Prospect                                   
Genesis 28:10-19a  

Visions belong to spiritual athletes, no?  Don’t they properly belong to hermits and cloistered religious, vocational mystics and prayer warriors?  Do not these men and women deserve visions because they have succeeded in putting away from themselves the sort of grinding wheels which distract the rest of us?

This Sunday’s Old Testament reading from the Book of Genesis contains just such a vision:    A ladder reaches up into heaven and on it the angels of God move up and down.  Jacob was one of the Old Testament heroes.  It all fits - this saintly man off in a desert.  Unlike us, at least.  Better than us, probably.  The stories leading up to, and following, this vision, however, reveal just what a fractured man Jacob was.  He was a thief and a fraud and a coward.  He is like the comic-book brother-in-law who plays fast and loose with his business, even family business, and who you can just about tolerate over turkey and green bean casserole at Thanksgiving.  

His story in the Book of Genesis will, moreover, do nothing but get worse for a while.  Jacob is, however, part of the story of God’s love to his family and to the world which will ultimately share the faith of Abraham’s children and grandchildren.  Unbidden and certainly undeserved, God grants him the grace of reminding him what part he plays in the restoration of the world.  

You may share no DNA with Jacob’s family and yet he is one of your ancestors in the faith.    Read on.  God wins over Jacob.  The earlier vision comes to bear fruit at the end.
What are the wheels that are grinding for you right now?   If your thoughts on Sunday morning were audible whispers what would we all hear?  How much family business?  How much business business?  What about grudges or complaints about what you lack?  What renders you insecure? What made you angry this morning?  

The life of our worshipping community, the Sunday morning panoply of words, prayers, sermons and songs, the ringing of bells and the elevation of bread and wine in ancient formularies - the midweek fellowship between us - these are moments and occasions of grace.  Do not reject those moments when you are seized by some fleeting glimpse of wholeness and beauty and unimagined possibilities.  Though the wheel continues to grind - be tender, even with yourself.  The vision has a purpose.  God can win you over.

Prospect                                                     
Genesis 22:1-14  

The reading from Genesis 22 - the Akedah or “Binding of Isaac” - is a deeply disturbing piece of Scripture.   The powers-that-be down at Lectionary Central have even graciously provided your Rector with an alternative - should he so desire.  It’s from the Book of Jeremiah and I was tempted to use it since, otherwise, that would make two weeks in a row of heart-rending Patriarchal family politics with potential victims (Hagar - Ishmael - Isaac) seemingly put in harm’s way by God and then rescued in the nick of time.  

The emphasis in our story this Sunday is that God intervenes once again to preserve life. This is true.  
That he first colluded in the expulsion of Hagar and her son Ishmael from Abraham’s camp and that he initially commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son on Mount Moriah is, however, highly problematic.  Soren Kierkegaard wrote an entire essay on the Binding of Isaac (Fear and Trembling) in which he retold the story four different times in order to try and unwind the conundrum with only limited success.

Another point of emphasis is that what we have received in this life is all a gift.  It all belongs to God. It can be given back.  This also is true.

But what of the godly origins of the love which should tie us unequivocally to our children, to our communities and to the vulnerable within them?  Is our ethics and our capacity for loyalty something of merely human origins which God would dispense with in the name of religion - as a quotable example of faith?

I must, of course, refuse to spare you from struggling with this text.  Jesus points back to the Abraham story.  So does St Paul.  It contains motifs of faith, obedience and sacrifice which are the building blocks of the Christian faith and cannot simply be expunged in favour of something more uplifting.  Explaining it neatly away would be a lie.  
 
I didn’t want to be the sort of clergyman who turns hard readings into pabulum.  And so - between now and Sunday - I will struggle to make sense of a difficult text.  

Pentecost 3 - Year A
Proper 7
Genesis 21:8-21 

Among the hymns of my childhood was the one where:

God sees the little sparrow fall, It meets his tender view; If God so loves the little birds,I know he loves me too.  

As a boy I filed this one in the envelope marked "God is very big and can do all sorts of things at the same time" because, while it seemed very good of God to take care of the sparrows of Winnipeg, it was certainly not the BIG STORY which God seemed most concerned about which was obviously the family of Abraham and his descendants - the whole biblical epic which culminated in the ministry of Jesus and then beyond to the evangelization of the world, foreign missions, etc, etc.  
Sparrows were, at best, a sideline.

You remember the story of Hagar, the Egyptian servant of Abraham's wife Sarah?  She was given to Abraham as a surrogate when Sarah was unable to conceive a child.  She was given to him so that the BIG STORY would continue in spite of Sarah's barrenness.  And then Sarah, miraculously, becomes
pregnant herself and so Hagar and Ishmael, her son by Abraham, are cast out of the camp.  The scene in Sunday's reading is poignant: alone and without support, food or water, Hagar lays her boy beneath a tree and retires to a distance so that she will not need to witness the boy’s death.  She lifts up her voice and weeps.  And God hears her.  He points her to the immediate satisfaction of her needs - a well of water - and to a future which had not existed prior to his intervention.

You've been there.  So have I.  

Our particular desperate corners - our crises, our illnesses, our family problems - do not appear to be part of the BIG STORY.  God has more than one script, however and when things appear to be lost, the game to be over and our goose well and truly cooked, we may be heartened by the fact that the testimonies of countless thousands across the history of the Christian faith begin at precisely there - at that moment of imminent or certain loss.  We cry out to the only one who can save us.  Grace is shown to what is small and cast away.  The sparrow.  The marginalized servant woman.  You.  Me

Pentecost                             
Acts 2:1-21 

How do we change the world?  Or do we ever change it?  Maybe the world is a big stony thing which just "is" the way it is.  We adapt to it.  We wiggle around it.  At our worst moments we don a pair of rose colored spectacles and delude ourselves about it.

The Day of Pentecost was a world changing moment for the early Church.  The manifestations of the Spirit's movement - an audible sound of rushing wind and something like tongues of fire which appeared on the heads of each of the praying disciples - were matched by a change within them as they were suddenly equipped to minister within a world which had not, outwardly speaking, changed at all.   Yet threat had now turned immediately to opportunity.  The tendency to keep to themselves and protect the centre was now transformed.  They turned to the world around them - a field ready for the harvest.

The world may be the way it is but the people who live in it can change.  

