Sharing our coats, sharing our hearts

Advent 3 C

December 16, 2012

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Canticle 9: Isaiah 12:2-6

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:1-6

How hard it is today to sing “rejoice!”, as our first three lessons from the prophets Zephaniah and Isaiah, and from St. Paul’s letter to the people in Philippi, exhort us. Everyone’s hearts, since the horrific news came out on Friday morning, have been torn and tortured, our minds filled with terrible things, and our feelings angry and agitated:

What then should we do? What then should we do? Gun control? Better treatment of people with mental health? Turn our elementary schools into locked-down fortresses?

What then should we do? What then should we do? Hug our children more tightly? Praise the heroic acts of gym teachers and librarians and school psychologists? Weep? Mourn? Shout? Stay home and pull the covers over our heads? All of the above?

And is any of this an appropriate conversation to have in church?

Churches in Newtown, CT

Even though I was born in Syracuse, my mother’s family has New England roots, and several years ago she came upon a quote from the diary of one of our 19th century Peabody relatives, who had gone to hear Henry Ward Beecher – one of the great American preachers. “Politics and the pulpit don’t mix well together,” was my ancestor’s now famous (in our household at least) line in response to Beecher’s visit to his New Hampshire town. 

That remark may have signaled one of the first cracks in the non-separation of church and state in America. There was a time when politics and the pulpit were joined, when everyone who came to church understood church as so much a part of American society and American culture and the American way of life that preachers could and did combine the two. Everything fit together, reinforced each other. Maybe some of us here think we remember that time of happy union – happy for Protestants with New England roots, anyway. We are probably remembering its distant echo in the church-going 1950s – when churches like this were planted, grew and flourished in an expanding, prosperous and peaceful America.

But not only for Mr. Peabody but for many other Americans as well, what happened in church became disconnected with the travails and challenges of daily life. A survey of the current church-going habits of Americans revealed that right now 20 percent of us – fully one-fifth of all Americans – have no religious preference. Many of these people believe in God, have an active prayer life, even went to church in their younger years, but now, on Sunday morning, when we get in our cars and come here, they say, no, thanks. I’ll stay at home. I’ll go to Starbucks. I’ll go to the gym. I’ll do yoga. I’ll spend time with my children, and hug them tight, because, after all, you never know.

I think this is what the people who flocked around John the Baptist were talking about. The religious establishment of their time – the Temple and their leaders who were in the thrall to the Roman Empire – and of course the politics and economics of their day were, from their point of view, morally bankrupt. John the Baptist made sense to people for whom nothing worked. Prophets like John used to speak to the reality of real people – prophets like Isaiah and Zephaniah, and that whole host of characters we read during Advent – prophets who promise that God’s creation of abundance and mercy and peace will be restored. In the lives of the people gathering around John the Baptist, their religious leaders are paying no attention to those prophets, and so are paying no attention to the daily needs of these people, no attention to the challenges and demands of their lives. What then shall WE do, they say to John the Baptist. What then shall we do? For these people at the bottom of the social ladder, it all made sense: share your warm coats. Don’t cheat. Don’t steal. It’s pretty basic. The Good News from God is pretty basic.

There are a lot of reasons why people don’t come to church, why the membership of this parish has declined in recent years. Some of those reasons have nothing to do with us: the population has shifted. Corporations who were massive employers have left the area. Sexual abuse, loss of trust, bitter fights over who is in and who is out – all of that and more are prevalent in the big society, and there are echoes of that here. Some people are just bored with the church of the 1950s, or ‘60s, or ‘70s – as lovely and attractive as we think we are -- and want nothing to do with it anymore.

Look again at the appeal of John the Baptist to the people around him. He was direct. He spoke to their reality. He did not mince words. He paid attention to them. He offered real hope that spoke to their real longings.

What do we offer today, on this Third Sunday of Advent? What do we say to our friends and neighbors who are hurting and yearning for hope? To whom are we opening our hearts, and our doors? 

