to settle for crumbs from God’s table. Even when we feel like all we can do is fling ourselves on the mercy of others, we can still wrestle with God. We can still demand a blessing, and cling and cling and cling until dawn. Even if we have to limp away, we shall not be denied, we shall be blessed. For to see God face to face is – like those crowds pressing in on Jesus – to encounter love and compassion.  
 
From this story of Jesus we learn what we learn every month at this table: Jesus shall give us our fill. Jesus shall feed us on the way to a promised end. With his own body broken and blood spilt, Jesus hosts us at this table where we receive and become the body of Christ. It is often said that times of heightened stress, those crucible moments, strip away the veneer of politeness and civility and expose real character. Well, if that is the case we see in this story that Jesus is not polite, but kind, not civil but compassionate. In this way the story prefigures those moments on the cross, when in the midst of agony and desolation, Christ is able to look down on his grieving mother and friend and ensure they have each other, is able to look on those tormenting him, and pray for their forgiveness. The state that Jesus is in in these stories reveals the true state of Jesus - the wounded healer, the compassionate carer, the generous host, the full force of divine love. And because of this, once again, no one is asked to settle for crumbs, no one is sent away to scrounge up a meal elsewhere; all are invited to the love feast. Despite his own grief and anguish, Christ looked on the crowds with compassion and met their needs. For the light of the world cannot be overcome, and the bread of life shall not leave us hungry. Amen.

The Psalms emphasise with regularity and variety the things that remind us of the closeness of God. Psalm 104 points to the heavens and the clouds, the earth and its foundations, the mountains and the valleys, the waters and the trees and the way these provide for all manner of creatures. The manifold works of the Living God, visible in the sky, the earth, and the sea, testify to the wisdom and creativity of God, the love and provision of God, the presence and glory of God.
 
Other psalms will appeal to God’s actions in history as testaments to the closeness of God – God’s mighty hand which reaches out to save, to separate the seas, to scatter the encroaching hordes, to scandalise the powerful. While others still will attest to the expansive scope of God’s knowledge and affection, who knits us in wombs, finds us in Sheol, and fishes us from the depths.
 
And these are all sublime things to appeal to when seeking reminders of the nature and closeness of God. And yet, perhaps, sometimes and for some of us, they can be too large, too monumental, too primordial or cosmic, too spectacular and mythic. Perhaps there are times that we really do need that reminder of the closeness of God, and being directed to see the heavens as a tent, the mountains as a boundary, or the vanquishing of ancient forces might feel too big, too far, too extraordinary to bring us much balm, to register much hope, to fill a despairing soul with meaning. Perhaps, there are times we need a subtler reminder.
 
This is in part why I love that reading from Song of Songs (and the whole book with it) as it blurs the line between romantic love poem and (in its surplus) can be read as something of an analogy for the feeling of divine nearness, of the desire for God and the desire of God, of our love for Christ and Christ’s love for the church. In taking the feeling of our longing for, worship of, and waiting on God and placing it in the realm of anticipation for romantic eros, it places what is often registered in cosmic, natural, or historical language in language deeply tied to the personal, the intimate, and the sentimental. Which can be an excellent and helpful register to play in, when we are desperate to be reminded of the closeness of God, something the mystics have known and exemplified for many centuries.
 
But a completely different, but – for me – equally satisfying way of searching for reminders of God in language closer to home and nearer to the everyday comes from this week’s poem.
 
Derrick Austin’s poem, “Things that remind me of the closeness of God” comes from his 2026 collection, This Elegance. This is it in its entirety.
 
House music.
Water from a hose in summer.
Toadstools.
Nails in an ugly crucifix.
Sand caught in the paint of a plein-air landscape from
     another century.      
A private inscription in a used book.
 
I love this poem, and cherish this list. And there are two main reasons. First, it is those items on the list, where I immediately feel, "yes! me too. I have that feeling when I look at those kinds of nails, or see that kind of care in an inscription, or reflect on the way the landscape the painter captured itself is captured in the painting and crosses oceans and centuries to us today." These moments of connection affirm a feeling of my own and redouble the sense of closeness. But then also, and second, even the items on the list I wouldn’t think to write, that I wouldn't call to mind in response to the question, they by virtue of being in such a list, can still perform this function for me. I have no particular association with toadstools, for instance, but now when I see mushrooms growing by the footpath I think of what they mean for Austin, and look at them anew, and think about the God who causes them to grow from the earth, in all their colours and patterns, all their purposes and uses, and I am reminded of the closeness of God.
 
And so, what we are going to do, as a way of responding to this poem, and as a way of closing up this whole series on poems and psalms, is to add our own lines. Everyone should have some paper and a pen. I’m going to ask you to add one or two of your own things that remind you of the closeness of God. And I’m going to encourage us, in the way of Austin’s poem, to try and make them as small, as near, as approachable as possible (that doesn’t mean they aren’t profound or poetic, but they should be personal). Because if they are personal, if they are real in that way, like with what we see here, they maintain the capacity to speak beyond you and me, to many others, even if it is not something they would have thought to name for themselves. And then, later in the service, I’m going to ask us to call them aloud (it will be ok if you don’t want to share yours aloud). We’re going to read out our shared reminders, so that we have a big whole list to take out from this series, out into the season ahead, a big whole list of little reminders of the closeness of God, that can shape and sustain us along the path of discipleship.
 
