Proper 26b, 2021

 

Lectionary:

Opening

Some of my best friends are good storytellers. In fact I reflected this past week that I think I trust a good storyteller more than I do someone who rigorously tries to stick to the facts.

Interestingly as I’m sure you’re aware, Jesus was a good storyteller. In Hawaiian pidgen the way you refer to friends sitting around sharing their life stories is the phrase "talk story". Talk story is what you do with friends. Elie Wiesel said years ago, quoting ancient rabbis, that, "God made man because He loves stories." Over the years I’ve become convinced that talking story with good friends is what changes lives and converts sinners to saints. Over the years I have found that talking story is one of the best ways to prepare someone for initiation into the body of Christ.

Next week we plan to have baptisms

The Colt’s grandchildren, Reid and Anna Claire, are expecting to be baptized here at Saint Pauls. We got to sit at the table of their grandma and grandpa, breaking bread and talking story. It changes lives.

Confirmation

We learned this past week that we will have a bishop's visit on Jan. 9th. Do you know of someone who would like to be confirmed at that time?

Have them get in touch with the church office or with me. Will try to figure out a way to share stories in such a way that we will be ready for the transformation that happens in the celebration of the sacraments.

Great Commandment

How do we learn to pass on the tradition that we ourselves have received? How does the community of the Saints give to the next generation the way of life?

The Jewish method of doing that involves among other things the daily repetition, recitation, of the Shema

שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה׀ אֶחָֽד׃ 5 וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ׃ 6 וְהָי֞וּ הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה אֲשֶׁ֨ר אָנֹכִ֧י מְצַוְּךָ֛ הַיּ֖וֹם עַל־לְבָבֶֽךָ

Hear O’ Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One Blessed is the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead, inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. The shema

A student one day asked Rabbi Akiba if he could teach the entire Torah while he stood still on one foot. Akiba responded that the whole Torah could be summed up in the phrase: "Do not do unto others what you would not have done to yourself. All the rest is commentary."

How does one convey “Torah?”

The word “Torah” in Hebrew means: “teaching”, “doctrine”, or “instruction”; the commonly accepted the word “law” gives a wrong impression.

Jesus articulates what I learned as "The Great Commandment" in the words from today's Gospel passage. Jesus is engaged in a classic Jewish study session -- Classic head to head questioning one another, back and forth. I first became aware of this pattern when I watched the movie Yentl many years ago. Maybe some of you saw it too.

When I was a child, there was only one liturgy for the Eucharist. And it included at the very beginning the Great Commandment. We still have it in Rite 1 in the prayer book. It was one of those passages I heard so often that I fairly quickly became numb to it. But it remains to this day as one of the basic signposts for me in how to live my life.

In many ways it is a summary of the "Torah" -- the basic teaching of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. "Law, doctrine, instruction", these words all convey something that is given to us from some authority. We are instructed when the higher up tells us what's what.

Torah is perhaps best conveyed by stories. Jesus thought so.

Surely the understanding of the scribes who were debating Jesus that day was that Torah could be logically argued, settled once and for all. Whoever had the superior logic would win the day -- for them.

Jesus, however, "answered well", for he knew that it is not authority or logic that taught the "great commandments" to steer a life toward the kingdom. He knew that stories had the power to turn hearts. That modeling a life on mentors who have traveled the road before was the way one learned the steps.

"Torah" is learning to tell stories and walking the talk.

We hear in the gospel passage an assortment of biblical texts:

• 3 of the gospels have variations: Luke 10:25-28, Matthew 22:35-40, Mark 12:28-31
• the Shema from Deuteronomy: Deut. 6:4-5
• and an early expression of the Israelite, later Jewish, commitment to love of neighbor (Lev. 19:18)

There is much to learn from these few short verses. One could have many sessions of talking story about these few verses, combining: Love of God and love of neighbor.

Ruth

But our first lesson from Ruth is just as rich in themes about how to be a faithful disciple.

I love to hear and read from this short book.

The main characters are women. That in itself makes it interesting. It is a story about Fidelity, faithfulness, and loyalty.

Where you go, I will go;
Where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.

— I can almost hear Ruth speak those words. She feels like someone I have known. When I hear her share her story, I know that she is someone I admire. It almost seems like she’s someone I have known in my life. A guide and mentor for what it means to be a faithful disciple.

We will miss the 2nd part of the story which we would normally hear next week, because we will be celebrating All Saints Day and initiating the two candidates into the fellowship of the saints.

In the middle of this short story we hear how Ruth is eventually wed to Boaz. It's a steamy story for any of you who haven't read it. Give it a try.

The ending of the book identifies Boaz, as the great-grandfather of David. It establishes Ruth in the line of David. Jesus was later addressed by some of his followers as "Son of David." But note: Ruth was a foreigner.

