20 PENTECOST, PROPER 24, YEAR B
SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE
THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY
18 OCTOBER 2009
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Job 38:1-41; Ps. 104:1-9, 25, 37b; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45
The Book of Job is a long one. We’ve heard parts of it in church for three weeks now, with one more to go. From chapter one to chapter twenty-three to thirty-eight today and next week the end of the last chapter, number forty-two. It’s better to read the whole thing, of course, but this is better than nothing. We’ve been hitting some highlights.
Job, the righteous and good man who practiced his faith and followed God. What more could you ask? But one day Satan, a servant of God, persuaded God to let him, Satan, wreak havoc on Job. And God let Satan have his way. Job lost his family, his health was wrecked and his money gone.
Job complained (don’t be fooled, Job wasn’t all that patient). Why do righteous people like me suffer? Job’s friends tried to comfort him by delivering various pastoral lectures, in essence saying: “job, you’ve earned your suffering, it’s your fault, you’ve obviously done something wrong, just admit it and ask for God’s mercy.” But Job maintained his innocence and asked only that he have an audience with God. Job wanted answers, or at the very least, a response, from God.
Finally, finally, today, Job hears from God. God’s voice breaks through at last. God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind. “Look around you, Job! What do you see? Who do you think you are? Pull yourself together. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Did you have anything to do with the creation of the world? Morning, the sun, light, darkness—all of it. Who made it all? Who are you, compared to the likes of me?” (a very loose translation!).
What did all this mean for Job? For does it mean for us? As one wise observer says, there are three choices. First, that Job’s friends are right, that because Job had so much horrible calamities in his life he must have deserved them. Or second, we might figure that God is a tyrant who brings evil upon people. Or maybe it’s that God is a total mystery, that God’s ways are beyond human understanding. Maybe that’s it.
It’s like the reality tv show House Hunters, when couples look at houses to buy and narrow their choices to three and we have to guess which one they’ll pick. In the end, what does Job choose? That he’s a sinner whose misfortune is a sign of his sin? That God is a tyrant who inflicts pain and suffering?
In the end, Job goes with option #3. He decides that God is beyond his understanding. That God is a mystery. We will hear Job next week. “I give up, God. I don’t understand you. I can’t begin to figure out why I have suffered. But you are God and in you I place my trust.”
Job’s righteousness and faith didn’t guarantee him an easy life. He was a good man but misery came anyway. Our righteousness and faith and good deeds are no guarantee of a fancy car and fabulous health and a chicken in every pot for us, either.
In Mark’s gospel today, we meet James and John, good guys like Job. Good guys who tagged along after Jesus, following Jesus. Disciples. They expected perks for their discipleship. They figured Jesus would recognize their goodness by giving them a place of honor in the heavenly realm. So they asked Jesus straight up, “Allow us to sit on either side of you in your ultimate place of glory, Jesus.” (In Matthew’s gospel, the writer tries to save the reputations of the Zebedee brothers since in Matthew’s gospel it’s their mother who asks Jesus for the favor so she’s the greedy one).
And Jesus said, “Can you drink the cup that I will have to drink? Can you drink that cup and can you be baptized in the suffering I am about to endure?” “Oh sure,” said the brothers.
But did they have a clue how hard it would be to follow Jesus? To follow in his path? That discipleship is no easy matter? That following Jesus, really following him, is risky? That, as one author puts it, the church is perhaps the most dangerous place on earth? (If the church truly follows Jesus, that is).
Did James and John know that? Perhaps not right then. Do we know it?
Job was getting close to understanding that. He was coming to know that although being faithful was the way of life for him, it was no guarantee of a life of ease. In the end, Job recognized his own smallness in the face of God’s vast mystery. All he could do then was to stand before God in awe.
Job was getting warm. But he didn’t know it all. He couldn’t have known about Jesus, about Jesus’ teaching. About the gospel good news that was for everyone. He didn’t know about Jesus’ death or Jesus’ resurrection. Although he did believe that his redeemer liveth, as we read at funerals.
Job couldn’t know the cost of discipleship in the way that Jesus made so clear, that to be leaders means being followers of a life of commitment to the gospel which Jesus flung open to the world, especially to those who huddle in the fringes of society. Those who aren’t always welcome to come all the way in from those edges, or who are left out altogether. We know who they are. We read about them every day; we even some of them in our towns. They are the ones Jesus served. What Job most likely didn’t know, but what we know because Jesus told us, is that when we welcome one such “little one” we are welcoming God’s own self. create for us whirlwinds and trouble.
Job didn’t know all that we know. But he points us to Jesus. We know that God was present in Job’s whirlwind. We know that God was present also to Jesus in his. And we should know that God is with us in our own whirlwinds, especially the whirlwinds which come when we stick our necks out boldly in faith. Jesus gives us our marching orders and also promises to be with us to the end of time.