So we’re going to have some music, which will give us some time to write our own reflections, and then after a bit we can share them with each other.

--
Below is a pastiche of some of the reflections written down and shared by the congregation. 

Things that remind us of the closeness of God (After Austin)

Friendly dogs.
Open fires at night.
A kiss.
Laughter.
Smell before the rain.
The smell of rain on grass.
The sound of rain.
Raindrops on roses.
Rainbows.
Sunsets.
Sunrises.
Flowers.
The warmth of the sun on my back.
The Bible.
The ocean.
The vastness of the ocean.
The beauty of the ocean.
Glisten in the ocean.
Sunrise over the ocean.
Sitting by the ocean.
The waves rolling on the sand.
The thunder of the mighty waves which both thrill and then leave me in peace.
Stars. Stars.
Night sky full of stars.
Friends.
A Loving Smile/The Smile of a Stranger/The Smile of a Baby.
A hymn of faithfulness.
Gentle breezes.
The emotion of love.
The answers to prayer.
Safety.
The flowers and birds out the church window.
Family.
Family beyond family.
A horse's nose.
Giving and receiving of love and hope.
Trees.
Falling autumn leaves.
Gum trees.
The calls of wild birds.
Corellas picking at seeds.
Kookaburras on my clothesline.
Flannel flowers growing in the bush and in my garden.
The flowers grow and blossom bringing beauty to life and love.
The interrelationship between insects and plants.
The immense wisdom of the statement: "I am with you always"
Good health as I age.
The wonders of grandchildren.
The curiosity of children.
Softly played music.
Powerful music.
Music in general.
Music - Christian and Love and Dancing.
The hymn 'O Lord my God.'
Wildness.
Pain.
Wisdom.
Joy.
Earth seen from space.
Sitting with loved ones on a cold day in the warmth of the radiator.
 

Psalm 10 is a psalm which pulls no punches. It locates the audacity and actions of the wicked in their belief that God is not going to stop them. They act with impunity, exploiting the poor in a belief that there is no one coming to help. This is the very attitudes that we have been observing, which believes the current state of affairs, the status quo of the worldly systems, reflects the true way of things. They reflect the assumption that being rich and powerful is a sign that you are blessed and right and worthy, and being poor and vulnerable a sign that you are cursed and wrong and worthless. And so the wicked fill their mouths with cursing, deceit and oppression, they, like lions, watch for the helpless and seize the poor, because their wealth and status has made it so: We shall not be moved; throughout all generations we shall not meet adversity.
 
Evelyn Araluen, a contemporary Bundjalung poet, captures the same presumption in her poem, Billionaire Liturgy (from her 2025 collection The Rot). The poem begins with much the same charge as the psalm: how to make a billion? incubate god in a crypto mine. That is, to make a billion, to achieve such obscene wealth, one must first displace God from your heart and mind, believing that what you do will not be seen nor sought by something more powerful and just that you.
 
Then, again in the way of the psalm, Araluen, catalogues the deceit and oppression, the mischief and iniquity of the wicked:
who could ever know how much a billion costs?
the weight of oceans, rates of miscarriage,
coal forests collapsing into desert…
            for a billion you’ll need a billion
bones of small birds, a billion
shimmering fish, a billion crimes
 
At the close of the poem, Araluen, considers the increasing desire of the mega-rich to blast off into space, to get further from the earth and its poor, which they have plundered:
is a billion still a billion in space? up there
are we as small as a billion leaves
shimmering from a billion trees?
            how far will you fly to
forget a billion souls? how far do you
have to be from the gun and the
knife before the recoil won’t shudder
in your hand? before the blood
won’t touch your face.
 
As we’ve discussed in the past, we live in an age where the bigness of these numbers is just hard to comprehend. And so it is helpful to remember that where 1000 seconds is just about 16 and a half minutes ago, and a million seconds is just eleven and a half days ago. A billion seconds is 31.7 years ago, while 100 billion is 3171 years ago (which was the Bronze Age mind you). And since we recently had (albeit momentarily) our first trillionaire, does anyone want to guess how long ago a trillion seconds was? 31,688 years ago (which was the ice age mind you). And Araluen’s liturgy is only increasing in relevance. In the last five years the world has gone from 2095 billionaires (holding $8T US) to 3428 billionaires (holding $20T US) – let’s not even attempt to think about how many seconds ago that is! The great chasms between rich and poor of older societies – be that Tsarist Russia, Imperial Rome, Qing Dynasty China, or Gilded Age America – pale in comparison to our own.
 
Araluen’s poem revolves around questions – how to make a billion? What a billion really costs? What is left for a billionaire to dream? What will a billion mean in space? It unsettles and provokes, and makes room for us to live in the wake of these questions. It certainly gestures to the emptiness of a life built on the love of money and the exploitation of others. What it doesn’t do, explicitly, is indicate or predict that any kind of change is coming.
 
The parable of Jesus and the psalm attest to the coming of a great reversal. In the midst of suffering, surrounded by example after example of the injustice which relies on inequality, the psalmist – in a tremendous display of faith – calls out:
 
Rise up, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
   do not forget the oppressed.
Why do the wicked renounce God,
   and say in their hearts, ‘You will not call us to account’?
 
