Psalm 80
David A. Davis
December 3, 2023
Jump to audio

---

“Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we might be saved.” Let your face shine, that we might be saved. Let your face shine. The bible has a strange relationship with the face of God. The psalmist’s repeated refrain here in Psalm 80 echoes throughout scripture. Let your face shine, that we might saved. Psalm 67 begins “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make God’s face to shine upon us.”  It was the Lord who spoke to Moses giving the words of blessing for Aaron to pronounce to the people of Israel. “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6). According to the Book of Exodus, the Lord spoke to Moses “face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” (Ex. 33)

            But… pretty much at the same time, the Lord tells Moses “You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” So Moses speaks to God face to face, friend to friend and Moses cannot see the face of God because no one shall see the face of God and live. The face of Lord is invoked as a blessing or is it curse? Let your face shine that we might be saved. No one can see the face of God and live. When it comes to the face of God, the bible is a bit confusing.

The life threatening implication related to the face of God come in response to Moses asking to see God’s glory. That’s when God tells Moses to go stand a rock and as the glory of the Lord passes by the Lord will hide Moses in the cleft of a rock and cover Moses with a divine hand until the Lord passes by. The Lord tells Moses, “Then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.” (Ex 33)  My face shall not be seen. God’s glory, God’s face. God’s face, God’s glory. In the rich imagery and poetry that fills the pages of scripture, the glory of the Lord and the face of the Lord seem to be one and the same. “Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we might be saved.” Let your glory shine, that we might be saved. Restore us, O God, by your glory.

In the gospel accounts of the birth of Jesus, we all know there is quite a bit of angel talk. The angels are busy. Matthew reports “an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.” (Mt 1) Luke tells of of lots of angels. The angel who appeared to Zechariah. The angel Gabriel who came to Mary. And of course, the angel who lit up the sky above the shepherds and brought “a multitude of the heavenly host.” i.e. lots and lots and lots of angels. When it comes to the If we’re honest, most of us have a strange relationship with angels. Maybe it is better to say we’re just not sure what to do with angels other than enjoying them and their attire in a Christmas pageant. On the pages of scripture, angels always come with a fear factor otherwise the appearance wouldn’t always come with “Do not be afraid.” I have always just assumed that Gabriel appeared with the same radiance as the angel who stood before the shepherds. At least that’s what artists have led me to assume. Angels. Fear. Splendor. Or as Luke puts it, “Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them…” Even more messengers from God, the angels of the nativity reflect something of the glory of God. Yes, mid the imagery and poetry of scripture, the angels offer yet one more witness to the glory of God. of Angels are the gospel version of the psalmist invoking the face of God. An angel of the Lord. The face of the Lord. The glory of the Lord.  Gloria in Excelsis Deo!

Back in Exodus, when God allows Moses to see God’s back but not God’s face, the Hebrew dictionary is pretty clear about what is meant by “back”. It is the back side, the hindquarters, the back parts. The term bears the connotation of “rear end”. But forms of the same word can carry more of a connotation of the aftermath. The backside of something that carries with it a sense of timing; afterwards, coming after, in the wake of. All the adults in the room chipping in to pick up in the aftermath of a little child’s chaos after they go to bed. On the backside of her day. Finding the treasures left behind by a grandmother after her visit. A note. A card. A trinket. A dollar. Enjoying the backend of Grandma’s visit. Basking in the glow, still offering a shout after the parade passes by. A shout from the backside of the parade. Moses and the backside of God’s glory; the wake of God’s glory, the leftovers, the crumbs of God’s glory.

The experience of God’s glory takes an incredible turn with these angels. The angel talk in the Luke and Matthew provides the first set in the evolving experience of God’s glory. The Apostle Paul builds upon the angel talk and takes the understanding and experience of God’s glory one step further in writing to the Corinthians: “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (II Cor 4) The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Let your glory shine, O Lord, that we might be saved. With the angels, the invitation to experience God’s glory comes not on the backside but out in the front. The angels tell of the now and future glory of God. Not the crumbs of God’s glory but the full radiance of God’s glory come down in and through Jesus Christ.  The Lord’s glory not in the past but the Lord’s glory in all of its divine abundance in the Child Jesus and his life, death, and resurrection.

An encounter with these angels of the Nativity is an encounter with God’s glory. The reaction to and encounter with the glory of God, the face of God, moves from curse or fear to wonder and exuberant praise. God’s glory on display results in worship and wonder for Zechariah, and Mary, and the shepherds. God’s glory revealed elicits our praise, our worship, not our fear but our wonder. Let your glory shine, O God, that we might be saved.

Martha Moore-Keish, a professor from Columbia Seminary offers an interesting twist on the angels and their song, Gloria In Excelsis Deo. She points out that the shepherds themselves were somehow moved or changed by the vision and voice of the heavenly host. They went to Bethlehem only after the heavenly light show of praise. When they returned, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, they would have been talking not just about Mary and Joseph and the babe, but about that angel song too.  Because, after all, that Gloria helped them to see Jesus. Maybe we need to reverse our ordinary ordering when it comes to singing gloria, Professor Moore-Keish suggests. Instead of recognizing the birth of Jesus and then bursting into song, maybe we hear and sing “Glory to God” and are therefore moved, changed, enabled, empowered, blessed, restored to see, as the professor puts it “the entrance of Jesus into our world.”

God’s glory, God’s face, and our act of praise. The celebration of the Lord’s Supper is an act of praise. Yes, it is remembering, it is communing, it is receiving, it is giving thanks. But it is also an act or praise. “Accept this our sacrifice of praise, O God, for great is the mystery of faith. Christ has died. Christ has Risen. Christ will come again.” Once again this Advent, in the telling, in the singing, in the feasting, in the shouting, let our Gloria burst forth that our hearts might be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Our worship and wonder in the power of the Spirit and by God’s grace enabling, inspiring and empowering one another and others to see not simply a baby Jesus, but to see and to experience and to live into the world that God so loves, the world into which Jesus was born, the world for which Jesus died and rose again. “Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we might be saved.” The face of God, The glory of God. The song of angels. And God’s glory shining in the face of the child Jesus.

Over in my office, I have a table of pictures of family and friends. My clergy prayer group I have been with for 35 years. My dear friend Rabbi Feldman and me at our daughter Hannah’s wedding. Other wedding pictures. Vacation pictures. Mostly pictures of our kids and now grandchildren. I have a picture of Hannah when she was 3 or 4 years old dressed as an angel for a Christmas pageant. You can see the costume. It is every angel’s costume ever. White choir surplus, a tiny garland ring on her head for the halo. Hannah has a finger in her mouth. She is smiling and looking right at the camera. The flash of the camera gives her halo an unforgettable sparkle, a twinkle, a shine. That toddler angel is now a mother of two.

Maybe we’re not sure what to do with angels other than enjoying them and their attire in a Christmas pageant. But when I think of the whole host of little angels everywhere who put on a white surplus and a halo and learned to sing glo-o-o-ria, or all the wise ones who put on a hat from burger king, or all the shepherds who brought a bathrobe from home, or all the Marys who held the baby Jesus and Josephs were just glad they didn’t have a speaking part, when I think of all those who whether they knew it or not, led congregation after congregation, generation after generation in hearing and singing “Glory to God”. Angels in white surpluses and twinkling garlands leading the followers of Jesus as they are once again moved, changed, enabled, empowered, blessed, restored to see “the entrance of Jesus into our world.”

In every generation, those pageant characters now grown, that motley crew who tell again and again of the Savior’s birth, they become the hands and feet of Jesus as he works to restore, to save, to make his face to shine. Angels always looking to point to, witness, and reveal the once and future glory of God. You, me, and the angels all around us.

“Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we might be saved.”

Ephesians 1:15-23
Lauren J. McFeaters
November 26, 2023
Jump to audio

---

Thanksgiving and Prayer. Glory and Spirit.

Wisdom and Revelation. Enlightenment and Inheritance. Glory, Power, Rule, Authority.

