Consolation

2 Corinthians 1:1-11,

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

               Last week we finished our study of the book of Job and this week we begin a study of 2^nd Corinthians.  So today I want to give you a bit of background on this book in the Bible and then focus specifically on today’s passage from 2^nd Corinthians as well as the passage from Matthew.

To give you a little background on this book, 1^st and 2^nd Corinthians are actually made of fragments of a number of letters to the Corinthians.  And these are an interesting couple of books because Paul is writing to a community that is unhappy with him, a community with whom he is in conflict.  They are upset with him for a number of reasons: some involving money – he wouldn’t take money in the form of a collection for his work from them, but he had taken money from the Macedonians, which some saw as a slight; apparently he made some statement about refusing money for his labor which had shamed some of the other leaders in Corinth who have taken up a collection; some felt his working with his hands was inconsistent with the life of an apostle; and some didn’t like that he used frankness as a means of asking for affection.  Also, he had promised a visit which apparently never took place.  And finally some in the Corinthian community came to a place of wanting to “test” his apostleship which deeply offended Paul.

Today’s passage comes from a fragment that is believed to be from his fourth letter to the Corinthians and includes all of 2^nd Corinthians 1-9.  As we hear, he is taking several steps to get into a better relationship with the Corinthians.  He pairs himself with Timothy because Timothy has a good relationship with the Corinthians, and he extends the letter to “all the saints throughout Achaia,” because the Achaians, too, were in a good relationship with Paul.  Paul’s wish of peace for them is a naming of his wish for reconciliation.  He emphasizes that Christians are not isolated from each other, that they are all partners in suffering and in receiving God’s comfort, and he tries to drum up some pity in his description of his suffering in Asia to try to soften their hearts towards him.

I think all of this behavior is familiar to us.  We’ve all done or seen others do similar things in attempts to heal or reconcile relationships, and Paul is very human in this way.  We will look at this in more depth in the upcoming weeks.  But for today, that should give you a solid background for proceeding through the book of 2^nd Corinthians.

Where I want to go in terms of today’s scriptures, both from 2^nd Corinthians and from Matthew is to take some time to look at human efforts and work, and the results of those efforts. In many ways, Paul comes from the exact opposite place from Job.  While Job and his friends came to their experiences with the belief that those who did good would have good lives and those who did bad would have bad lives; that the sign of being a good person was none other than having riches and comforts in this life (an idea that was overthrown by the rest of the book), Paul starts from the exact opposite place.  Paul is very clear that people of faith WILL suffer.  For Paul, association with the gospel guarantees being at cross purposes with the world, and experiencing affliction, distress and opposition.   If you choose to follow Christ, you WILL suffer, according to Paul.  We know Jesus did – he died because of his standing up for the oppressed and poor, for preaching love in the face of a society that valued law more.  And Paul, also experienced persecution for preaching Jesus’ message and gospel.  The ways of Christ are exactly opposite to the values of the world: they do not encourage riches, comforts and ease for oneself but instead ask us to give all we have and follow.  This will bring suffering, it will bring conflict, it will bring anger, opposition, persecution and affliction.  As a quote by Charles Bowen sent to me this week says it, “The rain, it raineth on the just, and also on the unjust fellow, but mainly on the just because the unjust steals the just's umbrella."  Paul is clear about that, just as Jesus was. 

The story from Matthew today similarly pointed out that no matter what you do in terms of doing the work of God, abuse will follow.  If you are truly doing the work of God, the work of Jesus, you will be in conflict with the world.  And that means that you will feel at times that you are getting nowhere in the work that you do.  But still, you are being called to be a sower, like God.  And if you are truly doing God’s work, you will experience some of it falling on land that is rocky, some that falls on shallow soil, some roots that look like they have planted will be torn out by the winds of concern over wealth, power, politics, and worldly comforts.

Being a person of faith, really looking at these scriptures and trusting in them is not for the faint of heart.  And trying to do the work of God in a world that focuses and values and uplifts those with money, power and fame - it is hard.  It is frustrating beyond measure.  I will tell you honestly that there are times when I despair.  What am I doing?  Have my words made one iota of difference in the way people live their lives?  Are people more faithful, more generous, more committed to caring for the poor and oppressed in any way because of things that I have said or done? Has my work made any kind of positive difference in this place or in the world?  Or am I just throwing seed on concrete?  This is especially true when sometimes I will preach a heartfelt sermon and have someone say to me, “that is exactly what I needed to hear today.” And then they will say something that is exactly opposite of what I tried to communicate. 

I remember doing a bible study in which the pastor was discussing the fact that his sermons made little difference and how he then decided to do everything differently and now his congregation lives in intentional poverty, giving almost all they have to the poor in some truly amazing ways.  And I hear stuff like that and know I don’t have the power, authority or charisma to make anything like that happen.  So it’s easy to start feeling that the seed I’ve tried to scatter is no good, that I have no chance of doing the work God wants me to do. 

I know I’m not alone in this.  Whole faith communities can start to feel like they are not really succeeding.  Congregations yearn for younger families and when they don’t come they can feel that they are failing at planting any kind of seed.  They aren’t succeeding.  Within our own families it can feel this way.  Talking to our teenagers, talking to family members with whom we disagree can feel like beating our heads against the wall. 

