In the Boat

Mark 4:35-41

June 21, 2015

Year B

First and Harmony Presbyterian Churches

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

*Preached the Sunday after a mass shooting at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC.

               

The weekend after the Iraq war began, I stepped into the pulpit at First Presbyterian Church in Ann Arbor and began my sermon with these words, “Since we last gathered in this place, our world has changed dramatically.”

Today I can only stand here and say that since we last gathered in this place, our world is tragically the same.

In a turn of events that is becoming all too familiar, a disaffected young man took out the rage of his inner struggles on innocent lives.

In a turn of events that is becoming all too familiar, the targets of his rage were chosen because of the color of their skin.

In a turn of events that is becoming all too familiar, our political, cultural, and media voices have spent more time trying to explain away the actions of this disturbed young man than they have spent talking about the spiritual and societal cancer that is at the root of this and all too many events like these; racism.

Racism is but one manifestation of our culture’s persistent devaluation of human life and dignity, but it is perhaps the one that has grown deepest into our bones.  Racism is, as one commentator said many years ago, America’s original sin. 

It is the sin that stains our culture and colors our lives.  Our cultural history of segmenting off one portion of the children of God as inherently less than has made it tragically easy to segment off others based on the cultural fears, prejudices, and whims of the moment.

On Wednesday night as the news broke about the shootings at Mother Emmanuel AME church in Charleston, I found myself cycling through a laundry list of reactions.

I was horrified that this could happen in a church.

I was heartbroken that so many innocent lives were lost.

I was angry that this young man had taken his ignorance to a lethal level.

I was livid that commentators on the left took this as a chance to preach about gun violence as though a law can dictate what happens in a callous heart and commentators on the right twisted themselves in knots to ignore that this was an act of domestic racial terror and instead tried to paint this as an attack on Christians rather than what it was; cowardly racial hate. 

I was disappointed that my President and each and every man and woman of both parties who wants to be President parsed their words and hedged their statements until what they said made sense only to the narrow band of like-minded people to whom they were momentarily pandering. 

I cycled through a laundry list of reactions until finally I got around to what was, and is, really bothering me.

Our world is being thrown about on a stormy sea and as often as not it feels like our savior is asleep in the boat. 

The context for this narrative from Mark is the parable of the sower.  The farmer throws seed on the ground.  Some lands on fertile soil, some on rocky ground.  The parable is rather clearly about whether we, in heart, soul, and living, will be hospitable soil for the gospel of Jesus Christ to take root in the world and grow.

Punctuated by Mark’s rapid fire narrative, while the words of the parable hang in the air the disciples find themselves on a boat confronted by a fearful moment and a fateful choice; in their moment of need will they put their faith in God in Christ or will they allow themselves to be held captive by their fears.

Readings of this text which have endured the test of time and the changing winds of interpretive whims, cast this story in just such a light.  The disciples are faced with a moment of decision; will they choose faith or fear?  Will their lives be fertile ground in which the Gospel can find purchase and grow or will they be overcome by the weight of their fears?

Despite the abbreviated length of this narrative, Mark does what Mark so often does, he throws a wrinkle into the question.

The implication that the disciples are faced with a choice between faith and fear is compounded by the fact that at their urging, and probably because of the volume of their pleading, Jesus wakes up from his sleeping and calms the storm. 

Now, remember here that the men in the boat with Jesus were not inexperienced land lubbers. Most are experienced fishermen who had probably seen it all and lived to tell the tale of rough seas before.  This storm was so fierce that even the saltiest dog of the crowd was begging Jesus to do something to calm things down.

Jesus wakes from his sleep and at his word the storm stopped, the waves calmed, the winds abated, and the peril disappeared.

It is then, and only then, that Jesus poses the question to them, “Why are you afraid?  Have you no faith?”

When they are confronted by this defining question of faith and fear it comes not when the danger is still underfoot, but when the waters are calm and all is well again.

The text tells us that it is at this moment, when the seas are calm and when Jesus poses this question of faith or fear, that the disciples ask one another, “Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

I remember learning this story in Sunday school growing up and the lesson that attended it then; like the disciples, we are called to stand in awe and wonder at the power of God.  What voice do the wind and sea obey? 

Jesus.

Just Jesus.

Not Jesus plus.

Not Jesus and a little luck.

Not Jesus and some help from us.

Just Jesus.