And then, we have those beautiful words: But you do see!
 
This feels akin to some of the other lines we have encountered in this series on psalms and poems. Psalm 6’s: How long! Merrill’s chelonian: was heard. These deep, primordial breakthroughs of truth in the face of the breakdown of language. But you do see is another like these. In these words we are struck by the inbreaking of the true truth which explodes the long-presumed veneer of truth by which the world has operated: In the pride of their countenance the wicked say, ‘God will not seek it out’; all their thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’ …
 
But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief,
   that you may take it into your hands;
the helpless commit themselves to you;
   you have been the helper of the orphan.
 
Break the arm of the wicked and evildoers;
   seek out their wickedness until you find none.
The Lord is king for ever and ever;
   the nations shall perish from his land.
 
O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek;
   you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear
to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed,
   so that those from earth may strike terror no more.
 
The Living God will see the exploitative acts of the wicked, and seek them out until there are none left to strike terror on the earth. And, at the same time, God will hear the desire of the meek, strengthen their heart, and see justice done. For God is the helper of the helpless.
 
What does this mean for us then, as we think about living lives of meaning, value, and hope? In part it is a reminder of the necessary work of having our view of the world continually shaped and reshaped by the vision of God’s kingdom. To have our values upset and set by scripture. To remember that God hears the cries of the oppressed, that Christ teaches that in the kingdom the poor are blessed and the last will be first, and riches are an encumbrance to embracing the true cost (and treasure) of Christian discipleship. Teachings such as these help us avoid the narratives pushed by our society which would have us suspect and despise the sore-covered Lazarus, while offering the seat of honour to the linen clad rich man. It allows us to resist the increasingly unguarded celebration of wealth and defence of inequality.
 
But this psalm, like Jesus’ parable means something more as well. It is also a promise that beyond us, God is at work in the world as the helper of the helpless, defender of the oppressed. God sees the exploitation so often hidden from human view, God seeks out the injustice so often untroubled by human systems, God lifts a hand to secure those so often held under the human thumb. The reality of God means that the present form of this world is passing away and the great chasms and dividing walls shall be broken down. Those who have received all manner of evil things shall be comforted and the wicked will be dragged from their hiding places (even if that should end up being distant space). This is a comfort, this is hope, but it is also a prompt of where to find meaning. A prompt calling us to live meaningfully in the present age as if the kingdom has come. A call to live lives together that break down today’s chasms, upset today’s logics, see today’s wrongs, and alleviate today’s wounds. It is, simply put, a call to live as if there is a God who sees.

 
If Jesus seeks to respond to one impossible question: how to not worry over the things we need, Emily Dickinson’s “an altered look about the hills” responds to another. She responds to the question Nicodemus asks of Jesus in the Gospel of John: how can one be born again? Dickinson’s response: consider the altered look about the hills.
 
An altered look about the hills —
A Tyrian light the village fills —
A wider sunrise in the morn —
A deeper twilight on the lawn —
A print of a vermilion foot —
A purple finger on the slope —
A flippant fly upon the pane —
A spider at his trade again —
An added strut in Chanticleer —
A flower expected everywhere —
An axe shrill singing in the woods —
Fern odors on untraveled roads —
All this and more I cannot tell —
A furtive look you know as well —
And Nicodemus' Mystery
Receives its annual reply!
 
Creation itself, at the change of the season, offers annual reply to Nicodemus’ question. And, I suspect, helps us also to draw close to Jesus’ teaching.
 
Attune one’s breath with the rhythm of the world around and you will see in the continued rhythm of life from death the faithful provision of God. And when we see this will we understand that not only is it possible for one to be born again, it is possible that as such, we can learn to be free from worry. In learning to observe the altered look about the hills, like learning to consider the fineries of the lilies of the field or the preciousness of the life of the raven, we will learn to breath in the rhythm of God’s tender provision. It is this careful and regular observance of even quite mundane things, rather regular changes, that our souls, so determined to fill themselves with worry and striving, will be able to be quieted. From this place, from the breath attuned to God’s care, we can begin to live again; to lay aside striving and so lay aside worry.
 
The psalm we heard today (which is, admittedly, a good psalm to pick if you want to memorise a psalm) also attests to the caring logic of both Christ and Dickinson’s words.
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
   my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
   too great and too marvellous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
   like a weaned child with its mother;
   my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
 
I love this little psalm. I love its gentle image of calming and quieting the soul by ceasing to occupy oneself with those things too great and marvellous.
 
In lowering the vision, our soul becomes like the weaned child within us, peaceful and at rest. Now I do need to offer a caveat here: teachings about not worrying, encouragements to quiet our souls, are not medical advice. Anxiety is a condition that needs professional therapeutic/medical support. It is not sinful to be anxious, nor is it a sign of lack of trust or weakness of faith to seek treatment in order to care for one’s soul, quiet one’s mind, and live an abundant life. These passages of scripture, this kind of sermon, is about the kind of worrying we can lay aside with the right support from community and consideration of lilies. It is interesting to observe, that the kind of cataloguing that Dickinson lays out, like the practice of Jesus to observe and take in, reflects what we know about treating panic attacks – slowing down and returning to the moment by helping the panicking person notice what is around them, helping them to breath and catalogue their surrounds. 
 