They can come to themselves.  They can undergo transformation.  They can repent and be restored.  They can renew their commitments.  They can have epiphanies.  

It is the experience of the Universal Church across the centuries that men and women who have been touched by an experience of God do transform the world around them.  Much of what we now take for granted, in terms of structures of care within our societies, began with the spiritual changes which took place in individuals and communities whom God had touched and changed.  The stone dropped into the pond made ripples.  The wind moved the branches.  There was an effect.  It is my pastoral experience as a priest of the Church that the stony and immovable world is a very different place when people develop a sense of purpose and develop a capacity to reach out to it in love.  

The lives of those Pentecost disciples were rarely easy in the years which followed the events recounted in the Book of Acts.  

The world, however, has never been the same.

Prospect                   
Acts 1: 6-14 

Have you ever been nagged?    Has somebody ever asked you more than once to do the very same thing?

The disciples ask Jesus the same question over and over again.  Two disciples on their way to Emmaus (Luke 24:21) had mentioned to their mysterious co-traveler how they “had hoped” Jesus would be the one to “redeem Israel”.  Here in Acts, gathered together with their Saviour, somebody broaches the subject one last time:  “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the Kingdom to Israel”?  Behind the question are, of course, the aspirations of a people who have been long oppressed by foreign powers and are warm to the recurrent myth of a political Messiah - a mighty figure like King David - who would put the foreigners out and restore a purified religion to Israel.  

Jesus response here in Acts is both a no and a yes.  As is so often the case, they have misunderstood the import of Jesus’ work on earth.  Their question is narrow and worldly.  Israel is a means, after all, and not an end.  Will Israel regain political sovereignty or achieve preeminence over its enemies?  That is not the point.  The power that is promised to the disciples is bigger and better than that.  It is altogether different.

It is not, however, a “no”.  In the relatively short term, Jesus will redeem Israel’s task and restore, to a remnant, the heart of Israel’s vocation which is to spread the knowledge of God throughout the world.  By defeating the Romans?  No, in fact, a comprehensive network of Roman roads will be used to spread the Gospel through the words of the witnesses to Christ’s resurrection to the ends of the known world.  The Greek language with which the Romans still communicate with vast swaths of their empire will be the means by which the stories of God’s love are extended throughout that world.  The friendship of God will be preached to the ends of the earth.  It will all work out magnificently.
Much of what we badger God about in our prayers has to do with the restoration of what we think we’ve lost.  Might God not prompt us to look beyond a narrow path of unmet needs and recurrent short-term hopes.

It is a bigger and much broader road which the saints have walked.

Prospect      
John 14:15-21  

With reference to the wind, the poet Christina Rossetti wrote:  

Who has seen the wind?  
Neither you nor I.  
But when the trees bow down their              
heads   The wind is passing by.  

The invisibility of wind - the ordinary insubstantiality of air - is contrasted to its ability to affect and change the environment.  It bends trees, shapes landscape and casts the water up into waves.  Jesus used the image once to good effect with Nicodemus.  The wind has its own origins.   It rises unbidden.   It changes direction.  It blows where it will.  The frustration of Nicodemus is palpable in the face of this metaphor.  He might well have preferred to be told who God is rather than what he is like.  Nothing is given to him which he can control and file away in the way he wants to.  In this week's Gospel reading, Jesus says to his disciples that he

"...will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever." 

He ushers in yet another metaphor - that of the Advocate.  Here again, we are promised something yet still effectively denied the ability to define things with enough precision to control what will happen.  On this Sunday, when we gather as adults and young people at Christ Church to hear the promises of Christ to his people, we might well seek out a word which is clear about what the future will look like for us and for the ones we love best.  What are we getting into?  What will become of us?  What will become of our young people?  What Jesus tells us, instead, is that his people will not be alone.  God will be present to them in his Spirit.  He will intervene for them.  He will give them the words to speak when they need them.  He will stand between them and the consequence of human sin.  He is on their side.

Like the disciples gathered with Jesus at this point, God's people stand together at the beginning of a life of faith.  You are embarking on an adventure.  

Prospect                                       
John 14:1-14


There is a bumper sticker I saw once that said  “The Bible says it, I believe it and that settles it”. 

There are no fewer than 98 instances of the verb “to believe” in John’s Gospel.  There are  invitations, as in this Sunday’s Gospel, to begin to believe.   There are as well, descriptions of individuals and crowds who had, in fact, come to believe over the course of the Gospel.  Where the bumper sticker seems to be describing someone who is the way he is and will remain so forever, belief in the New Testament describes a more dynamic process.  People come to believe because of Jesus.   They change their beliefs about God because of Jesus.   They are forever changed because of something Jesus has said or done.   Something has welled up within them in response. 

It’s a word we use in common language in a number of ways:  “believing that” something is the case is a very different thing than “believing about” or “believing in”.   We tend to be a bit promiscuous about the things we “believe in” - ideas mostly - which we inherited or have come to believe in as a way of making sense of the world and identifying ourselves within it.  Free Enterprise or Universal Health Care or the Brotherhood of Man under the Fatherhood of God - things that are “believed in” tend to sprout capital letters with time.  It is perhaps natural that belief in God or belief in Jesus might be things we file away in the same envelope.  Are these not beliefs which define our families or perhaps, even, our national communities?  From these beliefs “in” something, certain actions and attitudes will proceed which are consistent with such beliefs.  We would like to be consistent in our beliefs.  That may be why we stick bumper stickers on our cars - just in case something new and unclassifiable comes into the room and we forget and change our minds.

And there’s the rub.  Belief in the Gospel leads to departures and changes - not the endless reinforcement of old slogans and the adages we learned at our grandparents’ knees. 

Are we flexible enough?  Are we open enough to believe?

Prospect
Luke 24:13-35

Luke describes events on the road to Emmaus, near Jerusalem, where Jesus broke bread in the midst of two disciples and opened their minds by his exposition of the Scriptures. The downcast disciples were heartened by the encounter and went on their way much improved. A clergy-person might feel tempted to own this scripture passage.

Word and Sacrament? In the space of an hour or so? It's about us, innit?

Don't we strive to be this sort of "point on the journey" for our parishioners? Wouldn't it be great if, on next year's Annual Parochial Return, I was able to report that most our our membership had gone from "Wandering Uncertainty and Deep Perplexity" (line 6) to "Blessed Assurance, Expectation and Commitment to Living the Resurrection Life" (line 8)? Alas, I do not think Saint Luke is plotting out the shape of a perfect church service or a parish's program year. Yet there is an important point to glean herein.