I want to share a story with you that I found in a commentary: Theodore J. Wardlaw wrote:

I once caught a glimpse of God and God's mercy in such a place. I was with a group of civic leaders—lawyers, politicians, foundation representatives, journalists—touring various outposts of our city's criminal justice system. It was near the end of the day, and we were visiting the juvenile court and detention center. That place was so depressing, its landscape marked by wire-mesh gates with large padlocks and razor wire wrapped around electrified fences. When the doors clanged shut behind us, I imagined how final they must always sound when adolescents—children!—are escorted there. We were led, floor by floor, through this facility by an amazing young judge who worked there. She showed us the holding cells where the new inmates are processed. She showed us the classrooms where an ongoing education is at least attempted. She showed us the courtrooms where cases are prosecuted.

Near the end of our tour, she led us down one bleak hall to give us a sense of the cells where young offenders lived. Each cell had a steel door with narrow slots about two-thirds of the way up, through which various pairs of eyes were watching us as we walked down the hall. Some of these children were accused of major crimes; some of them were repeat offenders. Most of them, we learned, had had little or no nurture across their brief lives—not from a primary adult who cared about them, not from family, not from neighborhood, not from church. It was hard to notice those eyes staring through narrow slots without doing something. So I lingered at one door and whispered to one pair of eyes: "God loves you." The eyes did not appear to register much, and sometimes I wonder what, if anything, happened next. Did that news fall on the path to get eaten by birds? Did it fall among thorns to get choked out? I will never know.

As the tour went on, the cumulative effect of all this brokenness got to one member of our group, who finally just stopped in the hallway and began to cry. When the judge noticed this, she paused in her narration, walked back and put her arms around that person, and, with tears in her own eyes, said, "I know. I understand."

I thought to myself, "If I am ever to be judged, I want a judge like that." Then it dawned on me—like a seed thrown onto my path—that indeed I do have a judge like that! …

Ultimately, though, with all due respect to the well-meaning allegorist, this parable is not so much about good soil as it is about a good sower. This sower is not so cautious and strategic as to throw the seed in only those places where the chances for growth are best. No, this sower is a high-risk sower, relentless in indiscriminately throwing seed on all soil—as if it were all potentially good soil. On the rocks, amid the thorns, on the well-worn path, maybe even in a jail!

Which leaves us to wonder if there is any place or circumstance in which God's seed cannot sprout and take root.

(Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year A, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season After Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16).

Stories like today’s passage from Matthew are encouraging.  And this parable in particular is extremely comforting.  We all know that soil can surprise us.  We can plant things in the best possible way and have the plants die.  We can avoid planting things where we know they can’t possibly grow and discover something gorgeous growing there on its own.  Different soils lead to the growth of different plants, but beautiful, fruitful plants seem to grow in all kinds of different types of soil.  And things happen that can give us pause to think.  A friend of mine told me that she had a beautiful planter and she took great care to prepare the soil, to make sure everything was right and she planted petunias in it.  But they wouldn’t grow.  In a weird fluke, however, she noticed one day that apparently some of the petunia seeds had fallen out of the planter and had planted themselves in the crevice in the concrete near the planter box.  And out of this crevice she found that there was a beautiful petunia plant growing! 

The surprise of today’s parable story is not the frustration of years of planting work that ends up with most of the plants failing for one reason or another.  Instead, the miracle here is that despite persecution, lure of wealth, hardened hearts and “evil” that there are still disciples: that despite all the values of the world and the lure of wealth and fame, and the greed and “me, me, me” thinking, that there are still people who learn to love those who are different from them, those who are “other”, those who don’t have the same color, or background or social or economic class.  And that is an amazing, miraculous gift from God.  We are called to speak God’s truth of love.  We are called to work for justice and empowerment of all people.  We are called to feed and to serve and to offer grace in unexpected places.  We don’t know who will take what we do and run with it, grow from it, learn from it, deepen in their faith and their trust in God and in love.  We don’t know, but we are called to have faith in God’s abundance, to follow God’s model for sowing in abundance and trusting in abundant results.  Note that God, here, is not a “good business person”.  God doesn’t care about that, doesn’t measure value around that at all.  God, as the sower, throws the seed EVERYWHERE.  On the hard rock, on the weedy patches, on the shallow soil; trusting that there will be growth somewhere and that even one seed that sprouts is worth the effort of the sowing. 

Note also, that in part the success of all of this seed is not just on the sower, but on the community.  Do we help to till the soil?  Do we feed, water, and care for the seed that God has scattered?  And so, too, when we scatter seed: when we speak words of hope and truth and love.  It is not just up to us to do the work.  We have a community that then must take those seeds and nurture them, plant them deeper, do the work of caring for the plants that have begun to grow. 

There is a story of a man who moved to a new community that had incredibly rocky, inhospitable soil.  He tilled the ground, he mixed the soil with good soil, he nurtured and cared for the area and after years and years of hard work, he had an incredibly beautiful garden.  One day a visitor to the area came by and said to the man, “wow, God has created an amazing garden here!” To which the man replied, “well, when it was just up to God it was a mess!”  The point is that God includes us in the work of sowing and caring for the earth.  And that is NOT just about other people, and this applies on the small scale as well. 

What I mean is that we all have places within each of us, every single one of us, that are rocky, that are weedy, and that are shallow.  And we need to be intentional, not only about learning, and listening, but about beating those rough rocky places within into a softer soil, adding nurturing soil to the most inhospitable places inside of us, making sure we water and feed the soil of our lives so that we have fertile places where words, wisdom, love, compassion and grace can grow, being available for opportunities to get to know and hear new people and new things. 