I said before, the teaching to consider the lilies, like observing the signs of creation going about its course in unhurried simplicity, becomes the bridge from the teaching about not worrying to the picture of a community devoted to harmonious common life. And this is because we cannot be ready to be the kind of community who hold everything in common, when we are gripped by worry. We cannot be a people who cast off the lures of partiality to the powerful, when we are striving after worldly things. For when we are consumed by such worrying and striving then we are too busy watching closely that common pot for any hint of unequal distribution, for any whiff of unfairness, for any glint of someone unproductive or unconducive. We become too concerned with making sure I get what is mine to ensure that everyone has theirs. That is to say, the consuming striving and worrying proves a barrier to a communal life where all our needs are met. On the other hand, learning to strive first for God’s kingdom, builds a bridge by which we can move out beyond ourselves, giving ourselves fully to the joy of a common life lived in the power of the Spirit.
 
And so, in the end, we learn to hold all the tensions and instructions together – not held in contrast, as if each time one tugs it moves us away from another. But we hold them in tandem, realising we need them all to make it work. The picture of harmonious common life in Acts is one reached when, following Jesus, we learn to quiet our soul through observing the testaments to God’s provision, love, care and faithfulness all around us. When we do this we can quiet voices telling us to strive, to secure, to store up, to suspect. And instead – free of such worries and striving – we learn to trust not only God but each other… and in this state of trust we are ready not only to say keep warm and eat your fill, but to turn what we have to that cause, to give what we have to any who have need, so that there are none trapped in the worries which – without a caring, loving community built on the power of a caring and loving God – we would simply crumble beneath.
 
So this week, look around for those signs of God’s care and provision, Christ’s love and grace, the Spirit’s presence and power. Look for them in the little shifts in the season, the simple consistency of the birds, the finery of the flowers, the love and care of this community. And as we take these in, let them calm and quiet our soul, as a weaned child with its mother. And from this quiet calm, let us find the strength to lay aside the drive to strive for what we will find much more wondrously in the shared life of the community of Christ.

 
This, we might say, is not limited to the imperative to rejoice and praise, but is the nature of all commandments. We don’t need a law, unless people are breaking the law – laws are responsive to behaviour deemed incongruous or unconducive to the kind of society those in power seek to construct. Thou shall not murder, is only needed after Cain slew Abel.
 
Jeremiah captures this well. Looking ahead to the days surely coming when the Living God shall make a new covenant with the house of Israel, the distinctive characteristic of this covenant is the way it will not need all external signposts, but live within the people:
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord.
They shall say to each other ‘Know the Lord.’ Know the Lord, is the all-encompassing stand in for the whole of the Law. For if one truly knows the Lord one loves God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength and their neighbour as themselves. If one knows the Lord, their heart is filled with praise and their life with rejoicing. But until those coming days, we will, it seems, need to be reminded to rejoice, we will need to be told, do not go on sinning just so grace can abound.
 
Why is this the case? What makes it so hard to – as we heard in today’s psalm - bless the Living God at all times; and keep God’s praise continually in our mouths? And how do we consider the answer to this shortcoming (if we are to understand it thus) in a way that doesn’t feel like a public flogging, shame-inducing scolding, or God-ordained guilt-trip? That is to say, how do we – in anticipation of the coming days of the fulfilment of the new covenant – write the knowledge of God on our hearts so that praise and rejoicing might well up out of infinite baths of grace, rather than the shallow pools of obligation?
 
Well, since we’re in our poems and psalms series, let us consider this in light of a poem. 

James Merrill, was a contemporary of last week’s poet, James Schuyler. The poem we’re thinking with today is “Rescue” from his 1995 collection, A Scattering of Salts. The poem has a slightly complex structure, but a very fun premise, so I’ll lay it out a little before reading two key excerpts. The poem narrates the poet and his partner driving along a rainy highway in Japan. They notice a turtle stuck trying to cross the busy road. The partner stops the car and hops out to carry the turtle to safety.
 
Dusk. Rain over          but asphalt hissing
Flooded clear          with sea light.
Sharply, sweet heart,       you swerved, pulled off,
ran back and snatching        the three-inch turtle
we almost hadn’t         missed as it started
its perilous crossing           deposited it
there! at the far         pasture’s edge--
mission so nimbly,               raptly accomplished
where dizzying beams              rushed both ways
and tears broke                from the tall trees
that I who saw             the marvel simply
filed it away         for future use.
We’d seen so many               marvels those days:
 
The poem then shifts to Merrill’s recollections of other marvels he has seen on this holiday, before returning to the present scene on the road, this time, however, narrated from the turtle’s perspective.
 
Back to the turtle,          here’s a tale
it can tell          till the end of time:
“Night was falling.             Too frightened to shrink
into my shell,          as the shattering lights
hurtled past           I took despairingly
slow steps             to appease them.
Upon chelonian               powers that shouldered
Terra herself          from a waste of waters
childlike I called       for help. Was heard!--
only then turning      to instinctive stone.
Shame upon me.     I had shut myself to
life even         as it uplifted
and heaved me into          a green haven.”
 
