Suffering

 

1 Peter 4:1-19

Malachi 3:1-3

Matthew 5:43-48

 

“There stood Beethoven, gravely ill and totally deaf.  Eyes closed, he kept conducting the orchestra even after they had ceased their performance and the audience had risen to its feet in thunderous applause.  As a singer stepped from the choir to turn him around to see those whose shouts of “bravo” resonated throughout the concert hall, tears of elation filled his eyes.  Perhaps the worst loss a composer could experience had been the catalyst for a remarkably adaptive creativity that allowed him to transcend his tortures to become immersed in the thrill of conducting the premiere of his Ninth Symphony, the “ode to Joy”.  At that moment, and not only in spite of but BECAUSE of his adversity, Beethoven had experienced the thrill of thriving through adversity.”  _ prelude of “Beethoven Factor”

I’ve found myself thinking a great deal about suffering lately.  And today’s passages really explore it and call us to look at it once again.  There is a Christian Education study entitled, “If you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat” which explores many aspects of stepping out in faith to walk as Jesus has called us to do, with God and each other.  The study explores our fear, the risks we take, how we perceive failure and also what we do with suffering because when we do take the risks of stepping out of the boat and stepping onto the water, there will be times when we suffer as a result, when we fall into the water, when we fail.  Even though we know there will be suffering, we are still called to do it.  We are still called to step out, take the risks of faith, go through the fire to come out on the other side, purified.  In one of the chapters, John Ortberg looks at what he calls the “resilience factor”.  He wrote, “People who not only survive but grow through difficult situations have (been found to have) three qualities in common:  1.  They take action, seeking to reassert some command over their destiny rather than viewing themselves as helpless victims.  2.  They have a larger-than usual capacity for what might be called moral courage – for refusing to betray their values.  And 3.  They find meaning and purpose in their suffering.” 

In the book, the Beethoven Factor, the new positive psychology of hardiness, happiness, healing and hope, Paul Pearsall says a similar thing, especially in regards to finding meaning and purpose in suffering.  He says that some people who suffer don’t become victims or even survivors, instead they become thrivers, people who actually grow through and because of their pain and suffering.  He lists twelve characteristics of such people, but many of them also have to do with finding meaning and purpose.  Number one on his list is that he says those who thrive rather than just becoming survivors, or staying always as victims have found meaning behind the things that have happened to them, though for each individual that will look different.  He also says that thrivers make sense of what has happened or is happening to them.  In other words, both of these studies emphasize again and again the importance in finding meaning and purpose in our suffering if we are to come out stronger, thriving and resilient on the other side.

For much of the Western world, suffering seems pointless.  Our culture tells us the purpose of life is “fun”, or happiness.  And in that context, suffering can have no meaning.  As a result, many people in our culture have a very difficult time when pain does come.  Where is meaning and purpose in suffering when the goal is just to “be happy”?

But our faith paints for us a very different picture.  The Bible never tells us that life is about being happy or comfortable or at ease.  Meaning and purpose have many levels and many layers and therefore we can’t say there is one reason or one purpose behind any individual’s suffering, we can’t determine for anyone else what their suffering is about, or why it is happening or what good God can bring out of it for any one person.  None the less, what we can and do know as people of faith is that God can and will bring purpose, meaning and new life out of suffering if we work with God, if we are open to God’s movement through the pain.  God creates meaning even when we can’t find it.  God brings resurrection out of death.  And for me, today’s passages really touch on the “reasons”, the purpose, the meaning behind all that we suffer.  The passage from Peter says that God uses suffering to “test” us.  I don’t really like the word “test” because for some that can imply that God authors our suffering to see how much we can put up with.  That isn’t my experience of God.  The God I experience does not create our suffering, but can use it to help us to grow, and to change.  And that is actually the truer meaning behind the Greek word that is here translated as “test”.  It is more accurately translated “challenge” in the sense that God uses our suffering to challenge us to grow, to learn, and to deepen in our connection with God and with life.  I find the same meanings present in the Malachi passage.  Our suffering can refine us.  As John says, it also “prunes” us.  Our suffering can lead us to be more godly, but only if we are open to the purpose God can put into it, open to being “refined” through the hardships. 