Jesus is inordinately interested in what the disciples are already talking about. He asks them about it.: "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?" He is more interested in them than we are, oftentimes, in our own people. Where did we develop the bad habit of treating the visitor, the new member or the "passer-through" as a bank slate - a tabula rasa, if you will - upon which we impose the indisputable goodness of the creeds, the Mass, John 3:16, the happy life of our parish, bells, hymns, incense or the compelling brown eyes of the Rector?

A shining light of revelation which dismisses human concerns, hopes, griefs, joys, errors and aspirations and takes them off the table with one sweep of the arm is a truly limited affair in the Bible. You don't find much of that. Most of the encounters God has with people are genuine conversations. We already know that the years of struggle or inner turmoil which precede our own healthy forward steps are not negated when we do, in fact, step forward. They are a part of the process. We may be better off afterwards but we are still the struggling person God met when he or she was still struggling.

He reasoned with us over time. He met us on the road. This is evidence of love and it made the next part possible. 

Prospect            
John 20:1-18                                                                          

What have you witnessed?  

It's the sort of question a police officer or a judge might someday require of you - that you describe, audibly or in writing, the details of what you have seen or heard at a particular time and place.  Memories play tricks and entropy takes its toll even on recall.  Sometimes it takes the collected memories of a series of witnesses before the real story can be reconstructed or the reliable core of the story can be established.

Know this, though:  a small number of disillusioned and failed followers of an itinerant prophet from Nazareth were transformed, in a very short time, into agents of hope.  They transformed their world and went on to refashion ours.  Resurrection not only "was" something - with reference to God's raising of Christ on the third day - but it "meant" something.   We know its reality not only in the collecting of testimonies from the four Evangelists but by the history of what followed.  

When you throw a stone into the centre of a pond the ripples travel out to the edges.  Truth is spoken to the powerful by humble people who, seemingly, have no fear.  The great persecutor of the early church becomes one of its chief apostles and advocates.  The boundaries which separate the wealthy from the poor, the Jew from the Gentile, fade away.  God has not only raised Christ from the dead, he has raised us as well.  This power over death and meaninglessness is extended to the lives which we lead.

What the disciples saw, and heard and touched with their own hands will be the subject at hand this Sunday.  That is only the beginning.  The Sunday readings between now and the day of Pentecost move into what this unique event means for his followers.  Christ in his resurrection is "the first fruits" of a harvest to come.  "Christ is risen....and so.....".  What has happened now to you (and what will happen in the future) is part of the story.

The invitation to live abundantly has been extended to us as well.

Prospect
Matthew 26:14-27:66

This Sunday we will distribute the reading of the Passion Narrative of St Matthew's Gospel amongst various readers.  It's not because we can find no one energetic enough to do the whole thing him/herself.   Nor is it the Rector's latest collectivist plot to distribute work and privileges across the widest possible community of people.  It is simply a very old tradition that the historical participants in the Passion of our Lord were people like us and that we should reflect our own involvement in the story - even our own implication in the events surrounding the betrayal, the denial and the crucifixion of Christ.

Odd?  A bit of a downer? It has been one of the darker sides of Christian history that we wonder aloud whose fault it was that Christ was betrayed, denied, rejected and crucified.  We divide up characters into friends and enemies - distribute white hats and black hats.  It was the Romans, it was the High Priest, it was the Jews, it was Judas.  Those whose misfortune it has been, across the years, to be at odds with an ascendent Church, a Christian prince or at odds with whichever faction of the Church was doing the choosing found themselves cast in the role of those deserving punishment from below and from above.

It has provoked, historically, violence by Protestants against Catholics, by Catholics against Protestants, by Christian rulers and ordinary Christian townsmen against Jews, by Crusaders against Muslims - the list goes on....  Who today would we cast into the role of Christ's enemy?

The Gospel writers are at pains to express to us how Jesus was essentially alone at the time of his crucifixion.  His mother and St John are present but the rest of his coterie are soldiers and thieves.  The Galilean Springtime is over.  The happy crowds which accompanied him through the gates of Jerusalem have scattered.  Judas has betrayed him, Peter has denied him.  The other disciples are laying low.  The Gospel writers, in the power of the Holy Spirit, look across the ages at us to let us know that it is human nature which conspired against God's work and effected these events.  The story continues to be the story of what God has himself done on behalf of a guilty humanity.  It is not the story of a few who were discovered, in the end, to be virtuous.

And so we take our parts.  We are that disciple who betrayed his master and snuck out into the night.  We are that disciple who denied his Saviour, not once but three times.  We are the crowds who were there one moment and then nowhere to be seen when the fancy struck them.  We are that mid-level Roman bureaucrat who cynically put expediency above right.  It is not them.

There is no them.
It is us.
We are Pilate, Judas and Peter.
We are the crowds.
This Sunday we take our parts.

Prospect           
John 11:1-45      

There is a pious legend that Lazarus, after Jesus raised him from the tomb where he'd lain for four days, never smiled again during the thirty years he remained alive on the earth.  It had something to do, apparently, with the imprisoned souls he'd seen in Hades while he was there.

The story of Lazarus' rescue from the grave is the final of a list of seven "Signs" which Jesus accomplished in the course of his earthly ministry as John relates it in his Gospel.  From the changing of water into wine in the second chapter to the raising of Lazarus in the eleventh, the Gospel is doing the opposite of what we used to do in Primary School when we were small.  Our activity was called Show and Tell.  We would bring some physical object into the class and then tax our vocabulary and narrative skills by telling the other boys and girls what the thing was.  John, in the Prologue, which we are possibly most familiar with from services of Midnight Mass or the end of Nine Lessons and Carols, tells us, right at the beginning, that Jesus is Word, light, power and love.  

We have the telling first.  

What follows in the Gospel are the signs - the showing that this is indeed so.

We carry the narrative of salvation with us.  These are words and stories which we know, if not by heart, then in the back of our minds.  Occasionally when reading or referring to a particularly well known Scripture in church on Sunday I see your lips move.  I know you know them.   In these seven signs, but even more so in the evidence of the testimonies of men and women across the ages, God takes these words and makes them flesh.  Water becomes wine, the sick are made whole, the outcast is welcomed in and the impossible task is accomplished.  