In case, like me (and I suspect most) you don’t know the word “chelonian,” it means, “of or pertaining to turtles.” I first came across this poem through another poet Garth Greenwell, who wrote about it with such appreciation and wonder. On that use of the chelonian, he notes that “it lavishes the little creature with dignity.” But we need to focus on the last part, as the turtle, childlike, calls for help and “Was heard!” I love the way it breaks in… in a beautiful way it is the counterpoint to the appeal in Psalm 6 last week. Recall the “-- how long?” which broke it through the breakdown of language. Where there we had “how long?” here we have “was heard!” As Greenwell notes, “the answer to all longing, human or chelonian; the whole yearning universe is in those two words.”
 
And yet, the titular moment of rescue is not met with rejoicing, praise, or thanksgiving. “Shame on me” – in the moment of grace, in the very moment of salvation, of being uplifted and placed into a green haven, the turtle turns to instinctive stone. At the moment it has the most to be thankful, upon being heard by some mysterious and tremendous force, it finds that out of instinct, it has shut itself to life. Poor turtle.
 
But also, poor poet. For the turtle’s inability to rejoice in being rescued draws us back to the line that ended the first section, where the poet, on watching this scene from the outside, takes it in stride: I who saw the marvel simply / filed it away for future use. The turtle’s failure allows the poem to draw us (and perhaps the poet) back to this moment, to the taking for granted of the many marvels he had seen in those days, that allowed something like this (which if it was not altogether significant to his life, was of utmost significance to the turtle) to pass by unpraised.

“The point of the poem” writes Greenwell, “is to wake the speaker up to that miracle, to imbue his experience of his own life with the marvelling meanings of the turtle’s account. To reenchant his relationship to his own existence—and so do the same for all of us reading the poem.”
 
We might say the same with the psalms of thanksgiving and praise. That these psalms with their reminders that, The Lord is near to the broken-hearted, and saves the crushed in spirit, wake us up as we speak and hear them, and reenchant our relationship to our existence, and to God and the marvels of God. They point us to marvels beyond ourselves so we can be readied to see them for what they are in our own lives.
 
The persistence then, of these calls to praise and rejoicing, not only in the psalms but across scripture is neither a reflection of Christians as shiny happy people, nor a kind of oppressive cajoling to be shiny happy people. It is impossible to praise continually and we must register the genre of psalms as poetry and thus not bind ourselves to reading them as literal imperatives. Because when these calls to praise and rejoicing are read poetically, they become something so much more valuable to a life of meaning and hope.
 
The call to praise embodies an invitation to open ourselves once more to life. These psalms call us into gratitude for the uplifting of grace, the heaving of Christ’s resurrection through which we are raised to newness of life. They awaken us to the marvels of God and make room for our voice within their words. But the good news is, that even when we, like the little turtle, freeze in the face of grace, even when we fail to respond as perhaps we ought to the goodness and grace of God, these calls to praise do not leave us in shame. Because they are, themselves, what we cannot always be. Even when the bibles are closed and our mouths are shut, their praise is continual (for they are not only sung to God, but in Christ, sung by God). They themselves are the grateful response. And even when we cannot fill our hearts or mouths with their joy, we can observe from afar. When we cannot feel it ourselves, we can simply take these words in, until the day we are ready to make the most of that filed away for future use, and write it on our hearts.

-- later in service

Let us take our mind back, once more, to that turtle. It is worth remembering and giving thanks, that despite the turtle's freezing up, despite failing to responding to the grace of being heard and rescued, it is still placed on the safe shores of the green haven. Now, the turtle's rescuer has no conception of the turtle's shame-filled lack of response, but we know, that even though God does know our response (or sometimes lack of) we too are still and nonetheless placed on safe shores, we are still and always held in the strong and sure hands of God. Wrapped up in God's tender and fierce and loving and rescuing embrace from which nothing can snatch us. Our capacity to offer resounding praise and live lives of perpetual gratitude does not determine, negate, or jeopardise what God has, in perfect freedom, willed from beginningless time to do: to be for us and for our salvation. 

Readings, Psalm 6 and Matthew 9:18-26
Image, The Old Guitarist, Pablo Picasso, 1903
 
The psalms have ordered, guided, and resourced Jewish and Christian worship for millennia. And there are many types of psalms. Psalms of thanksgiving, psalms of praise, royal psalms, wisdom or teaching psalms, imprecatory psalms, and psalms of lament. Given this, the question is often posed: does and if not why doesn’t TiS, or a similar modern worship hymnbook or song list of contemporary Christian songs contain such range?
 
While we can find reasons for not-replicating some kinds of psalms, it is hard to explain the absence of lament. For we have not run short of sorrows, the tears have yet to be dried from our eyes, why should we have given up so readily, collective lament through music?
 
There are between 60-65 psalms of lament, both individual and collective. Which makes it the largest category, covering over a third of the collection. And it’s not even like it takes a while for the psalter to warm up, there are two laments in the first ten psalms – one of which, Psalm 6 – we heard today.

And I love this psalm, in particular, because of how grounded the lament feels. There's that passage in the middle, 
​ I am weary with my moaning;
   every night I flood my bed with tears;
   I drench my couch with my weeping.
Which feel like lines you'd still hear on the radio today. There's nothing peculiarly biblical about that feeling, about flooding your bed with tears, that belongs to us all.

But I want to focus first on this section:

Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing;
   O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.
My soul also is struck with terror,
   while you, O Lord—how long?
 