What does any of this have to do with God?  Well, as Paul said, God’s consolation comes in measure to the suffering.  And it is always in great abundance.  When Jesus here in the parable of Matthew describes the yield – one hundred to one in some cases, or even the thirty to one in another case, he is talking about enormous abundance.  For a farmer, a 30 to one yield is enough to feed a village for a year.  A hundredfold would allow the farmer to “retire to a villa by the Sea of Galilee”.  That is the abundance of God.

But in the end we have to remember that ultimately we are not in charge of the outcome.  Our job is simply to do that which is in front of us to do.  We then have to let go of the results.  It reminds me of a scene from the movie “28 days”.  In the movie, everyone is at a rehab center dealing with their various addictions.  The main character, Gwen is talking with a professional baseball player.  She picks up a ball throws it at the mat that he has set up to practice his pitching and ball goes wild.  “Great” she says, “just one more thing I’m terrible at.”

“What were you thinking about?  When you threw the ball?”

“… I don’t know… the mattress.  You’re thinking about hitting the mattress”

“Well, that might sound funny to you but that’s all wrong.  You get all locked in on the strike zone and the next thing you know it’s looking about the size of a peanut. And you’re thinking, ‘wow!  I got to get that little ball in there?’  And you’ve psyched yourself right out of the game.  The strike zone, the call, the count, the batter… forget all that!  You got to think about the little things.  The things you can control.  You can control your stance, your balance, your release, your follow through.  Try to think about those little things and only those little things.  Cause you know, when you let go of the ball, it’s over.  You don’t have any say over what happens down there.  That’s somebody else’s job.”

I think about the Amy Grant song, “All I ever have to be”

“… And all I ever have to be is what you made me.  Any more or less would be a step out of your plan.  As you daily recreate me, help me always keep in mind, that I only have to do what I can find.  And all I ever have to be is what you made me.”

All we have to do is what is in front of us to do, and to trust that God will take care of the rest.  Our job therefore is not just to sow the seed, but to celebrate the abundant harvest when it comes, to celebrate when seed grows and people experience life in new ways.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

A Loving Response

A Loving Response

7/5/20

Job 41:1-8; 42:1-17

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Suffering leads to deeper relationships with God.  OR, genuine relationship with God should be the goal.

               Today we finish up the story of Job, and as you heard, in many ways it is like a fairy tale ending.  Everything was wrong and now everything is right again.  But there is so much more in this final passage, and in the arc of the story that I want to focus on today.

As you may remember from a month ago, the book of Job begins with the accuser challenging the authenticity of Job’s goodness.  He basically says that Job is faithful and good because he believes that will be rewarded.  It’s quid pro quo.  I’ll do what you want me to do, God, and then, God, your job is to reward me.  And the accuser at the very beginning says that this is not a sign of being a good person.  This is payment for work done.  It is an exchange of goods, a trade.  He says Job is not innately good. He is just doing what he believes will bring him what he wants.  And both the accuser and God seem to be on the same page with the conclusion that this is, frankly, wrong.  This is NOT a good or right reason to be faithful or good. 

Why is it not a good reason?  This goes back to the mistaken idea that life is fair and just.  We discussed that a month ago, but it comes up here again as well since part of today’s passage is God confronting Job’s friends and telling them they were wrong.  Again, remember that Job’s friends kept telling Job that he was just reaping what he must have sown.  And God here clearly states that they are mistaken.  Their ideas about good people being rewarded and bad people being punished are just plain in error.  But again, we talked about this a month ago.

So today I want to focus more on the second problem with just being good in order to get what we want.  And I want to start again by asking you to think about why you are faithful and why you go to church.  Is it, like Job, because you are trying to win a way into heaven?  We know that for many, people answer this question with, basically “for heaven insurance”.  Many people have faith and go to church because they believe that is what will guarantee them entrance into heaven.  They are paying for their afterlife.  This is an exchange of goods idea, it is trade thinking.  For these people, they don’t come to church because it is meaningful to them now, or because they really feel called to give, and they don’t have a relationship with God because it is valuable, life-giving or important to them on a daily basis.  They are faithful and go to church because it is payment now for heaven reward later.   But I would say that even for those people who are not looking at an afterlife, for many, they are still using their faith, their actions and their church attendance as payment for good things in this life.  We still desperately want life to be fair.  And we believe that if we are good, if we do right, that we will be rewarded.  More problematically, we tend to believe that if other people are suffering, it must be because they have not tried, they have not worked, they have not “earned” the good things that we have.  We assume this in our very cores and tend to act this out in unbelievably cruel ways.  We assume that people who’ve been killed did something to deserve it.  We blame them for what they have experienced because then it makes life feel “fair”.  We believe that poor people are lazy.  We blame them for their own poverty.  We believe that those who are refugees or are suffering oppression must somehow be innately less-than, must deserve it, must have earned the trauma and disasters that they are experiencing.  We attack people who are already down, just like Job’s friends, saying that it is their fault that they are suffering, or enslaved, or imprisoned, or killed or kept down.  We become complicit with evil when we try to justify it happening and fail to call it for what it is. 

 I understand this thinking.  It is a way to regain a sense of control in our own lives.  If life is fair, then all we have to do is be good, do right, and we will be fine.  We can feel that all we have we have earned and we do not owe payments to the larger society or to one another.  We can feel a smug self-righteousness about what we have, what we do and who we are.