Prospect        
1st Samuel 16:1-13     

Seven sons of Jesse the Bethlehemite are each paraded before the prophet Samuel and no, it appears that none of them is quite right.  God himself had told the prophet to anoint, as King, the one that he would point out from among Jesse's sons.  The passage from 1st Samuel relates an ongoing interior conversation between God and Samuel as the boys each walk by:  

"No, not that one - and not that one.  Still no joy - this isn't him either."  

Jesse is unaware of Samuel's deeper purpose.  He simply presents seven of his eight sons to a visiting prophet - a great man - who has paid them the honor of a visit.    Jesse brings out the cream of his crop: strong boys - articulate and presentable.  David, the eighth son, could reasonably be kept out of sight in a supporting role.  After all, somebody needs to cover the chores and duties of his older brothers. It is this forgotten eighth son who Samuel eventually calls for.

As a group, all three readings for this Sunday take discernment as their theme - either the choice in discerning a forward path or the wisdom in discerning why things work out the way they do.  It's Lent: We'd do well to ask ourselves why we make the decisions we do and set the priorities we live by.  How do we make decisions for ourselves and for others?  How do we listen to God?  Do we, in fact, have that many options about how to conduct our lives?  

We would be challenged, by this first reading from the Old Testament, to ask ourselves what we do not put on the table when we chart a forward path.  What do we discount because of prejudice?  What do we forget or neglect to mention because of shame?  Our friends and our enemies are both curious about the things we avoid in conversations.  Employers will always ask specifically about items we gloss over on our CV.  Try as we might to avoid the subject, our parents will always identify the one bit of homework which hasn't been done.  That's what's important.  That's what piques their interest.
The Old and New Testament are shot through with stories of God doing great things by using, as his starting point, what has been forgotten, neglected, overlooked, avoided, scorned or fibbed about.  The raw material for your next step may already be on your person.  You shouldn't be surprised to find it in your back pocket..

Prospect 
John 4:5-42 

The conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well is an unusual conversation.  
Jesus is, first of all, not on his home turf.  Traveling from Judea in the South to Galilee in the North he could easily have skirted Samaria - as pious travelers frequently did if they were concerned about coming into contact with something or someone which would render them unclean.  Jesus takes the short route and ends up in a Samaritan town called Sychar at high noon.  

He is out of place - a solitary Jew in a Samaritan village with his disciples gone off on an errand.  A woman shows up at noon to draw water at the local well.  The woman in the story is also out of place. This is an unusual time for her to be doing this sort of thing.  Her contemporaries had all been by the well the cool of the morning.  It might indicate someone who was disorganized in her household habits or, as is mostly likely the case, somebody who was sincerely hoping not to bump into anyone she knew.  Women talked when they were together at the well.  The woman in our story has a chaotic life story.  Other women  at the well might have talked about her.

Jesus doesn't care that she is a Samaritan.  He doesn't even seem completely perplexed by her complicated personal history.  He asks her for a drink of water.  She rambles on - nervous and bemused at being spoken to by a stranger.  She's even prepared to enter into an ecumenical discussion about the differing practices and holy places of the Jews and the Samaritans.  Jesus dismisses these bluffs and platitudes as religious nonsense.   He proceeds to tell her exactly who she is and who he is and what might ensue should she ever come to her right mind and ask him for the gift of life - summed up in his words about Living Water.

So many of the transforming moments in both the Old and New Testaments occur when the comfortable safety of stable and respectable life is either lost or set aside.  The character in a biblical story about transformation is more than likely to be a wanderer, a prisoner, an expatriate, a social outcast or a solitary seeker.  

You might not seek such a life for yourself.  If it is thrust upon you, however, take heart.

Unaccustomed times and places are putty in God's hands.  

A Liberal Application of Ashes

Are they for everyone - this plate of dirty ashes on my desk?  Some of us don't need to be reminded that life is short and human nature flawed.  I'm seeing, right now, the faces of those I know to be struggling with the deathward stance their lives have taken.  They are beset by acute or chronic illness or are enduring the death of a primary relationship.  They have found themselves sidelined in their employment or vocation.  They are caught up in their own or somebody else's deep moral flaw.  They find themselves burdened by the emotional weight of jobs in which, frankly, they've seen too much.  What more could their parish priest possibly add as he advances upon them this evening at the beginning of an Ash Wednesday service with a black and dripping thumb:  

Roger, you are dust.  To dust you shall return.  Thank you, Father, I knew that.

If the gesture were an assault upon stupidity or shallowness then this would only apply to a narrow slice of humanity who could, I suppose, be especially invited to a service confected just for them - in the ascendent at work, regulars at the gym, perfect children and a perfect house, devoid of questions, doubts or depth.  A liberal application of ashes accompanied by words reminding them of the shortness and uncertainty of human life might, I imagine, provide a theological vessel into which future experiences of failure and contingency could be poured.  But only once these things had happened and once they could be believed.

No, I would submit that these ashes are for everyone - even for the majority of us who are reasonably well but who have been around the block.  They represent something other than the Church's presumption that people aren't aware how life's building blocks are pretty basic stuff - oil and carbon scraped off at the end with a little fluff and lemon juice.  Instead of being bad news about the lives we lead, though, they point us to the value of those lives by providing a frame.

The artist painting a picture of the Puy de Dome or the Pentland Hills or the Mostar Bridge does not have the liberty of including in his painting everything to the infinite right or left, to the utter east or west.  The painting has a frame which defines what the subject most definitely is and ensures that it is not some other thing.  Without its frame life is, at best, undefined.  We are dished out a certain amount.  In the bottom of the bowl is our meat and veg.  Our portion, generous or slender, is not infinite.

It is my experience of people, in the wake of a funeral, that they feel disturbed.   The immediate loss is in the process of being digested and understood.  But beyond any feelings of sympathy or empathy for the family of the deceased and beyond even the loss of somebody loved and valued, there is a nagging recognition of life's ticking clock.  Have the requisite colours been added to my painting - here in this 56th year of life?  What about the broken relationships which have never been mended?  What about the phone conversation not initiated or the letter unwritten?  What about the vow to straighten up?  What about the youthful promise to be courageous?  What about the midlife determination to recover that courage?  Having thrown our handful of earth into the grave we brush the dust from our hand as we walk back to the car.   We return from the Ash Wednesday service and wipe the smudge off our forehead with a soapy washcloth.  