Throwing oneself at the feet of God with this mix of woes, plea, and accusation is characteristic of the lament.. Plea: O Lord be gracious to me… Woes: my bones are shaking my soul is struck… Accusation: O Lord – how long? -- I particularly love the way that "how long" just bursts in, as if the psalmist were planning a longer, ore eloquent line, but the well burst and all they could do was blurt out their plea.  ​

 
There is also, in this lament, another characteristic quality: reasoning (almost sounds like we’re going through the 7 stages of grief here). The reasoning in this psalm is a somewhat funny one, though it pops up across the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.
 
Turn, O Lord, save my life;
   deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love.
For in death there is no remembrance of you;
   in Sheol who can give you praise?
 
Essentially the argument is: God, it makes sense for you to save me – no really, it is a good deal for you – because if I die I won’t be able to remember you, or give you praise… so in order to keep up your number of worshippers it behoves you to save my life.
 
We don’t sing many laments in church these days, indeed, many of us have maybe wondered if it is even right and proper to pray such laments in privacy. I wonder if you may have felt the need in prayer to somewhat buffer or soften your laments and complaints in the fear of seeming ungrateful before God, or out of a sense of propriety and even concern that if I’m too angry at God, God might get angry back.
 
The psalms show no such concern. And though most of the laments do have a movement toward trust and even sometimes hope in a great reversal of present misfortunes, this does not stop them naming – often with equal parts detail and vehemence – their sorrows; even going so far as to name their source in God’s seeming neglect. But the two impulses are connected: it is that very full-throated, non-self-conscious lament (even anger) that makes possible the movement to praise and hope.
 
And yet, while we may not sing them too often in our contemporary churches and may not even pray them too regularly in our personal piety, laments can still be found. And I have one today, as we continue our poems and psalms series, which I hope will draw out further the power of lament in a life of meaning, value, and hope.
 
James Schuyler was a Twentieth Century American poet who lived a difficult life. He was hospitalised several times across his life following mental breakdowns, often needing to rely on the generosity of friends, colleagues, and grants to cover his medical and living expenses. He once remarked to a friend, that “life had been after him with a sledgehammer.” He had, safe to say, much to lament. But Schuyler also had tremendous capacity in his works to open himself to the beauty around him. No one wrote about flowers like him, and many of his poems concern looking out a window, taking in the world, and laying it down in words. This poem, Afterward (is much as before), is part of his 1980 Pulitzer Prize winning collection The Morning of the Poem, and demonstrates both Schuyler’s capacity to lament, and look out beyond tragedy.
 
            Here we read the poem, which can be found on p238 of the Collected Poems.
 
There’s two sections I want to draw our attention to. First, it is these 19 lines, where Schuyler lists his various trials and travails with such simplicity that we can both miss and be overwhelmed by them.
 
The past ten months
were something else:
pneumonia, diabetes, a
fire in bed (extase, cauchemar,
sommeil dans un nid de flames),[1]
months getting skin
grafts for third-degree
burns (for laughs, try
sleeping in an airplane
splint) and getting
poisoned by the side
effects of a potent
tranquilizer: it took
two more months to
learn to walk again
and when I came out
feeling great wham
a nervous breakdown: four
weeks in another hospital
 
It is a kind of honest, frank cataloguing that we have all probably engaged in (either for ourselves or loved ones) at some time. Those seasons where one illness, inconvenience, calamity, or crisis, follows another. Those hard times we hope to be able to look back on and laugh at the absurdity – but while in it, find unrelenting, completely devastating, and sadly, for far too many, all consuming.
 
It is the depth of detail that then gives the little exchange with his doctor such poignancy.
 
St. Vincent’s, the Neurological
Institute, Tower Nine at
Roosevelt: “You’ve had too
many hospitals,” my doctor
said, “I’m going to get you
out of here as fast as I
can,” and so he did. It’s
funny to be free again: to
look out and see
the gorgeous October day
and know that I
can stroll right out into
it and for as long as
I wish and that’s what I
do. This room needs flowers.
 
“You’ve had too many hospitals” – that little response floors me every time. How nice it is, when we are at wits end, to have someone understand what we have endured and swoop in to light a path up and out. And it does seem, that this is where we find Schuyler in this poem, out from the depth, head above water, “free again.”
 
In his own version of the psalmist’s joy of deliverance which sees their enemies shamed, Schuyler finds himself on safe shores, and enjoys the simple wonder of being able to walk out of doors, for as long as he wishes… a freedom he decides to enjoy (thus ending the poem) since, after all, the room needs flowers.
 
We need to be able to lament. And the power of a poem like Schuyler’s testifies to that. We are drawn to his sufferings and find a way to voice our own in his words, even when the particulars differ. And we can read those final words either as promise and hope that we might reach such flowering fields one day, or as a reminder to give thanks that we have already. And for this reason we can give thanks to the poets who put words to our woes and give outlet to our sorrows so that we can sing heartbreak songs at full volume in our car.
 
But we also need communal lament. We need communal lament because some wounds are communal. We need communal lament because some sorrows need more than one voice. We need communal lament because grief isolates. We need communal lament because as a body, and when one member suffers all suffer together. So it behoves us as the church to find ways to lament together. Whether that be through the psalms (and surely this is a good place to start) but also through other means, creative, communal, and contextual means – saying prayers, lighting candles, sharing stories, holding silence.
 