Themes

The book of Ruth contains some exquisite passages about love and devotion.

• Ruth and her mother-in-law Na'omi.
• Boaz' devotion to Ruth --- as well as her rather scandalous seduction of him

Women, as I've said, are key figures in the story. This story of a woman who was vital to the larger story of God's people fits into the overall narrative of the bible. Beginning in Chapter 1 of Genesis, the biblical narrative makes it clear that women have a vital role in the narrative of God and God's people: this has to be reckoned with by those who would claim that the biblical teaching is that women must be subservient to men.

The verse in Genesis next after the one I quoted last week says:

God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them.

Miriam was Moses sister, and though obviously her brother takes the spotlight in the Old Testament, she speaks what some scholars argue is the most ancient Hebrew to be found in the Hebrew Bible.

Sing to the Lord, for an overflowing victory! Horse and rider he threw into the sea!

Debra: I met a woman named Debra the other day. When I asked for a little bit of her story, she told me she was named after the Debra in the Bible. I told her that means she is "a woman to be reckoned with" -- a judge, a prophet, a hero, a ruler

Hannah: mother of the prohet/king Samuel. The first of the prophets by traditional reckoning. 1st & 2nd Samuel -- the scroll of Samuel, begins the story of the people who would produce the prophets. Her "Song" is now included in our authorized Canticles. Centuries before Mary and her "song", Hannah sang of the same reversal and divine justice that upends the expectations of the world as we hear from Mary and her "song", the Magnificat

Mary: the mother of Jesus. God-bearer in the Orthodox tradition. Icon of what is best about humanity. The one closest to Jesus. "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord." Ruth takes her place alongside the great women of the biblical narrative.

It speaks of the tension between fidelity to family vs. fidelity to national culture. In a theme that is still very much with us today, Ruth has chosen fidelity to family over fidelity to a national cause. When families get together what do they do? They break bread and talk story.

The book of Ruth makes a point of identifying Ruth as an ancestor of King David, and by extension, Jesus many centuries later. Was that the whole reason for telling the story? No. But it may well be why it was preserved in the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures.

And then there is the theme of the outsider as being a vital part of the story of the chosen people. Women were outsiders just by being women. But Ruth was a foreign woman. From the initial books of the Torah and continuing through prophets and psalms, the Bible teaches that it is essential to care for the foreigner in the midst of the citizens of the covenant. Often the watchword is that once the people of Israel were foreigners in a strange land. Much like it is said of this country that the vast majority of the people living in this country got here as strangers and foreigners. Immigrants.

In Judaism --- as well as Christianity --- respect and concern for the alien in our midst is at the heart of Torah.

Where does that point us in the world we live in?

As we prayed a couple of weeks ago, we live in a time marked by divisions, conflict, opposing points of view that seem intractable. In no small measure these are connected to divisions in culture, diversity, people different from ourselves. Just the kind of thing that the Book of Ruth is about. Just the kind of thing that the Great Commandment directly speaks of: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

There seem to be heightened passions about gender roles and the place of women in our society. As we have witnessed the sudden transfer of power in Afghanistan, we have also witnessed the sudden and terrifying threat imposed by those who would subjugate women to the rule of men.

My own conviction is that we live in an era -- spanning decades if not centuries -- where the relations between men and women are being examined and adjusted. What we hear in the story of Ruth is relevant to that process.

Love of God / Love of Neighbor

• What would Jesus do?
• A variation of that is: What does the biblical tradition teach us to do?

In today's readings from scripture, we hear God speaking to us of how we are to live in the world in relation to others who do not look like us, act like us, pray like us, -- but who are profoundly our neighbor. And Jesus commands us in no uncertain terms that we are to love our neighbor alongside our devotion and trust in God.

What would Jesus do? What would the biblical tradition teach us about it?

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Proper 25b, Monroe

 

Readings

Lectionary

Introduction

I want to talk about God -- (kind of an expected topic for a preacher) I want to talk about gratitude -- I long for the day when "gratitude" is as common place among believers as is judgment or anger. I want to talk about "stewardship" -- not so much in the context of giving money to the church but in the context of Genesis 1:26.

Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.” (ESV)

or as the King James Version put it.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. (KJV)

The traditional translation is that men and women were given "dominion" or "rule" over creation. My understanding of the passage is that we were made "stewards" of creation.

I want to talk about "stewardship", something built upon reverence, awe, and gratitude. # Job's reverence before the majesty

Over the past few weeks, we have seen how Job was so secure about his relationship with God that he could even argue with God. He could maintain in his passionate pleading with God that he, Job, had been unjustly punished; but through it all Job held closely to his relationship with this God.

Finally, God's patience wore down, the bold mystery of God's creative majesty is revealed to Job, and he can only be silent.

Then Job spoke from the position of reverence before the majesty of God. Reverence is the operative word.

