Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church, Houston, Texas
The Reverend Neil Alan Willard, M.Div.
Proper 24, October 18, 2020

Jesus, Savior, may I know your love and make it known. Amen.

One of my favorite things I’ve seen recently, something I’m sure some of you have seen too, is spooky, nighttime video footage of a man and a woman walking up to a house, where the man starts ringing the doorbell, repeatedly, before quickly knocking on the door, repeatedly, and even trying to turn the doorknob, without success. It was locked, and he immediately starts ringing the doorbell again and knocking on the door and then calling out the name Paul, who presumably lived there. No answer. So he begins ringing the doorbell again and knocking on the door, and you, worried about Paul, start to think it’s the beginning of a horror movie.

Either something really bad has already happened or will any second, right? It’s after two o’clock in the morning. No good can come of this.

Finally, Paul’s voice can be heard through the speaker. And the man outside says to him, “Paul? It’s Bob Wilson, you’ve won the Nobel Prize. And so they’re trying to reach you, but they cannot. They don’t seem to have a number for you.” Then the woman chimes in, saying, “We gave them your cell phone number.” Paul says, “Yeah, wow. Yeah, ok.” “Will you answer your phone,” pleads the woman before laughing aloud as he answers, “Yes.” Bob replied, “You need to let them be able to call you.”

Paul Milgrom is the name of the man who was awakened in the middle of the night; and Robert Wilson is his neighbor and longtime colleague, who also won a Nobel Prize. In fact, they won that award in economics together. It turns out that Bob had been hard to reach, too, having unplugged his landline after not recognizing the number and thinking he was getting a spam phone call from some political campaign at home late at night.

But imagine for a moment if you had been in that kind of situation, except there wasn’t a Nobel Prize to be handed out but rather a need to be met, a cry to be heard, and you kept ringing the doorbell and banging on the front door, and there was no answer.

What comes to mind for me is the time when the Prophet Elijah in the First Book of Kings watched the priests of Jezebel try to rouse the Canaanite god Baal. It doesn’t work, so Elijah mocks them, suggesting their god must have unplugged the landline or be meditating or has fallen asleep and needs to be awakened. Psalm 121, by contrast, says the One “who keeps watch over Israel,” who “watches over [us],” “shall neither slumber nor sleep.”[1]

And the psalm we heard today, Psalm 99, tells us that the Lord answered Moses and Aaron and Samuel, and presumably other priests and prophets, who called upon the Lord’s name. Then that same assertion is repeated later, as the psalmist speaks directly to the Lord our God and says,

You answered them indeed.[2]

Some of you hearing my voice could easily repeat those words in your heart as a prayer of thanksgiving today. Maybe you recently had an experience of being heard by the One who sustains your life, gives you breath, and sends you forth to face another day.

But there are surely others here this morning who would like to say, who are saying, those same words in a very different tone. Yes, you believe God answered Moses and Aaron and Samuel, but you’d very much like God to answer you, too, and sooner rather than later.

Maybe you want there to be justice and judgment, divinely meted out, which almost certainly means you want those things to be visited upon other people. (We’ve all been there, or are there right now.) After all, Psalm 99 states clearly that God executes those things as a “lover of justice.”[3] It’s part of what makes God holy, part of what makes God great and fearful.

The psalmist takes us to Mount Zion in Jerusalem and into the very heart of the temple, where the Lord is enthroned upon the cherubim. These angelic creatures aren’t what the Jewish scholar Robert Alter humorously describes as “the dimpled darlings of Christian iconography.”[4] No, they are fierce, carved in radiant gold, with “the body of a lion, large wings, and a human face.”[5] Their wings, outstretched toward one another atop the Ark of the Covenant, in the Holy of Holies, formed a seat for the Holy One of Israel.

That is where God was present, in a real way. Mysterious, yes, but actually there. And the force, the movement, in the words of this psalm is that God will continue to do today what God has done in the past, that those who’ve followed in the footsteps of Moses, Aaron, and Samuel will cry out and their prayers will be answered.

But praise the Lord that justice and judgement aren’t the only things ascribed to God in this psalm, this prayer, which is also our own prayer in our own day. I mean, it’s not that I don’t want God’s righteousness to be established on the earth or in this nation. I do. I really do, the sooner the better. It’s just that one of the things too often in the way of that is me.

So I love that God’s most important answer to the prayers of Moses, Aaron, and Samuel on behalf of the people is that God forgave them. That’s the first thing mentioned after the palmist turns to God, addressing God directly, praising God for answered prayers. Yes, they endured the consequences of things done and left undone, but God forgave them, God carried the burden of their disobedience, of our disobedience, of my disobedience.

That incredibly good news is just as true today as it was then. God forgives you, even though the temple no longer stands, even though the mercy seat above the wings of the cherubim no longer exists. The glory of the Lord has gone out from there to be with his people, wherever they may be, whatever their circumstances may be, which means the glory of the Lord is here.

When Jesus died on the cross, the curtain of the temple that hid from view the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies was torn asunder, not because mercy had somehow vanished, but because mercy was being poured out on the whole world. And the good news is that you don’t have to depend upon me for God to answer our prayers here. That’s because Jesus is our great high priest, “our only Mediator and Advocate.”[6]

Jesus is interceding for us, and we are forgiven.

And if you happen to be one of those people pointing a finger at God, for any number of very understandable reasons, while praying, “You answered them indeed,” remember this: Remember that Jesus struggled in the Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed intensely and waited in the silence for an answer. It seemed as if God had gone away from him, as if he’d been abandoned, as if the house was completely empty, as if no amount of ringing the doorbell or banging on the front door would summon the voice of a friend.

But God answered with a thunderous yes, raising Jesus from the dead, taking the door of death off its hinges, so to speak, and leaving behind only the shattered gates of hell so that no one would ever be shut out from his mercy and his forgiveness. Not even those who feel godforsaken are beyond the reach of his saving embrace. He will take them by the hand with love.

I really believe that. I believe that for you, for me, for everyone. Jesus is alive, and his presence and his love are what you will receive today at the time of holy communion, whether you receive the consecrated bread, the Body of Christ, in your hands here at the church or say the words of the prayer for spiritual communion in your home.

Those things received in holy communion are given to you personally, and they’re given to me personally. But they are received as God’s people together, in a community of prayer and praise. They are received communally, in a congregation where our own imperfections don’t keep us out, but draw us in to approach the throne of grace with boldness.

And there, as Psalm 85 describes it so beautifully, mercy and truth meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other, and somehow — at the last day — all wrongs will have been righted, not only those around us but also those within us. And God, having reconciled the world to himself in Christ, will finally be all in all. This I believe.

AMEN

1 BACK TO POST Psalm 121:3-4 (1979 Book of Common Prayer).

2 BACK TO POST Psalm 99:8 (1979 Book of Common Prayer).

3 BACK TO POST Psalm 99:4 (1979 Book of Common Prayer).

4 BACK TO POST Robert Alter, commenting on Psalm 99 in The Hebrew Bible, Volume 3: The Writings (New York: Norton, 2019) 233n.

5 BACK TO POST Robert Alter, commenting on Psalm 99 in The Hebrew Bible, Volume 3: The Writings (New York: Norton, 2019) 233n.

6 BACK TO POST From the Prayers of the People in the liturgy for Holy Eucharist, Rite I, in the Book of Common Prayer (1979).