At the word of Jesus, the wind and the sea obey.

Any traditional reading of this text affirms that conclusion and calls us to the faith of the disciples.  And, friends, I hope and pray that when that day comes you and I will have that faith.

I truly do.

I hope we have that faith.

I hope we have that courage.

I hope we have the spiritual capacity to stand in the wake of our fear and see with eyes of wonder the peace that God has made in the world.

I pray that when that time comes, we will have the faith of those disciples and we might be fertile ground for faith to grow.

When that time comes.

When that time comes.

For my part, I just wish that time would get here.  Because at this moment, in this time, our boat is still taking on water and the perilous winds of the world are raging.

I hope we have the courage of the disciples when that day comes, but what do we do now?

How do we stand in our boat with the storms of the present raging around us? 

This story gives us insight into what I hope we will all do when the time comes that the storms of the day are calmed, but what about now?  Because as much as I like to think that faith will find its way into my heart when that day comes, right here right now in the midst of the storms of this world…

I am afraid.

I would like to say that I have the steely faith of the Breton fishermen of legend who calmly pray, “O God, be good to me, for thy sea is so vast and my boat is so small.”

The truth is that I am afraid of the waves, I am afraid of the winds, I am afraid that my little boat is going to capsize before Jesus wakes up and makes it all stop.

I am afraid of the storm on the sea and I wager to say that I am not the only one.

How then, with this story hanging in the air, can we possibly be fearful and yet hope to be faithful?

The answer comes from Jesus’ question.

Hear it again in this story. 

They woke him up and said, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re drowning?” He got up and gave orders to the wind, and he said to the lake, “Silence! Be still!” The wind settled down and there was a great calm. ⁴⁰ Jesus asked them, “Why are you afraid?”

Why are you afraid?

Not, do not be afraid, but why are you afraid?

Fear is not the enemy in this story. 

Fear isn’t even the point of this story.

Jesus never tells the disciples that there is nothing to be afraid of.  A massive storm on the Sea of Galilee is absolutely something to be afraid of!  The fear in this story is very real and Jesus recognizes it.

For too many years I read Jesus’ words as a rebuke as though he was sternly scolding the disciples who woke him from his slumber like Mr. Wilson chasing Dennis the Menace across the yard!  In truth, I think this scene is more like a parent sitting in the dark holding a child just awake from a nightmare.  This is a moment of Jesus’ genuine concern for the disciples, not exasperated impatience for being awakened with no reason.

The issue is not that the fear is unreal or unimportant.  The issue is that the fear is not all that there is. 

When Jesus says, “Why are you afraid?” his voice must be one of compassionate concern.  For it to be anything else would be to deny the promise of the gospel.  It is the voice befitting the one who came into the world to say and to show for once and for all that brokenness, sinfulness, hate, and, yes, fear are fleeting and have no more staying power than the steam from  a kettle.  The only thing that endures is the hope that is born into the world in Christ Jesus. 

It is that hope that carries us through when the very real fears and trials of this world take hold of us while the storm is still raging and we cannot escape the feeling that Jesus is asleep in the boat.

And it is that hope that reminds us that even when we cannot escape the feeling that Jesus is asleep in the boat, he is IN THE BOAT!

He isn’t waiting on the distant shore for us to get ourselves across the sea or out of this mess. 

He is in the boat!  If there is any place for us to put our faith in the midst of the very real fears of our day, it is in that truth and that hope.

He knows the waves that crash over us, because he is in the boat!

He knows the winds that howl around us, because he is in the boat!

He knows the churning seas that threaten to pull us down to the deepest darkest depths, because he is in the boat!

He knows the pain of a broken world, because he is in the boat!

He knows the fear that grips our lives, because he is in the boat!

He knows the pain of a community reeling from loss, because he is in the boat!

Yes, in Charleston,

or Baltimore,

or Cleveland,

or Ferguson,

or Clarksville,

or Nepal,

or Syria,

or Israel,

or the quiet of our  own homes,

or the silence of our own hearts…

wherever the human spirit grieves,

wherever fear seeks to take hold,

wherever the waters come crashing over the side and the tumult threatens to overwhelm us, he is in the boat!

If you hear nothing else I say on this or any other day, please, please hear this…

by God, through the Spirit, in this moment, in this place, in our lives, through this storm, without fail, the proof of God’s amazing love is and will always be this…

…he is in this boat!

Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Amen.

Call: The Holy Inevitability of Hope

Isaiah 6:1-8 (9-13)

Trinity Sunday Year B

May 31, 2015

First and Harmony Presbyterian Churches

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Of all the theological concepts and constructs the church has managed to devise over the last two thousand years, none is as confusing, confounding, or down right difficult to understand than the doctrine of the Trinity.

            Since the early 18^th century work of German theologian Johan August Urlsburger, Trinitarian theology has focused on the distinction between an immanent trinity and the economic trinity.  The immanent trinity seeks to understand the relationship of the triune God and the world; how does God encounter creation as Father, Son, and Spirit; how does God relate in the here and now?

            The economic trinity seeks to understand how the persons of the trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, relate to one another.

            As if the concept of a God who is three in one, three persons of one being, Urlsburger and those who followed him did what theologians often do; they unnecessarily complicated something that was not exactly easy in the first place. 

            The problems with the immanent and economic trinity are too numerous and, frankly, too boring to name this morning. 

            Almost twenty-five years ago, a book was published that sought to address what is arguably the most troublesome of those pesky theological problems.  By speaking about the trinity in either immanent or economic terms, in other words by speaking about how God relates to the world OR to Godself, our theology begins to separate the nature of God into halves. 

            Catholic theologian Catherine Mowry Lacugna argued that far from two technical ways of speaking about God, the immanent and the economic, the language of the trinity is in fact the language of the radical holiness of our present and active God.  Trinitarian language is the cornerstone, she argued, of any systematic theology.

             Trinity Sunday invites us to attend to this mystical reality of the God who is present and active in our lives and in our world. 

Part of that mystic reality is God’s radical holiness.

That is the focus of Isaiah’s vision we head this morning.

In his vision, Isaiah encounters the great I AM, the Lord of Hosts, the Divine Other, the Lord of all.  In that moment, the distant otherness of God was right there.  This was no still small voice like Elijah encountered, this was the Triune God in full glory complete with seraphs covering their faces as they sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts…the whole earth is full of God’s glory.”

With the possible exception of those parts we hear around Christmastime, the first eight verses of chapter six are probably the best known of all of Isaiah’s writing. 

Summoned to the throne of God, Isaiah is struck by his own unworthiness.  He does not belong there and he knows it. 

Yet there he is.

Standing before the throne of God hearing the divine voice calling him to this prophetic ministry.

At its heart, this IS a call story.

            Then I heard the voice of the LORD saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  And I said, “Here am I; send me.”

            If the movement of Isaiah’s vision sounds familiar, it may be because there is a roadmap of it in your hand this morning.  Our order of worship is similar to Isaiah’s vision.  We come into God’s presence to give praise and, like the Seraphs, we sing our “Holy, holy, holies” to God. 

            We acknowledge our sinfulness.

            We seek God’s forgiveness.

            We ask that God would give us ears to hear and hearts to understand God’s word so that we too can respond in faith. 

            All of the elements of our worship- gathering, praising, confessing, praying, hearing, and responding- are appropriate responses to the holy Triune God who claims us.[i]  It was precisely this sort of encounter that Catherine Lacugna had in mind when she said that the doctrine of the Trinity is the cornerstone of any theology of our calling God. 

            Call is what happens every time God breaks down the walls that divide the creator and the creation; every time God speaks in the life of one of God’s children; every time God flips a light switch and reveals something new and unexpected.

            I have to admit that my own sense of call was less of a light switch being flipped the way it was for Isaiah and more like a dimmer switch being turned up very, very slowly. 

Whether it happens with the clarion call of Isaiah’s vision or sneaks up on you when you least expect it, at its heart there is a deep mystery at work whenever God calls and whether it is loud as a siren or silent as a lamb, God’s call always brings with it a profound upsetting of our equilibrium.  We tend to read this text like Isaiah is recalling a placid encounter with the holy, but I imagine that hearing it first hand from the prophet there would have been a dose of trembling wonder in his voice…

            “In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the LORD…sitting on a throne…high and lofty and the hem of his robe FILLED the temple!...”

            Divine call is a bit frightening.

            Or at least it should be.

            Far too often we leave the power of divine call the same way we leave worship on Sunday mornings…we cut it off at the comfortable points.