Power and Dominion. My heavens, it’s a lot.

 

Jesus comes to us out of God’s glory. The glory comes to us with purpose. The purpose is an  unfathomable. The majesty has an incandescent beauty given for us. All intended for the salvation of humankind: The Revelation of Jesus the Christ, Christ the King, the Very Glory of God, sent for your salvation and for mine. [i]

 

And at the heart of such extravagance, at the heart of Christ’s radiance, comes a Lord who lavishes upon us – Hope. With the eyes of our hearts, we’re told, we will know the hope to which we have been called. In a world gone mad, we are to dare to hope.

 

You know, we downsize the word Hope. We economize it. We rein it in, and put it on sale. It always starts with, “I.” We say things like:

“I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

“I sure hope the grocery store still has cranberries.”

“I hope Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce find a date night.”

Or from this weekend’s ad campaigns:

From Best Buy:  Joy & Hope Are in the Air!

From Macy’s Fine Jewelry:  Hope for More Silver & Gold!

And from Bass Pro Shops, because who doesn’t love a sports store, comes:  Enjoy the Magic & Hope of Santa!

 

We smash hope into little, itty, bitty, tiny packages, that makes hope a miniature wish, a miniscule goal, a microscopic plan.

 

But then we meet the God of the Ephesians, and hope becomes  a holy expectation…

“… that, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened,

we may know what is the hope

to which God has called us,

what are the riches of our Lord’s

glorious inheritance among the saints,

and what is the immeasurable greatness

of his power, for us who believe …”

 

Here is a 1^st century church; a vulnerable church, being torn apart by disunity, gutted by politics, needing the guidance and wisdom of Paul their pastor, who is writing to them from prison.  And Paul, wanting to help them recover themselves, wanting them to know he has not forgotten them, and never will, offers Gospel Medicine to their wound of hopelessness. He goes straight for the good news.

 

And Paul is never, ever, interested in offering the good news for “someday, sooner or later, one day in the future.” He prays quite specifically for the church, here and now, to be lit up from within, here and now, praying that God gives them a spirit wisdom, as they mature in faith, and a sacred  hope that binds each believer to the Risen Christ.

 

Jan Richardson, a favorite artist, minister, and blogger, puts it like this: Paul makes clear that Christ is putting his power to work in us, and not just for someday, but for now. Even as Paul writes about the risen Christ being seated in the heavenly places, he also bears witness to a Christ who wore our flesh and abides in us:  Hoping for us when our hope is shattered; Hoping on behalf of us when our lives are in chaos: Hoping in compassion for us when our world is gutted – that is Christ’s Hope – not always comforting or comfortable – but a hope that asks us to imagine what is beyond our imagining; and to bear what seems unbearable. ^[ii]

 

Hope is a hard word these days. Hope gets a bad rap. Our world will tell is that Hope in Christ is for the ignorant and the unschooled. Hope in Christ is for immature, juvenile people that can’t keep a rational thought in their brains. And yet through Christ:

We may not fully understand hope,

but we know it when we see it;

that it meets us where we are;

and does not leave us where it found us. [iii]

 

When Isak Dinesen begins her novel Out of Africa she says this:  “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.” The book recounts her years in Kenya, and when she has lost all hope, and can no longer stay in Kenya, she must sell her possessions, and prepare to leave for Mombasa, and then for Denmark.

 

For twenty years she has loved Nairobi, and has been transformed by its people. Her most beloved friend is her  interpreter, Farah, and she tells him:

 

You must have the people of the farm

ready to leave before the rains.

Do you understand? Or they will lose everything.

Farah, for their safety, you must make them understand.

 

This land is far – where you are going, he asks?

Not too far, she lies, for she is going thousands of miles away.

How can it be now, with me and you, Farah wants to know?

Do you remember how it was … on safari, she says. In the afternoons I would send you ahead, to look for a camp,

and you would go and wait for me and build a fire,

so I would know where to find you.

Well, this will be like that.

Only this time I will go ahead – and wait for you.

It is far, where you are going?

Yes. It is far.

Then you must make this fire very big, he says,

so I can find you.

You must make this fire very, very big so I can find you. ^[iv]

 

When you have experienced God’s hope,

you understand God has lit a fire so big

that you will never be lost, and can always be found.

 

Jesus, Christ and King, will never let you go.

 

You are sealed by the Holy Spirit

and belong to Christ Jesus forever.

And we are not ignorant and juvenile, but audacious and bold.

We know God’s hope is not made of wishes, but of substance.

It’s a hope that knows how to sing when there seems little cause; that prays when there seems little potential;

and raises us from the dead —

not someday,

but this day, every day,

again and again and again. [v]

ENDNOTES

[i] David A. Davis. “All in All.” Nassau Presbyterian Church, November 23, 2008.

 

[ii] Adapted from Jan Richardson. “So That You May Know the Hope.” Nov. 19, 2014, paintedprayerbook.com.

 

[iii] Adapted from Anne Lamott.

 

[iv] Isak Dinesen. Out of Africa. New York:  Random House Publishing Group, 1992. Reprinted from the original 1937 edition.

 

[v] Adapted from Jan Richardson. “So That You May Know the Hope.” Nov. 19, 2014, paintedprayerbook.com.

 

Habakkuk 2:1-3
David A. Davis
November 19, 2023
Jump to audio

---

We have an 85 lb. black lab whose name is Rooney. You may remember seeing the video of Rooney interrupting my sermon recording in our living room very early in the pandemic. When Rooney came into our home as a puppy, I was not really ready for another dog. I was outvoted 3 to 1. Two of the people voting in favor were no longer living in our house. Rooney is now 8 years old. One of Rooney’s favorite things to is to sit with Cathy and me on our back patio, especially at night. Our house backs up to Smoyer Park. So when we sit on the patio there are no lights to be seen. With our string of lights turned on, you can’t see a thing beyond the pavers that form the patio. Rooney goes to the very edge of the patio, sits down, and keeps watch. He won’t move until we go inside like he is protecting us from deer, fox, rabbits, squirrels. I have never asked Rooney whether he is keeping watch into the darkness with his eyes or with his ears but I am guessing it is both. Watch keeping.

“My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.” (Ps. 130) “For God alone my soul waits in silence, from God comes my salvation.” (Ps. 62) “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (Ps. 27) Watch keeping.

From the prophet Habakkuk: “I will stand at my watchpost and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what the Lord will say to me and what the Lord will answer”.  Watch keeping. The prophet’s image is one of standing guard, being a lookout. Habakkuk announces that he will take his place high atop the wall. It is a very large wall that surrounds the city. He will ascend to a strategic point up on the wall; a corner, the highest point, or just the right spot with the best panoramic view. One doesn’t climb up to the watch post to enjoy the view. It is a spot to keep an eye on the movements of enemy forces or watch preparations for battle. Watch keeping is where protection begins. It is a place for vigilance. It is an environment with an edge to it not to be confused with a retreat setting or an oasis for reflection. It is not one of those Old Testament mountaintops but like those places of theophany where God spoke to Moses and Elijah, Habakkuk announces that he intends to watch and wait for a “Word from the Lord.” When Habakkuk demands an answer from God, he goes to the watch post. He turns to watch keeping. “I will stand at my watchpost and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what the Lord will say to me and what the Lord will answer”.

There is not much to know about Habakkuk. There is not much information about the prophet in the Hebrew bible. Historians of antiquity and bible scholars don’t’ add much more. Habakkuk was a prophet of God. A prophet who most likely lived in or around Jerusalem. The ancient city had expansive walls and plenty of watch posts and ramparts. Habakkuk was a Hebrew prophet at a time when Babylon was the empire of the day. That means that the city was in ruins. Jerusalem was under siege. The prophet’s world was crumbling around him. Not much more can be said about Habakkuk. The prophet’s call, however, is to watch keeping.