As Rick Warren, author of Purpose Given Life said in an interview, “We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense…Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one.  The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort; God is more interested in making your life holy than (God) is in making your life happy.  We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.”

As we know, this isn’t easy.  Malachi tells us this isn’t easy when he compares the process to the pruning of branches, to the refining of metals.  Growing in character means loving more fully, more deeply, even those we don’t like.  Getting there is hard.  And knowing exactly how to do this, how to love more deeply and fully is a challenge.  So God pushes, God “refines” us and “prunes” us so that we might bear more fruit, so that we might be the pure, refined silver we are meant to be.  That hurts.  It just does.  But that also gives meaning to the suffering that comes.  Again, I’m not saying that God causes our suffering.  What I am saying is that when we do suffer, God can use it and DOES use it to refine us if we are open.  While I don’t believe God purposely wants us to hurt, I do believe God can bring and create meaning through our suffering by allowing it to teach and refine us into more godly people. 

Some women in a Bible study came across this passage from Malachi, “God will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.”  One of the women offered to find out the process of refining silver and get back to the group at their next Bible Study. That week, the woman called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work.  She didn't mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about the process of refining Silver.  As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up.  He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities.  The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says:  'He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver.'   She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time.  The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire.  If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.  The woman was silent for a moment.  Then she asked the silversmith, 'How do you know when the silver is fully refined?'

He smiled at her and answered, 'Oh, that's easy -- when I see my image in it.'

   “…When I see my image in it”. 

God refines us until we are truly in God’s image.  What an amazing and wondrous act of love on God’s part, to be with us in that suffering to the point where we are truly made in God’s image.  To be in the image of the God of love, is to love.  To be in the image of the God who loved us so much that that God was willing to die for us, is to love each other so much that we are willing to die for each other.  Not easy.  But that is what being in relationship with God pushes us towards, and challenges us to do.

At one church where I shared this story, one of the congregation’s members approached me afterwards and said something that I also think can help us through times of suffering.  She said, “How hot it must be for God to sit there and refine constantly.”  That is the other part of Jesus on the cross as well.  God is with us in our pain, God is with us in our suffering.  And God is standing alongside in the heat, also suffering but still intent on helping us grow through and beyond our trials.

  A Hawaiian elder once said, “God sometimes tears at the fabric of our lives so that we will learn to be better weavers and to show us how to more deeply appreciate being given the chance to weave.  We may not see the final pattern, but we are wise if we try to find new patterns and become more patient and creative weavers.” (Beethoven factor, xxviii)

And it doesn’t end there.  As the passage from Peter tells us, “After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, the one who called you into his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will himself restore, empower, strengthen, and establish you.”  So finally, the other side of suffering comes.  We are refined, we are made new, and in that newness we are brought to healing, to strength and to a stronger place.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

How Long, O Lord?

 Psalm 90, Matthew 22:34-36

Most people who preach on this passage stick with the two commandments part of this.  And this is a good topic to preach on because it is the grounding of our faith: these are the things Jesus tells us that God requires of us first, foremost, always and in all things - to love God and love one another. 

But today I’d like us to take a bigger look at today’s lectionary passage and especially focus on the part of this passage where Jesus turns the tables and asks the Pharisees a question that they cannot answer.  And I think we have to begin in our understanding of this passage to look at the scriptures that surround this story and especially those that proceed it. 

Do you remember the passage from last week?  The Pharisees were trying to entrap or trick Jesus by asking him questions that would anger a particular group in the crowd.  Last week they asked about paying taxes.  This is followed by a section in scripture that is not included in the lectionary in which the Sadducees try to trick or entrap Jesus by asking him about marriage.  They ask if a person has been married and widowed several times, to whom are they married after they die?  They are again attempting to get the crowds angry at Jesus and so they ask a question that

they believe will elicit an answer that will isolate either one group of Jews that does not believe in a resurrection at all, or another group that does.  But Jesus didn’t not fall into this trap, either.  Instead he simply says that they really don’t understand about the afterlife, they haven’t read scriptures carefully and he leaves it at that.  The final question, and their final attempt to trap him is presented in today’s scripture. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 

Read out of context, the question looks innocent enough.  But in fact they are still trying to trap him.  They are asking him to tell them who he “sides” with in the debates among the Jews, and they are again trying to set a crowd against him.  Which of the ten commandments is most important?  They are asking if Jesus is going to rank them or if he believes they are all of equal value.  For example, is it just as bad to lie as to kill someone?  Is it just as bad to worship idols as to covet?