 Job, as we’ve discussed, was not exempt from this thinking.  He, too, believed that life was fair, that goodness would be rewarded, that his faithful actions would lead to good things.  His friends believed this too: hence their speeches.  But today’s passage is a confrontation of that.  God says, in no uncertain terms, that this is not the case.  Job’s friends, he states, are wrong: absolutely and unequivocally wrong.  That’s not how life – now, or after death – works.  You cannot “buy” good things, a good life or heaven in this way.  And if you are trying to do that, that is not genuine faith.  But more importantly, it is not a sign of being a good person.  That kind of thinking involves a complete lack of both humility and compassion for the other, and it is not what God wants for us.

I think about the parishioners I’ve heard about, and those who have come to me, who have wanted, begged even, over the years, for an actual experience of the Divine.  They usually have some formula for how they will achieve that, how they will find it.  And it, too, seems to be based on this “currency” model of relationship with God.  If I only do x, then I will receive what I am hoping for.  If I only go to church, pray more, do better, then God should reward me with a deep and true experience of the Divine.

And this leads me to the main part of what I want to talk with you about today.  The unfortunate truth is that all of those people I know who have had genuine, real experiences of God: those experiences have not come from being good or doing good.  Those experiences have come, without exception, from suffering. 

I am not saying that God causes suffering.  But I believe with everything in me that God is still creating, taking chaos and bringing good out of it.  And this is nowhere more clear than when God uses our suffering to bring resurrection and the highest good to our lives.  Suffering has many gifts with it.  It teaches humility, it helps us to grow, helps us to empathize.  More, suffering shows us who we really are.  How we respond to that suffering- either with anger or with compassion, shows who we are at our core.  Richard Rohr says transformation takes place in only two ways: either through great love or great suffering. 

And again, the impact of that suffering on our understanding and experience of God?  Job’s suffering and his lament allowed him to see God: Job was completely transformed by his experience of suffering.  Before his suffering he did not see beyond himself: his needs, his wants, what he needed to do to earn what he needed and wanted.  It was only through his suffering that he was given a larger vision of the world, its beauty, its immense majesty, its awesomeness.  And then a vision of God-self.

Perhaps even more profoundly and deeply than the story of Job is the story of Jacob.

Genesis 32:22-32:  That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.  After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions.  So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.  When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.  Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” The man asked him, “What is your name?” “Jacob,” he answered.  Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”  Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.” But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.

               The very word, the very name “Israel” means “one who struggles with God”.  And that is deeply profound.  The very roots of our faith tradition stem from a struggle with God.  We experience, see, and have full relationship with God only when we are willing to jump fully into the questions, and into the pain of life.  When we choose to be fully real and transparent and engaged with God and God’s life, then we experience God.

               That brings us back to my first point:  why, then, should we really have faith?  And why should we go to church?  I think about when Jesus asked the disciples (John 6:67) “do you also want to leave?” and Simon Peter’s response, “Lord, where would we go?”  Their love for him was so great and so deep that they could not imagine being any place else.  It is like when we love our families.  The idea of going away from them makes no sense.  It is that love, that committed, unconditional love that is the only reason for our faith, for our commitment, for our dedication to God and to our community, to one another.

Job’s reason for his actions change completely.  And they change at the point of his lament, at the point of his crying out to God – it is in his suffering that his person changes, it is in his suffering that his reason for his actions changes.  He goes from being a person who is doing good in order to buy what he wants into a person who is actively and lovingly seeking a relationship with God.  His suffering opened up for him, pushed him to be absolutely real, himself, to wrestle, like Jacob, with God.    Until he spoke his pain, his goal of gaining for himself and then his self-obsession with his pain blocked his vision of God, blocked his ability even to see the amazing beauty of creation.  But his suffering broke him open so that the light could finally come in.  It broke him so that he could then see the beauty of creation and come to love God fully and completely. 

           I want to make one final point concerning Job.  Job never receives a real answer about why people suffer.  Instead he is shown a God who cares about that suffering and is there with him in that suffering.  In the end, this answer is enough for Job.  He has grown through his pain into being the person God called him to be: a person of humility who has seen God, who loves God and is choosing relationship with God.  God’s creative powers are not finished with any of us: there is still order that needs to be found, there is still chaos that needs to be subdued.  God is still creating until the world is at peace and justice has come.  God is still speaking.  God continues.  And so we end with the disaster that was Job being transformed, renewed and brought back to life:  God offers that to us as well: to bring beauty out of our chaos, and new vision out of our suffering. 

Our call to faith, our call to relationship with God should be about our love for God.  And our actions: coming to church, but also serving and caring for God’s people: these should be responses of gratitude for the relationship, the love, the care that we have for God.  We should not be acting “good” in order to manipulate God into gifting us with good things.  Instead, we act in faith and love because God first loved us and in gratitude for God’s love, we cannot help but respond with giving back.

And God Shows Up

             Job 31:35-37; 38:1-11, 25-27, Job 42:5

Mark 10:35-45

A salesman, driving on a lonely country road one dark and rainy night, had a flat.  He opened the trunk - no lug wrench.  The light from a farmhouse could be seen dimly up the road.  He set out on foot through the driving rain.  Surely the farmer would have a lug wrench he could borrow, he thought.  Of course, it was late at night - the farmer would be asleep in his warm, dry bed.  Maybe he wouldn’t answer the door.  And even if he did, he’d be angry at being awakened in the middle of the night.  The salesman, picking his way blindly in the dark, stumbled on.  By now his shoes and clothing were soaked.  Even if the farmer did answer his knock, he would probably shout something like, “What’s the big idea waking me up at this hour?”  This thought made the salesman angry.  What right did that farmer have to refuse him the loan of a lug wrench?  After all he was stranded in the middle of nowhere, soaked to the skin.  The farmer was so selfish - no doubt about that!  The salesman finally reached the house and banged loudly on the door.  A light went on inside, and a window opened above.  A voice called out, “Who is it?”  His face white with anger, the salesman called out, “you know darn well who it is.  It’s me!  And you can keep your blasted lug wrench.  I wouldn’t borrow it now if you had the last one on earth!”

