Readings, Psalm 71 and Luke 13:10-17
Image,  Thomas Schaidhauf, Christ Heals the Crooked Woman (c. 1780-1800)
 
Some months ago, members of the congregation shared about songs or hymns which shape and sustain their faith, songs from which they draw comfort, meaning, and hope. I’m sure many of us have these kinds of songs, or if not songs then passages of scripture, which are part of the story, part of the pastiche which leads us here to worship. That is to say, that we have, deep in our heart, songs and stories which have taught us something about God, and having come to believe this thing about God, we come to this place where we worship and learn about God together. And this, I contend, is no different for the woman who comes to the Synagogue in today’s gospel reading, who I want to suggest, with no evidence other than to know it is possible, is led to the synagogue because of Psalm 71. We heard the psalm read, but it might be good to also hear it sung. (Hymn 40 The Lord is near to all who call)
 
Let us imagine this woman on her way to the Synagogue, likely not an easy task – neither physically, as she has been suffering from this crippling spirit for eighteen years, nor perhaps spiritually or emotionally. And yet she makes her way to the synagogue with these words of the psalm on her lips:
For you, O Lord, are my hope,
   my trust, O Lord, from my youth.
Upon you I have leaned from my birth      
We can believe she would know something about leaning on another to rest, to steady, to persist. It would perhaps serve as a fecund image for her relationship with God, her reliance on God’s grace and promise. In hope and trust she moves toward the household of God.
 
But as she does, she starts, perhaps to get some of the familiar pangs of anxiety, and gives them voice in these verses:
I have been like a portent to many,
   but you are my strong refuge.
We know that at times people suffering from prolonged maladies, ailments, or disabilities could be seen as portents; signs of sinfulness, wickedness, curses, or calamity. Perhaps this had been suggested to her in the past as a reason for her prolonged suffering. Perhaps she has been made to feel less than holy, less than welcome. It might not have always been this way, but perhaps, over time, she came to experience derision or disregard. And perhaps when the place became less of a refuge, the feeling of God as refuge took on all the more resonance. Or perhaps even if she experienced nothing but understanding and compassion from her community, she may nonetheless suffered under the lowering of expectations, of the quiet dismissal of her capacity that can afflict many in our communities who are seen, either because of disability or age, as unexpected to contribute. And in the face of the good - though patronising – will of others, she filled her heart and mouth with the plea:
Do not cast me off in the time of old age;
   do not forsake me when my strength is spent.
 
And at this point she appears in the synagogue and in our story, and at this moment, and the yearning of the psalm infuses once more with her own,
O God, do not be far from me;
   O my God, make haste to help me!
Little does she know just how near God is to her this day, little does she know that help is here. Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus, the Word made flesh, is teaching in this very synagogue this very day. And he sees her. Quite unable to stand up, but nonetheless here, and Jesus sees her and calls over to her. This whole time the words of God swim in her mind and cascade off her lips, and now the word of God calls back, Woman, you are set free from your ailment. The God of her refuge and hope, who she pleaded to be near to her, is here with her. Laying his hands upon her, she immediately stood up straight and began praising God, perhaps, drawing once more on the words of this psalm:
My lips will shout for joy
   when I sing praises to you;
   my soul also, which you have rescued.
All day long my tongue will talk of your righteous help
 
And yet, in the midst of this joy, in the wake of this wonder, in the afterglow of this glory, the leader of the synagogue, [was] indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath. Talk about letting the air out of the balloon. There’s an interesting little detail here, the leader of the synagogue is noted to have kept saying to the crowd his complaint. Kept saying, paints the picture of a kind of glum persistence, perpetually interrupting what is undoubtedly a moment of revelry. We might imagine him going from group to group trying out his little line, or looking for quieter moments to interject, getting louder and louder, incessant in his insistence that this blessing is a crisis.
 
I wonder what, in this moment of praise and joy, the woman feels as she hears this persistent complaint. Well (perhaps surprising no one at this point) there’s something in the psalm which might have come to her mind:
Let my accusers be put to shame and consumed;
   let those who seek to hurt me
   be covered with scorn and disgrace.
It turns out this is the very thing that happens. For following Jesus’ response to the leader of the Synagogue, Luke reports, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing. Rejoicing, perhaps following the prompting of the woman, with the words of the psalm:
My mouth will tell of your righteous acts,
   of your deeds of salvation all day long,
   though their number is past my knowledge.
I will come praising the mighty deeds of the Lord God,
   I will praise your righteousness, yours alone.
 
As I said at the beginning, I have no evidence for the significance of this psalm to this woman other than to know it is possible. But if not this psalm it could well be another, or perhaps some word of the prophets, or story from scripture where God delivered people from suffering. But the point, in the end, is not simply to infuse this story with backstory, not simply to connect petition with psychology. Rather it is to commend the sustaining strength that can come from weaving into our life the words of Scripture. The hope we can find in tucking our life into the passages of God’s word. The meaning we can make when we can bring to mind God’s promises or the prayers of God’s people, in our own moments of need. The Basis of Union, our movement’s founding document, “lays upon its members the serious duty of reading the Scriptures” because in the scriptures we, like the woman coming to the synagogue, find in its pages the songs, prayers, stories, and promises of God which can help lead us to this place, to this people, where we might once more hear the call of Christ which raises us up, and sparks great rejoicing for all the wonderful things Christ is doing.  

Readings, Amos 8:1-12 and Psalm 52
Image, Vincent van Gogh, “Olive Grove,” July 1889​

There’s an old axiom that a preacher should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Hardly an iron, or even golden, rule, but there are times, even when one does not set out to do so, that the news and the assigned reading happen to touch. This week one particular story overlapped so much with our reading from Amos that the Venn diagram is practically a circle. We’ll get to the story soon, let’s begin with Amos.
 
Last week, Amos was told to pack up and leave by the powers that be, this week we see what he has to say in response: The Lord said to me, ‘The end has come upon my people Israel.’ Hardly likely to reverse the prevailing antagonism being directed toward him.
 
Readings like these are part of a slew of texts which stress the sinfulness of economic exploitation and injustice. The word of the Lord given to Amos rails against those who trample the poor and treat the Sabbath and holy festivals as inconveniences delaying their profiteering off their neighbour. When, they ask, can we go back to practicing deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals and selling the sweepings of the wheat. The exploitative nature of these practices is evident – placing a thumb on the scale to increase price and profit, trapping the poor and vulnerable in cycles of debt, issuing dangerous loans to those without basic necessities, selling that which God’s law stipulates is meant to be left for the vulnerable. The Lord promises that these deeds shall not be forgotten, and God’s wrath shall be swift and severe: I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation.
 