            This text we have today from Isaiah is a case in point.  Churches around the world who use the pattern of the Revised Common Lectionary are reading this passage from Isaiah 6; these familiar and appealing and sentimental words of the prophet ending with that familiar phrase of holy surrender… ”Here am I; send me.”

            On the one hand it is a beautiful place to end the reading.  But on another it is actually quite dangerous.  It is dangerous because leaving it there leaves the impression that the heat of divine calling is this romantic notion of sweet surrender.

            Now, don’t get me wrong.  I would be fine with it if the end of the matter was a moment of sweet surrender to God; if the whole of the Christian life was dewy garden paths and sweet chariots coming to take us home.  I would be fine if ministry was what so many pastors start out thinking it is- just a life of loving people and being their friend just like a lot of us are lulled into thinking that the Christian life happens between 11am and noon once a week. 

            Here am I, Lord.  Let’s leave it at that. 

            That would be nice.  I wouldn’t mind it if the whole of Christian call ended with our reading today.

            The problem, of course, is that life does not end at verse 8 and neither does God.

            There is more to this whole call thing than a moment of holy surrender, there is also the matter of the rest of the text; the part that comes after the moment of sweet surrender; the part that comes after the benediction in church on Sunday morning. 

            After the moment of sweet surrender, comes the hard part; the part when God says…

 “Go and say to this people:

Listen intently, but don’t understand;
    look carefully, but don’t comprehend.
¹⁰ Make the minds of this people dull.
    Make their ears deaf and their eyes blind,
    so they can’t see with their eyes
    or hear with their ears,
    or understand with their minds,
    and turn, and be healed.”

¹¹ I said, “How long, Lord?”

And God said, “Until cities lie ruined with no one living in them, until there are houses without people and the land is left devastated.” ¹² The Lord will send the people far away, and the land will be completely abandoned. ¹³ Even if one-tenth remain there, they will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, which when it is cut down leaves a stump. Its stump is a holy seed.

            While the lectionary text ends with verse 8, it is what follows that gets Isaiah, and us, into trouble.  Rather than a call to a settled ministry- a call to a settled life nestled comfortably in the familiar surroundings of your usual pew on Sunday mornings- God calls Isaiah and us to prophetic engagement in a world that is profoundly deaf to our words. 

            To be sure there is a hint of hyperbole in these latter verses of Isaiah 6.  The picture of Israel that is painted sounds like a desolate landscape devoid of life or hope like the scenery of Cormac McCarthy’s novel the Road.  Things were bad in Israel but they weren’t nearly THAT bad. 

Still, it isn’t any surprise that the compilers of the lectionary and the preachers who follow it would rather leave things with “Here am I; send me.”  That sun kissed dewy garden path is a lot more appealing than the grey skied post-apocalyptic wasteland of “until cities lie ruined with no one living in them.”

Just watch the news or read the paper or pay the slightest attention to the world around us and it won’t take long before you start crying with Isaiah’s other words, “How long, LORD?”

How long until we get beyond the petty jealousies of political rivalry?

How long until we get past the cancer of racial and ethnic hatred?

How long until we put sexism, racism, ageism, xenophobia, homophobia, religious intolerance, and economic disparity behind us?

How long will the world remain deaf to the word proclaimed and blind to the word revealed?

How long, LORD, how long?!

If verses 1-8 recounts the awe inspiring wonder of being called by this holy Triune God, 9-13 reveals the perils of saying yes to God.  Because whether it is destructiveness of a culture of consumption that threatens to consume us or idolatries that threaten to drive the church to distraction or destruction, there is plenty in the world to persuade even the most faithful of prophets to move quickly from “Here am I” to “How long, LORD?” in less time than a TV preacher can ask for a donation.

The inevitability of the reality of the world make prophetic calling seem anything but appealing.  

The opening words of T. S. Eliot’s epic poem the Waste Land have an eerie echo of this harsh truth.  He writes,

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with the spring rain.

Like the prophetic call that begins with sentimental surrender and ends with a desolate landscape, year after year spring offers up new life only to remind us that it is merely temporary- fleeting. 

The call to proclaim the gospel in a world that is deaf to our words is like admiring the beauty of lilacs that will only be swallowed up by the earth again.  The church speaks, the world does not hear, the church speaks, the world does not hear.  It is an endless cycle of inevitability.

Even the heartiest, the prophet says, will die- they will be cut down to the stump.  By the end nothing remains.