Job has asked for vindication, Job has declared to God that his treatment is unfair.  Job knows he is a righteous man – we are told, in fact that he was “blameless and upright”, and so he is angry at what he sees as unfair treatment and he’s been hollering at God.  Today we hear part of God’s answer to Job and at first glance it appears that God is answering with anger, that Job’s yelling at God is somehow displeasing to God.  He certainly doesn’t appear to answer Job’s questions.  As the God character in Joan of Arcadia said, “you notice I’m not answering the questions.”  And while some might say this is because it is like a human trying to explain to his/her pet the theory of relativity, for Job, as for any of us asking the “why!” questions and not receiving the answers we are hoping for, this must have been extremely frustrating.  Especially when God responds to Job with questions such as “Who is this darkening counsel with words lacking knowledge?” and “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?” it would seem that God’s goal is simply to push Job back into his place and straighten him out.

Those comments are in many ways echoed by Jesus in today’s passage from Mark as Jesus responds to James and John’s request to sit next to Jesus when he comes in his glory.  “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?!”  And while we know that the answer is really “no”, that James and John really can’t or at least, not to the same degree, share in the cup that Jesus drank or be baptized in the same way as Jesus, still James and John have the nerve, the gall to say that they can follow Jesus in this way, without really understanding what that means.  One might wonder if, after Jesus then turns around and says, “Okay, you will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with,” if they don’t then think to themselves “Holy Cow.  What have we just signed up for??!!”  It might appear that Jesus is responding to their gall, to their nerve with punishment – and the promise of the persecution and death that Jesus himself experienced.

But while both of these passages might be heard as God responding to audacity and nerve with anger or even punishment, I think that they both call us to a deeper look, first at those who approach God and then at God’s response to that approach. 

Job was yelling at God.  And while, like with James and John we might at first find ourselves asking, what nerve, and what gall it must take for a person to say such things to God, I think we have to look at what this says about Job.  There are only two situations in which someone could have that much nerve, to declare themselves innocent and upright and demand that God vindicate them.  The first is that they are beyond caring.  Some might say this is the case with Job, but I don’t hear it this way.   If Job were beyond caring I don’t think he would engage God at all because engaging the other, even in anger, is still an act of caring, it is still being in the relationship, it is still connecting.  If Job was beyond caring, he would have written God off.  But he didn’t do that.  He yelled, he expressed anger, and to me that is a sign that he is still in full relationship with God.  So what is the only other explanation for that kind of nerve or gall?  As we discussed last week, it is faith.  Job had an amazing faith that God would hear him, would respond to him, and will vindicate him!  He is saying to God, “I see all that you have done!  I have faith in all that you have done in the world – amazing, wonderful things.  So where are you now when I need you?  Where are you now because I need you!”  That is faith.  That is trust.  That is a relationship with God.

James and John, too, express an extraordinary amount of faith simply in making their request.  This story of James and John follows immediately after Jesus announces his coming death for the third time.  He has just said, “They will condemn me to death and will hand me over to the Gentiles, who will mock me and spit on me, flog me and kill me. Three days later I will rise.”  Jesus has just declared a horrible, awful death.  And yet, even after Jesus has declared this, so in other words, no matter how bad things may look or sound, James and John are so sure of Jesus' final victory that they sign up to go with him.  This is faith.  This is a depth of faith that says that they are even willing to give their lives because they are so sure of the outcome, so sure that Jesus will overcome. 

So, Job, James and John have just expressed strong faith in their God.  And God’s response?  Well, when we get yelled at, I think we react in one of two ways most often.  We either walk away – showing that we don’t care enough about the relationship to engage the discussion – or we engage it back in some way.  Which does God choose?  God chooses to respond!  To stay engaged.  To stay in the relationship and even engage us further.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that we can get angry and even impolite with God because "God prefers Job's courage to the piety of Job's friends…Devout defiance pleases God. It may even bring God out of hiding, with a roar that lays our ears back against our heads and makes the angels shout for joy".

I love those statements: “Devout Defiance pleases God.”  And “It may even bring God out of hiding with a roar that lays our ears back against our heads and makes the angels shout for joy.”  And I think that in today’s passages, this is exactly what God expresses.  God responds to Job out of the whirlwind, which to me does not say that God responded to Job in anger, but that God stepped out of the chaos that was Job’s life, God stepped out of what must have felt to Job like God hiding, to SHOW UP!!  Job yelled at God and was rewarded by God’s very presence.  Yes, God challenged Job, but the story tells us that Job found comfort and life in God’s words, too – a reminder that God is still there, that God is still present, God is still in charge and that God has Job’s best interests at heart.  That’s what God does when God shows up – both comforts and challenges us to look at our lives in a different way, to see in a different way, to engage life, no matter what we have been handed, with a vision of gratitude and grace – which is exactly what Job is given.  What an amazing, awesome gift.  Job yells at God and God SHOWS UP! 