It is time we took our light out from under the bushel. This is a safe, a meaningful, an important place to talk about the things that matter to us. This is a place where we share our coats and share our hearts, where we know, and where we are not shy to say, that in the face of the horror that drove that young man to kill all those innocent children, God is with us, God is with us, God is with us.

Amen.

Find the Prayers of the People from today's service, along with links to the authors of some of the prayers, at our Forming Disciples blog.

Tender Mercies

Advent 2-C                 Dec. 9, 2012

Malachi 3:1

Luke 1: 1:68-79

Philippians 1:3-11

Luke 3:1-6

We live in a time obsessed with the particular. TV news shows are on a lot at our house. Pundits, bloggers, reporters, editors, historians, analysts, you name it. At any time on any channel, frequency or URL, you can find a comment, an opinion, a fact about someone or something important, middling important or just plain gossipy. If it walks, talks, flies or misbehaves, we will soon know about it.

We think of this obsession with taking the pulse of the body politic as something modern, but look here: the Gospel of Luke is very concerned to place John the Baptist in his particular social and historical context. John the Baptist was not wandering around the Jordanian wilderness at any time; it was in the 15th year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberias, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee. Nor are we living in just any time: it’s the 4th year of the presidency of Barack Obama, the 2nd year of the Governorship of Andrew Cuomo, Joanie Mahoney is County Executive and Gladstone Adams is the bishop. The way Luke is telling this story of John the Baptist, place – and who rules that place – is crucially important. It was in THIS place at THIS time that the Word of God came to -- not just anybody, but to John son of Zechariah.

To the first readers of Luke’s Gospel, these little phrases would mean a lot. “The Word of God” comes to prophets in the Hebrew tradition. All the prophets identify the rulers whose reigns their prophecies will unseat. Remember Isaiah, to whom the word of God came “in the year that King Uzziah died.” Baruch, a scribe for the prophet Jeremiah, writes from the context of the terrible exile in Babylon. Malachi was written at the end of the exile, when Cyrus was King of Persia. Prophets come from particular times and places, and the word of God speaks to them and through them in those particularities.

Luke shows us a different picture of John the Baptist than we get in the Gospels of Matthew or Mark. There is no description of his attire, no eating of locusts and wild honey. He doesn’t even baptize Jesus in this Gospel – he has challenged Herod so much that he lands in prison before Jesus gets to the Jordan River.

But Luke is very careful to place John in history. In place of the psalm today, we read the passage from the first chapter of Luke that follows the announcement of the birth of John. This is the song of Zechariah, an elderly righteous man, “living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord.” As he serves in the temple, an angel comes to him:

“I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.”

Gabriel announces the birth of John:

“ … he will be great in the sight of the Lord … He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

Zechariah was made speechless by this prophecy, and not until baby John is born does he speak, revealing some of what Gabriel had told him. This is not any child, Zechariah says; this child will be the prophet of the Most High, preparing the way of the Lord, letting the people know that God’s salvation will come, that sins will be forgiven, that by God’s tender mercies the dawn from on high will break upon us. This child, Zechariah says, will be the one to announce the Good News.

But even though this child is a New Prophet, he does not proclaim NEW news. This Good News is Old News, Zechariah says, reciting in his song all the mighty deeds of God, saving the people from their enemies and showing mercy.

That is what all this particularity is about, placing John here, in this family, under these rulers, and not just anywhere. He’s not just any righteous man: the same Word of the Lord comes to him that came to the prophets of old – the Good News he brings is the same Old Good News of the covenant made with Abraham. Those rulers might be very current in their fashions and their weaponry and their empires and their Roman names, but they are the same enemies from whom God has always rescued his people. Those representatives of the shadow of death might be unique and particular, but the words John speaks, of the dawn from on high, the light in the darkness and the tender mercy of God, are the old words, the old prophecies, the old promises of God’s love.