How does Jesus deal with this trap?  He avoids this final trap as well by answering not with one of the ten commandments at all but with the Sh’ma.  The Sh’ma is even more central and calls us to an even clearer understanding, a summary really of the ten commandments.   The Sh’ma is a passage that every Jew of that time and even today is required to commit to heart as central to their faith.  To quote Deut. 6:5.  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.”  He takes the second part about loving your neighbor as yourself again as a summary of all scripture.  But he also takes it directly from Leviticus 19:18b which says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  By quoting these even more central scriptures, he again shames those who would shame him.  He also avoids the whole ranking of the ten commandments by summarizing them: the first four of which are about loving God, the second six about loving your neighbor.  He calls his listeners back to the center of their faith and reminds them of what they should be remembering at all times - especially when they are trying to entrap a fellow Jew: “love the Lord your God with everything you’ve got, and love your neighbor as yourself - including JESUS whether you feel threatened by him, or not: whether you agree with him or not!”

This, then, is the context in which we find Jesus turning the tables and asking the Pharisees a question instead. As I read this I found myself thinking about the psalm that was also part of today’s lectionary.  Psalm 90, which we also read this morning as part of our lectionary scriptures, has this appeal in the middle of it, “Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants!”  How difficult it must have been for Jesus to be tested again and again with the desire, with the hope, of entrapment by the people.  He must have felt with every new day and every new trial, how long must he endure this?  How long would he have to endure the “not getting it” of his own disciples?  How long would he have to endure the constant attempts at entrapment from the Pharisees, the Herodians, the Sadducees?  It must have been exhausting.  Utterly exhausting.

How many of you have felt that kind of tired?  Have any of you felt that kind of “how long, O Lord, must we endure this?”  How much longer can we stand being tested - either by someone who doesn’t like us or feels threatened by us, or just by the trials of life?  Sometimes I think when we are down it feels like the kicks just keep coming and coming and coming! 

I think about many of the homeless people I’ve met - who ended up homeless for exactly the reason that they had a series of bad luck things happen all at once: the loss of a job, followed by the loss of a house, followed often by the death of a close one, followed by depression which ends them up on the street.  Many times these tests or trials are all related: a person has a problem with alcohol which leads to loss of job, family, etc..  But other times they aren’t related - and yet these big stressors can fall together.  I have a close friend whose mother died and a week later her husband asked for a divorce.  I’ve been thinking about a friend of mine who lost her son three months ago and now her husband.  How hard to endure both of those losses.  How do we endure these extremely difficult times?  And again, the question has to be asked, whether it happens aloud or not, “How long, O Lord, must we endure this?”  Right now with all that is going on around us, the pandemic, the fires, the social unrest, the national stress around this election. And we as a country find ourselves asking “how long, O Lord, must we endure this?”  My father made the comment to me last week that my sermons are different now.  He said it has become obvious in these recorded services that I am highly stressed, that I am struggling. He is not the first person to have said this to me or named this for me.  So I name this as true though I also tell you there is nothing you need to do to take care of me around this.  This is just a reality of the times.  I am stressed, I am struggling.  I am a social being who is not handling this separation and staying at home well.  I don’t preach easily to an empty room but rather find it difficult, exhausting even, and extremely stressful.  I usually bounce off of your energy, I can tell by your reactions, though often subtle, if I have said enough or not.  I have no feedback in preaching in this space.  Connecting through zoom and through the phone can only go so far.  Add to that that when people are unhappy and choose to deal with it by ignoring or avoiding and there is no way to address it because we cannot get together, it weighs on me in a completely different way.  There is no “in person” contact to give me more positive feedback.  Again, you do not have to take care of me around this, but I want to say to you that your cries of “How long, O Lord!” are mirrored by my own.  “How long, O Lord, will we need to continue in this way?  How long will this go on?  How long can we sustain and endure and connect in these weirdly distant, detached ways?!”

