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.  ​

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.