The wilderness itself is old and familiar, reminding the people of Israel of the very place where God first called them “My people.” Out of that old place John calls the people together again, calls them back, as the angel Gabriel promised his father he would: even the disobedient ones will come to the wisdom of the righteous. John will make them ready.

This is the Old Good News, a prophecy of restoration. John quotes the prophet Isaiah, writing about how the people of Israel will be able to return from exile to Jerusalem: the Lord will lead the way, on a path straight and smooth, only now, it’s not only to Jerusalem. It’s not only to one particular people or one particular place and time. It’s for all flesh – all of us in our particular time and our particular place – this time all of us will see just what God has in store.

Prophecy and apocalypse: trust in the future

Advent 1 C
Dec. 2, 2012

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Ps. 25

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Luke 21:25-36

There are people in this world who like to hoard secrets. Someone I used to know drove me nuts, because he had a way of telling you something and leaving out the back story – the most crucial parts. It’s like he would tell me things in a way that implied I was “in the know” but I really didn't quite know what was going on. I always felt I was coming in in the middle of the story, but left outside of the secret.

There is a certain aspect of that to today’s readings, all about the apocalypse, the end time. Is everything really falling apart? When is this supposed to happen? I've said here before that there is quite a lot of popular fascination with the End Times, in a way that makes “apocalypse” equal “destruction.” But if we look at the meaning of the word in Greek, and how it was used in the New Testament – especially in the Mother Lode of all apocalyptic literature, the Revelation of St. John the Divine – the word “apocalypse” means taking the cover off that which has been hidden. It means discerning something’s deeper meaning, deeper purpose. It’s not about keeping secrets but about opening everything up. It’s not about figuring out some arcane puzzle – we don’t have to be theological detectives like Tom Hanks’ character in The DaVinci Code. When people of faith write “apocalypse” they are trying to make sense of the world – trying to discern the patterns of God’s work in the world around – they are trying to understand the meaning of what is going on, especially when what’s going on might be frightening or dangerous.

The partner of apocalypse is often “prophecy” – a word which also needs some unpacking. As a biblical scholar reminded me,

… prophecy is not a fortuneteller's prediction, but a projection forward, a warning of what may come if we don't change direction …

When a prophet speaks, as Jesus is speaking in this passage from the Gospel of Luke, or when the writer of the letter to the Thessalonians talks about “the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints,” or when Jeremiah declares that the day of the Lord will be a day of righteousness and justice, that prophecy is not a secretive portent of bad things to come, but

… a vision of hope and trust in God's ability to save the world from whatever mess we've made of it. The truth of prophecy does not lie in whether it came true the way a weather prediction comes true; it lies in the deeper insight it gives into our existence and God's way of working in the world.[1]

Good prophecy spurs us to action, just like “good apocalypse” helps us understand what is going on. Global warming might indeed be apocalyptic even in the disaster-movie sense, but an environmentalist who is a good prophet tells us the terrible facts, along with the hope that there might indeed be something we can do to mitigate the disaster we might otherwise be heading for.

These apocalyptic readings in the Bible remind us also that we are not alone – we are not solitary Christians. More than any other writings, we read here about what God has in store for everyone, for the whole of creation. They were written thousands of years ago, in particular times and places, among particular people facing particular challenges, but they resonate deeply across time. 

People of all times, who are facing terrible circumstances, can find their story and their experience in these words. But always, always, tempting as it can be to find a blueprint in these long-ago writings, we have to approach them with humility. Our interpretation can be only that: “There are always signs in the heavens and distress among nations, and we are always wondering how the story of this world will end.”[2] Being o-so-certain that this in the Bible really means that, or that gives the people or groups we don’t like the same condemnation as has been given to the long-ago enemies of the writer  -- that kind of triumphalism we must guard against. It’s like my former friend and his “secret” knowledge; his was not the final interpretation of what was going on. If you ever feel you are getting it “right” and everyone around you is “wrong,” re-reading our psalm today – Psalm 25 – can help you put yourself in a better perspective.