The book of Habakkuk is just three chapters. Chapter 1 is Habakkuk’s complaint to the Lord. After the few verses I read to you, chapter two is the Lord’s response. Chapter 3 is identified as the prophet’s prayer though Habakkuk’s very strong complaint should be understood as a prayer, a lament as well. The lament begins like this: “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not listen? Or cry to you, ‘violence!’ and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrong doing? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.” It is the prophet calling on God to look around. “I’m not sure which world you are watching over but my world is falling apart. Evil carries the day. Violence never seems to stop. The bad guys always seem to win. You should be astounded at the nations that thrive. Righteous leaders are no where to be found. Aren’t you the God of old? Aren’t you the one to do something? Aren’t you the one who is supposed to make a difference?”

Habakkuk and his timeless complaint. He doesn’t stop there. “By the way Lord, I am getting tired of asking and pleading and getting nowhere. Nothing changes. So I am just going to climb up there to the watch post, stop my complaining and wait. I will wait to hear and watch to see what you have to say.”  You and I may not know a whole lot about Habakkuk but a whole lot of us have been to the watch post. Waiting for some answer, some explanation, some purpose that is yet to be revealed by the Lord of All.

Then the Lord answers Habakkuk. It’s a short book so the prophet didn’t have to wait long. “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not delay.” God reassures Habakkuk there is still a vision even for these days; for the here and now. A vision of God’s future. If you don’t see it, you don’t grasp it, you don’t understand it. Be patient. It is surely coming.

When the vision, the assurance, the promise comes, the Lord tells the prophet to make it plain. Write it so that the people can carry it with them on the journey. Write it so they can read it and comprehend it along the way. So the runner can know it along the way. The vision, the assurance, the promise, the comfort, the message is sure and true. God is here, the world belongs to God, you belong to God. Despite all the signs to the contrary in crumbling world, God is steadfast and true and full of mercy, love, and grace. And as the Lord affirms and proclaims to the prophet, “The righteous live by faith”. The righteous shall live by faith rather than answers and certainties. Share the vision in a way that it is not just etched in stone but etched into the hearts of those called by God “to run with perseverance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12).

In Habakkuk’s prayer that concludes the book, the prophet offers praise and adoration. In our small group this week studying the prayer of Hannah and the prayer of Mary we had a good discussion about whether prayer always has to start with praise and adoration. One can’t help but notice Habakkuk starts with complaint and moves later to praise and adoration. His prayer of praise and adoration is a prayer that God would come and save God’s people; that God’s people would endure. He also acknowledges there will still be waiting and a need for patience. Amid the watching and waiting, Habakkuk finishes the prayer:  “Yet……I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord is my strength.” Amid watching and waiting, yet… I will rejoice. The prophet of such strong complaint. The prophet of such strong praise. And in between Habakkuk went to the watch post. Watch keeping.

During these last weeks of this series on ways to pray from the Old Testament, I have found myself re-reading Anne Lamott’s short book on prayer entitled Help Thanks Wow. Len Scales discussed this book in the first Adult Education class of the series last month. In the section on prayer as simply asking God for help, Anne Lamott writes this: “One modest tool for letting go in prayer that I’ve used for twenty-five years is a God box. I’ve relied on every imaginable container- from a pillbox, to my car’s glove box, to decorative boxes friends have given me. The container has to exist in time and space so you can physically put a note in it, so you can see yourself let go, in time and space”

She goes on her practice of jotting down the prayer requests that are the most distressing and heavy on her heart. She takes the note, folds it up and sticks in the box and closes the box. “You might have a brief moment of prayer” Lamott says, “it might come out sounding like this: ‘Here. You think you’re so big? Fine. You deal with it. Although I have a few more excellent ideas on how best to proceed’. Then I agree to keep my sticky mitts off the spaceship until I hear back”.  She tells of waiting for response that surely won’t be a voice or skywriting but a time when you know again who God is and who you are. “Maybe after you put a not in the God box you’ll go a little limp, and in that divine limpness you’ll be able to breath again….Breath is holy spirit. Breath is life.” Lamott tells of a friend of hers who is a priest who told her that “through prayer, we take ourselves off the hook and put God on the hook, where God belongs.”

In sharing her twenty-five year practice of the God box, Anne Lamott is sharing her version of the watch post. Her version of watch keeping. Hearing and seeing and being claimed again and again by a vision from God. Clear and easy answers? Not so much. But an assurance that there is a vision for the here and now. A promise of God’s presence and a reminder deep within that God’s future is real. An almost mystical affirmation that God is still in control. For at the end of the day, and all through the night, the righteous shall live by faith.

From complaint to praise and a vision of the promise of God that comes right smack in the middle of it all. From complaint to praise, with a visit to the watch post right in between. You remember Jesus said “Come unto me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”.  How many times have we heard it, read it, pondered it. The invitation of Jesus. It is an invitation from our Lord and Savior’s to bring your complaint to him, even when, especially when your life or the world feels like it is crumbling. Jesus’ invitation to come to the watch post with him. Jesus invites us to meet him at the watch post. Jesus invites us to come watch keeping. “Come unto me”.

Jesus is our watch post.

1 Samuel 2:1-10
David A. Davis
November 12, 2023
Jump to audio

---

Hannah doesn’t hang around long in the pages of scripture. She is only mentioned here in the first two chapters of I Samuel. She never gets a shout out by name in the New Testament. She doesn’t make that list in Hebrews chapter 11 where the preacher does that riff: “by faith Noah, by faith Abraham, by faith Jacob, by faith Moses and more” That list is all men. By the middle of I Samuel 2 the narrative tells that “the Lord took note of Hannah; she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters.” And then Hannah exits the bible’s stage. “The Lord took note of Hannah.” The primary meaning of the Lord “taking note” is a reference to the vexing biblical theme of barrenness and fertility. But I am guessing the Lord taking note of Hannah goes much further than her having children. The Lord took note. Clearly, so did Mary the mother of Jesus. The Lord took note of Hannah. Mary took note of Hannah. And so should we.

Hannah’s prayer that I read for your hearing is not her only prayer. Earlier in the story Hannah goes to pray to the Lord in the temple.  “She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord,  and wept bitterly.” Eli the priest sees Hannah and because her lips were moving yet her prayer was silent, Eli accuses her of being “a drunken spectacle”. Hannah stands up for herself before the priest. She tells him she has had nothing drink and that she has been “pouring out her soul before the Lord.” “Do not regard your servant as worthless woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time”.  You go Hannah! Take note of Hannah. She stood up for herself, for her faith, for her relationship to God, and for her prayer life. She gave it to Eli. She gave it to God for that matter pouring out her soul. After Samuel was born Hannah “lent him to the Lord” for as long as lived.

“Hannah prayed and said, ‘My heart exults in the Lord, my strength is exalted in my God. Mary prayed and said “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Hannah prayed “the bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird their strength.” Mary prayed “The Lord has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” Hannah prayed “the Lord raises up the poor from the dust; the Lord lifts the needy from the ash heap.” Mary prayed “The Lord has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” Hannah prayed “The Lord will guard the feet of God’s faithful ones”. Mary prayed “God’s mercy is for those who fear God, from generation to generation.”  Hannah’s prayer is Mary’s prayer. Hannah’s song is Mary’s song. Mary’s Magnificat is Hannah’s Magnificat.

Both Hannah and Mary praying to the God of justice. Praying, singing, painting a world of justice, righteousness, compassion, and transformation. Both Hannah and Mary telling of the never-ending mercy and the certain presence and the present act of God. Hitting notes in their song that proclaim the world as we know it turned upside down, a world overflowing with peace, a world where the lowliest find themselves joining a divine song of joy and praise. Both Hannah and Mary singing a picture of the kingdom of God.