We are the living.   We are the mostly healthy.  We have years left to us and, while there is still time, we have the means to value better what we have within our frame and within our bowl.  A sharp message about life's meagre span grants us the gift of a lifetime.

Prospect                                                                           
Matthew 4:12-23  

 The broken down houses in the village of Bethsaida at the north end of the Sea of Galilee highlights the loneliness of the place.  It's been abandoned for centuries - this town of Andrew and Peter and James and John.  Everyone has gone.  One of the lonely houses here has been identified as the House of Zebedee the fisherman - marginally bigger and perhaps more prosperous than the neighboring buildings.  In fact, one of the loneliest characters in the New Testament must certainly be "old Zebedee" himself in this week's reading from Matthew's Gospel.    

 Zebedee began his day in a boat by the Sea of Galilee with his two sons James and John.   He finished it alone after the two boys stepped out over the gunwales onto the beach and became followers of Jesus.  They formed part of a coterie of men and women following Jesus who proved a disruption to their extended families, who broke out of their niches in village hierarchies, who disappointed their parents and who ceased to function within their guilds and syndicates.  As such they wasted an education and abandoned whatever promotions they had received to this point.  Nothing was ever the same again.  Not for them.  Not for their families.

 They might have been called quitters or splitters or leavers.  Someone out there, no doubt, considered them an utter waste of space.

 Now old Zebedee has no one to fish with.   That's a shame.  It's not by accident that the reader feels the poignant loneliness.   He could not possibly have been made to understand that his sons had left something good for something better.  His boys were simply up and gone.

     These opening chapters of the Gospel are about exciting times - Jesus is calling together his band of followers.  We are here reminded that we can start again in the midst of life - that the call of Christ comes to those who already have a history - that there are none of us nailed into place.

But every "turning to" is a "turning away" and every "yes" is a "no".  How many doors have you shut in your lifetime?  And do you regret these departures?  In your cleaving to Jesus, in your excitement about his words and your recognition of the compelling part of his character which seemed to call you out directly, were you at all conscious that you were leaving something behind?

 Did you hear the door click?

Prospect   
Matthew 1:18-25    
                                                                                      
There are so many people in the Christmas story.  

The combined tea towels and pillow cases of several families would scarcely cover all the shepherds and angels needed to complete the cast of a Christmas Pageant.  Nor is it all nineteenth century invention either, like so many of our Christmas traditions.  There are, in fact, a lot of characters in the stories from Luke's and Matthew's Gospels.  Some of them are mere bystanders, only incidental to the main action.  Others play a central role, enabling (or perhaps even trying to impede) the main action of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us.

When Tony Jordan, a writer of popular British television, was tasked with writing the screenplay for the BBC's take on the Nativity in 2010 he struggled with the tradition which dressed all these extra characters in "big square beards with sackcloth wrapped around them".  Early television and movie renditions of the Nativity story merely fitted them in where there was space - like we might arrange a set of crib figures, shepherds and Wise Men on a too-small coffee table.

Looking for "the story within the story" he struggled with the characters of "the others" for weeks.  
Late one night, bleary-eyed and with an overflowing ashtray, he came to the realization that the other characters, major and minor roles, were important *exactly because* the son of God came for them - "for you" says one of the angels to a shepherd on a hillside in Jordan's screenplay - this all happened for you.    

And so, as we do every year, we take our place in the tableau.  We read somebody else's words and recount deeds and events which took place during this or that Census in the eastern end of the Roman Empire a long time ago.  We may play the role of one of the major or minor characters in the story, or read the words of the Prophet Isaiah or St John the Evangelist from the lectern, but that's not who we are.  We live here and now, caught up in the lives and relationships we know so well.  

We are us.  All these things took place and were accomplished for us and for others like us.

Prospect 
Philippians 4:4-6                                                                                        

Rejoice in The Lord always.  Again, I say, rejoice.  

This Sunday is called Gaudete Sunday and the candle in the Advent wreath will be pink instead of the usual purple.  So why?

Advent and Lent are easily mixed up.  In both seasons there are serious reflections about the path humanity is taken and the need to return to the straight and narrow.  Lent (in the period leading up to Easter) is more strictly a penitential season where Advent (leading up to Christmas) the emphasis is placed more on expectation and anticipation rather than sorrow and regret.  
Instead of ruminating about our shortcomings we are asked pointedly about our hopes.  
The traditional Introit sung at the beginning of the service of Holy Communion in churches across the ages took as its text the words of St Paul in Philippians 4:4

Gaudete in Domino semper:  iterum dico, Gaudete  

Rejoice in The Lord always:  Again, I say rejoice!    
  
The future is an unknown terrain.  It contains all the necessary transformations which might spell trouble for us -  loss, change and uncertainty.  But it contains everything which could be the making of us as well.  How we look at the future is important and Paul in Philippians 4:4-6 prescribes rejoicing as the proper stance.  Rejoice!  Rejoice that God is in that future, and that love is there as well - community, friendship and new projects.

This Sunday we are saying goodbye to three of our key parishioners - David, Kathy and Sara - all of whom have been important members of our parish and our community of friends.  We feel and will continue to feel their loss.  They, themselves, have no certain knowledge of what awaits them but we have more than enough reason to suspect that in their future too, God will be there and love as well - community, friendship and new projects.

The same congregation which will witness the departure of these old friends with our blessings will include families who are only now beginning to find their way among us as a Christian family.  We still confuse their children's names after many weeks.  The shoes that David, Kathy and Sara leave behind them will, in time, be amply filled by others.  

The candle is pink because the future which is dawning is good.  
Rejoice!  God will take care of us.    

Prospect
Romans 15:4-13

Paul tells his readers in this week's reading from the Epistle to the Romans that a backward glance into Israel's scriptures should give them reason to hope for the future.  If they keep their eyes open to what is presently happening around them in a church which is bringing together elements of society which had previously been at enmity into one fellowship in Christ, they should again have reason to hope for what is to come.

So to where the risk lies:  to the unseen future.  Paul launches into a blessing at the end of the passage.

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,
so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."