We ended today’s Job passages with these words from Job: “My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes behold you.”  And in this case, “behold” is intimate, close, is about seeing and understanding.  No where else, NO WHERE else in our scriptures does someone say they behold God.  That gift of being given sight, being given that kind of close interaction/vision with God is given ONLY to this person who took the risk of speaking his truth to God, fully, completely, with pain and anger, yes; but more with faith, trust and commitment to the relationship with God.  Job’s lament, Job’s words made room for his vision of the beauty of the world to return.  They made space within him for awe and a sense of wonder and appreciation to return to him.  He laid the ground work of having a genuine experience of God by being genuine himself, by being transparent, and completely real.

For James and John, too, when they demand that Jesus give them whatever they ask for, Jesus doesn’t scorn them or walk away, or even act repelled.  He asks them what they want him to do for them.  And then when they tell Jesus that they want to be seated next to Jesus when Jesus comes into his glory, Jesus does not dismiss them then either.  He, too, instead, engages their devout defiance.  He, too, enters into conversation with them, is present with them.  But then, he, too, brings both comfort and challenge – okay, if you want to follow me, you will do exactly that – which both promises death and promises the resurrection to follow.

The deepest gift in both of these texts is that God stays with them even in the face of their audacity and gall.  God shows up, is present, continues to engage them in an ever deepening relationship with God-self.  It comes back to relationships: Job wants to talk to God and God wants to talk to Job. And that, THAT is beyond amazing.  It is the dialogue and conversation that is so crucial: that’s the relationship right there.  And I would say that is the case between people as well.  Our choice to stay in relationship is what is most important.

Barbara Brown Taylor explains the gifts of God’s responses in these texts this way… "the worst thing that can happen (to us) is not to suffer without reason, but to suffer without God – without any hope of consolation or rebirth."

Rabbi Albert Lewis described the alternative, the experience of those without an experience of God’s presence, with these words, “I had a doctor once who was an atheist….This doctor liked to jab me and my beliefs.  He used to schedule my appointments deliberately on Saturdays, so I would have to call the receptionist and explain why, because of my religion, that wouldn’t work…  One day, I read in the paper that his brother had died.  So I made a condolence call…(in this job you don’t retaliate).  So I go to his house and he sees me.  I can tell he is upset.  I tell him I am sorry for his loss.  And he says, with an angry face, ‘I envy you.’  ‘Why do you envy me?’  I said.  ‘Because when you lose someone you love, you can curse God.  You can yell.  You can blame (God).  You can demand to know why.  But I don’t believe in God.  I’m a doctor!  And I couldn’t help my brother.’  He was near tears.  ‘Who do I blame?’ he kept asking me.  ‘There is no God.  I can only blame myself.’  That, is a terrible self-indictment.  Worse than an unanswered prayer.  (For) it is far more comforting to think God listened and said no than to think that nobody’s out there.” (HALF, p 81, 82)

We have the most precious gift of knowing that someone is out there.  We know that God is with us, and even more that God does answer our prayers, usually not in the ways we expect, but always in faithful, present ways.  We can be brave with God, we can speak out truth to God - God knows what we really think and feel anyway, so we may as well tell God.  When we choose that kind of real honesty, real openness with God, God shows up.  For God wants relationship with us as much as we want relationship with God.  Call out to God, speak to God.  In return we find God’s very being. 

But also take this to the next step.  Just as God’s response to those who argue with God is for God to show up, our relationships to those who take the time to talk to us is a call also to show up.   To listen, to be present.  Thanks be to God! 

Sorrow and Compassion

Job 1:1-22, 3:1-10

Matthew 9:35-10:8, (9-23)

               As my own congregation will remember, I have chosen to use the Narrative lectionary this last year as a change from the three year cycle of the revised common lectionary that I’ve used for the last 20 some years.  The narrative lectionary is on a four year schedule and it looks more intensively at each book of the bible, following it through with longer readings, skipping a lot less material, in order for us to get a real look at these books.  For this next month, the narrative lectionary is looking in depth at the book of Job, which is not a scripture that we usually give much of our time.  When we do look at Job, we usually will give it a single week of our attention, rather than spreading it out over a number of weeks.  It is an uncomfortable book for many of us in many ways.  So today I want to give a bit of an overview.

               The book of Job is one of my favorite books in the bible, for reasons that we will explore more in the coming weeks.  One reason, which we will explore more today, is that many people have come to understand it as a book that addresses the question of why bad things happen to good people, or, to put it another way: many have understood it as a book that seeks to explore the age-old question of evil.  The question of evil is, in many ways, THE theological problem that people of faith face.  As many theologians explain it, in particular, Rabbi Kushner in his book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, and Frederick Buechner puts it in his book Wishful thinking, A Theological ABC, there are three statements that people of faith generally believe to be true:

1.       God is all Powerful

2.       God is all Good

3.       Bad things happen.

One of these three statements has to go.  They can’t all work together.  If God is all powerful and all good, then even things that look bad must in fact not be.  If God is all powerful but bad things happen, then God, the creator and controller of all things, must be the author of those bad things so God can’t be all good.  And finally, if God is all good but bad things happen, then God must not be all powerful.  There must be other forces at work in the world, in our lives and in the universe that have some sway and some say over what happens and that make for bad things to happen. 

People are uncomfortable with this.  And in general people strive and desperately want to believe that all three statements must be true.  We don’t want to believe that God is other than all powerful and all good.  But we also experience that bad things happen, every day, all around us.  And so we often jump through huge hoops in our thinking in order to make all three of these statements work.  And what we tend to discount can be a strong indicator of where we stand in our theology.