This feeling can also make me impatient in other things, as I’ve seen with those around me.  The “how long” makes us want to reopen things too soon, taking the risk of a backwards step.  But it spills into other things too.  “how long” spills into impatience with lines at stores.  People are even nuttier in their driving now than before and I think their impatience on the road is a reflection of the pain they are experiencing in other areas.  Patience is not a part of our fast-paced, instant gratification society.  So when we cannot speed things up, everything can feel “how long?”

It is in the midst of these questions that we are given the scriptures and we are reminded, first by the psalmists that God can handle that anger, God can handle that pain, God can handle our questions.  The psalmist not only gives us permission to express those deep pains, but also gives us the words when sometimes they are hard to find to cry out to God.  It is a myth that says that God needs us to be “nice” all the time - especially with God.  God wants us to be real, God gave us the ability to feel ALL of our feelings and God has given you the very words to cry out in that pain – “how long, O lord.  How long?”

And then God gives us Jesus.  Through Jesus we can see that God has been there, too.  Jesus has experienced the “how long must we endure this?”  The testing kept coming.  The threats kept coming to Jesus.  He knows what we go through.  He has experienced it too.

Finally, Jesus shows us another way to handle it when we’ve hit that “how long” place.  How does Jesus finally deal with all of these tests and entrapments being sent his way?  Jesus deals with the tests finally by turning the tables and asking them a question - one they can’t answer. 

How do we turn the tables when life is full of trials and struggles?  How do we reclaim our power and our sense of living life when things are really difficult?  There isn’t always an easy answer to that.  Almost all of us are victimized at some point.  Some people have really awful things happen to them from which they cannot recover.  Some live with victimization on a daily basis, some had childhoods in which they were abused regularly, some live in situations from which it is almost impossible, if not impossible to recover.  There are some injustices from which people simply cannot recover, or can only recover with serious intervention, a great deal of time, and a great deal of support, love and professional help.  I am not speaking to those people right now, though I have the greatest sympathy and compassion for them and for their suffering.

Instead I am speaking to the majority of people in middle class America who at some point grow up and have to choose how we are going to deal with the many things that have victimized us.  Are we going to pass on those bad behaviors?  Are we going to be walking professional victims, telling everyone we meet how awfully we were treated and how unfair our life has been and how unfair it continues to be?  Or are we going to choose instead to be survivors and hopefully even thrivers - people who have not only survived the victimization and who choose not to be victims any longer but people who thrive, who live, who have learned from their victimization and who choose strength both for themselves and for those they encounter?  Are we going to use our experiences of injustice to insist on a better world for all?  Are we going to stand up for ourselves and others, helping to empower others to do the same?  I know it is not easy to choose to be survivors rather than victims.  And it is even harder to be thrivers.  But these are choices we can make.  I am reminded of a Curtis comic strip I saw some time ago (March 30, 2008). The father pointed out that many rap artists both in the past and in the present talk about (among other things) how terrible everyone has been to them, and then he suggested that maybe it would be better if instead they talked about how they could make different life choices and make things better.

Choosing to be a survivor may not be as “interesting” as complaining about the injustices that we’ve experienced.  It may not be as attractive.  It may not be as easy.  It involves feeling some hard feelings - grief, for example, must be felt, must be experienced, must be lived through to come out the other side.  But choosing to feel those feelings is part of turning the tables: not allowing the trials of life to defeat you - choosing instead to seize life and no longer be the target, the victim, the pursued.  Jesus did this by again, turning the tables on those who would entrap him, not attacking, but asking questions that required his listeners to make a choice between being genuine or being true to the image they were trying to put forward.  He forced them to look at themselves, look at their own theology, look at the inconsistencies and hypocrisies in their own faiths.  He used the same method as they did - asking questions, but he did so in a way that told them volumes about themselves and about him.  We may not have the same ability to do that, but chances are that our trials will not be the same as those Jesus faced either. 