Prophecy and apocalypse are not about secrets; they are about trust in the future. They are about humans taking a hard, discerning look at what is going on around them, and placing what is going on in the context of how God would have it go on. 

We do not know how the world will end, but we do know that God does not want it to end. All the prophets want us to pay attention, to know that who we are, as a community and as individuals, matters, and that what we do matters. Reading these funny, ancient books reminds us, if nothing else does, that we are part of the whole stream of human history, and of the history of creation before human history. The truth of that creation – the meaning of our own lives -- is always being revealed, the cover of secrets is always being blown off, and we are always drawing closer to that glorious end time when we – all of us -- will be embraced by God.

---

[1] Janine A Goodwin, http://feministheology.blogspot.com/2012/11/advent-1.html

[2] Ibid.

The Good King

Proper 29 B; Nov. 25, 2012

2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37

The movie “Lincoln,” now in theaters, opens with a group of Union soldiers talking to the President. He sits in a simple chair, on some sort of a porch, in the dark night in an army campground, and the soldiers are in awe of meeting the great man. One of them says he enlisted just after the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery; his brother died in that battle, and then he speaks from memory Lincoln’s words on that day. Other soldiers come by, simple farm boys and even freed slaves, and slowly, from soldier after soldier, we hear the brief speech in its entirety.

In such a scene is how we Americans like to remember our kings: humble and fallible, yet brilliant and regal, powerful and complex, and standing on the side of right. That scene of Lincoln quietly and informally conversing with soldiers on the eve of battle is what comes to mind with later in the film Mary Todd Lincoln declares to a White House full of politicians, including those who would oppose him, “The people love my husband!”

We have ancient models of kings in our memories – of David, for example, the ideal king of Israel. We read his “last words,” today in our first lesson, words which remind us that such kings who rule with the justice of God bring order and prosperity and peace and beauty to the world.

That sounds good, of course, but is the figure of the king not an outmoded concept for us today? A king who cannot be elected or thrown out of office, a king who does not reflect the will of the people, who rules without the consent of the governed?

All true. All good reasons, of course, for democracy, and after all, even the Queen of England does not so much as rule as preside rather delicately at the will of Parliament.

So why Christ the King? It’s not a feast from the Bible, like Christmas, Easter, Pentecost or Ascension. It’s not an early church custom, like Lent or Holy Week, or something borrowed from folk religion, like All Saints. A King, and a Kingdom, are political terms. A king rules territory: a kingdom. Everyone within those boundaries is subject to the king. The boundaries of a just king, a righteous king, enclose a pleasant land, a land like that spoken of by David, where the people live in peace and prosperity. If you live in the kingdom of a just king, you get it all. You don’t have to join anything – you don’t have to register for one political party or another, vote a particular way. You are there; part of the Common-wealth.

Of course, for Christ the King, there are no geographical boundaries, as well as no political litmus tests. Say yes, step up to the font and get washed in the waters of baptism and you’re in. That’s all it takes to be one of the people of God’s pasture, one of the sheep of God’s hand. Everyone is welcomed into this kingdom, even those who can’t curtsey, or those who can’t pay, those who aren’t always good and those who are not nearly so bad as some people think.

No, Jesus tells Pilate, my kingdom is not from this world. I don’t have to fight for it with violence for I win it with love. Not even the death with which you threaten me, Jesus says to Pilate, can overthrow my kingdom.

On this last Sunday of the church year, we are reminded of the cross, and the death which Jesus will die. Next Sunday begins Advent, when we prepare for the birth of this same Christ in the humility of a poor family with only a barn for shelter. With such a beginning and an ending, no wonder Pilate, draped as he is in the trappings of the empire, cannot comprehend this Jesus as a king. Pilate has no idea why anyone would choose to follow this king.