Today’s psalm also looks forward to a great upturning where those who performed mischief against the godly, trusted in abundant riches, and sought refuge in wealth will be broken down for ever, snatched from their tent, and uprooted from the land of the living.
 
The vehemence of these condemnations is due to the fact that these violations of the poor, this exploitation of the needy, this rank profiteering is a gross abnegation of what it means to be the people of God. God’s people are set apart to serve as an example to the nations, a witness to the nature of God, a testament to the possibility and beauty of another way to be in the world. From the beginning, when Israel is shepherded safely across the Nile, they are called to be different to the empire which had enslaved and exploited them. As the fourth commandment declares in instituting the Sabbath, Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day. The Sabbath is placed in contrast with exploitative earthly economics which work people, animals, and land without rest. It is the same with the laws of Jubilee, which decree that every seventh year the land must be allowed to rest, that land sold because of economic trouble, should be returned to those who sold it, and that those who had to sell themselves into slavery are set free. In this way the laws of Sabbath and Jubilee, like the broader laws around the care of orphans, widows, and foreigners, are aimed to stress that economic exploitation and injustice which cause perpetual inequality and indenture are anathema to the Lord. In contrast, the Lord requires justice, mercy, and kindness, desiring a people determined not to let struggle and bad luck entrench generational divides of haves and have nots, free and unfree, rich and poor. In short, a people who do not seek refuge in money, but trust in the steadfast love of God. It is the dire gap between the people as they should be and as they have been that provokes the judgment of God delivered by the prophet Amos.
 
Now to the promised stories. Which are also a situation where in the realm of economic justice the has comes up despairingly short of the should. SBS News reported on a recent study of nearly 3000 workers under the age of 30. The study found one-third recorded been underpaid by their employers (some are being paid $10 less than the minimum wage), 1/3rd were found to have not been paid their compulsory super and the same number had been banned from taking entitled breaks. As alarming as this sounds, the researchers are confident that these numbers underreport the issue, as many, many more simply do not know or understand that they are being exploited or underpaid.
 
Another story reported the expansion of the AfterPay app and the intention to make it as widely available as card payments. Debt support groups have expressed alarm and concern, that such ease (especially when used to purchase every day, basic necessities) dramatically increases the risk of already vulnerable people getting trapped in debt spirals.
 
Another story recorded on once more that not only is the current gap between rich and poor the widest in history, but the gap between rich and “comfortable” is so ludicrously large we cannot even fathom the maths required to comprehend it. For instance, let’s say tomorrow when you awoke, I gave you $150million. Pretty sweet deal and likely enough to get everything you ever wanted or needed. And then the next day you wake up and I give you $150m again, okay, still sweet, now you can likely get everything all your loved ones ever wanted or needed. Ok, the next day, 150m again, look now you can buy a sports car and a house for everyone working at your favourite ten cafes. Another day, another 150m, now you can give handsomely to all the charities that mean a lot to you and become an esteemed patron of the arts. Another day… now don’t tire on me yet, we’re not even out of the first week! Imagine this goes on and on, every morning for a year. Do you know what you have at the end of this year, after receiving 150m a day for 365 days, what your refuge of wealth will have amounted to? ¼ of the net worth of the world’s richest man.
 
So perhaps it’s better to focus back on that SBS article: the little infringements, the small thefts of wages, which are hardly insignificant in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. But one of the troubles we face when we consider our response is that, in contrast to Amos, we are not speaking to or about the people of God. That is to say, we cannot presume to say, hey this is wrong because our God loves justice. We cannot presume to say, if we do not fix our ways, the songs of the temple shall become wailing. Because that might have meant something to Amos’ audience (though perhaps not enough) but it means little to less now.
 
It is interesting then, to consider exactly what God says shall befall Israel for its wanton disregard of the commands for economic fairness and integrity: The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. This is the cataclysm that is coming, this will be the result of all that false piety. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
 
Could this have befallen our own day? Could such inequality, injustice, and rank ignoring of systemic jubilee, be the result of a famine of hearing the word of God? Could it be that so few who see the state of the world are moved to act is because the words of prophet and psalmist have fallen on closed ears? That these stories can be frowned upon without the fear of God, could this be in part the result of a famine of hearing the words of the Lord?
 
If this could be the case then what is needed is what the psalmist describes: people rooted like a green olive tree in the house of God; ready to laugh at the evildoer and trust in the steadfast love of God. That is to say, what is needed are those who live not on bread alone but every word that proceeds from the mouth of our Lord. Those able to see the mockery of God in the tipping of scales, the stealing of wages, and the building up of storehouses so monumental they make the tower of Babel seem a miniature made for model train set. Perhaps one way through is for people rooted in God’s word and love to speak, like Amos, the word of righteous judgment against the sins of exploitation and inequity.
 
But importantly, this people, being rooted in God’s word and God’s love, fed on scripture and song, must offer more than just critique. The point of a people of God is to be an alternative, to embody possibility. The people of God are set apart to witness, to be a testament to what is possible when rooted in God’s house, God’s word, God’s love. To show what can happen when we commit to living the way of justice, mercy, and kindness, where our way of relating to people, creation, and wealth is not one of competition, acquisition, and surplus, but is grounded on rest, peace, wholeness, community, and abundance of life.
 
The call placed upon us as the church, as a people set apart, is to glorify God and serve the world by being a living example of what can be possible when rest, mutuality, jubilee, justice, and neighbourliness, shape the ordering of our days together. What we owe to the world is a commitment to this vision, possibility, and calling. And we sustain this commitment by being rooted in the house of God so we shall never hunger or thirst for God’s word. It won’t solve everything, and we can’t do it alone, but the wider results of such witness are almost secondary. Because first and foremost such a commitment is one which keeps us from being uprooted by the winds of worldly allure, by grounding us in the house of God where in the presence of the faithful we proclaim the Holy Name, for it is good.  

Readings, Proverbs 8: 1-4, 22-31 and Psalm 8
Image, Segment from The Holy Family with Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (1618)

What does it mean to believe in a Triune God? To confess the Holy Trinity? To live as though our God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? There are, of course, conceptual answers (more often than not teaching us what not to say: the Son is not created, the Father is not above the Son, etc), and they are important. A proper understanding of who Jesus is, or why the Spirit is sent at Pentecost requires the full picture of God as Triune.
 