            Today is reformation Sunday and in many ways, the Reformation was an answer to the question of “how Long”.  Martin Luther said, “enough.  No longer will I endure the injustices I am witnessing.  No longer will we walk in this way.  We must change or forge a new path”  And he did.  As an aside I want to point out that what Jesus shows in this passage is that confrontation is not the opposite of love.  Jesus is the embodiment of love, and he follows this passage about loving your neighbor with a confrontation.

            Sometimes we will endure.  Sometimes we will grieve and walk through.  And sometimes, we are called to make changes, to stand up against injustices and to answer the question of “how long” with “no longer.  It is time for this to change and that change will start with me.”

We can make a choice - are we going to be victims, survivors, or thrivers?  Are we going to go out of this life doing the work, healing, living and engaged?  Or are we going to let life plow us and other people over?  How do you want to run this race?  Do you want to live life so fully that you cross the finish line exhausted but fulfilled?  Or do you want to walk to the finish line - still whole, but without having lived?  Or do you want to limp along until you are finally called home?  Jesus calls you to live.  Jesus calls you to be engaged.  Jesus calls you to stand up for yourself and for those around you who suffer injustices.  Jesus calls you to love God and love your neighbor, all of your neighbors, as yourself, even when we are asking “how long”, even when we are struggling, even when we are tired.  “How long, O Lord?” we ask.  And answer is, “you do not know the time or the place”.  So live now, live today, in whatever way you can, in whatever ways are life-giving for you and for those around you.  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! 

Lament and Faith

                        Job 14:7-15; 19:23-27

Matthew 10:24-39

               Today we continue with our study of Job.  At this point in Job we come to see a man who is suffering intensely.  And his friends have been worse than useless: they have been adding to his pain.  Rather than being supportive listeners, they have basically been telling Job that it must be his fault, that he would not be suffering if he hadn’t deserved it somehow, that God was punishing him for crimes that he must have in his heart if nowhere else, and that he needs to repent in order to be released from his suffering.  Again, the book of Job confronts this idea.  One of the ways in which it does that is to show the errors of it in the form of Job’s friends’ speeches.  Like most of us when someone we care about is in pain, they are unable to do what is most helpful and most needed in difficult times, which is to simply be present with the person who is suffering.  Job’s friends also, unhelpfully, tell him to keep quiet, to shut up.  They tell Job that he has no right to express his pain and even less right to speak his frustration about his situation to God. 

But Job’s pain is total and all compelling.  And while his first response was silence, we have moved far beyond that at this point in the story into a totally different stage of grief.  As I said last week, he doesn’t ever curse God, but his pain is so full that he does curse his own life: the day he was conceived.  His pain has become so intolerable to him that he cries out in unbearable anguish.  He starts by yelling at his friends – who are you to tell me to shut up?  I’m upset, things are bad, I am in PAIN.  And finally in today’s passages he turns in his crying to God.

We are familiar with Job’s cries.  Especially now in this time and in this place.  Job’s cry is the cry that we have been hearing in our communities the last few weeks.  Job moves in today’s passage also from a crying out of sheer pain into a demand for justice, into an anguished request for things to be righted, for a system that is broken (in Job’s case, he believes God’s system is what is broken) to be fixed.  It is too much to bear.  We are seeing this now in our own communities.  The cries of the black community and those who care about them have moved from a place of deep pain into a lament and a long, deep waling that is a crying out for justice, for an unjust system of prejudice, racism, and oppression to change.  Job is crying out about a relationship that is so broken he can’t take it, and so intense that he can’t be rid of it.  And this is the cry of God’s people now. 

Job’s friends believe this to be unfaithful.  But Job’s pain declares that he is beyond caring if that is the case.  He demands for God to hear him.  He will be heard and he will not be silenced. 

But what I want to say to you today is two things.  First, I want to note the immense power that his speaking out gives to Job, for his own life, for his own experience.  Jewish belief at this time was that death was final.  It was absolute.  It was an ending and a separation from all that one had known, all that one had cared about.  It was THE END – written with capital letters. 