As Hannah finishes her prayer and soon takes her leave from the pages of scripture, Sanuel remains and begins to “minister to the Lord in the presence of the priest Eli.” The writer of I Samuel tells the reader that “the sons of Eli were scoundrels” who had no regard for the Lord. The reader is also informed that “The word of the Lord was rare in those days, visions were not widespread.” Scoundrels run amok and no one seeking a word from the Lord. That seems like a biblical way of describing a world far from what God intends. A world where humanity is not at its best. A world where the faithful must have been wondering about the silence of God; the perceived absence of God. A world where the darkness is too bright and the mercy and grace of God too hard to find. Hannah breaths her prayer into that world.

It’s a prayer, like Mary’s prayer, that begins with exultation and praise. It moves toward a daring affirmation of all that the Lord of heaven and earth can do.  The prayer proclaims what God can do and the restored world God intends. One scholar describes it as a prayer that acknowledges that the Lord has the power to intrude, intervene, and invert. But in acknowledging God’s power to intrude, intervene, and invert, one can also conclude that  Hannah’s prayer is also invoking, asking, pleading for God to be and to act. What goes unspoken in the prayer from the one who poured out her soul to the Lord, what goes unspoken and yet must have been a passion deep with Hannah’s soul, was her lament for the world around her. God’s people around her.

Biblical theologian Walter Brueggemann describes Hannah’s prayer this way: “This song becomes the song of Mary and the song of the church as the faithful community finds in Jesus the means through which Yahweh will turn and right the world…. This song becomes a source of deep and dangerous hope in the world wherever the prospect and possibility of human arrangements have been exhausted. When people can no longer believe the promises of the rulers of this age….this song voices an alternative to which the desperate faithful cling.” Yes, Hannah’s prayer, Mary’s song, the church’ song. A prayer for you and for me. A prayer for us amid our lament for the world around us.

Brueggemann writes that Hannah “flings” her song in the world’s power of death and darkness. He calls it an “act of daring hope.” Through Mary, Hannah also flings her song into the future of God’s people. Songs work that way sometimes. It’s a song that stuck. A song the church can’t get out of its head. A song that has a future. A song for the people of God to keep on singing. A song to pass on from generation to generation. A song that never ends.

Several weeks ago, our 2 and a half year old granddaughter Franny was staying with us for the weekend while her parents went to a wedding. Franny has discovered our piano that sits likes to tickle the ivories with me. As we both sat on the bench, I started to play “Blessed Assurance”. Franny’s face lit up and she yelled, “That’s Franny’s church song!” So we sang it together. Her grandmother and I didn’t teach Franny the song. Her parents didn’t teach her. Franny learned her song at Broadway Presbyterian Church in New York City. The church taught Franny her church song. Songs work that way sometimes.

That’s how it should be with Hannah’s daring act of hope. Passing the prayer from generation to generation. That in every generation God’s people might cling to the belief that this old world still belongs to the God who created it while again and again calling on God to be and to act. Hannah’s song. Mary’s song. The Church’s song. It tells of God’s world. God’s kingdom. And together we shall sing it, and pray for it, and live toward it, and work for it. Our exultation and praise takes shape in here so we can witness to the God of restoration out there. Inspired by our acts of praise in here, we are empowered and enabled and inspired to be instruments of God’s grace out there. So transformed, we whose hearts exult in the Lord, whose strength is exalted in our God, so transformed that we know ourselves to be midwives of God’s kingdom here on earth. Ever longing, ever asking for that kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.

This last Monday Cathy and I went up to New York City to meet our new granddaughter Maddy for the first time. I have told a lot of people of the years that my day off is Fridays because on Monday I am too tired to enjoy it. Monday’s are the day of the week when I do my first bit of sermon preparation. There may be no better way to begin sermon preparation than holding your four day old grandchild. At one point in the afternoon, I found myself alone with Maddy as I sat on the sofa holding her. She was asleep and I was humming a few hymns probably more for me than her since she was sound asleep. I found myself thinking about this beautiful newborn child and what a few friends, family members, and colleagues have said by text and email as we shared the news of Maddy’s birth: “Welcome to the world, Madeline Fay.” Welcome to this world. The world surrounding us here and now.

That’s when the sermon preparation started. Because I realized right then, maybe for the first time really. I realized that Hannah’s prayer and Mary’s prayer have something in common beyond the content. Something in common as important as the content. Both Hannah and Mary were praying to the Lord of heaven and earth for their child. They both were praising God and asking God to be and to act in the world in which their child would grow up. Longing for that world to more like the world God intends and for God to work on that a whole lot sooner than later.

Hannah’s prayer to the God of justice. Hannah’s prayer. Mary’s prayer. The Church’s prayer. Our prayer.

“My heart exults in the Lord, my strength is exalted in my God.”

Amen.

1 Kings 8:22-30, 52-55
David A. Davis
November 5, 2023
Jump to audio

---

This morning’s scripture lesson comes from the Book of I Kings and like last week, it is prayer of King Solomon. This prayer comes after Solomon and the people finished building the temple, the house of the Lord. Solomon assembles all the leaders of the people of Israel to have them bring the ark of the covenant to the inner sanctuary of the temple. After offering a blessing on the ark in its new place and celebrating the fulfillment of God’s promise regarding the house of the Lord, Solomon stands before the altar of the Lord and before the assembly of Israel and offers a prayer. A long prayer. I will be reading the beginning and the end of Solomon’s prayers of the people.

I Kings 8:22-30,52-55

The 20 or so verses between the beginning and the end of Solomon’s prayer contain his intercessions for the people of Israel. The prayer list includes asking God to reward the righteousness. When drought comes, that God would bring rain amid if the people turn back to God. If there is famine and plaques in the land, that God would heal the land if God’s people repent. That God would welcome foreigners in the land who come to pray in the house of the Lord and turn to God. Solomon asks for protection for the people in battle and to return them from exile in a foreign land again if they repent and turn to God. The shape of the prayer has an extended “if-then” format built on God’s promise that when the people of God turn to God, over and over again, God will restore them.

I chose to read just the beginning the end of Solomon’s prayer for others for a few reasons. From a downright practical standpoint, long scripture readings in worship and before a sermon are a challenge both to read and to hear. Also, Solomon’s petitions have that rhetorical and theological pattern more easily summarized in the context of God’s covenant with God’s people. Lastly, and frankly, some of them are hard to read with war raging now in the region and so many innocent men, women, and children have been killed. Solomon’s prayer was so long and perhaps so fervent that he began standing and facing the people. By the end he is kneeling before the altar of the Lord. the beginning and the end of Solomon’s prayer provides insight into the relationship of God and God’s people and perhaps some insight into an understanding of intercessory prayer in our own lives.

Here’s a little pastor’s secret to share with you. For those of us who lead worship on a regular basis, whose tasks include preaching and praying and reading scripture and welcoming and passing information along about church life, the hardest part week in and week out is not writing a sermon. The most challenging part hands down is crafting the prayers of the people. When it comes to preaching, at some level most listeners acknowledge that a sermon represents one person’s thought and effort. Hopefully guided, informed, inspired by prayer, the Holy Spirit and grace of God. Praying the pastoral prayer on behalf of everyone is more of priestly role; petitioning God on your behalf. The prayer is your prayer. Our prayer language is your language. Our words, your words. So, form and content and word choice is of the utmost importance. There are some Sunday mornings when the one leading the prayer longs to be in a tradition where such prayers come from the prayer book week in and week. In our tradition the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving at the Lord’s Supper tends to be the only time our prayer comes from a book.  There are some weeks, like these weeks right now, when it takes much longer to write the prayer than write the sermon. And every Sunday the one leading the prayer has to find the balance between praying a list that is never long enough and can sound like a check list and asking God to guide and empower a congregation’s life of discipleship as God engages God’s people as part of God’s answer to prayer in the world.  Prayer, and especially intercessory prayer rests so very deep within our hearts. So very core to a relationship with God. And according to the witness of scripture, our prayer rests deep within the very heart of God.