However, while worthy of a sermon, this is not how I want to approach the question “what does it mean to believe in a Triune God” today. Instead, the sermon is: we glorify, recognise, and confess the reality of the Triune God in treating human beings as crowned by God with glory and honour, treating each person as one who the wisdom of God delights.
 
I’ve been reading a book on the Soviet dissident movement, called To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause (which would have been my toast to myself had I come out to preach on the conceptual answers to the question of the Trinity). The book centres the simple though radical choice these dissidents made: in an unfree country, they began to conduct themselves like free people.
 
This serves as a guide for our own lives as subjects of the Triune God, citizens of the kingdom of heaven, living amidst worldly fracture, failure, and folly. That in a world of prejudice and discrimination, of abuse and neglect, of violence and war, of tyranny and despotism, of callousness and cruelty, we live as those who believe God cares for the human person. To confess the reality of the Triune God is to live in God’s reality. And in God’s reality, God is mindful of and cares for the mortal, has crowned the human with glory and honour. To glorify the Triune God is to defy the worldly appearance of things and live as if each person has really, truly been made little lower than a God.
 
To live “as is,” is not to live in blinkered delusion, but to awaken to incongruity. It is to wake and see where in the world people are treated as if they bear no crown, no divine image, no holy delight. The most recent Peninsula Living was delivered which detailed the rising scourge of elder abuse across the Northern Beaches (and across the wider State). Stories such as this create a clash between the world as it is and the world as it should be, a clash between how the vulnerable are too often treated in the world, and how they are viewed by God. And this clash acts as a spark, it ignites us to act, advocate, organise and pray so that the as it should be gains ground in the world. 
 
On the global scale, we see the humanitarian crisis spiralling out of control in Gaza. The blocking and destruction of international aid by Israel, their strategies of starvation and deprivation added onto direct military strikes, are enabled and empowered by their own (and much of the wider world’s) decision to classify a population not as little lower than a God, but far lower than human dignity, rights, and compassion. The cataclysmic death toll is enabled and empowered by the ability to look at some people not as crowned with glory and honour, not as a site where Divine Wisdom delights, but as an inhuman problem to be extinguished or expelled. Again these heart wrenching stories spark a clash within us, they create an undeniable incongruity between the world as it is and the world as it should be, about the human as seen through a sinful, worldly vision, and as they are seen by God.     
 
More intimately, we might connect this to last week’s message about the Spirit bearing witness with our own that we are children of God. God has crowned us with glory and honour, making us little lower than a God, and this creates a clash of incongruity with our own negative self-talk, which would seek to place us several rungs lower on that ladder.
 
We believe in the Triune God by not settling for the vision of the world as it is. We believe by  rebelling against the worldly categorisation and treatment of our fellow human beings as anything lower than what God has determined us to be. Because as the reading from Proverbs stresses, it is this relationship to the human that defines the nature of our God.
 
In language reminiscent of the prologue of John, the figure of Wisdom is described as being set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth. Narrating God’s ordering of the primordial creation, Wisdom declares Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. It is writings such as these that resourced the development of the doctrine of the Trinity in the early church. But again, the emphasis today is not on the conceptual articulation of the Trinity. Rather, we find the emphasis in the following verse when Wisdom declares, and my delights were with the sons of men. Wisdom, who was with God when there were no depths, finds delight with the sons of men. Like the opening of John, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh and lived among us.
 
There is always a directionality, or focal point, for the figure of Wisdom or Word: to be among us, to be for us, to live and delight with us. While it is established that these figures are with God from the beginning, pivotal in the act of creation, the emphasis is not on their relation in an idealised pre-human eternity. Rather the emphasis is the movement toward the human, the decision to be with and for us. The emphasis is that God, who established the clouds above, the mountains below, and the limits of the seas; God for whom the moon and the stars are the works of Their fingers; should be mindful of human beings, that God should care for mortals, and make them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour. Who God is, from the beginning is the one who is turned toward the human. God is only and always a God for us. A God who has elected in freedom to be our creator, redeemer, and sustainer. Who is the Triune God? The one who crowned us with honour and glory. 
 
As Julian of Norwich wrote, I saw that God never began to love mankind; for just as mankind will be in endless bliss, fulfilling God’s joy with regard to his works, just so has that same mankind been known and loved in God’s prescience from without beginning in his righteous intent… For before he made us, he loved us. (Showings)
 
What does it mean to recognise this Triune God and live faithfully in this reality? It is to recognise ourselves and our fellow human creatures as those God is mindful of, and in turn be mindful of them. To recognise ourselves and our fellow as cared for by God, and in turn care for them. To recognise ourselves and our fellow as crowned by God and in turn treat each other as crowned. It is to live as dissidents to the world of sin and death, to the world as it is, and instead to live as free citizens of the kingdom of God; world as it should be. We live as those who see and consider neighbours and strangers with the dignity, respect, and love that befits God’s own care. We live as those who are troubled by the incongruity between the all-too-common worldly denigration of the human creature and seek to rectify this out of a robust vision of God’s as it should be. In doing so we believe in the Triune God as the one who in absolute freedom, and from without beginning answered the question of divine identity simply in being mindful of us, and in being mindful, loving us.

Readings, Psalm 126, Isaiah 43:16-21, and Philippians 3:4b-14
Image, 
 
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. There might not be a more profound prayer than the one held in this simple line from today’s Psalm. It is a timeless petition, for until the age to come when God wipes all tears from our eyes, the human experience shall not be short of tears, nor the longing for them to be replaced with joy. It is a prayer we might have prayed for ourselves, for a loved one, or for whole regions and peoples wracked by ruinous calamity or military violence.
 
This sentiment, this hope, that those who sow in tears shall reap in joy, runs throughout Scripture. Could it not describe the yearning and journey of Ruth and Naomi, the prophetic hope given to slaves in Egypt and exiles in Babylon, is it not descriptive of the travails of Joseph or of Hagar. The psalm could be sung over the people of God at so many points in their history and feel as though it was written directly for them. Just as countless faithful have opened their Bible to this page and heard it speak the longing of their heart.  
 
It is fitting then, that this verse, particularly when we let it run on to the next, proves a succinct plot summary of that first Easter morning: Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves. Or, in a perhaps more potent translation (from Robert Alter):
He walks along and weeps,
The bearer of the seed bag.
He will surely come in with glad song
Bearing his sheaves.
 