Nothing, that is, except a holy remnant; the stump, Isaiah says, is a holy seed. 

That is the true inevitability; hope.

The hope that remains even in the most desolate of places.

The hope that dwells even in the most barren of lands.

The hope that cannot be defeated, denied, or destroyed.

The holy disruption that is the call of our triune God in the life of each and every one of us is the holy disruption of hope.

“Whom shall I send?”

“Here am I; send me.”

“How long, LORD, how long?”

“Soon and very soon.”

Alleluia.  Alleluia.  Amen. 

---

[i] Kristine Emery Saldine, Feasting on the Word Year B.

Custodians of the Promise

Acts 1:1-11

Ascension of the Lord

Year B

May 17, 2015

First and Harmony Presbyterian Church

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Today is actually two days- this is the seventh Sunday of Easter, the day we bring our prolonged season of Alleluia to a close and it is also the day we observe Ascension Sunday, the day when Christ was taken up into heaven.

            Today two of the great moments in the history of the church come together; the Resurrection of Christ from the dead and the return of Christ to sit at the right hand of God the Father almighty, as the creed says. 

            This moment in the history of the faith is so important that Luke actually tells it twice.  One instance of his telling is in our reading today from the book of Acts.  A second is found in his gospel, in Luke 24.  The stories are remarkably similar, which makes sense since we believe the same author wrote both.  In both the central actions are the same; Jesus takes one last chance to teach the disciples and God takes him from their presence into God’s.

            The gospel account has the disciples standing there in silence listening and watching, but Acts includes a question from them.  It doesn’t tell us who asked the question, but let’s face it, it was probably Peter.  Whoever it is, the question is one that has been persisting since the beginning of Jesus’ ministry; it is the question of timing.

            When are these things going to happen?

            When are all these promises going to come to pass?

            There is a sense that they have begun to trust that the promises WILL be kept, but the timing still eludes them. 

            So, as Jesus is teaching them this one last time, one of the twelve asks him, “Lord, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?”

            It has taken a while, but their question has changed in at least one important way.  They don’t question IF the kingdom will be restored but WHEN. 

            If we press down lightly on this text, we can see in their question a little progress at least.

            Jesus seems unimpressed with their progress though because he replies, “It isn’t for you to know the times and the seasons the Father has set by his own authority.” 

In other words, you are STILL asking the wrong question.

            It is a NEW wrong question, but it too misses the point.

            What Jesus hears in the disciples’ question is an assumption; that restoration of the kingdom is God’s work and God’s work alone.

            Jesus, in one last effort, tries to get them to understand that when it comes to the kingdom of God, the timing is up to God but the ushering in, well, that is all hands on deck. 

            St. Augustine put it this way, “Without God I can’t; without me God won’t.”

            Or as Desmund Tutu frequently paraphrases, “by himself, God won’t; by ourselves, we can’t; but together, with God, we can.”

            When it comes to the ushering in of the kingdom of God, we are not spectators of God’s work in the world; we are partners in God’s work in the world.

            At its heart, Ascension Sunday is about one part of that that partnership.  Just before he is taken by God to heaven, Jesus entrusts the disciples- entrusts us- one last time with the promises of God and the witness of the Spirit.  When you peel back all the layers of history and tradition, all the pomp and circumstance, all the keepsakes and souvenirs of generations of institutionalized religion, what is the church but a community entrusted with a witness; a story; a good word to share with the world?

            Last week I spent five days with a couple of thousand other preachers at an event that probably sounds like the seventh circle of hell to most people.  It is called the Festival of Homiletics and over the course of four days and evenings, I heard eight sermons and attended six lectures on preaching. 

            It was incredible.

            Yes, it was also an extraordinary display of church nerd-dom as two thousand grown men and women treated a bunch of preachers and professors like they were rock stars.

            And, yes, on the surface a preaching conference is about as dull as it sounds.

            But one thing sets this event apart. 

            As someone who is entrusted week after week to handle the word of God and hopefully share some tiny corner of a window through which we might all peek into it, being with that many others who feel equally ill-equipped and overwhelmed by the privilege and burden of this work is like water on a dry garden- it restores what is nearly wilted to death.  It is life giving to be with other preachers.

            As providence would have it, on Monday morning the Pew Research Center released its latest round of research on religion in America.  The Religious Landscape Survey is the most comprehensive ongoing picture of religion in America and, well, the news was not good.