And we also need communal lament, because, as we see with Schuyler’s poem, it so often takes another person, to recognise and name our struggles and to work with us to move out from lament toward healing, trust, and hope. It is all well and good to say, stop and smell the roses, but unless we receive the material support to be free again to walk through those fields, the words mean little. As James (not Schuyler) wrote, If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? The act of communal lament not only allows others to lend their voice to our sorrows, but gives us an opportunity to move together toward action (whether in support of individual sufferings or collective/communal woes). It is in lamenting together that we can become awake to one another’s situations, and in so doing, commit to journey together toward better days.
 
To end, we do well to remember the nature of the one to whom we deliver our laments. For unlike a poem, we do not have to worry about a critical audience who might take issue with our syntax, imagery, or metre. As the gospel passage made clear, we do not need any great eloquence or flawless argumentation – with the bleeding woman we declare, if we but touch the hem of his coat. If we but move toward and reach out with whatever means, whatever words, whatever faith we have, Christ will know, and knowing feel, and feeling love, and loving restore. For God does not abhor the affliction of the afflicted, but earnestly desires to lead us to life and life in abundance. So cry out, friends (with no less apprehension or equivocation than Christ himself who cried a psalm of lament on the cross). Cry out, knowing that we shall be heard, and lifted into life free again to walk in fields of flowers. 
​
--

[1] "ecstasy, nightmare, sleep in a nest of flames" (quote from Rimbaud)

​Hamlet, in this moment, speaks of his growing disenchantment with all things. A disenchantment that has tainted his view of creation at large, and humanity in particular. In language resembling both the opening of Genesis and Psalm 8, Hamlet observes:
I have of late – but
wherefore I know not-- lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.
 
In the first instance, Hamlet valorises: creation is the excellent canopy, the majestical roof, the golden fire; the human is noble in reason, infinite in faculty, in action like an angel, in apprehension like a god, the beauty of the world! It is hard to find a more appreciative and eloquent summation of the artistry of God’s creation with the human as its crescendo. And yet, all this is established to emphasise his present sorrow. The higher the heights the longer the fall. For all that might be said of the dazzling sky: it is now nothing but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. For all that might be said about the human person: a quintessence of dust.
 
Many, I wager, can relate. This ping-ponging between acknowledging the wonders of the world without feeling any great awe or satisfaction is something that occurs within most of us (at least from time to time). We can probably relate as well, to looking at the world and thinking: with all the gifts given to humanity, how is this the world we have? A world of mountains and meadows where we are forced to spend most of our time working in front of a computer in order to eat. This world of creativity and passion, being overrun by AI slop. This world of possibility and connection, being torn apart by war and hatred. It is easy to, like Prince Hamlet, see the failings of those around him (and perhaps also within himself), and despair… what good is all the good, when it is cast in the shadow of so much wrong?
 
As I said before, Hamlet’s words echo Psalm 8. For the psalmist similarly affirms the wonder of creation: which reflects the works of God’s fingers and displays God’s glory; and the loftiness of the human person: who are made a little lower than God, and crowned with glory and honour. And if this was all the psalm was about (which is nothing to turn our nose up at) it would have to stand – and perhaps fall – against the same measurement as Hamlet’s speech and the rabbis discourse… that is we would have to test this view of the human against the reality of human sin.
 
However, that is what would need to happen if the psalmist proclaimed what they thought of the human. But this is not what the psalm is about. Rather than concerning what we think about creation, or what we think about the human… these valorising words are responding to a very specific question asked to God: what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
 
The psalm is not about who is the human in abstraction… but who is the human to God… or even, more profoundly, who God is to the human. Because that little line, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Contains within its inquiry a confession as to the nature of God. Who is God? God is the one who is mindful of human beings, God is the one who cares for the human. Whatever human beings are (and whatever we might think about humanity and its worth or potential on any given day) this is what we are to God: objects of care and attention.

God is the one who has made humanity just a little lower than a god (or in God’s own image to take the language of Genesis 1). God is the one who crowns the human being with glory and honour (and fills the human with God’s own breath, to take the language of Genesis 2). God is the one who gifts humanity purpose and standing within the whole created order (to take the language of both Genesis accounts). Because, first and foremost God is mindful of and cares for humanity.
 
Hamlet is right on two accounts. First, human beings contain complexity – they can be both the beauty of the world and quintessence of dust. Humans are capable both of writing something like Hamlet and performing the kinds of backstabbing and betrayal that are found in Hamlet. But whatever humanity is capable of, whatever history and potential that is contained or squandered within our species, God can sculpt and mould us into meaning and purpose and hope. God can pierce and awaken, and provide through the example of Christ and the power of the Spirit a way toward a life crowned with glory and honour.
 
And second, Hamlet is right to recognise that we can, suddenly and without discernible reason lose our capacity to see the goodness in that which surrounds and envelopes us. But the psalm reminds us that God is not so changeable. God, does not change how God feels toward creation and the human being. Because, as God spoke to the prophet Hosea, I am God and not a man (Hos 11). Whatever misgivings God has over the creation of the human in Genesis 6, the ultimate emphasis of that story is its endpoint: the covenant with Noah, the eternal promise that God shall not annihilate or cast off, not forsake or hate what God hath made. The rainbow which reminds us of this covenant is a well-chosen sign, appearing as it does on the heels of grey and gloomy skies.
 