For does this not describe the journey of Mary Magdalene on Easter morn? She who walked, weeping, bearing spices to the tomb of her Lord, is she who comes home with shouts of joy, returning to the disciples with glad song to rouse them from their mourning.
 
Perhaps it should be no surprise that such a verse maps so poetically onto the Easter scene. For the rising of Christ, his triumph over Death, is the divine signature beneath the promise that those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. The resurrection of Christ, as Paul strives to describe, is that which strengthens us to forget what lies behind and to press on toward the goal. The resurrection is that truth of surpassing value which permits us to hope that the story does not end in tears, that the losses are not forever, that the seeds watered in tears will not grow trees of sorrow. The fields of our lives might be laid to waste by calamity and tragedy but they shall not remain barren. For the resurrection signals the coming of a day when all shall rise, and all things shall be restored to their former glory, as the great Sower arrives with glad song, heralding the in-breaking of new creation.
 
None of this is to suggest that because of this promise of glad song we need put down our laments. For as the teacher says, there is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. The psalm conveys that it is by honouring one time that the other comes to fruition. It is by sowing in tears that the changing of the seasons leads us to reaping in joy and glad song. Had Mary not gone to attend Christ in her grief, she would not have had her heard her name spoken by her Lord and friend. Our faith is one of death and resurrection; the latter does not ignore but transforms the former. So too the griefs in our life are real, the losses profound, and there are those who know sufferings and losses which defy the understanding of all but their compatriots in the valley of death. And far too many never live to feel taste the tears replaced by laughter returning to their mouths and glad song to their hearts. The tears of today are too real to be waved away by the promise of tomorrow, the time must be taken to sow and wait before there’s any talk of reaping.  
 
In a similar way, none of this is to suggest that suffering is inherently good. That the knowledge it brings, the experience it provides, the ground it serves for cultivating transformation is enviable. There’s a line in Saul Bellow’s novel, Mr Sammler’s Planet, where a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps remarks, “To some people, true enough, experience seemed wealth. Misery worth a lot. Horror a fortune. Yes. But I never wanted such riches.” We recall that Christ weeps for his friend Lazarus as he lies in his tomb, even though Christ is the resurrection and the life, who can call his friend by name and lead him into life. Griefs are too awful to be envied, even if what might be sowed in their season might lead to glad song in another. Just because Joseph’s sale into slavery leads to the salvation of many, or because Hagar’s casting out leads to her encounter with God in the wilderness, this does not mean we take as necessary, excusable, or enviable the actions of others that led them there. Nor should it prompt us to say, how fortunate they suffered such woe, otherwise they would never have felt such joy.
 
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. This is a sublime prayer, an earnest hope, a foundational promise. It speaks God’s nature to make straight the paths through the wilderness and provide water in the dessert. It speaks the Easter promise of resurrection which transforms death and allows Paul to consider the worldly privileges he lost in his dying with Christ merely excrement compared to what he has gained by sharing in Christ’s resurrection. It speaks the Spirit’s power to prevent grief being the last word, or loss the final state. It reminds us that though there is a time to weep and mourn there will be another time, if not in this life, then in the age to come, when tears shall be wiped from our eyes and all things restored to dazzling glory.
 
And while speaking this comfort and promise, the psalm also speaks our commission as Christ’s disciples living in this time between Christ’s resurrection and return. For too much suffering need not be, and too many of our fellows are denied the time, care, and justice required to move from weeping to glad song. It belongs to us, as Christ’s, to live and work with our neighbours that we might share the burden of the seed bag when they weep and work to clear away that which stifles what could grow out from their season of grief if only the world would stop dumping calamity on their heads. Let us live with our neighbours in their times of mourning and their seasons of waiting, that we might join in the glad song and shouts of joy when the time of reaping has begun. For this is the very image of Christ, who though buried in tears, rises to gather his scattered and weeping friends so they may know once more the time of dancing and laughter.

Image, Joan Mitchell, Cypress, 1980

In one of the great segments of The Twilight Zone a scholarly man finds himself post-apocalyptic scene, seemingly the last man left alive. It all seems fairly dire, until he stumbles upon a library... of course, it is the Twilight Zone, so things don't necessarily go as planned. You can watch the ending here.
 
We have a lot of stories where we long for a place, some utopia, and then, when we arrive there is a cruel and ironic twist. The vision of the future, the idealised time to come, the mythical place of the character’s dream looks great from afar, built up by imagination and yearning but by the end of the story we discover that what has been eagerly awaited cannot live up to expectations, plagued by some flaw inherent to its nature. Readied as we are by such stories and their twists, the words of the psalm, One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, might be accompanied by a sense of foreboding. Like, yes, you wish that now, but have you really thought such things through? Will there not yet be a rug pulled out from under your dreams?
 
We are progressing through the season of Lent, the forty days of preparation for Calvary. We ready ourselves through piety, prayer, and proclamation to feel the upheaval, the drama, tragedy and victory of the cross and the empty tomb. Our readings today serve such an end.
 
The Psalm captures the Lenten yearning for refuge and salvation. The psalm teaches our heart to Come and seek God’s face. For at heart, this is what Lenten habits of fasting and forgoing, or of focused intensifying of spiritual practices are aimed toward: teaching our hearts to seek the one thing, to strip away the distractions and find the one thing to ask of the Living God, to discover or rediscover the one place in which we shall find true rest, refuge, and delight.
 
Pressed in on all sides the Psalmist looks toward the refuge of God’s presence. World-weary and wrung dry the Psalmist yearns to come in from the cold and exist in the warmth of God’s beauty – represented on earth for them in the Temple. Their desire, born of faith and struggle is to spend their days where eternity and time intersect, where divine presence dwells on earth. To press in with the assembly to seek God’s face, learn God’s ways, and see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
 
Speaking of a place where time and eternity intersect and the divine presence dwells on earth, let’s talk about the gospel reading. Evil doers assail Jesus, seeking to devour his flesh, and he is warned by some Pharisees to flee for safety. This is a good reminder that the relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees is not simply one of protagonist and antagonist. While there is (at times heated) disagreement between the parties, it is clear Jesus spends a great deal of time amidst the Pharisees. And here, we see that far from betraying Jesus into the hands of Herod, the Pharisees burst in with warnings… warnings which serve to ready us again for Easter.
 
