"You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate … " One of the things that I was often asked by reporters after 9/11 was a question of faith: "How has your belief in God changed now that this has happened?" The question was framed in such a way to presume one’s belief would be changed by such an event, and I suspect most of the reporters assumed that such events made a belief in God more tenuous. Hence, there was a look of surprise when my answer was that 9/11 didn’t change anything about what I believed to be true as a person of faith. I would go on to explain that the foundations of my faith … our faith … were still true – that I believed God’s love for us was stronger than anything … that God was with us … that as followers of Jesus Christ we had nothing to fear. And I was grateful for the foundations of Christian faith that allowed us to respond to the aftermath of 9/11 rather than reacting to them.

We gather this morning in a similar place, having watched the destruction of Haiti during a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. Haiti is already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere with 80% of its population living below poverty level. One of the most vivid descriptions of the massive poverty in Haiti is found in mud. Women make mud-cakes to sell at a penny or two. The market for the mud-cakes is to families with young children. The children are fed the mud-cakes to take away the hunger pangs … for the mud, though without nutrition will fill the children’s stomachs. THAT is poverty and desperation!

In the book of Job, as calamity after calamity falls upon Job, his friends and even his wife tell him to throw in the towel and denounce God. Job steadfastly refuses to give in to their pressure. Again, to those who would ask, particularly those who would ask in the hopes of getting us to denounce God, we say – all of God’s promises to us are true. We may need to hear them voiced more strongly, we may need to have places to lament and raise a fist in anger over things that happen … but more than anything else we gather in the certainty that God is still God, and there is nothing that can undo that.

It is with that foundation that we gather to hear the texts of promise that are the assigned readings for this morning. To celebrate God’s promise that no matter what anyone else says to us, we will never be called forsaken. No one can take that away from us – no bully who calls us names, no job that demeans us, no illness or grief … no amount of disaster – there is nothing that can take that promise away from us. We live this promise as individuals facing the realities of life – of loss and illness and periods of grief – God will never forsake us. We live this promise when we confront the enormity of disasters – God will never forsake.

Another of Job’s friends tried to tell him that he must have done something to cause all the calamities that were happening to him … that at some point in his life he had committed some grievous sin that God was now punishing him for. Job steadfastly maintained that while he might not be perfect, he had done nothing to deserve what he got, and furthermore that was not in keeping with the God he knew. To those who try and explain terrible things by saying it is the wrath of God heaped upon a person or a people, again, we remember our text – God will never forsake. And we look at the gospel text for this morning – the first miracle of Jesus. It is a rather strange miracle to record as the first. It’s not a wonderful healing, or a changing of someone’s heart … it’s about changing water into wine at a wedding feast of all things … go figure! I believe it reminds us that in Jesus Christ we know that God is not going around looking for ways to punish us or causing pain and misery, but that God is lavishly pouring out upon us abundant grace and love … and in a way it is a reminder that the best is yet to come.

These are not trite and pat … easy answers that we give to people to make them leave us alone. They are not answers born from naiveté. If anything, it is easier to do what Job’s friends encouraged him to do – to curse God and die. It is easier to walk away from the promise that we read in the text from Isaiah and be done with it all, to turn away from all the pain and suffering we see and we know … and let it overwhelm and destroy.

Our task is the more challenging, and the more rewarding. God’s promise to us is what brings us true life and love. It is from that place we are called to live … compelled to share this Good News with others. Tomorrow is set aside as the day we particularly remember the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As we look at the world that is, and particularly today on the devastation in Haiti, I think of King’s dream. Here is a person that in spite of what the current circumstances were, could see ahead and envision a different reality. And so he spoke those famous words: "I have a dream." And elaborated his vision of a time when there would be justice and equality for all." His challenge to those listening to that speech, and to we who gather this morning is to work towards that dream, that reality.

It is the text from Corinthians that calls us to work together as co-conspirators with God in bringing the kingdom of God to fruition. Paul reminds us: "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good." Each of us has gifts to use for the strengthening of the body of Christ so that we can be the best, visible presence of Christ in the world that we can possibly be. We go from the promise that God will never name us forsaken, knowing that there is no earthly power that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We go forth to proclaim in the words of Desmond Tutu:

Goodness is stronger than evil,
Love is stronger than hate,
Light is stronger than darkness,
Life is stronger than death,
Victory is ours through God who loves us.