Belief here is not mere credulity.  Not all whims and hungers will magically be provided for.  You've never promised your own children that.  When you usher your grown children into the world, with some assurance that things will be well, you are not telling them that nothing will ever go wrong.  You are telling them, hopefully, that they now know enough to find their way through.  And that the ideals they have gleaned from the communities of their childhood are valuable.  Most importantly, they are portable.  They can be exercised in new circumstances and within new communities long after grandparents, parents, parish priests and teachers have gone to their reward.  The past and the present prepare us for the future.

So, too, with Paul's description of hope, but with an added dimension.   Yes, those who desire to be numbered among the servants of the living God can harvest from the past and the present exactly what is needed to take the next step in a new direction.  But God, through the power of his Holy Spirit, also walks along with his Creation and moves within the human family he is drawing to himself.

All of the "fear nots" of the Gospels are here present - that whole history of faith which stretches back to Abraham.  We are a part of that history.  What he has done in the past, he will do again.



 

Prospect 
Psalm 122  

"Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity with itself"  

If you've ever been to Jerusalem you know that the countryside is divided with high walls.  Unity?  How accurate is that today?  Was it accurate during the 20th century, maybe, or during the days of the Ottoman Empire?  How about the Crusades or the dying days of the Roman Empire?  How about the time of Jesus?  Go back even further:  Add the Persians to the mix or the Babylonians.  

You might hold out for some shred of glory and unity in the days of David or Solomon, but I suspect that even a cursory reading of the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings moves more in the direction of Jerusalem being a place of intrigue, energy and turmoil.  Civic and religious unity in the Holy City?  Possibly not.

I can attest to the fact, though, that the city is alive this day with pilgrims.  From all countries in the world men and women meander through the groups of soldiers in east Jerusalem on their way to places which stand, for them, as symbols of wholeness, unity and transformation.  What do they see that the news media doesn't?

We are perhaps looking for the wrong thing. The reality of the world always appears to contrast with the reconciliation God promised to Abraham and with what the prophets saw in their visions. What Mary proclaimed in the Magnificat and what John the Baptist foretold is not negated by the humanity of Jesus and the initial rejection of his message by many. With such a vision of unity (with God and between people) in the heads of faithful people, schools and hospitals are built, sinners are forgiven, strangers are welcomed, the poor are provisioned and nations are evangelized. These are as incontrovertible a series of facts as any disaster on the front page of the newspaper.

We are in the business - you and I, John the Baptist, Mary and King David - of seeing "into things" and not merely describing what has hit us on the head.

Keep your eyes open.  Act on the vision!

Proper 27 - Year C

Haggai 1:15b-2:9 

A project manager?  Of course!  A couple of good hammer-and-nail men?  Even better!  But why would you need a prophet on a building site?  Maybe so God can be heard saying something to the people like the following:

“The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts.  The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts.”  

This line from the prophet Haggai, beloved of stewardship preachers across the ages, comes from the mouth of one of the Minor Prophets.  Along with his contemporary Zechariah and the prophet Malachi (who lived a generation afterwards) Haggai prophesied to the nation following the return of the Jews from Babylon and during the period of their rebuilding and reestablishment in the land of their fathers.  This week’s reading from Haggai is significantly enriched by reading the events recorded in Ezra chapters 3-6 but particularly from chapter 4 on.  After having received permission and encouragement from the Persian King Darius himself for the rebuilding of the Temple, and having seen the emergence of capable leaders, Zerubbabel and Jeshua, it was the people themselves who began to lose heart and to listen to those voices within and around them which suggested that failure was inevitable.  

Momentum was lost and doubts abounded.

Enter the preacher - the prophet:  What Haggai does here is to remind the people that the resources they need to complete their work and to fulfill their destiny as God's people in the land never really were locked up in the hand of their adversaries after all.  Nor were these cut off from reaching their destination because of the logic of the balance sheet.  The needed resources - in this case silver and gold - were given into the earth by God and God can release them for his purposes.  

Let the adversaries think they control them, then.  God will shake those nations up.  Let the balance sheet say what it will.  The chief weapon in God's hand is his word and the retelling of his mighty acts in the past.  The proper response to God's promise, spoken through the prophet, is courage.  

The project will move forward when the hearts of men and women are turned.

Sermon notes on Luke 19:1-10

Proper 26 - Year C

Luke 19:1-10

People who have been bullied over the years may become bullies and abusers themselves.  The Gospel writer tells us that Zacchaeus was a “chief tax collector”.  Luke is here describing a nasty man in nasty employment.  “Tax farming” was standard practice in Jesus’ time and the job of collecting taxes was outsourced to men who were thugs or who at least had thugs in their retinue.   Of course they added a percentage for themselves.  They were opportunists and bullies in the pay of oppressive powers (the Romans in Judea or the Herodians in the Galilee).  

It might come as no surprise then, given my opening statement, that St Luke further describes Zacchaeus as being “short in stature” - “a wee little man” as the children’s song goes.  One could editorialize the whole episode and see a lifetime’s worth of  payback against his own community - the slow working out of a well-developed grudge.  He remains an outsider but now a powerful and dangerous outsider.  

The story hinges around Jesus’ shouted command to Zaccheus up a Sycamore tree, where he listens to the sermon from a safe but privileged vantage point.  “Zacchaeus!”, Jesus shouts.  “Come down!”.  The community’s (and perhaps the reader’s) expectation is that Jesus will now confront and damn the unloveable traitor and exploiter of the people.  Charismatic leaders do that with bullies - they confront them.  Win or lose they will not leave them unchallenged.  

Jumping to the end of the story, one finds the onlookers robbed of a bloody confrontation and a satisfying denouement.  Jesus’ words to Zacchaeus are a form of confrontation but one which leaves the hated man unbloodied.  There has been no fatal blow.   The “righteous” expectations of the community are unsatisfied.  

What does it mean to be confronted by love, convicted by kindness, bowled over by opportunity or bashed over the head by a second chance?    Any other response on Jesus’ part would merely have confirmed Zacchaeus in his distance from God.  Jesus appears to be interested in change more than he is in damnation.  This interest in the “lot of sinners” is the tax collector’s only hope.   It is the only hope of the gathered onlookers in this story.   It is also the only hope of the contemporary readers of my imperfect retelling of this story.  Our interest in the perfect justice of God might be ideological or even theological.  Our interest in his blessed mercy is intensely personal.