For where the psalm readies us by giving voice to yearning, the gospel readies us by setting the stage of the conflict narrative that will drive us to the cross. For having been warned, Jesus offers perhaps his most explicit critique of Herod and the worldly powers assailing him: Go and tell that fox for me… The following proclamation of Jesus’ messianic mission, his prophetic cause, his foreshadowing of his death and victory is all placed here in direct confrontation and defiance of Herod, which is a confrontation and defiance of the imperial rule of his day.
 
In calling Herod a fox, Jesus is also able to define the nature of this conflict. Because, in the same speech that Jesus refers to Herod as a fox, he describes himself as a Mother Hen. Flee, Jesus is warned, a fox approaches, no, Jesus says, my desire is to gather the children of Jerusalem like a mother hen her chicks. Compared to the wily, destructive, and violent fox, Jesus is the nurturing, protective, and unassuming hen. The contest between Jesus and the forces out to subdue him is not likened by Jesus to two waring armies, but a fox and a mother hen. Jesus’ desire is not glorious battle, but to gather and shelter. To make of himself, a place where we will find our refuge, a place we can seek to live all the days of our lives, a place to behold the beauty of the Lord. Here, his very body – which at this moment is assailed and threatened by evil forces – is held out to the world as a place of refuge and hope. Jesus speaks to those around him: ready yourself, the hour approaches, and remember when the work is finished, who it was that dwelt among you.
 
We seek something which will not disappoint, sweet waters with no bitter aftertaste. For he who has been tried did not fail. He who was buried did not stay buried. Lent readies us for a crescendo, the climax of the contest. Lent readies us for an ending, the death of Christ on the cross. And Lent also readies us for a new beginning in the Easter dawn. And when we arrive at each of these sites, we shall not be disappointed. We shall not feel the pinch of poetic irony. We shall not grow weary of their fields and flowers. For this is the site at which eternity and time intersect, where the divine presence dwells on earth, where the kingdom of God draws near, on earth as it is in heaven. Pressed on all sides, world-weary and wrung dry we can come again and again to the story and find the very presence of Christ, his very body opened toward us offering shelter and refuge from all sorts of foxes. Be strong and take heart, for here we behold the beauty of the Lord.
 
And yet, while Lent readies us for an ending, teaching our hearts to seek the one good thing, it also teaches us to seek this ending in the middle. Lent teaches us, that is, to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. In walking these forty days with Christ we learn to value power which nurtures, shelters, and gathers, and wonder how we as Christ’s body might act the hen. In gathering together in prayer, piety, and proclamation we learn how to lift our heads to make sounds of joy, and wonder how we as Christ’s body might battle back the forces that compel our neighbours to keep their heads low. In moving out into the world to bless the living with love and good deeds, we learn to seek God’s face in the least of these and wonder how as the body of Christ we might behold the Lord’s beauty in places the world consigns as ugly.
 
Wait for the Lord! The Psalmist proclaims. This isn’t a waiting until there is finally time enough, when all the diversions are wiped away and the ecosystem aligns with the fruition of our desires. We are waiting for one who was and is and is to come, waiting for one who is present with us, and who has already gone ahead to make for us a room to spend all the days of our lives. This is an active, engaged, creative, and communal waiting where we live within the belief that we shall see (and indeed might become) the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. So be strong and let your heart take courage. Live as those gathered and sent by a hen amongst foxes, until the great and glorious day when you say, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Readings, Psalm 127 and Mark 12:38-44
Image, Bed 2, Nemesio Antunez, 1980
 
Macbeth (well, William Shakespeare’s Macbeth) is overwhelmed by worry. Having killed Duncan he fears that his machinations could be exposed by Banquo, and laments to his wife,
Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
 In the affliction of these terrible dreams
 That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead,
 Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
 Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave.
 After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.
 
Later in the play, having now also done in Banquo, Lady Macbeth suffers her own perturbation, made manifest in restless nights, walking hither and thither, active though asleep, hoping to expunge the stain of blood from her hands.
 
This, the play suggests awaits those who build their house on betrayal. There is no rest for the wicked, whose own minds and bodies turn against them in violent agitation. Sleep provides no respite, bed no balm, for here especially they suffer the affliction of their conscious, the futility of their temporary gains, the peril at their gates. Better to be dead, Macbeth notes, at least then you get some sleep.
 
Unless the Lord builds the house, notes the psalmist, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for God gives sleep to his beloved.
 
Like last week we are drawing on a psalm (and some Shakespeare) to enter deeper into the paradox, mystery, and hope of the confession of Christ the King. Where last week the psalm contrasted the trustworthiness of Divine rule compared to mortal princes, this week sets human labour and energy against the foundation of God. Where, last week, the confession of Christ’s kingship worked as a check against placing all hope in finite, earthly power structures, today it checks against believing that the church can be built and preserved by our efforts. No matter how early we rise, how late we work, how diligently we watch, or how arduously we labour, it is in vain unless it is the Lord who builds, guards, acts. Fundamental to the confession of Christ the King, is Christ the cornerstone and foundation of the church.
 
The Uniting Church’s Basis of Union, the founding document of our church by which three denominations became one movement made this point explicitly. Rather than appealing to what the individual churches might contribute… The Uniting Church acknowledges that the Church is able to live and endure through the changes of history only because its Lord comes, addresses, and deals with people in and through the news of his completed work. Though we are charged to live as witnesses, it is Christ who reaches out to command people's attention and awaken faith; [Christ who] calls people into the fellowship of his sufferings… Christ who, in his own strange way… constitutes, rules and renews them as his Church.
 
Or, in the words of Ephesians, Christ is the cornerstone of the household of God: In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God. Unless Christ builds the church, we labour in vain.
 
Now, such a lesson could be stressed as a warning – a bulwark against going our own way, leaning too much on human labour, managerialism, or fads. A warning against deferring too much authority to earthly leaders in the church, a reminder that none should be thought above reproach or accountability because they are supposed to be essential to a church’s survival. It reminds us that Christ awakens faith, Christ feeds the church, Christ renews the body on the way to a promised end, and therefore we cannot neglect Christ in prayer, proclamation, and praise should we wish to be the church.
 
But such a lesson can also be read as a consolation, a balm, a hope. As the psalmist sings: God gives rest to the beloved. With Christ as the head and foundation of the church, the one who preserves and renews the church as cornerstone and high priest, we are freed from anxious toil. We can remove the burden of the church’s future from our shoulders. We no longer need to rise early and go late to rest, fitfully tossing and turning through the night our mind awash with all the things we have to do tomorrow. As co-labourers, as disciples, as those Christ calls friends, we give up the bread of anxious toil and eat the bread of life! We celebrate our liberation from the responsibility which belongs rightly to Christ; since what we need Christ to do, is not something we can pull off.
 