But we, his followers all these long years after, still know the sound of his voice. We know it’s true when he says all are welcome here, at this table. We know it’s true when he says, eat this bread and drink this wine, and be part of my body. We know it’s true when he says follow me to the death, for with the love we share, even that death is turned into life.

End time?

Proper 28-B

November 18, 2012

1 Samuel 1:4-20

Ps. 16

Mark 13:1-8

Now that the election is over, the politicians find it safe to talk about global warming. Even with Hurricane Sandy rearranging the coastline and wiping out whole towns and neighborhoods in two of the most populous states in the union, Governor Cuomo didn’t quite want to take sides, but he did admit we’d better be better prepared for more “extreme weather” than we have seen in the past.

Talk of what to do when the End Time comes is nothing new. It was, for example, one of Jesus’ big themes. When he left the Temple, after denouncing the “fat cats” who took advantage of the “widow’s mite,” the first thing he said was, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down. … Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes … there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.”

Humans like talking about The End Times, big, dramatic and scary. And not to diminish either what Jesus said, or the very real effects of global climate change, we have been talking about The End Times for a very long time. And all that talking can wake us up – which is what I think Jesus intended when he told his disciples about the signs to come – or it can paralyze us into despair, powerlessness and inaction.

Obviously, talking about The End Times hasn’t gotten us anywhere. We can focus our considerable energy on the “pangs” about to come, or, like Hannah – Hannah, who is barren, Hannah who is heartbroken – we can focus on the “birth.” On the future. On the child Hannah will bear. On what we can do to participate in the signs of hope that are breaking all around us. We can pay attention, take action, band together, connect the dots.

Yesterday at Diocesan Convention, we heard some amazing stories that are signs of hope in desperate times and places. There was a re-cap of the twenty-some years of our companion relationship with El Salvador, how we walk with the people of that very poor nation as they recover from earthquakes, wars, hurricanes, with resilience and grace. We watched a tribute to Bishop Martin Barahona, who will soon retire – looking at his leadership not only as a kind pastor, but as someone who took risks for social justice and structural change and for the hard work of peace-making. We heard the report of the Episcopal Church Women, who at last summer’s General Convention announced that they had given away millions of dollars in grants to address human need and build permanent good in 37 dioceses and eight countries.

And here at St. David’s: this has been an autumn of abundance – raising nearly $4,000 to help Bol Garang bring his mother to the U.S., partying at St. David’s Court, serving at the Samaritan Center, helping residents get to services at Van Duyn, raising money through the CROP Walk for Meals on Wheels, getting CoDFISH off the ground. And it’s not over yet: we’re still collecting canned goods and funds for holiday food for the Springfield Gardens Food Pantry and will have our own in-gathering of the United Thank Offering Blue Boxes on December 2.

Next Sunday is the last Sunday of the church year, and as we read these words of Jesus about the End Times, we wonder, what is this all about? The way the Gospel of Mark writes the story, Jesus is concerned with the present: with the kairos moment, the fulfillment of time. Mark’s story is about the one who brings about the beginning of the reign of God. Mark's community is the community of the New Age, a community who understands that their domination by corrupt, terror-filled and self-centered political powers will soon be over, and that God will vindicate the righteous. Their sufferings mark the culmination of history, and the birth-pangs of the rule of God.

What Mark leads us to look to is hope -- hope not only that the future will be better than the present, but that even the present troubles we experience now are part of the providence of God. Mark encourages us to stand firm throughout; God will triumph! In fact, we are not merely spectators to God's drama, but participants, partners with God in God’s mission of health and wholeness. We who follow Jesus see these signs of the times, these signposts of the triumph of hope over the paralysis of despair.

