This is the God in whom Jeremiah set his hope in a time of famine and drought. Jeremiah acknowledged that all was not well with society in his day but he also proclaimed the hope that God's promise was stronger than the wavering will of men and women. Jeremiah hoped for rain, for food, for better days - but even more Jeremiah hoped for reconciliation with God. "Remember and do not break your covenant with us," Jeremiah pleaded. "We set our hope on you."

Hope in the righteousness of God is hope well placed. Then and now. We too live in challenging times. The recently released 93 page Windsor Report has already engendered reams of comment about the life, health and fate of the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church. The race for the American presidency is full of strong feelings and considerable polarization. We have been through over a year of transition in the parish and we are not done yet. But it is not all about us. It is about God in whom we do well to set our hope.

The Psalmist claimed that those "whose hearts are set on the pilgrims' way will go through the desolate valley and find it a place of springs…" God will transform and clarify the vision of those who are ready to journey with their eyes fixed on God. But the challenge, even for earnest pilgrims, is to stop putting up billboards between ourselves and the horizons God would have us see.

It is so easy to paste up big pictures with heart-warming scenes and self-affirming slogans: advertisements that bolster of own point of view and sense of righteousness. "Look at that one, Mildred, there I am looking humble and saintly." Oooh, the next image is even better, there's a collection of good deeds and right thinking culled out the fuller messiness of our lives. Many of the billboards most of us erect along the way are simply unrealistic portraits of our daily life, selectively edited to make us look really good. We exaggerate in our own minds that which we do really well and we leave out those unattractive times when we have failed or fallen short. But God knows who we really are. God loves us warts and all. The billboards we put up do not obscure God's ability to see us. But the billboards do make it hard for us to see what God would like to show us - in ourselves, in the world, and in other people.

It is one thing to fill our eyes with an overblown sense of our own splendor. But along with all the bright affirmations of our personal and corporate goodness there are the attack ad billboards we put up to tear down the life and deeds of others in order to make ourselves shine by comparison. But God still knows who we are. And God knows those whom we would diminish. God came to save us all.

The truth is that all of us are imperfect. Sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we fail. Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we are really off the mark. But always we are in need of God's grace. It is God who saves us - not our successes or our self-image, nor our attempts to keep up appearances.

Last weekend Debra and I went to Tennessee to see our son Alex at St. Andrews-Sewanee. It was parent's weekend of another parent's weekend in 1998 when William Willimon was preaching in the chapel at Duke University. The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector had just been read and Willimon told this story on himself in his sermon.

"I got talked into being on the board of this fraternity. They have been on probation ever since I've known them. They are so bad Dean Wasoliek only occasionally lets them serve tea in the afternoon, otherwise they're not allowed to have parties on campus. Bad."

"Well, they call a board meeting on Palm Sunday afternoon. One of our biggest church days of the year," Willimon said, "and I'm over there in their section for this two-hour meeting."

" 'Were you there when the sofa caught fire?' they were asked. 'It was all a misunderstanding.' they said. Such was the level of conversation. I'm sitting there thinking, 'What's a person like me doing among people like these on a Sunday like this? I'm a preacher not a probation officer.'"

"Finally, the meeting ended. I'm heading for the door and pass this unshaven, beefy sort of person propping up a wall who says to me, 'That was a killer sermon today.'"

"I was stunned. 'You, go to church?' 'Sure. I'm there most every Sunday. Sit on the back row. George (he gestures toward this other unshaven sort of person in an inappropriate tee shirt next to him) goes with me. George said he liked your sermon a couple of weeks ago better than today. But I needed the one you did today. It was like God really spoke to me.'"

"Two men went to the Chapel to pray. Willimon said, One a Methodist preacher. The other an unshaven Sophomore in a tee shirt. Two men went back to the dorm. The later was justified, made right by God, but not the former."

Willimon exposed and owned the billboards he had erected along the way. He pulled them down in front of his hearers and allowed the radiance of the parable and the vision of God to shine out. Everyone had the opportunity to be bathed in the same light. Everyone was offered the same love: over achievers, under-performers, burners of sofas and university deans.

Those with no billboards in the way get to see the whole view. Those who insist on keeping their projections intact miss out. The Pharisee trusted in himself and left no room for the view, for the vision of God. The Tax Collector had no illusions about his own righteousness, no billboards of success raised up, only a wide open space waiting to be filled with God's mercy.

Are we willing to be open to mercy rather than walled in by self-righteousness or contempt for others? Can we do this in our own day - in the face of the turmoil around the Anglican Commission's Windsor report? Can we be open to mercy when politics are discussed? Can we focus on seeking God's mercy in contentious meetings at work or arguments at home, rather than just striving to be right?

Every day we are presented with the opportunity to travel in the pilgrim's way. Every day we choose whether to trust in ourselves or to place our hope in God. We choose whether to raise up signs of the evidence of our worth to try to convince God and our neighbor that we are more righteous than they are or to come as we are- human, needing God's grace and one another.

Our work is to encourage one another to clear the sides of the highway of all the billboards. The journey is not about our illusions or projections it is about the light of God. The point is not to be right but to seek communion and reconciliation.

Let us give thanks for that which is good. And let us engage those people and situations that challenge us in a spirit of seeking God's righteousness and mercy.
AMEN.