            Over the last decade, Christian churches across the spectrum- from Catholic and Orthodox to evangelical and mainline Protestant- have either continued to decline in membership or failed to grow with the broader population.  In fact, as the nation’s population has grown, the fastest growing religious identification is “none.”

            Outpacing every Christian category and every non-Christian religious group, the “nones” have grown from 16.1% to 22.8% of the population over the last seven years.

            As you can imagine, that was not welcome news to a convention center full of preachers.

            The day was dominated by conversations about the state of the church, the challenge of church growth, the persistent problem posed by the “nones,” and the generally disheartening state of ministry in a world that, simply put, doesn’t really seem to want what we are selling.

            By Monday night, there were, among those preachers, a lot of long faces and frustration.  I confess, mine was one of them.

            Now, I don’t mean to overplay the scene.  No one was thinking about laying down their cards and giving up the holy game of ministry or anything.  But there was a pall over the proceedings.

            If we are supposed to be partners with God in ushering in the kingdom of God, it looks awfully like we are losing ground.

            I have been here long enough and you know me well enough to know that I do not throw around the name of the Holy Spirit a lot.  I know that for some people the movement of the Spirit is as easy to feel as the breeze in the spring.  As for me, I seem to suffer from an overdose of spiritual Novocain because the Spirit usually has to smack me in the head to get my attention.

            Tuesday morning I got a smack.

            As I sat in the pew at Trinity United Methodist Church in Denver, Colorado listening to Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church preach, I was lisening to him and taking notes and getting ideas but my mind was not completely there.  A part of me was still ruminating on that damn Pew report and the frustration I and so many clergy feel about the “nones.”  Then there was a line that jumped from that pulpit and hit me square in the face. 

            Bishop Curry said, “we (meaning preachers) are custodians of the oracles of God.”  What he was talking about was the trust that you put in us week after week to preach God’s word and it is a trust, I for one, cherish.  In that moment, though, I didn’t hear him talking to me as a preacher but me as a member of the body of Christ.  The “we” I heard is this “we” the body of Christ.  “We” are entrusted with the oracles of God.  “We” are the custodians of God’s word.

            It was as though a key turned in a lock.

            When Jesus was with his disciples in those last moments on those last days, they were worried about when God’s work was going to get done, but Jesus was trying to get them to understand that in the meantime he was trusting them with the Good News OF God’s work. 

            They were to be the custodians of the promise; proclaimers of the promise; partners in the unfolding promise of God.

            And what is the promise of God other than the word of hope that is the risen Christ?

            It was as though a key turned in a lock.

            Jesus told the disciples you are worrying about the wrong thing when you get all caught up in the timing of the coming of the kingdom of God.  Don’t worry about WHEN it will happen.  Your job is to share the Good News THAT it will happen.

            The disciples were worrying about the wrong thing.

            And so was I.

            So are we.

            And at that moment at that Ecumenical conference in that pretty Methodist Church listening to that dynamic Episcopal Bishop, this Presbyterian preacher whispered to himself, “to hell with the Pew report.”

            We are worrying about the wrong thing. 

            We need to stop keeping score about WHEN the world comes to know the truth of God in the risen Christ and start getting about the business of proclaiming THAT the truth of God is the risen Christ.

            We need to stop worrying keeping the church and get about the work of proclaiming the kingdom.

            We are custodians of the promises of God.

            Christ has entrusted us with the very prayers of hope and love he has for this world and we had better get about the business of proclaiming them because if not we, then who will give voice to our savior's ongoing prayer for the world?

            From the moment of the ascension to this one, the church of Jesus Christ has been entrusted, not with the power of granting salvation, but the profound responsibility to proclaim it with out ceasing.

As long as there is breath in our bodies, we are called by Christ who rose to proclaim Christ who is risen.

And when we grow weary with our holy task; when we see Pew research data that makes us doubt our holy work; when we retreat into the tortoise shell of our cultural insecurities and silence our prayers, hope loses its voice in the world.

Because make no mistake about it, friends, the hope of all creation is the risen Christ and the voice of that hope is the people of God.

So let's take a breath, screw our courage to the post, and once more into the breach of this broken and sinful world let's make our voices heard as we sing the hope of God in the prayer of Christ that proclaims the salvation of ALL God's children.

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

Alleluia,  Alleluia! 

Amen.