Women crossing borders

Proper 27 B     Nov. 11, 2012

Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17

Psalm 126

Mark 12:38-44

We visited Independence Hall in Philadelphia this week, and on the tour with us were lots of schoolchildren. At the beginning of the tour, the Park Ranger quoted Abraham Lincoln, noting that this was the place where the words were first penned that inspired Lincoln’s Gettysburg address: that this was a nation: “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” We know, all too well, that by 1863, that original declaration of “equals” was in the bloody process of being expanded – to all men, to all men and women, to all adults born here, to all foreigners who come here and go through the process of claiming and believing that promise of liberty and proposition of equality. It was very moving to hear those words spoken, looking around the 18th century space we were in, at all the wild and representative diversity of who are, today, Americans.

Perhaps because it is Veterans Day weekend, the ranger ended the tour by talking about the “rebellious” Pennsylvanians, who were imprisoned in the upstairs room of Independence Hall, after it had been captured and occupied by the British. Many of those men, veterans of what we now know as the Revolutionary War, died in that room, and were buried outside in a mass grave. The story reminded us that war, even among people who are as ethnically and socially alike as colonial farmers and British soldiers, is a breathtakingly horrible thing. “Let us never forget,” the ranger said, “what cost must be paid to defend our liberty against all who would take it away from us.”

Among the schoolchildren were girls wearing hijab, or the headscarves worn by Muslim girls and women. As I listened to them chatter while we toured the building, I heard their very American accents. If the school group had been only boys, we would never have noticed them as “different,” but the girls, with their distinctive dress, stood out. Americans all, visiting the cradle of liberty: at what point do “foreigners” stop being “foreign” and become “us”?

We have two bible stories today about women who are different: women who are foreign, and women who are poor. Women who cannot blend into the rest of society, women who must fend for themselves, with only the slimmest of social protections to rely on.

We encounter Ruth and Naomi today in the middle of their story. Naomi’s husband and two sons have died, and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, has chosen to stay instead of returning to her family. The two of them have nothing: no home, no food, no way of making a living. Naomi even gives herself the name “Mara,” meaning “bitter,” a sign that she believes she no longer even has a future. The one slim chance they have is to return to Naomi’s Hebrew family, where Boaz may feel some responsibility to care for the widow. Ruth, who comes from Moab, is a complete foreigner here, but because of her loyalty to Naomi, she stands out; she is allowed to pick up the leftovers of the harvest, like other poor women. This gives Naomi a glimmer of hope: maybe Ruth will catch Boaz’ eye for other reasons as well – and indeed he does. Ruth and Boaz marry, they have a child, and this child becomes none other than the grandfather of David, the greatest of Israel’s kings. Through this foreign woman, Ruth, a poor widow is returned to her home, and not only is Naomi given a future – a grandson – but the whole people of Israel are given a future with the birth of this child. (And if you read the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, you will read Ruth’s name among the patriarchs and kings.)

Over the centuries rabbis have debated about the presence of Ruth, this foreigner, in such an important place in the Bible. Jews were not supposed to marry foreigners. Jews would fight against foreigners for the Promised Land – but here is Ruth, the one who is loyal, the one who carries God’s love and God’s promise for a future.

In that same Hebrew Bible, we find an acknowledgement that poor widows, like Naomi and Ruth, were treated so badly that they had to be singled out for protection in Jewish law. Common courtesy did not prevail among men with property; the Torah had to define how faithful Jews were to treat widows and orphans: Leave your field for the stranger to glean. Do not steal or deal falsely. Do not oppress the neighbor, or exploit your employees, or discriminate against the disabled. Do not take the widow’s cloak in pledge.

That is the Torah, the law. And there is the story of Ruth, the testimony to how God wants those who follow him to treat poor widows and foreigners – and not only because you “have to,” but because of all the blessings that will fall upon you when you do.

And now to Jesus: God’s pious followers were not so faithful to the Torah commandments about poor widows. This story is not so much about “the widow’s mite” – not so much about her faithfulness and duty – but about the faithlessness of the religious and political system of the day that would tax a poor widow down to where she has nothing left. Jesus’ condemnation of this “legalized” exploitation comes as he leaves the Temple for the last time, during the last week of his life.

