What if I had not believed
that I should see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!
O tarry and await the Lord’s pleasure;
be strong, and he shall comfort your heart;
wait patiently for the Lord.
Today’s Gospel is a little bit heartbreaking… or a lot heartbreaking. Jesus says to the Pharisees, who are warning him that he is in danger:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets… How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
This image of Jesus, loving the city of Jerusalem, loving its people like a mother hen, and yet knowing that despite his love, despite his wanting to take them under his wings, the city will kill him. His own people, the people who hold his faith, will betray him to death.
And yet he loves them still.
And I will say, this is a week that as I’ve prepared to preach this morning, I keep going to the psalm, not the Gospel. The Psalms are in many ways the most human, the most emotional, the most vulnerable book of the Bible. They are prayers, they are poetry, they are lamentation and celebration and anger and gratitude and grief. And Psalm 27, our psalm this morning, which we heard beautifully chanted, holds all of it together – the lamentation and the fear, the praise and the comfort. Verse seven:
For in the day of trouble he shall keep me safe in his shelter;
he shall hide me in the secrecy of his dwelling
and set me high upon a rock.
This week, I keep going to the psalm. As I hear about vulnerable people here and around the world facing starvation, the loss of homes and jobs, safety, lifesaving medicine, I find myself turning to the psalm. In a week when I see tension and war around the world, I turn to the psalm. Because it’s hard to add Jesus’ grief to my own grief. It’s hard to think about crucifixion when people are suffering and afraid. The wilderness of Lent becomes a wider wilderness, though that also keeps reminding me of what I have said before in this pulpit – we are not in the wilderness alone – we are in it with God, and we are in it with each other. So we turn to the Psalms, and to the poets.
Some of you may have noticed or picked up booklets at the entrance of the church in the last week or so – Lenten devotionals, a number of different ones, but in particular some small ones that were created by the SALT Project, centered on the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Our Women of Faith group that meets on Wednesday mornings is using this during this season. Each week we’ll be reading a couple of Emily’s poems along with scripture, and we talk about the faith and theology that connects them.
Emily Dickinson was that mysterious and reclusive poet many of us read in high school classes – she was born in 1830 and lived most of her 56 years at home in New England – a very quiet, very isolated life in many ways. She briefly attended Mount Holyoke College, where students were separated by the faculty and staff into three categories, based on their Christian faith, or what was perceived to be the strength of their Christian faith – “professors,” meaning those who professed their faith; “hopeful,” and “no hope.” Emily Dickinson was in the “no hope” category. She was a bit of a nonconformist, and so perhaps it was no surprise she only stayed at Mount Holyoke for one year. She returned home to live her quiet life, and by the end of it had written more than 1,800 poems. She sent them in letters to friends and sewed them into small handwritten books that were discovered after her death. And her poems reveal that in fact she did have a very strong faith in God, and a great love for God’s creation.
I’m giving you a sneak preview of one of the Week 3 readings this morning. She wrote this somewhere around 1860, relatively early. There are a few odd words in it – one is “bobolink,” which is a bird, a songbird, and I’ll say a little more about that later. And a surplice – some of you may know – our choir members are wearing them, these kind of white garments that go over cassocks. Clergy members wear them for Evensong and other services.
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.
I love this poem. Not because I advocate not going to church on the Sabbath, or short sermons, or that a single bird could replace a choir – never! – but I love it because Dickinson is pointing out that church is everywhere, that the world is sacred, and that we’re catching glimpses of heaven as we go. The green leaves and sweet fruit of an orchard can serve as the architecture of a church, and the miracle of birdsong is music enough. God’s presence is in the miraculous around us, often in the miraculous that we don’t notice or don’t remember or that is drowned out by the rush of our everyday lives, in the wilderness of the news cycle and the world’s griefs.
And I think this morning’s Psalm is telling us that a bit, as well. The Psalmist begins with praise and thanksgiving:
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom then shall I fear?
the Lord is the strength of my life;
of whom then shall I be afraid?
The God the Psalmist prays to is a God who dwells with us, a God who listens to us lament and praise and give thanks and be angry, a God who does not hide from us, a God who makes a home for us in this life and in the next:
One thing have I asked of God;
one thing I seek;
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life;
To behold the fair beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.
The God the Psalmist prays to is a God who is among us, whose temple is in the orchards and in the beauty of this world, a God whose face we can see. We see it around us always, just as Emily Dickinson did, God’s short, beautiful, constant sermons spoken in birdsong. We see God around us in the faces of humanity, including the humanity, especially the humanity that is suffering. We see God in the faces of our family and most beloved friends. We also see God in the faces of people on the street, and in the faces of those who live far from us, in Sudan, in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Iran, in Pakistan, in Russia, Israel, and Washington, D.C.
What if I had not believed
that I should see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!
For the goodness of the Lord is in the land of the living.
Out of curiosity, I looked up the bird that Emily Dickinson mentions in her poem, the bobolink, and I learned a little more about it. You can find miracles on Google, believe it or not. Bobolinks, despite their somewhat comical name, are some of the farthest-flying songbirds on earth. They cover thousands of miles, some of them flying far enough that they could circumnavigate the earth four or five times during their life. And they find their way by using our planet’s magnetic field, and by the stars in the sky – the same stars that Abram stood out under, talking with God on that night so long ago. They are living and traveling somewhere between heaven and earth.
Isn’t our journey somewhere between heaven and earth? In this wilderness we continue to travel through Lent, aren’t we looking for signs in the stars, trying also to stay grounded, asking God to protect us, looking for small miracles, trying to keep singing along the way?
What if I had not believed that I should see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!
We do believe we can see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. There is goodness in the wilderness, no matter how heartbreaking things seem to be. Jesus is staring death in the face, but he knows what comes after. Death will not have the final word. “Listen,” he says, “I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.” His life and his work of love lay somewhere between earth and heaven, bringing them together. So does ours.
So I invite you to look for the miracles, see the sacred, keep seeking the beautiful, keep loving and working, be the church in the wilderness, bringing heaven and earth a little closer together, every day.
Amen.
Sermon preached by Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett on Lent II, March 16, 2025.