Near the end of his prayer for the people, Solomon prays this: “Let your eyes be open to the plea of your servant , and to the plea of your people Israel, listening to them whenever they call you.”  Let your eyes be open to the plea. Not let your eyes see, let your eyes hear. Let your eyes hear and let your ears see? A jarring combination just like last week’s prayer when Solomon asks for a “discerning heart”. Not wise mind but a wise heart. Let your eyes be open to the plea, O Lord. A striking turn of phrase. Perhaps a minor anthropomorphic, poetic move. But a move full of promise.

Because before God’s eyes are open our plea, God’s eyes are open to God’s world. We believe God sees before we ask. God sees the world for which we beg. God sees the war and the suffering we lament. God sees the hungry, the unhoused, the poor we lift up. God sees the lack of justice that sparks our voice. God sees the loved one for whom we pray endlessly. God sees the dying friend we grieve. God sees the newborn we celebrate. God sees the bounty for which we give thanks. God sees the reconciliation we ask for again and again. God’s eyes open to our plea. God sees before we ask.

No, the promise doesn’t guarantee all prayers answered. The promise doesn’t address all the questions about the omnipotence of God and the reality of a world so far from what God intends. The promise doesn’t render intercessory prayer meaningless. A prayer for others nurtures our faith and our relationship to God. It is God inviting us into an alignment with God’s own yearning for the world and for the new life God offers. The new life God is creating. God inviting us into relationship and a deepening faith.

Professor Don Juel taught New Testament at Princeton Seminary and worshipped here at Nassau Church for years prior to his death. Dr. Juel once preached a sermon to a chapel full of seminarians on Palm 139. “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up…..whither can I go from you spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence.” When it comes to our lives and the world we live in, Juel proclaimed, “Such things are not unknown to God. God watches, and not from a distance…Does it not make you uneasy to think there is someone who knows all about you?….There will be times when the words of the psalmist will make you shudder. I hope so” he said. “For in that shudder, there is an acknowledgment of God’s real presence and also a sign that faith is still alive.” Or to put it another way, when it comes to our lives and our life in the world, God sees before we ask. Our asking is an acknowledgment of God’s real presence and a sign that faith is still alive.

Let your eyes be open to our plea. Perhaps a foreshadowing or an affirmation of the Apostle Paul’s writing about the Spirit’s role in prayer in the Letter to the Romans. “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs to deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” The Spirit intercedes, sighs, groans, far beyond words. Because God sees our heart and see the world before we ask. If the Holy Spirit nurtures the divine mysterious relationship of the Trinity through intercessory prayer, so should we.

The Episcopal preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, tells a story of her granddaughter in a sermon about the parable Jesus tells of the unjust judge and persistent widow who kept knocking. The title of the sermon is “Bothering God.” They were celebrating her daughter’s 7^th birthday with cake and candles and song. The little girl blew out the candles so fast that someone asked if she was going to make a wish. “I don’t know why I keep doing [this wishing thing]. Last year I wish my best friend wouldn’t move away but she did. This year I want to wish that my mommy and daddy will get back together” Her mother jumped in to assure that wasn’t going to happen and not to waste a wish. “So why do I keep doing this?” Taylor points out in the sermon that a wish is not the same thing as prayer and goes on to paint a meaningful picture of the persistent widow who demanded justice day after day after day. Saying it to the judge day after day was, in the preacher’s words, “how she remembered who she was. It was how she remembered the shape of her heart.”  At the very end of the sermon Taylor offers what we will say to her granddaughter when she inevitably asks her priest grandmother if prayer really works. “Oh, sweetie, of course it does. It keeps our hearts chasing after God’s heart. It’s how we bother God and it’s how God bothers us back. There’s nothing that works better than that.”

God’s eyes open to our plea. As we come to the Table this morning on this Sunday closest to All Saints Day, I find myself pondering Jesus’ intercessory prayer in the 17^th chapter of the Gospel of John. It’s the section of the gospel tradition labels “Jesus’ Last Discourse.” Jesus offers a long prayer for those followers God has entrusted to him. Jesus prays for them and for “those who will believe in me through their word.” It’s more than promise. It’s a breathtaking, life sustaining comfort really. To remember, not just at the Table, but every morning or every evening, to remember when you are praying for the world and for others, to remember that Jesus the Savior of the whole world, Jesus never stops praying for you.

Come to the Table. The one who prays for you invites you. Come and feast on God’s grace. For God’s grace opens God’s eyes to hear your prayer.

1 Kings 3:4-15
Lauren J. McFeaters
October 29, 2023
Jump to audio

---

There is a quote often attributed to the Talmud, that’s a loose translation of Micah 6:8, and it reads:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

While we reel from the massacres in Lewiston, Maine; remain horrified by the slaughter in Gaza and the unknown whereabouts of hostages, the catastrophic eruption of war; as we stagger at the ongoing devastation in Ukraine; and are undone by the unending hate of Black and brown citizens, Asian Americans, and LGBTQ+ folx, it’s hard not to find ourselves lying in a heap of hopelessness.[i]

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

This is where Solomon meets us. Daunted by his grief, his youth, his crushing responsibilities, he’s completely overwhelmed by his inexperience; totally engulfed by his inadequacy to rule a kingdom, with all of its complications, its battles, its difficulties.

Feeling his own inability in the face of such responsibility, he does what he knows how to do – he prays and God answers – “What can I give you Solomon? Ask.”

I have to imagine, that when a son is raised by a Psalmist, the son’s prayers are going to be set to song. Can you hear the song in Solomon’s prayer:

O Lord my God, I am only a little child;

I don’t know how to go out or come in.

I need your generous love,

so please, please, please, give me a wise and listening heart,

so I can lead your people with discernment and care.

A wise and listening heart.

Not glory, not money, not long-life, not triumph in battle. Just wisdom and understanding. A prayer for wisdom and understanding. Beautiful.

But here’s the thing about praying for wisdom. When we pray. “God, grant me wisdom,” there’s no abracadabra, no hocus-pocus, and we are mysteriously gifted with wisdom. We are, instead, gifted, by God, with endless experiences that will teach us to be wise. Solomon would need to learn the experiences of wisdom, over and over again. And so do we.

Praying for wisdom, praying, “Lord, help me to be wise in life and faith and family,” doesn’t mean a sudden change in our personality, and lighten bolts of insight is dramatically bestowed. No. God answers our prayers with countless opportunities to dig deep, and make mistakes, and learn the ropes of wisdom – over and over and over again.

When I came home, after my first semester of college, my father took me aside and said he had something important to tell me. “Laurie,” he said (he always called me Laurie), “Laurie, I want you to remember, that your grandparents have more wisdom in tip of their little finger, than we will ever have.”

“What? What’d you mean?” And he repeated: “I want you to remember, that your grandparents have more wisdom, in tip of their little finger, than we will ever have.”

He said, “not one of your grandparents, or any family before them, ever had the chance to attend college – it was beyond their wildest dreams. Their education came from what work they could find – when they could find it. And because of that, they have more wisdom, than you and I will ever have – in the tip of their little finger.”

“Do you understand that coming home from college is nothing to boast about, when you remember, it is because of them, that you’re able to reach for the stars.”

I was silent. Here I was, having triumphantly returned to Pittsburgh after my first semester at my dream school in Boston. And with a lot of kindness, and not, in any way, trying to shame me, my dad looked at me and smiled: “It is because of them, that you’re able to reach for the stars.”

And I started to cry. And he started to cry. And I understood his message. And it was powerful. I looked at my grandparents in a whole new light. I looked at my dad in a whole new light. I understood myself, and what I had been handed, with a deep appreciation. My lessons in wisdom, had begun.

As we enter these weeks with a focus on prayer in the Hebrew scriptures, there are so many reminders of what we’ve been handed; that God comes to us in our prayers. We come from generations of church folk who sing to us their prayers and teach us the words of faith; who through hard won life experience, have more wisdom in the tip of their little finger – and choose to pass it on.