Yes, there is a stewardship sermon in this Gospel story, but it’s not about wrenching the last penny from your fingers. It’s about how we participate in God’s justice: about how we welcome strangers, how we feed hungry people, how we treat poor people with dignity and respect and not cast-off charity. It’s not about how we circle the wagons but about how we open our borders, and our hearts, and yes, even our pocketbooks. It’s about how much more we do together than any of us can do alone. It’s about how our generosity is a piece of God’s generosity, and God’s blessings, and God’s liberties, and God’s future.

All Saints: Loving God and Loving Neighbor

Tired of the election

All Saints Sunday          Nov. 4, 2012

Isaiah 25:6-9
Ps. 146

Mark 12:28-34

Who did not sympathize with that little girl, strapped in her seat in the back of the car, while her mother listened to an endless loop of campaign speculation and punditry on National Public Radio? The little girl who burst into tears at the mere mention of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney? It is not always helpful to quote the Bible at distressed children, but perhaps she would take comfort from today’s psalm:

Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, *

for there is no help in them.

When they breathe their last, they return to earth, *

and in that day their thoughts perish.

What would people in Staten Island, or along the Jersey Shore, make of these verses:

Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help!*

whose hope is in the LORD their God;

Who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them; *

who keeps his promise for ever;

Who gives justice to those who are oppressed, *

and food to those who hunger.

On the endless news loop this week we were more likely to see compelling and forceful cries for help from residents of New York City who felt utterly cut off from the rest of the nation. They had experienced the mighty force of heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them crashing down on their heads. If God sent justice to the oppressed, or food to the hungry, it came through the tireless efforts of rescue workers, and Red Cross volunteers, and Salvation Army food trucks. Multiply the old African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child” about a thousand times in this situation: it takes a nation, a state, a society, all of us, to restore any food, clothing or shelter to people so devastated. Even a FEMA trailer looks good to people who would otherwise choose between a cot in a school gym or their flooded, burned out or blown away home.

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 cares for the stranger; *

he sustains the orphan and widow, but frustrates the way of the wicked.

Not everyone who is giving their all to help thousands of people in need are doing it out of the conviction that when we do good, we do it in the name of God, or that when we do good we are carrying out the mission God has laid out for this world. If the orphaned and widowed are sustained, it is human hands that do it.

Not everyone understands “doing the right thing” in this God context. We can be suspicious of outsiders. The scribe, who questions Jesus in today’s Gospel, was part of a group that was very skeptical that what Jesus was doing was in the name of God. That scribe had to reach out to someone shunned by all the leaders around him, and when he saw was he was doing, and listened closely to what he was teaching about why he was doing things like healing and feeding, he reaches across the divide, and Jesus reaches back: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

When we are in the middle of a disaster on such a massive scale, religiosity – the modern-day equivalent of “burn offerings and sacrifices” -- all those phrases about God’s providence, or about the will of God, or God watching out for so-and-so while the person next to him drowned – I find it pretty hard to recognize that hand of God in events like those. But where I do see the hand of God is in the hands of those people – no matter their motives – who are there right now, doing the right thing, people who, wherever they are coming from, are not far from the kingdom of God.

This feast of All Saints is about all those people who have the two great commandments – to love God and to love neighbor – written on their hearts. This feast of All Saints is about people who did not have to think twice: people who put their bodies between an innocent victim and an oncoming bullet; people who cared for sick and dying people even as they risked their own lives; people who lived lives of love and compassion.

This feast of All Saints is about people who, even when times are bleak, know that God’s promises are meant for them: God’s promises of great feasts of rich food and fine wines – God’s promises that in the face of death itself God is there, wiping away tears and removing all their shame and disgrace, along with all the rubble of broken homes and shattered lives. 

This feast of All Saints is about people who believe that these promises are not just for “our kind of people,” our next-door neighbors only, not just for the people who vote the way we do or listen to the same radio stations, but for all people – that our God, for whom we wait, will bring this justice and abundance to all.