The Collect for 4 Epiphany: Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace…

Easter is April 11. Our celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ will be in the real springtime. The earth in spring seems annually resurrected -- hearts and minds revived. Daylight time returns with long afternoons and sweet air and time for walking in the woods after supper.

And here we are today celebrating the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany. The seventh and last Sunday after Epiphany is three weeks away. The Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper precedes Ash Wednesday with its penitential Eucharist and crosses smudged on foreheads. Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

As the year unfolds the Church celebrates God as the One who governs all things in heaven and on earth. We mark the passing of days and weeks remembering events in Jesus’ life, recalling what he says, what he does, and what he accomplishes and continues to carry out in our time.

In the words of the collect we’ve confessed belief in God who governs all things both in heaven and on earth. We’ve said that. Then I stop and think, “Does God govern all things on earth?” Does God control every thing that happens to happen? Does God direct awful tragic events like earthquakes and blizzards? Are people who treat others with injustice and violence ruled by God? Does God really govern all things on earth? Maybe God governs heaven, but how can we say God governs all things on earth? Maybe God just governs some things. Could it actually be true that God governs all things -- everything? Isn’t that merely pious sentimentality?

Why would God decide to shake California with earthquakes and mudslides, and North Carolina with hurricanes and floods? Why would God decide to give somebody cancer? Why would God decide to create a parent who abuses his children? Why would God govern in such a way that millions die of starvation in a wide world where there is no shortage of food, while millions of others dine daily in warm houses and restaurants? Why would God allow people to blow up other people and shoot others with guns? What kind of governor is God?

Sometimes it seems not that God or anyone else is governing. Sometimes it seems no one governs – no one is in control – the world is out of control.

What if the truth is with Jeremiah whose words we’ve heard today: “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” I don’t know enough to understand, much less explain, how it is that God governs all. It’s beyond my intellectual grasp. I am not capable of it. I don’t know what to say.

Why on earth would the people who compiled the Book of Common Prayer have included such an unbelievable phrase as, “God, you govern all things…on earth”? Isn’t it because in spite of its seeming absurdity this belief has been part of the Church’s faith from the beginning? It’s beyond my ability to believe, yet without it, faith falls apart -- disintegrates.

Job’s poetry comes to mind. Job wants to understand why God allows tragedy, misfortune and suffering. Unlike Jeremiah, Job does not say, “God, truly I don’t know how to speak.” Instead he speaks at length with eloquence. He curses the day he was born. He says, “I have led a just life and done nothing wrong. I do not deserve this. “Why did you bring me forth from the womb? Would that I had died before any eye had seen me, and were as though I had not been, carried from the womb to the grave.” (Job 10:18-19)
Job’s faith is at low ebb. Faith as almost burned out. He thinks it’s because he can’t understand God’s ways.

I think of the Book of Job is one of the most excellent in all scripture, for it shows how a person can believe God governs all things on earth even while that same person feels as if all around is disintegrating, spinning out of control. The poetry of Job delves the deepest heart of human longing and finds there not chaos and nothingness but God – God who, in spite of all human effort to grasp and understand – God who governs all things in heaven and on earth.

After Job finishes speaking to his friends – after he finishes arguing with God,
Then the Lord answer[s] Job out of the whirlwind:

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know?
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
Or who laid its cornerstone
When the morning stars sang together
And all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?”
And the Lord [also] said to Job:
Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?
Anyone who argues with God must respond.”
Then Job answer[s] the Lord:
“See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you?
I lay my hand on my mouth.” (40:1-4)

That sounds like Jeremiah in today’s scripture. “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”

As these stories go, Jeremiah and Job feel and think themselves inadequate to the task of comprehending – understanding -- happenings and events in this world – this world they sincerely believe God governs.

Some people discard faith because it does not answer satisfactorily their questions and doubts about a good God who doesn’t seem to intervene and stop the suffering and injustice. Other people find it impossible to live in the tension between believing on the one hand and doubting on the other hand that God governs all things on earth. Many such folks choose to dismiss the careful and thorough investigations into the reality of things discovered through science and thoughtful reasoning.

These different areas of knowledge often lead religious people to demonize one another and to oppose and resist one another as if they, whom Jesus called friends, were their enemies and God’s enemies.

In today’s Gospel we discover this situation. Jesus reads scripture from the Book of Isaiah, sits down and comments on it. The people are amazed and they flatter him. Jesus questions their sincerity because he knows what is in their hearts. He perceives that they are jealous that their hometown boy is spending so much time with people from other towns and even alien nations. They don’t like it when he reminds them of the time when leprosy was sweeping through the land, and that it was not one of their own nation who was healed through Elisha’s ministry. It was, in fact Naaman the Syrian. When Jesus mentions that, they become so angry with him they drive him out of town.

People through the ages have had questions. And they want their questions answered to their satisfaction. When these questions are of a religious and theological nature, it’s hard to get satisfactory answers. So many folks tenaciously cling to certainties, which to them seem absolute. They isolate themselves from anybody and any churches, which do not defend themselves with barrages of verses from sacred scripture.

And on the other side people who elevate science to the position of supreme authority, isolate themselves from and ridicule people and churches that reflect on the words of sacred scripture.

What I have tried to think about in my life is the reality both of the value of science and of the reality of this loving God who governs all things both in heaven and on earth.
I belong to a church where science and faith are held together in tension. This church does not ask me to choose either science on the one hand or faith on the other hand. Instead, this church invites me to choose them both at the same time. This church does encourage me to recognize my limitations even as Jeremiah did: “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” I am encouraged to admit with Job: “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.” (40:1-4)

Saint Paul’s advice comes at the right place in our reflection. He says, “Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; rather be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults.

What if there are no simplistic and easy answers to our questions? What if there is something more important than having the answers? What if we find answers in the morsel of bread and the taste of wine through which God pours divine life into our hearts, minds and souls? What if we find the answer we crave in the Holy One dying with us on the cross and rising to new life carrying us with him forever?

A prayer from the tradition of the Iroquois:

Our religion is all about thanking the Creator.
That’s what we do when we pray.
We don’t ask Him for things.
We thank Him.
We thank Him for the world
and every animal and plant in it.

We thank Him for everything that exists.
We don’t take it for granted that a tree’s just there
We thank the Creator for that tree.
If we don’t thank Him maybe the Creator will take
that tree away.

That’s what the ceremonies are all about—that’s why
they are important—even for the White Man.
We pray for the harmony of the whole world.
The Creator wants to be thanked
{The Celtic Way of Prayer, Esther De Waal, page 70-71)

O God, you have taught me since I was young,
And to this day I tell of your wonderful works. Psalm 71:17

Doesn’t the Lord say to each of us what he said to Jeremiah? “Do not say, ‘I am too young; for you shall go to all to whom I send you…Do not be afraid…for I am with you to deliver you.”