Job talks about the tree that, once cut down will sprout again.  I think about the fact that many of the trees in the middle east are olive trees.  At our house we had this huge olive tree that was a problem for a number of reasons.  First, it blocked the sun from coming into the family room.  But second, it also caused a huge host of allergy problems for my family as well as a huge olive stain mess in the house.  So we had it cut down.  But every year since we cut it down, little olive branches have begun to grow from under the ground around the stump.  The stump, the sign and symbol of what was a full life but is no longer is still there.  The stump is the scar that shows that the plant suffered the tragedy of being cut down.  But it kept trying to live again through these little branches growing up.  This is what Job would have experienced too – that cutting down the tree did not end the possibility of life, of renewal of new growth.  Job says that in contrast humans are more like a dried-up lake that can no longer hold water.  He expresses this as a reality, one that he has been taught through his cultural and religious heritage.  When he begins to speak he is in ultimate despair of the dried up water that will never regenerate.

As I read this, I again found myself thinking about our world at this time.  It is so easy for us to lose hope when there are so many problems that seem beyond healing.  The racism, the destruction of the environment, the huge growing discrepancy between the rich and the poor, the undeniable oppression of the most vulnerable in our society… it is too much.  Holding on to hope in these times feels difficult to say the least.

Job is right there with us.  Remember that he has lost everything: his home, his riches, but also those who worked for him and finally, his family – his children.  They are gone.  They are dead.  And no matter what follows, the loss of one’s children, and in his case it was all of his children – that is a pain beyond any I could imagine.  I found myself remembering a quote from the book The Life of Pi.  “My suffering was taking place in a grand setting.  I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant, and I was still.  My suffering did not fit anywhere, I realized.  And I could accept this.  It was all right.  [But] It was daylight that brought my protest: ‘No! No! No! My suffering does matter.  I want to live!’” (177) 

Job had lost everything.  And the despair that comes with that is obvious.  Hope is more elusive.  And yet, we see in this passage an alternating between his despair and moments of hope.  How did he find it when he believe that death was the end?  How could he hold on to hope when everything looked so dark, so foreboding.  When there is no guarantee that things will end well, but many signs that things will end badly, how does one hold on to hope?  Talk of hope without facing the reality of death is dishonest.  So when faced with death, what do you hope for?  To heal relationships?  To find peace?  At the heart of Job’s despair is a sense of isolation which death will only further. Again, the idea of resurrection was not part of this Jewish reality.   For Christians, this passage is often used on Holy Saturday, or the day before Easter in the Catholic church.  These passages reflect the quiet of a deserted road in the middle of nowhere: shock, danger, fear.  Despair.

But what I want to point out here is that in his speaking, this place, this idea of the ultimate end moves.  In chapter three Job was yearning and begging for death.  But here, he is hoping for and envisioning something beyond it.  There comes a point in the deepest of unjust suffering, which is what Job has been experiencing, in which the accused, the one suffering, the one being oppressed must make an ultimate decision: to give up and die in despair, or to find the will to fight.  Job at first was giving in, because one cannot choose to stand up and fight that kind of ultimate despair alone.  But he changes.  In these passages he comes to a certainty that a redeemer will stand with him.  And he comes to this through his own speaking, through his lament, through his decision to confront the God he believes is harming him.

I remember reading a book about trauma and the effects and scars left by deep trauma.  The author was following children in war times and now was looking at the children in Syria who had lost house, family, source of food, etc.  And one of the things he found was that children who were able to write, and who journaled their experienced, were psychologically much more able to handle the crises than those who had no place to voice their pain, no place to name it, to speak it.  Job is expressing his pain through words to God.  And the very expression of those words changes him. 

In his remembering the image of the resurrection that the tree offers, he also calls to his own mind another possibility.  “If someone dies, will they live again?  All the days of my hard service I will wait for my renewal to come.  You will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made.”  And then, with even more conviction he continues, “I know that my redeemer lives,… and after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.  I myself will see him with my own eyes – I, and not another.  How my heart yearns within me!” 

There is hope here: deep, and sometimes inexplicable hope given where he comes from and what he has believed previously.  But it is there.  His expression of his pain has allowed him to move beyond complete despair and into the possibilities that he has not seen or understood the whole picture and that it might be bigger than he can imagine, more connected and more healing than he can imagine.