To confess Christ’s sovereign headship over the church is to make possible real rest. Our labour is not foundational, it is a joyful response to what Christ has, is and will do in, through, and beyond the church. When our labour is co-labour with Christ, our labour is not in vain.
 
It is this very confession that makes it possible to celebrate the widow’s offering. Because if the church was built and guarded with human hands, what difference really could that widow’s offering make. Let’s be serious, it’s a pittance. Much more pivotal are those loud and showy offerings of the rich. Truly, if the church is built alone by Christians, then we ought to overlook whatever hypocritic, self-serving, motivations they might have for giving. However, if the church lives and endures through the changes of history only because of Christ, then we can rightly celebrate the widow’s offering. Not because her mite will make the difference, but because her witness does. In drawing attention to her giving humbly out of her poverty, Christ awakens our attention and faith.
 
The widow’s offering reminds us that our labour is not in vain when it is meek and mild, when it is small and fragile, when it is humble and insufficient. Our labour is in vain when we believe it mighty, when it parades as the answer, when it takes the responsibility to guard and build. The widow’s offering can never be confused with anything but co-labouring, as anything but an offering which depends upon divine intervention. This is why it is celebrated in the gospel, and through this we learn how to celebrate these kinds of offerings in our church today.
 
For if Christ were not the head of the church, if the church does not endure through history only because of his word and presence, then it would be difficult to celebrate the little acts of generosity, kindness, faithfulness, mercy, and justice that sprinkle about the life of the church today. Because if the value and impact of these acts of prayer, fellowship, and witness were left to the cold calculations of material impact, as if the only thing standing between the church and the gates of hell were our own input, all we would see was how much they came up short, how much more still needed to be done. On our own, our efforts of faithful living might seem like trying to right a sinking ship by scooping out water with a teaspoon. What hope of a good night’s sleep is found in such an understanding of the church?
 
But this is not how we understand the church. We understand the church as a household of God built on the cornerstone of Christ, as a body with Christ as its head, as a people with Christ as their High Priest. And when we understand it this way, then when we lay the smallest stone, twitch the smallest muscle fibre, or offer the quietest prayer, all these small things are not measured on their own. They are part of the cosmic and eternal labour of God. And as such they become witnesses to Christ’s own activity which offers rest to the mind tormented by restless ecstasy with the promise that our labour (celebrated or unnoticed) is not in vain, for we do not labour alone.

Readings, Psalm 146 and James 2:1-7
 Image, Ethiopian Double Tryptic, artist unknown (C19th)
 
Brutus (well, at least William Shakespeare’s Brutus) stands before a Roman crowd, seeking to assuage their concerns and make his case for why it was necessary to slay Caesar.
Romans, countrymen, and lovers, hear me for my
cause, and be silent that you may hear. Believe me
for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour
that you may believe. Censure me in your wisdom,
and awake your senses that you may the better
judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear
friend of Caesar’s, to him I say that Brutus’ love
to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend
demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my
answer: not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved
Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living, and
die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all
freemen? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him. As he
was fortunate, I rejoice at it. As he was valiant, I
honour him. But, as he was ambitious, I slew him.
There is tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honour
for his valour, and death for his ambition.
 
Brutus had placed all his trust in Caesar, but Caesar could no longer be trusted, his ambition could no longer go unchecked. The great tragedy is that for all of Brutus’ nobility and reason, he too loses the trust of Rome, and his plans for the republic thwarted. Despite his rival Antony declaring him the noblest Roman of them all, Brutus (along with those who followed him) see the towering sprout of their vision shrivel into dust with his death.
 
The psalmist sings, Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish. Scepticism and caution toward human authority is a theme which runs like a river through the Bible. It is not that there aren’t noble human leaders, or voices in scripture heralding the importance of obedience to human authority, but a strong voice remains which warns that any allegiance to a mortal ruler is bound to end in ruin. Whether that ruin comes through corruption, failure or betrayal, or whether, simply, with the natural end of life, no one is immune: Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.   
 
We’re coming toward the end of the liturgical year, which culminates with Christ the King Sunday. And as we approach, we’ll explore some psalms which draw us into the mystery, paradox, and hope of Christ’s sovereignty. Today’s psalm establishes perhaps the cornerstone of the confession of Christ’s kingship, that while earthly princes and power structures might be expedient and necessary, none can be trusted in the way Christ can. None warrant our allegiance in the way God does. All are relative and contingent, compared to the eternal and universal sovereignty of our God.
 
Now this distinction is important for a few reasons. First, as already hinted at, it recognises that human leaders have all-too-human limitations. To uncritically and unreservedly pitch our tent in their camp will not only lead to disappointment but can all too easily lead to ruin.
 
James warns his congregation against the favouritism they are showing to the prosperous and the powerful, the kind of blind allegiance they give over to the ruling classes (who James reminds them are their oppressors!). To go all in on the princes of this earth (whether they are adorned with crowns and followed by soldiers, or adorned with honour and followed by sycophants) and give to them the best of this and the first of that, not only places them on the thrones belonging only to God, but leads us to dismiss and denigrate those whom God is known to be for.
 
[The Lord] executes justice for the oppressed;
   [The Lord] gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
   the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
   the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the strangers;
   God upholds the orphan and the widow…
 
As a direct counter to human princes, the psalmist details this as the character of our God. This is who we are commended to trust and praise. For unlike mortal princes and power structures (which the long sweep of human history alerts us are quick to kowtow to the preferences of those with money), God is not swayed by human riches, but takes the side of the downtrodden and forgotten.
 
Christ is our king, God is our sovereign, because – in having no need of human offerings or help – God cannot be swayed by the corrupting influences of power and prestige. Instead, God is free to take up the causes of the lowly without having to watch poll numbers and election cycles. But our allegiance to this God is earnt by more than a kind of affection for the poor; as if it were enough that God paid heed to the kingdom’s margins from an insulated throne room. No, we praise and trust our God because Christ gave up divine glory to take the form of a servant; lowly born among the oppressed and bowed down. We praise and trust because Christ demonstrated true greatness comes through service and true love is shown in laying down one’s life for one’s friends. It is not only God’s preference for but presence with the poor and oppressed that frees us to trust fully in Christ the King.
 