Sermon notes on Joel 2:23-32

“I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh!”

So God speaks through the prophet Joel to communities which have struggled to force a harvest from their fields with little rain. So he speaks to people who have barely been able to retain a sense of vision and purpose in times which are hard - both politically and spiritually. It will all come to pass. The times will be good again.

This time of restoration, with fields bearing the full weight of heavy heads of grains, with sons and daughters fit for prophecy and with old men (and presumably old women) seeing into the depth of things with wisdom and insight has always, in the Christian tradition, been seen in light of the gift of God’s spirit on the day of Pentecost.

First of all the gift is given - it is not confected through human effort and cunning plans. It arrives in God’s good time.

Secondly - the gift is poured upon ordinary human flesh: Ordinary humans - with the rustic abilities common to their humanity - find that their ordinary speech now wins over nations and convinces individuals. Hospitality - rather than being the simple ability to set a table and provide a roof - becomes a spiritual gift.

The Church has always had a table set in its midst.

Our sons and daughters and our old people: Note how those of us who consider themselves at the apex of their abilities as wage earners, parents, movers and shakers are here reminded that God spreads his talents far and wide and that we must look to the edges of our family - to youth and to elderly people to see what God is doing next.

The reading from Joel is both thrilling and humbling - a reasonable foretaste of the Advent season where we will marvel at how God uses whom he wills to bring about the transformation of the created order.





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Sermon notes on Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7. For expats everywhere

Interesting, isn't it, that God (through the prophet Jeremiah) does not say to the exiles in Babylon that they have been merely hard-done-by and captured by an evil King. He tells them that he, God, is the one who has sent them into exile there. These would have been bitter words for them to hear. They might have wanted more sympathy.

Last week we heard the words of the Psalmist (Psalm 137) from the same epoch asking "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" This week the question is answered.

God says: You will take your sojourn in Babylon seriously. It's where you live now. Your health depends on the health of the city and your prosperity on its prosperity. Allow your family life to be touched by the community you live in and extend your own hand upon your surroundings as well. Let genuine relationship flourish.

Above all pray for the city in which you live and lift up its life to God.

France is not Babylon. America, Canada and Great Britain are not the promised land. One should hesitate to make too direct a comparison between our world and the Biblical world we happen to be reading about. Nonetheless we ought to examine which reflections herein might apply to us:

1) While there are accidents of history (work or family necessities) which move us hither and thither we are involved, as people of God, with a Creator, Redeemer and Inspirer who has always uprooted and replanted his people. He does it for their good and he does it for the good of the world he sends them into. It should not surprise you that you are here with a purpose.

2) The world in which we feel like aliens or visitors is a beautiful world. God wants something for it and you are a partner in that work. You - and not someone else. Here - and nowhere else.

3) Even the symbols which God, through his prophet, recommends - the building of houses, planting of gardens and the contracting of marriages - may mean something for us. What is the visible sign we do, or could, exhibit which shows that we want to belong to the society in which we are presently living?

At the very least let us be curious about this and consider it.



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Proper 20 - Year C
Luke 16:1-13

This parable stumps rather a lot of people. Jesus seems to be praising a manager who plays fast and loose with his employer's money. I believe it makes the most sense when the character of the Dishonest Steward is set alongside the characters introduced in last Sunday's lectionary reading:

- A shepherd has lost a sheep and must search for it.

- A homemaker of modest means loses a valuable coin and must spend her day looking for it because she is poor.

- A king, who has committed himself to waging war, is outnumbered and outgunned by an opposing army and must sit down with his foreign minister and figure out what peace negotiations might look like.

I can put this character of the Dishonest Steward shoulder to shoulder with these three individuals and make the greatest sense of this difficult story while squinting only a little bit.

Jesus seems to be plumbing the depths of human behavior in individuals facing threats. In a world where a thing of value risks being forever lost, the human organism rebounds with great energy to face the threat. The shepherd combs the valleys, the woman sweeps out her house, the king sits down to settle his dispute and the Dishonest Steward fiddles the books. Faith's analogue, then, would be this rising up of the organism in the face of disaster - girded for action, thinking quickly on his or her feet and unwilling to take no for an answer.

Jesus poses questions to his followers: Are you willing to follow me? Will you forsake family for me? Will you drink the cup which I drink? Will you leave the confines of your religious subset? Will you endure the scorn of your friends for doing so? If you are serious you will not allow the opportunity of following to pass.

What, then, would the faith of such followers look like? Well, Jesus says, you'll find it in a plethora of ordinary human dynamics. Take this woman, for example - this shepherd, this King or even this steward. See how ordinary people clutch this valuable thing like it was their last and only hope.

Such a valuable thing is God's Kingdom. Such a clutching is the faith of the Church.

---------------

An older sermon on the same text (and with some of the same conclusions) can be found here.

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Proper 18 - Year C
Pentecost 16
Luke 14:25-33


The word “decide”, coming to us from Old French and beyond that from Latin, means to cut something (caedare) off (de) - hence, decaedere. It means to fall on one side of an ambiguity by turning away from the other option. There’s that poem by Robert Frost you read in school about the diverging paths in a forest. If you are a truly decisive person, you will have any number of roads behind you which were not taken and travelled.

It depends what you want. As a salesman, in this week’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus seems not to want to make a sale at all costs. He reminds us, his hearers, that we can have what we want. If we want him, however, and to be a member of the Kingdom which he is ushering in, there will be a cost to that decision. Jesus does not cajole them (or us) with false promises. He doesn’t anesthetize them (or us) with respect to the risks and the costs. He wants us to decide.

Some of us spend rather a long time in those woods looking at the two paths and even attempting to place a foot on each without doing ourselves an injury. We will need to say our “yes” and our “no” to something if we ever hope to get anywhere. We need to come to terms with the fact that decisions are costly.

Being husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, members of a local church and members of God’s Kingdom requires of you a positive affirmation of the life that goes along with that. You might have been surprised at what these roles required - but you suspected all along that there would be a cost.

All your pursuits - your jobs, your family roles, your engagement with the world and your fellowship in this parish church - require, as a first step, not an immediate application of work and energy but, rather, the answer to that nagging question about what you want. Disfunctions may stem less from our lack of native ability than they do from a lack of positive desire. Do you want any of these things enough to walk out of the woods and follow the path?

Jesus puts it plainly: It’s up to you. What do you want?





