As the waiter placed the meal on our table, my friend asked if I would offer the blessing.  When I said, “Amen” my friend said “You forgot to say ‘the hands that provided it’.”  I’m not sure anyone had critiqued my prayer aloud since seminary, so it took me a minute to figure out what my friend meant by “and the hands that provided it.”    I had remembered to give thanks to God, but had forgotten the human hands that provided for us: our waiter, barista, chef, delivery drivers, grocers, and farmers. You could go deeper in gratitude and remember those who taught culinary arts, ran utility lines, engineered the grid, made the table, washed the dishes, and hauled away our trash.  Recounting his own morning routine, Rev Dr Martin Luther King made connections all sound the world concluding, “all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly… This is the way our universe is structured, this is (our world’s) interrelated quality.”  “A Christmas Sermon on Peace” Dr King thought remembering our deep interconnectivity is essential for finding peace.  Such prayer can draw us deeply into our human interconnectivity and might help us love our neighbors as ourselves.  

Psalm 126 declares: “When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.” But then mid-verse, the verb tense shifts from celebrating what God has done to pleading for God to do something.  “Restore our fortunes, O LORD… May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.”  Prayer invites us into the tension between “already” and “not yet”, helping us name where God is working even as we long for God’s kin-dom to come more fully on earth. We can thank God for restoring us, even as we long for a deeper restoration.   

Psalm 126 likely was written near the end of the Jewish Exile to Babylon.  2 King 25 tells how King Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem for two years. Cut off from all imports the people ran out of food.  After two years, the Hebrew King Zedekiah took some soldiers, punched a hole in the city’s wall and fled by night, abandoning the citizens. The Babylonian soldiers caught up with the runaway King on the plains of Jericho and committed shocking war crimes. King Nebuchadnezzar, himself, came to Jerusalem and burned down the Temple. palace, and “every great house in Jerusalem”. The army tore down Jerusalem’s walls and took the powerful people as slaves to work in Babylon, leaving only the poorest people of the land to till the soil and pick the grapes.

It would be 70 years before “the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion.” How did the Lord restore the fortunes of the people?  Did God send another Moses to confront Babylon’s sins with plagues from heaven? Did Ezra divide the Tigris River or did the captives walk home across a fine Babylonian bridge? Did God speak and piles of rubble dance about, reordering themselves into Jerusalem’s wall?   No, the Lord restored the people’s hopes and fulfilled dreams with a lot of heads, hearts and hands coming together to rebuild the city.   

I grew up praying for grand miracles, never quite walking on water, but for God to disrupt the laws of the universe, bend human wills, and even negate scientific principles. The Biblical story of restoration lifts up the hands that provided for a new Jerusalem: King Cyrus of Persia, Nehemiah, Ezra, and Ester.     

The Chronicler and Ezra tell how “In the first year that King Cyrus of Persia… the Lord stirred up the King Cyrus of Persia’s spirit so that he made a law throughout Persian Empire: “Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and God has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Let any of those among you who are of his people—may the Lord their God be with them!—go up to Jerusalem and rebuild the city.”  It must have felt like a dream to see a change in policy end the captivity without plagues, revolution, or violence. The Persian King Cyrus had conquered Babylon and in the first year of this new administration decided to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple. Who could imagine that?  Not only did King Cyrus allow the captives to go home, the king kick-started the Temple building campaign with funds from the Babylonian Treasury.  King Cyrus returned 5400 gold and silver artifacts looted from the Jerusalem Temple. 

It would take over twenty years and a lot of hands to rebuild the city. Ezra tells us that King Cyrus’s declaration called on the “survivors in whatever place they reside to be assisted by the people of that place with silver and gold, with goods, and with livestock, besides freewill offerings for the house of God in Jerusalem.”… (as the people got ready to go rebuild) All their neighbors aided them with silver vessels, with gold, with goods, with livestock, and with valuable gifts.” Ezra and Nehemiah tell us the rebuilding was not easy.  People objected. Cash ran short. Some local leaders, who opposed rebuilding, stopped the project for about a year with a zoning appeal.  There was ridicule and rebellion, descent and doubt.  Mistakes were made. In the day they broke ground with golden shovels and the Temple band everyone sang “God is good, God’s steadfast love endures forever.” But many of the older priests and leaders, who had seen the first Temple, wept because the new foundation was much smaller than the first one King Nebuchadneezer burned down.  (Ezra 3)  King Herod actually restored the Temple to its Solomonic glory during Christ’s lifetime. 

I grew up praying for miracles. These days, I more often pray to be caught up in God’s dreams for our world, to be two of the hands that help restore God’s world. Jesus taught us to pray: “Lord, Your kingdom come, your will be done: forgiveness, daily bread, deliverance from evil…”  Lord, use my hands to restore the world as you used a more benevolent Persian foreign policy, courageous leaders like Ezra and Esther, lawyers who navigated that zoning appeal, people who gave sacrificially; and the skills and hard work of craftspeople shaping the limestone blocks that became your Temple.        

On May 1, 2024  somewhere around 9:18am, in Charlotte NC, I was privileged to cast my electronic ballot to remove 52 years of harmful language from our the UMC Book of Discipline.  93% of delegates voted to remove that ugly incompatibility language. It felt like a dream, like when the LORD restored the fortunes of Methodism, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy…  For the next 20 minutes I could not stop weeping. When the day’s break came many left the voting floor to celebrate singing songs like “Draw the Circle Wide”.  How did the Lord do that reconciling work? In the 1970’s a few churches like Edgehill planted the seeds of justice, faithfulness and full inclusion. I am proud that in 2013,  Belmont UMC officially adopted a welcoming statement, that in 2017 Belmont voted to become a reconciling congregation. In 2021 after the oppressive Traditional Plan passed, Belmont voted to support our pastors celebrating same sex unions in our sanctuary.  How did the Lord remake the world? God used our hands, hearts and hard work!  Such holy work can feel too long and too difficult: the soil we sow into can feel hard and unreceptive, and yet, God is always making all things new. Will we be the hands that remake our worlds?  

In nine days, our nation will hold an election, and we are praying and working that we as a nation might embrace Christin values like welcome, peace, compassion for poor people, housing, affordable healthcare, living wages, compassionate immigration policies, justice for all people, offering tolerance to all, dedication to equality, racial and gender equality, rejection of money as the sole measure of life, love for all neighbors, quality public education, and more. When we know the results, we may feel a dreamy sense that the Lord has restored our fortunes or we may be praying “Lord, restore our fortunes, hear our tears and send another Cyrus!  

No matter who wins the election, our neighbors will need our hands, hearts and heads striving to provide for a more compassionate, welcoming, just and peaceful place.  Jesus said, “you are the light of the world, a city on a hill, shine on,” so that people see what God is doing in us and through us and join us in restoring community and hope. So as we see the many hands that provide for us, the inescapable web of connectivity, may we offer our hands to God and neighbor so that God might use us to restore our communities.  Amen.