Job answered the Lord: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. [And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job.] "And Job died, old and full of days."

So the story seems to be in some sense a "happy" story. Through much suffering and strange divine behavior, but in the end a sense of calm and peace.

What I am interested in is our proper response to the majesty of God. It is not the larger theological issues that could occupy us a long time.

It only happened as the majesty of God was revealed to Job. From the whirlwind. To Elijah it came in the form of the still small voice. This past week it was revealed to me In the bare oak tree outside a window. Before such a revelation, reverence is an appropriate response.

Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Out of our reverence we seek to respond with faith, hope, and charity (love).

Gratitude

A mentor and friend of mine was named Bart. He shared with me that he identified with our gospel passage from Mark because of the name of the blind beggar. "Blind Bartimaeus". The result for my friend was that every time his name was mentioned by someone it was like a reminder of the blind beggar who called out to a wandering healer, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”

And he was healed. And like Job, in the face of such an experience, gratitude is the appropriate response.

For my friend, this passage in Mark's gospel was the single most important story for his Christian life -- outside of the Resurrection itself. It was this passage that told him who he was and whose he was.

"I once was blind, but now I see." After such an experience, gratitude is the appropriate response.

It's all grace

For myself, an analogous experience has been reading and re-reading a novel, titled A Diary of a Country Priest.

The narrative is what the title describes, focused on the priest, struggling to be faithful in his vocation, falling short by his own standards, but being picked up along the way by the love and affection of friends. Then comes a diagnosis of a terminal illness.

Not sure where to go after this stunning diagnosis, the priest decides to visit an old friend from seminary. After the two talk awhile, the priest isn't feeling well so he accepts an offer to stay at the friend's home for the evening. The priest dies that night. Although another priest can not be found quickly enough to give him his last rites, the priest's dying words are, "Does it matter? Grace is everywhere."

One writer said of the text:

The Diary of a Country Priest has changed me because it is so damned honest. The reality of suffering is to be accepted (ameliorated, yes, but accepted as a part of life) and countered with courage and faith in the mysteries and unfailing grace of God. In sum, Bernanos’ harsh honesty has forced me to be a bit more honest about how I am to live.

In 1948, as Georges Bernanos lay dying of cancer, he penned a letter to a friend saying, “May you feel the sweet presence of Jesus Christ who makes into one reality sorrow and joy, life and death.”

And in his last breath, Bernanos’ suffering, dying priest of Ambricourt weakly uttered with joy amidst pain and with hope in the consuming darkness, “Grace is everywhere.”

In the end, and through the darkness, it is.

To go back to the beginning of these words today, everything that surrounds us, all the vastness of inter-stellar space, grandmothers and aunties and uncles, grandchildren, and bare oak trees, deer in the forests, fish in the sea, and the breath-taking developments of modern science and technology ...

One could go on and on. But all of it is gift. And we have been made stewards of it.

Grace

Some of you have heard this story before. I have told it many times. I do that because it is a formative story for me.

When I was in seminary. My family of 3 had moved 900 miles to be at Nashotah House, Wisconsin. We abruptly went from a household with 2 incomes to one with none. Our first-born child was 1 1/2 years old. There were financial pressures galore.

One day I went to the mail room where all the students had mailboxes. I opened our box and there was an envelope with no stamp or return address, but inside was (I think) $50 in cash -- $50 was more in 1980 than it is now. That was all.

That was the first time I was really hit over the head with how my life was built on the unearned gifts of others.

Now, of course, at that time in my life I had already experienced the fruit of practically an infinite number of awesome gifts that made my life possible. But it was that event that left me speechless and determined to begin to build my life on the building blocks of gratitude.

I began to be intentional about giving from the abundance of the gifts of my life. That included giving to the church. But it was so much more than that. The criteria for my giving at first was undeveloped, but in time I learned that giving was something that I needed to do. For the sake of reverence. For the sake of gratitude. For the sake of stewardship.

I began reading, maybe 20 years ago, about how my generation (Boomers) was developing a new (relatively new, I suppose) set of criteria for giving away our wealth. I associate it iwith Bill Gates, but he was just a useful example at the time. He was the wealthiest man in the world based on the value of his company Microsoft.

I remember reading first of criticisms of him as being a self-centered exemplar of what was known as "Yuppies" at the time. It's a label that has been attached to my generation along the way of our journey. It evokes a concern with one's own well-being and happiness, success in the world. In op eds of the time I recognized the irony of the fact that 15 years earlier our generation had been known for our idealism, a commitment to change the world for the better. A commitment to being stewards of the gifts passed down to us.

It seemed as if since we found the task difficult, or met with failure, in the enterprise of making the world a better place, that we would just focus on bettering our own lives.

So there was criticism that with all his wealth, Bill Gates, did not have a practice or commitment to giving / sharing any of his wealth.