What a piece of work is man? Well, all manner of things, all the way from paragon to dust – this is true. But first and foremost, foundationally, the human is that which God is mindful of – made in God’s loving image, by God’s loving hands and breath. What are human beings? Well, they are capable of great marvels and unspeakable evil – this is true. But first and foremost, and foundationally, human beings are those whom God cares about, covenants with, and crowns with glory and honour. And it is in this view of the human – God’s view of the human – that we find meaning, hope, and purpose.
 
But more still, we think of the words of the carol: pleased as man with man to dwell… or, in another version, pleased as human flesh to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel. The worth, wonder, and standing of the human is given final seal and significance in the Incarnation. Where God becomes fully human, born of woman to live among us and for us. What a piece of work is man? First and last, we are that which God became and dwelt with so as to redeem and make divine. What are human beings? Those God is with.

 
When we think of the graph, we’re talking about a high level of responsibility – commissioned by Christ to go out and proclaim good news, perform works of justice and mercy, and invite and guide others along this way. And I’m sure many of us would feel – if not always then certainly from time to time – that the line of our capacity and confidence doesn’t quite run up to the heights to meet it.
 
Thankfully, we, like the disciples, are gifted the Spirit. The Spirit descends, and in so doing, creates the bridge between the two lines. The Spirit descends, and in so doing, raises us up with gifts and graces to take up the responsibility laid before us. The disciples may not have felt ready, but with the Spirit they would become ready. We, likewise, will often not feel ready, but indeed, friends we are, for despite the going ahead of Christ, we have not been left orphaned. This is the good news of the gospel: as Christ disciples called to carry on his work we are given meaning and purpose… and as the Spirit’s children we are raised in capacity to see this meaning and purpose (this Christian life) not as terrifying burden or unscalable mountain, but a free and joyful path for which we are well equipped to tread.
 
But there is more to say about what it means to say that fundamental to the Christian faith is that Jesus didn’t take us with him, but sends us on in his name (and with his Spirit).
 
The very base point of Christianity is that we have not been removed from the world. Jesus’ ascension did not result in our own. We (the Christian) are commissioned to live in the age between Christ’s resurrection and return. We are in, if not of, the world. If this is true, then we ought not to devote ourselves to trying to correct this decision as if Christ simply forgot to collect us. I speak less here of those intentional communities of monks and nuns which through scholarship and service often remained in contact and enmeshment with the world more than we’d imagine. Rather I think either of those who seek to remove themselves or their communities out of a loathing of the world, and/or a preoccupation with apocalyptic fervour. I mean here also those who, bashful over the delayed return of some militaristic Christ, seek to compel the world – through sword or law – to be a so-called Christian nation.
 
Such is the brilliance of Dostoyevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” scene in The Brothers Karamazov. In this famous scene, Christ returns – not in glory, but in the quiet manner that marked his ministry in the gospel. He moves through the town, offering healing and hope. Naturally, the authorities of the Church take him into custody and the Grand Inquisitor interrogates him. Christ, again as he often does in the gospel accounts of his trial, remains silent as the Inquisitor rails. Chief among the charges is that the burden Christ put upon his followers to continue without him, that is to say, the burden of freedom, was simply too much to expect for the masses. Sure, the Inquisitor admits, a few great and holy Christians might be able to actually live into the freedom of discipleship, actually take up the responsibility of the Christian life which is not marked by law but by grace, but they are few and far between. The bulk of humanity need someone to take charge, to provide limits and rules, to give them bread and order… and it is the church, which has taken up this mantle. And people were more than willing to give up the freedom and responsibility and have the church believe on their behalf and simply tell them what to do (even if this was mostly what not to do). And having received this authority, the Inquisitor builds to pronounce, the Church is not ready to hand the throne back over to Christ, who had his chance, but threw it away in this misguided belief in the freedom of conscious.
 
As the scene concludes, the accused Christ stands, silently, and kisses the Inquisitor, who – overcome by an act of pure grace – but unable to change his ways bellows: Go and do not come back at all ... do not come at all ...ever, ever!’ And he releases [Jesus] into the town’s dark streets and squares.
 
Here lies the danger inherent in the ascension, in the freedom given to the Christian in the power of the Spirit… that we, whether as individuals or as an institution, might seek instead security and stability won through the use of worldly might. That, realising the inability to remove ourselves from the world, we might seek to remove the world from the world. That in fear or apathy we might seek to police a kind of purity where we seek to expel those works of art, forms of culture, ways of being, or even people and communities, that we judge to be anathema with our vision of earth as it is in heaven.
 
With the ascension we see, we have not been removed from the world, and we ought not to devote ourselves to trying to correct this decision as if Christ simply forgot to collect us. Rather we ought to devote ourselves to living lives that resemble what Christ’s would have had he not ascended (even as we recognise - and will celebrate next week at Pentecost - that it is the ascension that makes this kind of a life possible). We honour the ascension by living lives of humble service, generous mercy, a tenacious love of justice, a devout commitment to neighbourliness, a fervour for community, worship, and joyful proclamation of the One who sent us out love and serve the world to the glory of God and flourishing of neighbour.