Reinhold Niebuhr gave us this prayer:

God, give us in wisdom, grace to accept with serenity,

the things that cannot be changed,

courage to change the things which should be changed,

and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Soren Kierkegaard gave us this:

The wise function of prayer, is not to influence God,

but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

But maybe it’s Ann Weems, our Presbyterian poet laureate, who takes our hand today as we pray for wisdom. Within the  enormity of the world’s grief and violence, Ann Weems wrote this prayer-poem for Ash Wednesday in 2003, right as US forces were preparing to invade Iraq. She titled it I No Longer Pray for Peace. She writes:

On the edge of war, one foot already in,

I no longer pray for peace: I pray for miracles.

I pray that stone hearts will turn
to tenderheartedness,
and evil intentions will turn to mercifulness …
and the whole world will be
astounded onto its knees.

 

I pray that all the “God talk” will take bones,
and stand up and shed its cloak of faithlessness,
and walk again in its powerful truth.

 

I pray that the whole world might
sit down together and share its bread and its wine.

 

Some say there is no hope,
but then I’ve always applauded the holy fools
who never seem to give up on
the scandalousness of our faith:

that we are loved by God ……
that we can truly love one another.

I no longer pray for peace: I pray for miracles.[ii]

Today, as we gather and once again take in a world bent on destroying itself, let us lean into the scandal of our faith. That in the midst of our lives, Angela and Christopher come forward, and we dare to baptize and make promises for the future with Lucy.

That new members dare to join us with the words: Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. And we in turn make promises to care for them, even as we walk together into the unknown.

And that like Solomon, in the face of what daunts and terrifies us, we boldly pray for wisdom and understanding and to discern between good and evil.

 

[i] Inspired by Anne Russ’s “Full Disclosure: I am daunted.” October 26, 2023, doubtingbeliever.com.

 

[ii] Anne Weems. “I No Longer Pray for Peace.” From Advent’s Alleluia to Easter’s Morning Light: Poetry for Worship, Study and Devotion. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010, 72.

 

 

Daniel 6:10-16
David A. Davis
October 22, 2023
Jump to audio

---

Our encounter with prayer in the Old Testament this morning comes from the Book of Daniel. In terms of biblical literature, scholars categorize the book of Daniel as apocalyptic. Like the Revelation to John at the end of the New Testament, Daniel is full of visions and dreams. At the top of the list of theological themes of apocalyptic literature is the affirmation of the sovereignty of God. In the midst of a world full of suffering, violence, and evil, the world and the people of God, still belong to God. As the psalmist puts it, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Ps. 46) When trying to wrap one’s head around the memorable stories of Daniel’s friends in the furnace and Daniel in the lion’s den in the first half  of the book and Daniel’s visions in the second half, that affirmation of the ultimate reign of God, that kingdom that cannot be shaken, is a helpful foundation.

When it comes to the furnace and the lion’s den, to King Nebuchadnezzer, King Belteshazzar, and King Darius, to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, when it comes to Daniel, for most of us, what likely comes to mind is a chancel drama, a Vacation Bible School theme, a Sunday School flannel board, a classic piece of art work, or perhaps, an African American spiritual like the one soon to be offered by the choir. But this morning, we are being to asked to focus on Daniel and his prayer. I would like to invite you to join me in thinking for just a few moments this morning about the theme of prayer as resistance. Prayer as resistance.

You will remember that King Nebuchadnezzar threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace because they refused to worship and bow down before the King’s gods and the golden statue he set up. “We have no need to present a defense to you in this matter. If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let our God deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue…” The three walked out of the furnace unharmed and the king promoted them and began to praise, extol, and honor the Lord, the King of heaven.

Daniel faced a similar choice under the reign of King Darius. The king showed favor to Daniel because of his gift for interpreting dreams and as the text says, “because an excellent spirit was in Daniel.” Some translations suggest that “excellent” spirit connotes his wisdom, his keen mind, his dream interpretation ability. But the Hebrew word is “spirit”.  Daniel had an exceptional spirit. In light of his gifts, the king was planning appoint Daniel as president over the whole kingdom. That created quite a bit of jealousy among others and a conspiracy was launched against Daniel to try and bring him down. But the conspirators could find nothing against Daniel because he was faithful and there was no evidence of negligence or corruption in him. The conspirators had to go to plan b and make something up. They went to the king and convinced him so sign an edict that no one in the land could pray to anyone at anytime except to King Darius. They clearly knew that Daniel, like his three friends, would refuse to pray to the king and would continue to pray to his God, the God of Israel, the God who made heaven and earth.

The Lord did deliver Daniel, deliver Daniel, deliver Daniel. King Darius spent that night fasting with no food or sleep. He rushed to the lion’s den the next morning hoping Daniel had survived. After hearing the king call out to him, Daniel responded “O king, live forever! My God sent an angel and shut the lions’ mouths so that they would not hurt me, because I was found blameless before God and also before you…I have done nothing wrong.” Like Nebuchadnezzar before him, King Darius offered praise to Daniel’s God and the bible says Daniel prospered.

Daniel, knowing the king had signed that edict, continues to go to his house three times a day as he always does, to kneel and face Jerusalem, and to pray to his God. In clear violation of the new royal edict and apparently in plain view through the window. Daniel prays and seeks mercy before his God. Scholars of biblical languages disagree about whether the windows in Daniel’s upper room would have normally been open in the warm climate or whether her opened them defiantly so that the conspirators could see him praying. It has to do with grammar and variances in the ancient texts. In the big picture, however, Daniel is simply leading a faithful life of prayer. Praying at the various times of day when faithful Jews were called to pray. A life of faithful prayer that nurtures and sustains the “excellent spirit”. The excellent spirit that so defines Daniel. Edict or no edict, it is Daniel’s life of prayer. Unlike Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego whose resistance to a king’s order was a single act of defiance, Daniel’s resistance is his life of prayer. His resistance is “praying and seeking mercy before his God.” His resistance is nurturing a spirit within that allows him to affirm that he and the world he lives in now and forever belongs to the God who gave him life.

Daniel praying in his upper room was not some kind of political act intended to strut a first amendment right. Daniel praying daily prayers in his upper room was not a public act intended to draw attention. Daniel kneeling and facing Jerusalem in prayer was not the same as street preacher at the crowded corner preaching a “turn or burn” sermon. It was his embodied life of prayer and coming into God’s presence to nurture and sustain his walk of faith in a foreign world. Yes, refusing to pray to the king alone but in praying and seeking the mercy of God refusing to let the world’s ways erode his identify and relationship as a beloved child of God.

I have confessed this before from this pulpit but it has been a long time ago. In college I failed DQT. The leaders of the campus Christian fellowship where I spent a lot of time were very big on DQT. Daily quiet time. Daily quiet time for prayer and scripture reading. It wasn’t that I didn’t spend time in prayer and reading the bible, it was that I couldn’t find the discipline to do it at the same time every day. For me it was more like offering a song of prayer in my head walking across campus, spending an afternoon by myself on a rock at Marble Head outside of Boston looking out over the ocean, singing texts of scripture in weekly choir rehearsals and in daily morning chapel, and starting a bedtime prayer always shortened by sleep. When it came to DQT I carried quite the guilt for years, even years into being a pastor.

Two books helped rid me of the guilt related to my under-performing piety.  I first read a book on preaching in my doctoral program hat affirmed sermon preparation as prayer. Then someone shared with me the book Practicing the Presence of Prayer by a 17^th century monk named Brother Lawrence. Brother Lawrence discovered that it was a mistake to think our prayer time was different than any other time in our experience of the presence of God. He described his life in the monastery and how serving others in the kitchen became a palpable experience of the presence of God. To push it just a bit, Brother Lawrence was suggesting that washing dishes was an act of prayer. Or closer to his own language, he experienced the presence of God there as meaningfully as he did praying the daily office in the chapel. He tells of a life of continually, consciously, intentionally drawing near to God. Brother Lawrence, Daniel, and a life of prayer.