His words seek more than just hope for his own life: they speak of redeeming a compromised system.  A commentator from Feasting on the Word said it this way: “Such stories provide a nuanced and complex way of exploring the elements that lead to a failure of justice.  They allow for an honest confrontation of the corruption that besets even the best systems of law.  They also provide an alternative to the complacency of those who refuse to see evil and the cynicism of those who refuse to believe that anything can be done about it.” 

His words are incredible expressions from a man whose faith tradition is such that death is the end.  These are declarations of faith in a God whose love extends beyond any suffering, beyond any grave, beyond even death.  Despite everything, Job finds hope.  He finds hope in his own laments and speeches to God.  And that hope is on a grand scale.

               I’m reminded of these words by Rienhold Niebuhr in The Irony of American History:

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”

               Job’s crying out is healing of him.  Job’s crying out is what brings him hope.  Job’s crying out is the beginning of an insistence on justice, on help, on reconciliation and healing.

               Job’s crying out, his decision to finally speak to God, to say what he is feeling in all its fullness, his insistence that God hear him: these are acts of deep faith.  The practice of lament, of speaking out to God, of raising our voices in our pain: these practices are rooted deeply in our psalms, in the book of Lamentations, and here in the book of Job.

               Next week and the week following we will be talking about God’s response to this.  But for this week what I want to make clear is that lament is one of the truest expressions of faith because it declares a number of things:

1.        That God is sovereign (or there would be no reason to speak to God!)

2.       That God does hear us (or again there would be no reason to cry out to God!)

3.       That God’s love is big enough to handle even our complaints against God. 

4.       That speaking our truth to God is a way of being more deeply invested in the relationship we have with God: of pulling close to God, of trusting God with all of who we are.

5.        That speaking our truth to God is healing, empowering, and moves us into hope.

Emily Dickinson said, “Hope is that thing with feathers -that perches in the soul- and sings the tune without words-and never stops- at all.”

The book of Job in so many ways is an expression of lament, one echoed in psalms and lamentations and even by Jesus himself when he cries out, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me!”  And we are in a time when the whole community is lamenting and begging for change.  We can join in that lament, that crying out to God, that crying out for justice.  Lament itself inspires us in hope, inspires us to action, and inspires us to our own healing.  Lament, crying out, expressing our truth – these are the acts of  faithful people trusting in God’s ability to hear, to move within us and to respond with resurrection, they are a way of trusting in God’s love. 

I want to end with a modern day lament about the book of Job.  You may not agree with everything in this poem.  Indeed, I don’t necessarily agree with everything in this poem.  But again, it is the voicing of lament, and so I would like to share it with you today:

Editing Job

By Carl Denis

I'd cut the prologue, where God agrees

To let his opponent, Satan,

Torment our hero merely to prove

What omniscience must know already:

That Job's devotion isn't dependent

On his prosperity. And how foolish of God

If he supposes that Satan, once proven wrong,

Will agree to forego his spite against creation

For even a minute.

I'd keep the part where Job disdains

His friends' assumption that somehow

He must be to blame for his suffering,

And the part where he makes a moving appeal

To God for an explanation.

I'd drop God's irrelevant, angry tirade

About might and majesty versus weakness.

The issue is justice. Is our hero

Impertinent for expecting his god

To practice justice as well as preach it,

For assuming the definition of justice

That holds on earth holds as well above?

Abraham isn't reproved in Genesis

For asking, when God decides to burn Sodom,

If it's fair to lump the good with the wicked.

Let Job be allowed to complain

About his treatment as long as he wants to,

For months, for decades,

And in this way secure his place forever

In the hearts of all who believe

That suffering shouldn't be silent,

That grievances ought to be aired completely,

Whether heard or not.

As for the end, if it's meant to suggest

That patience will be rewarded, I'd cut it too.

Or else I suggest at least adding a passage

Where God, after replenishing Job's possessions,

Comes to the tent where the man sits grieving

To ask his pardon. How foolish of majesty

To have assumed that Job's new family,

New wife and children and servants,

Would be an ample substitute for the old.