More fundamentalist and evangelicals, for example, tend to discount the statement that bad things happen.  They try to find ways in which the terrible things that happen are not really bad, or they say that the bad things didn’t really happen.  This often ends up with the devastating result that people say the most inhumane and unkind things to other people who are suffering.  Have you ever heard someone say to a person who has just lost a child, for example, “God needed that child more in heaven.”?  What a horrible thing to say to someone grieving: that they shouldn’t feel sad at the devastation they have just experienced because God somehow needs the baby more than they do!  Why would God “need” this child in heaven?    Or how about, “Everything happens for a reason” to someone who has just gone through an experience of loss or worse, has experienced some kind of truly torturous situation.  Their agony had a reason behind it?  Another favorite of mine is, “God never gives us more than we can handle” as if God had given us something bad in order to test our ability to handle things.  And we all know that people DO, all too often, experience more than they can handle.  People commit suicide because they are experiencing more than they can handle, they lose their minds, they become bitter or cynical, they DIE, overcome by disease or despair.  Every day people experience more than they can handle.  To tell someone who is on the verge of collapse that they haven’t been given more than they can handle is cruel because it declares their inability to handle the situation as a personal flaw.  And all of this points to a theology that says that the things that we experience as horrible are not, in fact horrible. 

Other times, people deal with the “bad things happen” part by assuming that anything bad that comes their way is punishment for bad behavior on their part.  This, too, is problematic for many reasons.  First of all, if God is all powerful, why would God allow us to act out bad behaviors that God then punishes?  Also, what kind of god is it that would hurt us because we made mistakes?  Not a very loving God, for sure.  But many people go to this place, don’t they?  Kushner himself tells the story of a parishioner who came to him after his daughter had died saying he had missed a high holy day at the temple and that this must be why God had punished him by killing his daughter.  Again, what kind of god does that describe?

Other faiths, perhaps, come to the conclusion that perhaps God is not all good, but is more like humans: a creator of good and evil who gets jealous, angry, vengeful and altogether destructive at times.  Since this is not a Christian understanding of God, people who believe God to be all good and all powerful but then experience terrible things sometimes end up chucking out faith in God at all.  They cannot believe in an all powerful god who would allow these terrible things to happen, so God must not be real, or must not be an entity worth worshiping. 

Finally, then, as we have discussed before, we come to the theology of people like Kushner and Buechner, and, frankly, of Job.  The story of Job does not describe a God who is punishing Job for bad behaviors.  The book of Job emphasizes repeatedly that Job is righteous.  And while some might say that perhaps the book of Job is describing a God who is perhaps not all good, who in fact makes an unfair contract with the devil even, there is a different way to understand this. 

I want to start, though, with a little historical critical look at Job.  The passages we read from the very beginning of Job has this word that is often translated “Satan” or “the Adversary” but is more accurately, from the Hebrew, translated as “the Accuser”.  There is no sense here of this accuser as being an “evil” one, or one who was working against God in the original.  Rather the sense is that this is a being whose job it is to see the truth in humanity and to hold people accountable for their actions, one who works with God in doing so.  This is very important distinction and it is how the Hebrew people would have originally heard and understood this.  To restate, this text is not a story of God somehow agreeing to the Devil’s demands.  This is a story in which the motives of Job, the deep understanding of Job is being questioned.  Additionally, when you look at what then happens, it is not that the Accuser goes down and causes problems for Job.  Some of what is described is natural disasters.  But most of it is the humans around Job doing damage.  As we hear, “A messenger came to Job and said: “The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys were grazing nearby when the Sabeans took them and killed the young men with swords. I alone escaped to tell you.”  And then, “Chaldeans set up three companies, raided the camels and took them, killing the young men with swords. I alone escaped to tell you.”  In other words, this is not a story about two gods: a good god we call “God” who made everything good and a bad god whom we call “Satan” who makes everything bad that we can’t handle, and who somehow makes an agreement with the good god to torture an innocent man.  I know the story, especially in our English translations, can sound that way, but that misses the intention of the story.

               Instead this is, and again was intended to be, a story that invites us more deeply into the question of good and evil.  As we move through the book of Job, we will explore this in more depth.  But the point of this intro, as well as Job’s angry rant in reaction to the suffering that he has experienced, is that bad things happen to good people.  Job did not deserve his suffering, the intro makes that clear.  He was a good and righteous man.  His suffering was not punishment, his suffering was not revenge, his suffering was not God, nor some “devil character” lashing out.

                Much of my study leave last week was spent taking a class on process theology.  Process theology has many facets, but the main point of process theology is that God is NOT all powerful.  God has released power in favor of freewill.  I have said this before, but God wants genuine relationship with creation.  If we are controlled, there is no genuine relationship.  If we are puppets, there is no real relationship.  God has given us, and all creation, choices, our own personal power to act and react in this world.  We have the power to act, nature has the power to act.  Each of us chooses how we will be in the world, what we will do with the time given to us, what choices we will make.  That means that when people make bad choices or do bad things (like the Sabeans and Chaldeans in the Job story), people suffer.  And God has no power to prevent those people from making those choices.  God’s power at this point in time, is one of persuasion.  When people listen to God, when people lean into the mandates to love all others as one loves oneself, then good comes.  When people such as the Sabeans and Chaldeans in this story do not see others as brothers and sisters, do not feel the call to love them as themselves, do not treat them kindly or well, but instead abuse them and take what they want for themselves, raping the land and killing those they see as “other”, God is powerless to prevent it. 