A life of prayer that seeks the presence of God in all the places of your life as over and over again the world’s ways seek to eat away at your identity and relationship as a beloved child of God. A life of prayer that nurtures a spirit within that while the world near and far may feel so contrary to what God intends, way down deep your spirit affirms that you and the world you live in now and forever belongs to the God who gave you life. A life of prayer in the presence of God. Something of what the Apostle Paul meant when he exhorted the church in Rome to be “constant in prayer” (Rom 12). Something of what the Apostle Paul meant when he exhorted the followers of Jesus at Philippi that “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God” (Eph 4). A life of prayer that gives you strength in resisting the powers and principalities. What the Apostle described in the Letter to the Ephesians as “the cosmic powers of this present darkness”.  A life of prayer in the presence of God that seals somewhere in your excellent spirit that you are now and forever a Beloved Child of God.

This life of prayer to which Christ himself calls is so much more than piety. It is the only way that any of us can live with the assurance of the psalmist that “weeping lasts for the night but joy comes in the morning.” The life of prayer in the presence of God forms the very foundation for how any of us can offer some ray of light when the darkness feels so strong. Basking in the presence of God is the only way any of us can be a sign of love in world so full of hate.

Daniel. Brother Lawrence. You and me. Yearning, craving the gift of a spirit within formed in and through a life of prayer. A life of prayer in the presence of God so that we can rise tomorrow and offer a bit of morning glory, and breaking light, and world conquering love.

 

Acts 10:1-16
Andrew Scales
October 15, 2023
Jump to audio

---

During the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I worked as an intern on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. And, no offense to the many fine PC(USA) churches in the metro DC area, but I found myself drawn to Sunday services at St. John’s Episcopal Church near my apartment. One week, I heard a sermon there in which the priest, Rev. Luis Leon, began with a simple statement: “God has no grandchildren, only children.”

“God has no grandchildren, only children.” It sounded odd, but then the priest began to explain. God speaks to people in each generation to bear witness to peace, love, and justice. Maybe God is calling you to participate in God’s story. Not someone else who’s older or wiser or more equipped and you get to tag along, but you. What would it look like to answer?

That sermon has stuck with me for the past twenty years, and sometimes I’ll say it to our students in Princeton Presbyterians: “God has no grandchildren, only children.” There’s something in that saying that gets at the radical freedom of God. The Holy Spirit can call anyone to get involved in the work of healing that the world needs. They do not need permission from a parent, a religious institution, a political authority, to do what is right in their time and place. While we can learn from the past, the Spirit of God is alive in this time, too, and our task is to try and catch up to what God is doing today.

This morning’s reading from the Book of Acts is about members of two communities between whom reconciliation seems impossible. Luke introduces us to Cornelius, a high-ranking officer in the Roman army. He’s stationed in a bustling coastal city called Caesarea Maritima, the epicenter of Roman life in ancient Judea. He is the paterfamilias of a traditional Roman household, the patron of a complicated network that might include a spouse and children, extended relatives, business associates, slaves and servants, visiting guests, and soldiers under his command. By Roman standards, he is a pillar of his community, honorable for his sense of duty to those depending on him.

Cornelius’s life could not be more different than Peter’s. Since the resurrection of Jesus, Peter has been planting new churches all over Judea and Galilee, often on the run from the authorities. After raising a woman named Tabitha to life in the coastal town of Joppa, Peter decides to stay with a tanner named Simon. The process that tanners used to soften and treat animal skins in order to make leather was really gross, and it meant that the whole house smelled. Peter seems to be on his own as a guest in a house that’s so stinky it stands on the coast outside the town limits for the sea breeze and the isolation. Luke loves to heighten contrasts, and so you have a story about someone who’s a platinum member of the local Roman baths, and someone who’s stuck in a smelly house.

There are deeper divisions that keep these two men apart than their immediate circumstances. The common wisdom was that by custom, by religious conviction, by personal preference, Romans and Jews like Cornelius and Peter do not associate with each other. They do not visit one another’s homes, they do not share meals, they avoid talking to one another if they can help it.

But neither Peter nor Cornelius’s lives fit into these neat boxes. Luke describes Cornelius as a “Godfearer,” someone who deeply loves and admires Jewish faith and life. He has not made a full conversion to Judaism, but he devotes himself to two markers of Jewish piety: regular prayer to God and generous almsgiving to people in need. And Peter likewise has engaged with Romans in positive ways before.

The seventh chapter of Luke’s Gospel tells of Jesus healing a centurion’s servant and commending his faith. Peter has seen his teacher and friend hold up a despised Roman officer as a model for trust in God.

While Cornelius prays in a private room of his bustling townhouse near the town plaza of Caesarea Maritima, and Peter climbs up onto the roof of his guesthouse to pray, and maybe to escape the smell, both men experience the presence of God in a vision. The Spirit of God speaks to them and tells them to seek one another out. They hear God’s voice and set out to find each other.

That’s the end of our reading, but it’s not the end of the story. Because the Book of Acts goes on to describe this astonishing encounter in which Peter and Cornelius listen to one another and see each other as human beings bearing the image of God. Cornelius, whose life has been marked by a profound longing for God, is told by Jesus’ closest friend that it is true, he is precious in God’s sight, he belongs in the family of God.

And Peter, who has been told to avoid and be afraid of Roman centurions his whole life, has this realization God has broken past the barriers of his religious tradition to include anyone who hears and says “yes” to the Spirit’s call.

In their time, Peter and Cornelius were able to acknowledge God’s ability to do something new between two human beings despite passionate enmities that had persisted between their communities for generations. The signs of God’s work included two people listening to one another, engaging in dialogue with one another, respecting each other as a fellow child of God. When it comes to the hard, sometimes seemingly impossible work of reconciliation, maybe it’s true to say that God has no grandchildren, only children.

This week, I’ve found myself at a loss for what to say as we reckon with the news of conflict in Israel and Palestine. It was sobering to hear my chaplain colleagues Rabbi Gil Steinlauf and Rabbi Eitan Webb share about the fear, the anger, the trauma of a terrorist organization like Hamas committing acts of horrific violence against civilians.

These are fresh and deep wounds that are layered upon generations of conflict and an even longer history of anti-Semitism. We have a responsibility to speak out and condemn anti-Semitism in all its forms.

This weekend, Israeli Defense Forces have ordered an evacuation of more than one million Palestinians from the northern half of Gaza, a demand that the United Nations describes as “impossible.”[1] We have seen on the news the grief and suffering of the Palestinian people as they contend with hospitals without power, no access to clean water to drink or fuel for vehicles to take people to safety.

The voices of Middle Eastern colleagues and friends from Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt come to mind and their longing for Palestinian refugees and members of Gaza and the West Bank to live in a free and just society.

Right now, hope for peace seems bleak amid escalating violence in Israel and Palestine. What can neighbors—neighbors in Princeton, neighbors from a different faith tradition, neighbors who know and love Jews and Palestinians–what can we do in a time like this?

I think we begin by reminding ourselves that God cares deeply about what is happening right now in our world. God is not indifferent or far off from us. God is grieving with us and calling upon anyone who will listen to join the work of peace.

And the work of peace involves seeing the image of God that lies deeper than the divisions we have inherited for ourselves and our neighbors.

You and I, members worshipping here at Nassau Presbyterian Church, we are not going to resolve the deep political crises and escalating war in Israel-Palestine. And yet the call of the Spirit of God comes to us not to stand apart or pretend that it doesn’t matter to us. Because our Jewish neighbors are grieving. Our Palestinian neighbors are grieving. These are people we know, and work with, and love, and they are in deep pain.

And when someone we love is in pain, we commit to the work of making them feel seen and heard. Like Cornelius and Peter, we can refuse to accept broad assumptions and easy stereotypes about communities that are different from us, and see instead human beings who are beloved by God. We can gather the courage to listen to them, sit beside them in their hurt, and engage in dialogue as friends.

We can do the work of learning about this crisis—its deep history and its current challenges—from respected sources. And when we have done these things, we can find ways to get involved that contribute toward a vision of a just and free society for everyone. Showing up, listening, learning about the crisis, discerning appropriate ways to help… these practices are the beginnings of understanding and solidarity.

