Sometimes I wonder…
I’ll tell you, my friends… my brothers and sisters in Christ…
In times like this… I wonder…
I wonder if maybe all those people who have decided to stay home on Sunday mornings might be onto something after all…
Here we are, Sunday after Sunday…
Talking about the old stories…
Digging in this familiar ground, searching for ideas that can give our lives meaning…
Does it do us any good?
Here we are…
Searching for God…
Hoping for God…
Praying to God…
And sometimes…
Sometimes I wonder…
Sometimes, I think, we all wonder…
Where are you, God?
Are you there?
If you think about it, this is the eternal question —
Has there ever been a human being who has not asked this question?
In every time
and in every language… every living person has looked up to the sky and asked
Where are you Lord?
Are you there?
The African men, women and children, ripped from their homes and thrown into the belly of a slave ship — I am sure they asked this question.
With their last breaths, 300 Lakota people asked this question at Wounded Knee,
Thousands of Japanese civilians living in Hiroshima in August 1945…
The Jews who saw the smoke rising from the smokestacks of Auschwitz…
Each of these people asked this question.
Atheists and agnostics ask this question…
People of faith ask this question.
It is a question that must be asked.
Where are you, Lord?
Are you there?
If you measure the year with the calendar that’s on our kitchen wall, today is the first Sunday in September.
It is a time of endings.
The long, lazy days of midsummer are getting shorter…
a time to harvest the basil the parsley,
a time to close the windows up at night;
It is a time of preparation for the long winter ahead…
A time to appraise the size of the woodpile, and see if there is enough cordwood to make it through till Spring…
A time to turn bring the houseplants in from the porch;
A time to pull the comforter from its summer home in the cedar chest,
A time to check the larder to see if the ingredients of winter squash soup are readily at hand.
In these seasonal rituals, I gather comfort.
In the slow turning of the seasons, I am aware of an underlying goodness… a kind of Yankee practicality that seems to live in the very air we breathe, up here in the north country.
This is the quick blood that pulses through the plays of Thornton Wilder, the wind the rustles through the poems of Robert Frost…
Going out, near midnight, to close up the chicken coop, I can see the big dipper reclining in the topmost reaches of the neighbor’s evergreen, and in that deep, dark distance, with its first faint taste of autumn sadness…
I sense your presence Lord…
Are you there?
If you live by the academic calendar at all, you know September as a time of beginnings.
The kids are back!
Look at them as they recognize each other from a distance, crossing the intervening space with a spring in their step…
The boys try to remain cool, but their eyes shine as they give each other high fives…
The girls don’t bother with that pretense. They squeal and jump, trying not to embrace… but failing.
How was your summer!
They can hardly contain themselves as class starts, the teachers trying to create order in a room spilling over with the excitement of being together…
All you can do is smile.
Youth, with all its freshness, all its energy, all its manifest promise and sheer silliness… is all on full display.
Well, not-quite-full-display…
There’s still the mask…
Mask or no mask… Surely you are here, Lord…
Here, where there is so much learning, so much promise… so much life.
Are you here, Lord…
Are you here?
The church’s liturgical calendar is another way to mark the passage of a year. If you pause to observe the top of today’s bulletin, you will see that, if you go by the seasons of the church, today is the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
On this, the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, the scripture reading that is offered up for our consideration is Mark’s gospel version of the story of the syro-phoenician woman.
This story also appears in Matthew where we are given more details about how the interaction takes place. Mark, though, is characteristically short on detail. As a storyteller, Mark was not one to beat around the bush. He only tells you what you need to know.
A woman, who is syro-phoenician, and, according to Mark “a gentile” came to beg Jesus to help cure her daughter.
Jesus rebuffs her, saying “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
To this she replies:
“Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
When Jesus hears this, he says “For saying that, you may go–the demon has left your daughter.
This remarkable interaction shows us something about Jesus…
It shows us that, for Jesus, compassion and faith are far more important than any artificial boundaries created by ethnicity or national origin.
It demonstrates that Jesus — though he is the messiah, has the humility to see when he is wrong, and learn what is right.
If, through the life of Jesus, we learn about God — we learn a great deal from this interaction.
God can learn from a human being.
Is this really what this story is telling us?
That God can learn from a human being?
And not only that…
Not only that…
If you look at this story from the perspective of the syrophoenician woman, we learn that one way to demonstrate to God that you have great faith…
Is to be uppity with God.
If you step back and look at this story with fresh eyes, you can see that the syrophoenician woman’s comeback is really pretty cheeky. She takes what Jesus said, and throws it right back at him.
He might be forgiven for saying something like: “Girl? Are you giving me lip?”
But does he say that?
No.
Jesus compliments her. He rewards her by healing her daughter.
You can be uppity with God…
Really?
You can be uppity with God?
Apparently… It seems that way from this story.
*
On January 11th 2020, the Chinese state media reported a death from a strange new virus.
That means that, if you go by the Coronavirus calendar, September 2021 represents the 21st month of the Corona era.
After such a long tiresome slog, after so many friends and family and sick or lost, we — you and I — who have survived thus far, can be forgiven when we ask:
Where are you God?
Are you there?
Perhaps we can even follow the example of the syrophoenician woman and add a little uppity flourish to our question:
Come on God… what’s the deal? Are you out there or what?
Would it hurt you to show up?
But wait…
Before we get too carried away, there’s something about the story of the syrophoenician woman that I neglected to mention…
The syrophoenician woman was not getting all up in Jesus’ face, for her own benefit. She was being uppity with Jesus for the sake of her daughter…
So hold on.
Its not ok to get uppity with God.
Its ok to get uppity with God, when you are doing it on behalf of someone else.
We learn, once again — just like we learn every Sunday — that God is love.
Get uppity for love! Get uppity with love!
That’s it!
Yesterday, today and tomorrow… now and evermore… uppity love…
Amen