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Proper 6 - Year C
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 7:36-8:3
(cf. Matt 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9 and John 12:1-8)


This Sunday's Gospel takes three slightly different forms in Matthew and Mark and Luke and a completely alternate retelling in John's Gospel:

A woman of ill-repute breaks into a dinner party made up of worthy people. She anoints Jesus with costly and fragrant ointment and weeps. The onlookers are aghast that Jesus should allow someone so sullied to have physical contact with him or (in Mark and Matthew's version) that expensive ointment has been so extravagantly wasted.

Is it only my imagination or do notorious sinners secretly save things up: money in numbered accounts or bodies buried somewhere?  It seems to me that they accumulate people.   They gather confederates to keep their secrets and friendly policemen to turn a blind eye. They keep a pot of expensive perfume at home to make their world smell better. They save up alibis or excuses which they rehearse. They must even convince themselves. They collect a series of routes home which bypass the people who know them and could denounce them. In the long run the lies they tell to hide their misdeeds become complicated and interlocking and hard to maintain.

Even those who may not consider themselves particularly notorious sinners will recognize this accumulated burden which they bear around in secret upon their shoulders. It may all become too much - as it did for this woman who, one day, decides to end the pretense. She hears the buzz in the market that Jesus is in her neighborhood and will be eating with Simon the Pharisee at his house. She knows the place and that Jesus is a perceptive prophet. There she will be known and exposed. She will come clean.

 It will all come pouring out.

When we love, testify or confess we spread our riches about. We empty our account. And rather than leaving us bereft, the perfume fills the room. Until this point the road has always carried us away from community, away from friendship and away from confident commerce with strangers. Jesus’ very presence can coax us from the tree where we've been hiding, up from the beggar’s corner that has been our lot in life - into community, into friendship and into forgiveness.






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The Second Sunday of Easter - Year C

John 20:19-31

God takes his time with us.

He converses rather a long time with Abraham about his plans for his family.  He reasons with Moses, he endures the complaints and the expressions of uncertainty from the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah.

And so it should come as no surprise, when Thomas sets the challenge that he will not believe until he himself sees the marks of the nails in Jesus' hands and the wound in his side, that Jesus should condescend to appear to the doubtful disciple to clear the matter up.

God desires faith from his people.  Given that all the best things in life are invisible - love, purpose, community - we will not avoid having to, at various points in our life, throw our efforts and our actions behind things we cannot see or quantify. Them's the breaks! 

In order to live lovingly or courageously we need to take a leap of faith.  Otherwise we'd never marry or have children or aspire beyond a small enclosure of assured results.  It would be poverty.

But it hurts a bit - the uncertainty.  We can foresee the possibility of abject failure. 

While God desires such faith from us - in particular our faith in the one he has sent to be a bridge between himself and his creatures - the faith he requires of us is not blind.  We will, I believe, look back upon our years and recognize those moments when God drew near to us in our weakness and made such belief possible and reasonable.  We were not left simply to figure it all out for ourselves.

Doubt is not the absence of faith.  Faith comes in response to hearing the Gospel proclaimed and it is the fruit of a long conversation in which God stirs the pot - filled as it is with the fears and doubts which are proper to human beings.  Faith is the response which issues when the doubts have been discussed and disclosed.

As it was with Abraham.  As it was with Moses and the prophets. As it was with Thomas.

Sermon Notes

John 2:1-11

When the wine ran out at the Wedding at Cana, Mary turned to Jesus and told him about it.  

Folks are a bit divided on whether Our Lady was among the angels at this point in the story.  Was she, knowing who her son was, simply letting him know that he would need to intervene in this unfortunate turn of events - or was she was doing what we all have a tendency to do when an over-planned event reveals a fatal glitch.  We comment out of one side of our mouth to the person sitting next to us:

"They missed that detail, didn't they?"  

The technical term is schadenfreude.  Its not a pretty thought. Come to think of it, it's not even a very pretty word.

Its all quite accurate, though.  The emperor truly has no clothes, the diva does have a busted zip at the back of her dress, and the preacher did, in fact, forget his notes.  All these aspired to great things while being, essentially, quite ordinary and fallible.  The Scots have a particularly memorable phrase which sums up such a state of affairs:

"Fur coat and nae knickers"

But do try to be both humble and bold.  It is no credit to the Gospel that we fail to reach beyond our abilities.  

We will continue to ask, undeserving as we are, for our Lord to involve himself in our lives' projects, which are the best we can produce given who we are - overreaching and too big for our boots.   As a congregation here at Christ Church, Clermont-Ferrand, our services will contain moments of confession where we acknowledge our brokenness and the fragmentary nature of our faith and ability.   They will also, however, contain reflections on stories such as this week's Gospel reading which point us to the person of Jesus, who touches and transforms the very matter which fails us and who declares himself, in his actions at the Wedding at Cana, to be the master not only of thoughts and reflections but also of the very ordinary resources we require for life and ministry, health and wholeness - for provision for ourselves and for the world we serve. 

Proper 25 - Year B

Pentecost 23

Mark10:46-52  

You'll find a recurring character both in stories about Jesus, and in the parables which Jesus told: It's the man or the woman who will not shut up - even when they’ve been told to.  

In the Gospel parables we meet such characters as the widow who hammered on the judge’s door until he delivered justice to her (Luke 18:1-8), or the neighbour who arrived at midnight asking for bread to feed a traveling friend and would not be turned away until the door was opened for him  (Luke 11:5-8).  

In stories concerning Jesus there is the Canaanite woman looking for healing for her daughter who shouted out and caused a fuss even though she’d been told to stop disturbing the master (Matthew 15:21-28).   In this Sunday’s Gospel reading, the role is played by blind Bartimeus who, when he heard that Jesus was walking by, made a complete spectacle of himself in spite of the disciples’ protests until Jesus walked over to him and healed him.

Politeness and goodness we oftentimes conflate with silence.  We do this particularly with respect to children.  Concerning ourselves, we worry perhaps that we might appear dependent or lose face in the community were we to express our needs openly and passionately?  

And yet Jesus seems to find that this very importunity - this same honest expression of need is something akin to faith - some part of faith - an example of faith - on the part of those who come to him openly and honestly and even loudly.

Tell someone, then, what you need.  Go ahead.  Tell God what you need.  

Not all silence is golden.