As we said before, God doesn’t have any grandchildren, only children. God speaks to people in each generation to bear witness to peace, love, and justice. Maybe God is calling you to participate in God’s story. Not someone else who’s older or wiser or more equipped and you get to tag along, but you. What would it look like to answer?

[1] Steve Hendrix, Louisa Loveluck, et al, “Israel orders 1 million Gazans to evacuate; U.N. says that’s impossible,” The Washington Post. October 13, 2023.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/13/israel-gaza-hamas-war-west-bank/. Accessed October 14, 2023.

Philippians 3:4b-16
David A. Davis
October 8, 2023
Jump to audio

---

A few years ago, the Davises and the Werners were together at McCarter Theater for a concert. That would be Noel, our director of Worship and Arts, and Wendi, my wife Cathy and me. We met for dinner somewhere in town and then headed over to McCarter for a concert that had the cellist Yo-Yo Ma in the billing. We knew that Yo-Yo Ma would not be there. It was a touring concert series that Yo-Yo Ma had something to do with starting. A group of musicians from around the world come together to play instruments and music from around the world. We didn’t really know what to expect. Noel probably did but he didn’t tell us. He didn’t warn us. I don’t really have the vocabulary to describe the music and the experience of listening to it. I can tell you that the bagpipes were amplified. Let’s just say it was a bit of tough slog. At intermission, Cathy remembered that since we had not gone home after work, we both had a car nearby. She leaned over to me and said, “I can’t listen anymore. I’m going home”. I said, “But what about Wendi and Noel?” Cathy said, “They can stay.” With some odd sense of obligation, I guess, I remained for the second set. I arrived home at the end of the concert to find Cathy listening to a recording of Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suites and sipping a glass of scotch. It was a combination of cleansing the palette and affirming that one can never get enough of Bach’s Cello Suites. Cathy sort of saying, “I want more of this!”

The third chapter of Philippians read like the Apostle Paul is sort of saying, “I want more of this!’ And the “this” is Jesus Christ. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection…” Paul. Paul starts with his resume, his CV, his accomplishments, the stripes he has earned, his confidence. “If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more..” But “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection…” “Whatever gains I had, I have come to regard as loss because of Christ…I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…I regard the loss of all things as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…having a righteous not of my own but that comes through the faith of Jesus Christ….I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection…”

Paul’s aspirational longing. “Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own…Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on…I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection…”

            It all sounds so personal. But you will remember that Philippians is a letter from prison to a congregation seeking to be faithful to the gospel. If a congregation is to stand strong in the face of outside pressures contrary to the gospel, if a congregation is able to mend and maintain relationships worthy of Christ, if a congregation is to exhibit a love overflowing more and more, if a congregation is to produce a harvest of righteousness in glory and praise to God, if a congregation is to witness to life in the face of loss and death, if a congregation is going to be able to rejoice in the Lord always, if a congregation is ever, somehow, to have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus…. according to Paul, there has to be this yearning  to know Christ more and more. To know Christ and the power of his resurrection.

Samuel Wells was once the dean of Duke Chapel. When he was there he preached a sermon to the congregation entitled “I Want to Know Christ and the Power of His Resurrection.”  Wells encouraged his listeners “feel the tentativeness of it”….I want to know Christ. The tentativeness of it. The preacher suggested that Paul doesn’t exaggerate his faith or claim the strength of his own faith here but acknowledges that he wants, he needs, he yearns to know more. Wells argued that the tentativeness also shows at the end of the sentence. “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” If somehow…..I want to know Christ and his resurrection.

It is fair to say that the tentative take on Paul here in Philippians is not the common read. The Apostle Paul and “tentative” is not a common pairing. Most preachers and interpreters would go the other way with Paul’s confidence, arrogance, ego strength. As to this verse in Philippians, the favors Paul’s confidence and certainty. “The righteousness that I have comes from knowing Christ, the power of his resurrection, and the participation in his sufferings.” Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase rings the same bell. “I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself.” A way confident Paul. But what about feeling the tentativeness of it. I want to know Christ, that I may come to know Christ, if somehow I can know Christ and the power of his resurrection!

Maybe tentative isn’t the right word. How about aspirational. Aspirational longing. Urgent aspirational longing. Feel the longing. It just makes Paul seem more accessible, more down to earth, more like you and me. Here in this place where we gather for worship and sing God’s praise, and tell of God’s love and point to God’s grace and proclaim God’s faithfulness and speak of God’s justice, all the while wanting, yearning, praying to know Christ more and more, to know Christ and the power of his resurrection….wanting more of that. And wanting it now!

Paul’s urgent aspirational longing in Philippians. It feels different than Paul writing about the future glory to be revealed. “For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is not seen. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Romans 8:24-25) That kind of hope has a longer runaway than wanting to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. Wanting to know more and more now. Yes, Christ Jesus has made us his own. Yes, the only righteousness we have comes not from our own but from the righteous that comes to us in and through the faith of Jesus Christ. And yes, we press on everyday by God’s grace and in the power of the Holy Spirit knowing that nothing and no one can take God’s love away from us. God’s love revealed to us in Jesus Christ. But darn, don’t you want to know more. Need to know more. To know Christ and the power of his resurrection so that we might continue to live for and serve and see and experience the ever present and coming reign of God.

Urgent aspirational longing. It’s a bit different than hope because it is a yearning to know and see Christ’s resurrection power at work in your life and in the world now! Tapping into the strength today you know didn’’t come from you. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”.  Experiencing a peace and contentment today that was far from your own creation. “My peace I give unto you, not as the world gives I unto you.” Rediscovering a purpose and meaning for these days of your life. A fresh sense of being today that helps you to rise above, step away, press on amid the fray, the rat race, the stress, the warrior-like expectations of work and home and life. “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us.”  I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection today!

Like a parent who begs for the college student to text every now and then just “so I know everything is all right.” Is it too much to ask God, for just a glimpse of resurrection power today? Like the teacher who every now and then gets to see the face light up of a student who gains in confidence and understanding. Like the gardener who stands back and admires the beauty of what was planted months ago. Like an athlete on a team during a season of losing. Is it too much to ask, Lord? A win every now then? Some beauty every now and then? Some assurance and understanding? Our urgent aspirational longing, O God. It is know Christ and see the power of his resurrection at work in our lives and in the world!

When word of a diagnosis comes and you’re being flooded with terms you never had to think about before and trying to put together a schedule of tests and appointments in real time and trying to process the weightiest of thoughts and emotions….I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. When you’re being overwhelmed in a semester but simply by the overflowing syllabus but by an intellectual world so full of ideas, concepts and thoughts that can so easily rock the faith formed within you long ago…..I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. When you find yourself there in the pew and the congregation that surrounds you stands yet again to sing of the steadfast love of God and you wonder if you’re the only one in this room with big questions and honest doubts, the only one who feels like you’re just going through the motions…..I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.

When your heart is heavy with grief that never seems to get any better, or your worried for a friend who always seems to have more than a reasonable share of loss, or the number of deaths among your circle of friends or your friends parents continues to mount….when death just seems to be adding up……I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. When it feels to you like the kingdom of God is not only nowhere at hand, but seems to be losing ground in the world and humanity’s efforts result in lack of civility, and poor or no decision making, and just getting along is hopeless and making progress is a joke…….I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection. When you find yourself confronted at work or at school or in the public square or in a random way by the forces of darkness and evil, powers and principalities clearly working against the ways of God, the hair on your neck standing up because the hatred, or the bigotry, or the sin in the room is so palpable……I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection.

The beauty of Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suites is that when you hear it for the first time, it feels like you could listen to it forever. That’s how it is with the resurrection power of Christ at work in life and the world once you’ve witnessed it, experienced it, seen it. There’s this longing, this urgent aspirational longing for more it inn life and in the world.

To know Christ and the power of his resurrection.