But this freedom to trust comes from something else as well. For unlike Brutus, we do not need to worry over what Christ would do with too much power. We know already that he has already been given all authority over heaven and earth and this he uses to intercede for us in mercy until the day he comes to turn the swords into ploughshares and wipe all tears from our eyes. Because we can trust Christ to be uncorruptible, trust God to always be the One who watches over the stranger, orphan, and widow, we do not have to spend our days with one suspicious eye trained upon our king. Unlike Brutus we do not have to fret and sweat through the night wondering whether we must take up the sword for the sake of the republic. Nor do we need to spend our days fundraising for the next election or worrying over whether this whole “feed the hungry and free the prisoners” thing will win votes. Instead, we are freed to be simple, grateful, and passionate subjects of God, devoting our days to seeking God’s kingdom.
 
Now such a pursuit may (indeed likely should) lead us into the all-too-human political arena. The confession of Divine sovereignty does not equate to quietism in human politics. For following Christ and seeking God’s Kingdom will lead us into relationships, alliances, and coalitions. Our work in domestic violence, or recent forays into addressing gambling harm, is motivated and spurred on by God's love of justice, by the gospel proclamation of the inherent dignity and of all God's creation, by the confession that Christ has come that we might have life in abundance, and from that place we forger partnerships and work alongside any number of community orgs and council initiatives.  It is in the act of seeking first the Kingdom of God that we  take up pen and write our elected reps, campaign for causes of justice, support movements for dignity, and critique war-mongering and global hypocrisy. The work may look the same as many others in our community,  but  when we do so as a response to our gleeful and grateful trust in God’s sovereignty, we do this work in a different posture. We do so, that is, viewing these mortal princes and power structures as expedient tools, and temporary, imperfect resources. None demand or deserve our ultimate trust or allegiance, none require our uncritical defence or deference, none hold our ultimate hope or promise. Instead, we find our happiness and trust in God and provisional usefulness in whatever the world might offer us as we seek to live in a way that reflects God’s political vision.  
[The Lord] executes justice for the oppressed;
   [The Lord] gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
   the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
   the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord watches over the strangers;
   he upholds the orphan and the widow…

May we, who are subject's of this Living Lord, seek to do likewise.

Readings, 1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-15 and Psalm 111
Image, Alfonse Borysewicz, Pomegranate, 2010–11. 70 x 50”, Oil & Wax on Linen

Perhaps it is the stories I was raised on, perhaps it is playing Dungeons and Dragons, but when I hear a story where a God asks a man, Ask what I should give you, my first impulse is, ‘be careful what you wish for.’ How many stories has our culture inherited of trickster deities offering a blank check, only for the wish to backfire in surprising, though legally buttoned up ways? King Midas wishes that everything he touches turns to gold, this comes true, but of course, everything means everything, even his beloved daughter. Jafar wishes to be an all-powerful genie, without realising this means being bound to a lamp. Scrooge wishes to be left alone, and is shown a future where he dies forgotten and unloved. Dear Dorian Gray wishes that he would have eternal youth, while all effects of aging are visited upon his portrait, a fate he later discovers leads to internal corruption and torment.
 
Solomon avoids a fate such as this. The story attests that his request of God for an understanding mind to govern God’s people… pleased the Lord. So pleased is God that Solomon is not only granted wisdom surpassing any who have come before or will rise up after, but also the more typical wishes people might ask of God: riches and honour.
 
Now, we might read this as a testament to the character of Solomon. He evidences his virtue in knowing the humble, service-focused thing to ask. This is often the way in stories, where the only one who can pull the sword from the stone, or wield the immensely powerful magical item, is the one who is pure of heart and free of selfish desire. Only those who would not ask for power and riches gain it, for in not wishing they demonstrate their worthiness. Aladdin proves himself worthy of the princess by using his final wish to free the Genie instead of asking to become a prince. Solomon demonstrates his character as one worthy to rule through service, as prepared to shepherd God’s people by desiring only what will assist him in his task. Solomon thus stands as an exemplary witness for us to emulate, a paragon of wisdom, who asks of God for nothing more than the capacity to serve those to whom he is responsible. May all our prayer lives be likewise, asking to become a blessing.
 
However, deeper still, this reading is a testament to God. To the God of our Psalm. To our God who is not two-sided, malicious, devious, or disinterested. For the God who asks, what should I give you, is the Righteous One, whose works are full of honour and majesty. The one who comes to Solomon with open hands, is the one whose hands are just, and precepts are trustworthy. Solomon can ask with confidence because the God who comes to him is the one who creates, redeems, and sustains all things with love and faithfulness. More important than the one who prays, is the one we pray too, who listens with tender patience, and yearns for us to ask for what is wise so that our knocking can be answered. The question is, then, how to learn to be wise… Thankfully, it is not too difficult.
 
Solomon, we learn from the psalm, is able to make the noble request, because he knows who God is. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This is one of those poetic, though archaic phrases, that can ruffle our collar. Is it fear of God’s judgment, God’s distance and severity that allows us to rightly posture ourselves? Put otherwise, do we need a certain level of fear of God in order to follow what God says; like the child who puts away their toys for no other reason than they fear the raised voice and lowered spoon? This, friends, is not the case, this is not the fear that leads to wisdom. To fear the Lord is to learn and revere the great things God has done. To fear the Lord is to stand before the truth of God’s benevolence and righteousness in thankful humility. We fear the Lord not by cowering but celebrating who God is for us. We might as well say, knowledge of God is the beginning of wisdom, reverence of God, delight in God, trust in God. Solomon was ready to pray for wisdom, because he had already begun down her path when he studied with delight the great works of God. This is the beginning of wisdom; his prayer is only its consolidation.
 
For us, our practice of collective worship, coupled with our being sent to love and serve the Lord with and amongst our neighbours, is the beginning of wisdom. In this movement of going and gathering we hear and proclaim the great things God has done. Here we give thanks for the redemption God has sent, remember the promise of the covenant, and learn to trust the faithfulness of God’s character. And in our movement to the world, we learn what we need from God in order to best serve our neighbours. In praise and service, we learn more of who God is, and stride further down the path of wisdom. To state it most simply, to ponder and delight in Christ is the path of wisdom, and this delight is found both in our gathering as Christ’s body in worship, and our going as Christ’s body in service.
 
