However, even if I don t know what s best, I. certainly know what isn't. The reality of people going to

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1 Advent 2, Yr. C Psalm 126, Baruch 5:1-19, Philippians 1: /6/15 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Altadena, CA The Rev. Betsy Hooper-Rosebrook And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. To help you determine what is best... I am so confused. I don't know what is best or how to get there. Maybe I once thought I did, but no longer. Like other generations before us, we re in a world that s upsetting and confounding and filled with questions and problems that seem to have no clear answers or solutions. We shouldn't imagine this is unique to our era, and yet time seems to have given us no more clue as to what's best than all those before us had. However, even if I don t know what s best, I certainly know what isn't. The reality of people going to a holiday party at work or a concert or a bible study or school and leaving in a body bag is not our best. Leaping to conclusions about and judging "others" based on their religion or ethnicity or color or gender identity or sexual orientation is not our best. Turning our backs on those who are trying to escape daily violence and terror, whether from their government, from those with illicit power in their communities, or from a member of their household is not our best. Allowing anyone to suffer from inadequate shelter, or food, or healthcare, or education is not our best. Living in fear is not our best. Humanity is created in the image of God--God who cares for the widow and orphan, who welcomes the stranger, who seeks out the

2 forgotten--and God's image within us, God with us, Emmanuel, calls us to do better than that. But...but...if we know our best isn't happening, and we're frustrated beyond all measure--because if you aren't frustrated and crying out right now, you've had your head in the sand--and yet we can't see a way forward, what are we to do? How are we to find a new vision? It shouldn't surprise you when I suggest we look to scripture, starting with today's reading from the letter to the Philippians: And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight...to help you to determine what is best. Love. Knowledge. Insight. Yelling at each other, answering violence with violence, hiding behind barriers of us and them, or throwing up our hands in defeat aren't offered as options, because we can do better than that. Love, knowledge, and insight, woven together. I'm sure that part of what that looks like is sharing our stories and listening to each other, really hearing rather than simply listening to figure out our rebuttal. It looks like carrying each other's burdens, praying as fervently for someone else's needs as we do for our own, and forgiving and asking forgiveness from one another. In other words, being in relationship. On Friday at the diocesan convention, our new Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, reminded us over and over that in the face of our confusion and uncertainty, Jesus shows us the way to be reconciled with each other, the way to live together, to be together, when he shows us that the way of love really is the only way. In Bishop Curry's words, "When we discover that there's plenty good room in God's big tent, we discover that there's room for all of

3 us." We so often want to figure out what to do by starting with deciding for ourselves who there's room for and who there's not, who's one of us and who's the other, who's worthy and who isn't...and that creates a giant wall with no opening for love or knowledge or insight. But when we enter into relationship with others, we're putting ourselves into the tent with them, and into relationship with God who has more than enough for everyone. That's God's true love, overflowing with knowledge and insight. Here's one of the hardest concrete steps in that. Grieving for lives cut short and families and communities shattered certainly reflects compassion, and we need to do that in every way we can imagine. But the really challenging part is praying not only for Shannon, Michael, Bennetta, Aurora, Isaac, Larry, Yvette, Sierra, Harry, Robert, Nicholas, Tin, Juan, and Damian, but also for Syed and Tashfeen, for ISIS and Al Queda. Praying for those who've caused us or our families harm personally. Praying for those who, in the limitations of our human hearts, seem to have stepped beyond the reach of God's love. Praying for ourselves when we fall short. That prayer is the love to which God calls us: contrary to all our impulses of anger and revenge and our presumption that it's ours to cast some into outer darkness, praying with words that are difficult perhaps for us even to form. It's the love that Jesus commanded when he told us to pray for our enemies and demonstrated as he said from the cross, "Father, forgive them." It's the love that Bishop Bruno described when he told us of the mother of the Downey police officer who was killed, a woman who has worked on the

4 diocesan staff for 15 years, being worried about the young men who took her son's life. That's God's true love, overflowing with knowledge and insight. Last week in chapel, I gave the Saint Mark's students a Cliff Notes explanation of Advent as not only preparing to celebrate Christ's first coming in Bethlehem but also getting ready for his second coming at the end of time. Honestly, talk about the end of time doesn't do a lot for your average 2nd grader, and possibly not for many of us. So how's this?: As we await the return of Christ to restore the world to the perfection of its first creation--a world of peace, and compassion, and justice, and wholeness--we're called to point out and be signs of that coming kingdom. We're called to look for the best in every person, knowing that each one is a child of God. We're called to speak up for those who don't have a voice, and to listen quietly when they begin to tell their stories. We're called to put coins in the jar for lunches in Haiti and cans in the basket for dinners in Altadena. We're called to write our representatives to share specifics of our vision of a more equitable, inclusive, and compassionate society, and to vote accordingly. We're called, in the words of biblical scholar Renita Weems, to show up in case God decides to say or do something through us. We're called to be better than we imagine we can be, to do more than we imagine we can do, and to help each other get back up and try again, and again, and again when we aren't and don't. That's God's true love, overflowing with knowledge and insight. The words today from Baruch and Psalm 126 are soothing balm to a world that's heartbroken and scared,

5 to people in San Bernardino and Beirut, Paris and Syria, to people on the streets of Pasadena and at home in Altadena, to those sitting in the pews of churches this morning, those standing in synagogues, those kneeling in mosques. "Those who sowed with tears will reap with shouts of joy." "Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God...see your children gathered from west and sorrow to profound joy. From fear to faith. From distrust to relationship. From the chains of hatred to the freedom of love. From the shadow of death into the way of peace. Rejoice, because in the midst of all our human fumbling and frustration, our questions and confusion, we are drawn into the life, the knowledge, the insight of the One who does know what is best, to stand with the One who is Love. east at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them." We're not there yet, God knows we're not there yet, but it's the vision and the promise to which we cling. It's God's true love, overflowing with knowledge and insight, to help us determine what is best. In Bishop Curry's words, this is God calling to us, "to transform the world from the nightmare it can be to the dream God intends for it to be." From heart-rending