I realize that for some, this is a scary thought.  It came up in one of our conversations during my study leave class that some people say, “If God can’t fix everything, if God is not all powerful, that is not a God I want to worship!”  The instructor’s response (and mine as well), “If God is not all Good, if God is not on the side of the suffering, if God has power and just stands by while terrible things happen, THAT is not a god I want to worship.”  (the third statement that bad things happen is not in question here: Job experienced them, I’ve experienced them and our world is experiencing them: so that is not the point in question here.)

(On a side note, this is the power we give to pastors in the Presbyterian church as well – we do not have the power to make decisions, though we usually take the crap when decisions don’t go the direction everyone wants, which is always – you just can’t please all the people all the time, EVER.  Pastors, too, in the Presbyterian church at least, are only given the power of persuasion.  That’s it.)

So, the idea here is that God does not interfere or prevent the bad things from happening.  The earth, just like humans, is active and alive and so things we call “natural disasters” because they devastate us happen.  Earthquakes happen.  Floods happen. Virus’ happen.  Sometimes, many times lately, humans make these things worse.  We affect the weather, we set up our societies in such a way that those most likely to get sick are also those least likely to get health care and therefore more than likely to spread disease to the rest of us.  But these are things WE do.  Not things God has done to us. 

“Let us not ask God to take away what we have been given responsibility to handle,” someone once said.  It’s our responsibility to prevent as many deaths as possible.  It is our responsibility to act in ways that limit our potential for earth’s destruction.  When we fail to take that responsibility, bad things will and do happen.  The world has been set up in such a way that there are consequences, in the big picture, for our actions; not because God is punishing, but because we have been given co-creative power and when we use that for evil, for destruction, for bad, then bad things come.  In a sense we are punished BY our sins, not FOR our sins.  On an individual basis, though, this means that life is not fair and there is suffering. 

Where is God in that suffering?  God is on the cross.  And this is the part that we have to understand.  Jesus, too, did not die because he deserved it.  His suffering, too, was not punishment, and it was not revenge.  His suffering, too, was deeply unfair.  When it comes to suffering and Christianity, it is clear that God did not prevent even the cross, but gave humans the freewill that enabled them to even kill the Son of God.  Barbara Brown Taylor in God in Pain said it like this, “Christianity is the only world religion that confesses a God who suffers.  It is not that popular an idea, even among Christians.  We prefer a God who prevents suffering, only that is not the God we have got.  What the cross teaches us is that God’s power is not the power to force human choices and end human pain.  It is, instead, the power to pick up the shattered pieces and make something holy out of them – not from a distance, but right close up.”

The question for us, then, is how do we respond in that suffering?  How do we respond when others suffer?  In relation to God, it is easy to praise God in the good times, but harder in the bad times.  We see this in Job.  He eventually gets upset.  His crisis of suffering is a spiritual crisis too, because he, as a member of his community, also had believed that the world was just and that suffering was punishment.  But now he sees otherwise: from his own experience, he is seeing things differently.  And while he doesn’t curse God, he never steps to the place in which he curses God like his wife suggests he do, he does curse his own life.  He rues the day he was born.  He laments.  He pours out his pain.  We will look more at this next week.  For today, though, my call for us is to sit in the question of evil.  Do you see, experience, feel suffering and evil in this world?  And if you do, do you choose to believe in a God who is all good, or a God who is all powerful?  Are you quick to blame God when things go badly?  Do you see a God who is angry and vengeful?  Or do you see a God who has loved you so deeply into being that God has given each of us free-will with the cost being that suffering comes?  These are hard questions.  They are questions that are not easily answered.   And for today, I invite you into the questions, into the exploration.  Unlike for many, I am not going to give you quick answers because I think God is in the very questions, pulling us closer, inviting us to listen, to hear, and to grow in our love for God.  I think that IS Good News.  A God in the questions.  Amen.

A person's job

          Our church volunteered at Convoy of Hope this weekend.  At one point, I was part of a group of people who were collecting, tying, organizing food bags to give away.  One of the other volunteers was a young boy (10 years old, maybe?) who was there with his father.  While working, the father said to the boy, "If you don't do well in school, this will be your job!"
        Sometimes my internal filter doesn't work very well, so out of my mouth pops, "If you do do well in school, this will be your job!"  The people around me didn't understand, and I realized I hadn't phrased it well, so a number of folk jumped all over me. I tried to explain, but everyone was very defensive, so I dropped it.  It wasn't that important to me to be "right" in that moment.  I did find it ironic that they were left with the impression that I don't value education. I didn't give my credentials: somehow that felt like bragging, which I didn't believe would be helpful. Still, those who know me know that everything about my own achievements through education says that I deeply value education. You all know that the idea that I would in any way underestimate the importance of education is ludicrous, to say the least.
       At the same time, I stick to what I said: no matter what your education level, no matter what you have accomplished in life, no matter how well you do in school or how far you go in education, who you are, what your rank is, or how much money you make: this work is your job.  What I mean by that is that the most important, most valued call that we all have is to care for one another, to be available to one another, to feed those who need some help.  The "job" that God gives us is always the same: to love one another as we love ourselves.  That means feeding one another as we feed ourselves, caring for one another as we care for ourselves.  We are terrible, absolutely terrible as a species, as a unified group, at this particular job.  I know extremely few people who are willing to house others to the same degree and with the same kind of housing that they house themselves.  I know very few others who are willing to feed the same luxurious meals to others as they feed their own families.  I know one or two, out of my total acquaintance, who would send a homeless family on the same kind of vacations that they regularly pay for for themselves.  We just don't do this.  But it is our job.  And it is the most important job we will ever have.