This is not a new connection. Early Christian communities intimately identified Christ with the Wisdom of God. As we read in Proverbs, the Wisdom of God was present at creation with God, before the beginning of the earth, when God established the heavens, and the sea was assigned its limit. Whoever finds Wisdom, the Proverb teaches, finds life. Such language resembles closely the beginning of John and the role of the Word. The path of Wisdom, is the path of the Word. To seek God’s Wisdom is to seek Christ, to be wise, is to be Christlike.
 
So give thanks, for our life with God is not one of navigating linguistic landmines, but is the delight that comes when we reflect on the character and action of God, and allow these thoughts to well up inside us and flow through us in our love and service of the world. This is the fear of the Lord, this is the beginning of wisdom, this is the path of life, Praise the Lord!

Readings, Psalm 130 and John 6: 35, 41-51
Image, Twilight in the Wilderness, Frederic Edwin Church (1860)

Let us consider the wilderness generation, those who received the manna from heaven and followed God for forty years. A generation passing away beneath the pillar of smoke by day, and fire by night. In one reading, this is a tragedy. Those who saw the sea part and sung the songs of deliverance on freedom’s shore, who saw the holy mountain and heard the covenantal promise, nonetheless display such distrust and division that they would never see the promised land. Sin destines them to wander until each member of that generation is buried in the dust. Only when the new census is taken, and not one name recorded at the mountain of God remains, shall the nation reach the promised land. Clearly a tragedy.
 
However, there’s another reading.* Despite their failings, and the judgment brought upon them by their mistakes, God, in steadfast love, gifts this generation an unparalleled privilege. For this generation pass their years receiving their daily bread from God. Each day the manna and the quail from heaven – never enough to store, but always enough to eat. Forty years as pilgrim people, freed from tomorrow’s worries: life in the benevolence of God. With the future all but closed off, they waded in the waters of God’s presence until their rest. What other generation has lived in such times as these, fed from the hand of God, falling to sleep beneath the stars of God’s creation and the fire of God’s presence? They may perish before seeing the promised land, but they lived within the nurturing sphere of God’s grace, a devotional walk, uninterrupted by the demands and distractions of daily life. In this reading the wilderness generation prefigure what John refers to as eternal life, that life lived fully attuned to the presence and promise of God, that life which begins now and reaches perfection in the age to come, that life of abundance which Jesus came to gift to all.
 
I am the bread of life, Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Jesus, proclaims himself this very present provision of God. His body descended from heaven to give eternal life, feeding a pilgrim people (as the Basis says) on the way to a promised end. The Christian yearns for a life like the wilderness generation, enveloped by God’s steadfast love and provision. For the church lives in the time-in-between, an Advent people proclaiming Christ’s resurrection while hastening and waiting for Christ’s return. We are those wait for the Lord, more than those who watch for morning. Of course, this future is out of our reach, belonging to God alone, arriving at an appointed time of which not even the angels are privy. Therefore, like that wilderness generation, we live in the perpetual now of God’s grace.
 
This is, in part, why Jesus teaches us not to store up treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume. Do not worry about your life, he teaches, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. The Christian is the one who considers the lilies of the field and in so doing learns to eat the bread of life which strengthens us to strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness.
 
Now I do not wish to imply that this kind of life is reached with ease. The wilderness generation did not achieve this state of perpetual intimacy with God’s daily provision out of their piety. Their life was gifted to them after their many errors. So too, we do not achieve sparrow like bliss through gritted teeth, we do not simply decide to stop worrying. These are gifts given out of God’s steadfast love, Christ’s abundant grace, and the Spirit’s freedom.
 
And yet, even though this kind of life cannot be gained by effort, we are called not only to wait, but to hasten. That is to say, while we cannot recreate the conditions by which we might learn to be like the lily, we seek to order the rhythm of our lives together to taste the living bread and seek first the kingdom of God. A rhythm, we might learn (in part at least) from today’s psalm… which begins in the depths. 
 
Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
   Lord, hear my voice!
As so many prayers, we cry out when we find ourselves in the depths. Whether the grind of daily life, or those heightened moments of calamity, we begin when we are honest about our situation. Rather than plaster on an image of shiny happy people, we turn to God when we see where we are, acknowledge what has befallen us, and cry out. 
 
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
   Lord, who could stand?
Honesty begets honesty. If we can tell the truth about the depths of woe in our world, we can then tell the truth about our own depths. We can allow ourselves the introspection of Saint Paul, who spoke truly of the human condition when he wrote, I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. This honesty leads to the recognition that our hope is not ground in our possibility of perfection, but in God, in whom there is the forgiveness of sins and the possibility of renewal. 
 
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
   and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
   more than those who watch for the morning,
   more than those who watch for the morning.
We recognise the time in which we live: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. We place our hope in the Word as our soul waits for the Lord to come again in glory and wipe all tears from our eyes, beat the swords into ploughshares, and bring about the consummation of the age when God shall be all in all. 
 
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
   and with the Living God is great power to redeem.
Though we despair, though we sin and fall short of the glory of God, though we wait with anticipation for the day when only love remains, we do so with joyful confidence because out of God’s great love for the world, Jesus was sent not to condemn but reconcile all things to God. In this we know and trust, God’s great power to redeem. 
 
What is notable, is that even at the end of this psalm, even here with the promise of redemption, the psalmist remains in the time of anticipation, even, perhaps, in the depths. Like the generation living beneath the fire of God, they are, after all, still in the wilderness. Like the church today, we remain, after all, in the present age of sin and shame. All this occurs here – there is no account of a reversal of fortunes and little on earth that could be confused with heaven. And yet, in faith and hope we hasten and wait for the horizon where God shall come like the dawn, and a new morning shall break.
 
We do not have to reach the promised land of longed-for inward perfection in order to come and taste the bread of life. We do not need to drag ourselves out of the depths of our own making nor those of the world’s ills in order to experience the eternal life offered in Christ’s own body. We do not need to live with the lightness of the sparrow in order to consider the lilies. A doctor goes to the sick, bread is given to the hungry, and Christ comes to the weary. As our High Priest, familiar with our travails, Christ gives his body to us in our depths – for there is no depth he has not descended – so that we shall not hunger or thirst while we wait for morning. Instead, we are fed by Christ and clothed in God’s righteousness, in order that we may share what we have received with those fellow-travellers crying out from the depths, yet to see the manna in the wilderness illuminated by the fire by night.

* I owe this reading to Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers ​(Schoken Books, 2015)