Seemingly Bill Gates took the criticism to heart and created a foundation from his wealth. That foundation has in the meantime become probably the leading and most important single foundation on the planet, it's mission being in part "to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty across the world, and to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology in the U.S."

At their origins the foundation sought to use business practices and goals in how it invested its money. That's a big part of why they have become so important and so successful. I don't want to disparage the work of the Gates Foundation. I do want to question whether good business, being successful, is the main criteria for the kind of stewardship I'm talking about today. Is being successful what Jesus was getting at in his ministry? Jesus tells us often in his parables that the measure that this world applies to situations is not the measure of the kingdom.

Culmination

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: “The only things we can keep are the things we freely give to God. What we try to keep for ourselves is just what we are sure to lose.”

Right at the top of the list of such things is "Love." A good case could be made that love is the most important and most valuable thing there is in this creation we share. But the only way to get love is to give it away.

I became convinced a long time ago, in the mail room at Nashotah House, that all the success, all the wealth, all the security that I might gather was only as valuable as what I gave away.

The criteria I apply to my giving is not based on success or sound profit and loss statements. Those are important. But my giving is based on:

• my dependence on so many others for who and what I am today
• my gratitude for the unearned gifts that have brought me to this day
• my desire to share the things that are most valuable: love, compassion, generosity, hope, faith.

And the greatest of these is Love.

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Proper 24b - Monroe

The patience of Job

Early on in reflecting on the lessons for today I wondered where the proverb that most of us have heard would have actually come from? The patience of Job. If you read the book of Job you cannot help but recognize that Job himself is anything but patient. In fact, over and over again, you will encounter a man who has experienced unimaginable loss and who argues with God, powerfully argues, that he didn't deserve it. Job is not an example of patience.

I had to look up the answer. That I had to look it up and didn't know it is, in part, a measure of my having grown old, and it is also a function of not knowing the Bible as well as my Baptist friends. Good source of the proverb is from the New Testament, the letter of James 5:11. It is also a product of a mistranslation from the Greek into English. In the King James Bible we read, “Ye have heard of the patience of Job.” This led to generations trying to read Job as having been a long-suffering faithful servant. Modern versions use words like: steadfastness, perseverance, endurance.

Job is almost unbelievably steadfast through 42 chapters, and to get there he endures a lot.

Job

You may remember that two weeks ago I made reference to the book of Job, from which we read the opening. In a kind of big picture way, what the book of Job is dealing with is the experience that is all too common, even universal, that innocent people suffer, bad things happen to good people.

Personally I have thought of Job as one of the most important books in the Bible precisely because it is dealing with and experience that is so prevalent and is a formidable challenge to anyone trying to live a life of faith in a God who cares about the world, to say nothing of a God who loves you and me.

I once used to frequently make the claim that on the basis of the evidence in the world around us, the news we see on TV, the news we read about in papers and magazines, made it easier to believe in evil than in God. I no longer see that as quite so obvious, but the world I look at leans in that direction.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once powerfully said: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

He was echoing a fuller statement from Unitarian minister in the 1850's who said:

"Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."

I do believe that conclusion -- but sometimes the "arc" seems infinitely long.

As I indicated two weeks ago, the preliminary setting for the bulk of the book is a strange scenario where God accepts the wager of his prime prosecutor, Ha Satan, that God would test the strength of Job’s trust by taking away everything that mattered in Job's life. All of that was just to see if Job would remain faithful or not.

This week we have heard from the beginning of the ending of the book. It is the dramatic re-entrance of God into the narrative.

In the intervening chapters that were summarized in the reading last week that we didn’t hear, Job is visited by four of his friends.

Job's friends¹

Job's friends initially responded as any genuine friend would in the face of catastrophe.

• They showed up, empathized with him.
• Spent time with him.
• At first they were Silent.
• then in chapters 4-25 they give speeches to Job.

Their speeches are pretty intense and Job is not very receptive to their message.

---

Eliphaz the Temanite. After Job complains to God about the injustice of his suffering, he is the first to speak. For Eliphaz it seems clear that Job must not fear God. His basic assumption is that suffering must be punishment from God is his basic assumption.

Bildad the Shuhite is the second to speak. He advises Job that he should confess his wrongs. It is clear to Bildad that Job must not be upright and righteous, since it is his deep conviction that God's infinite justice means that God punishes the wicked. Before God no one can be righteous.

Zophar the Naamathite Tells Job he deserves even more than what he got. He recognizes that sometimes God allows the wicked to flourish.

Elihu arrives later than the 3 initial friends. He focuses first on a rebuke of the 3 friends. For Elihu the 3 friends primarily understood God as a God who makes sure that sinful humans are held accountable. For example punishing the sinful. Rather he is keen to say, God is greater than any mortal can imagine. God's justice is supreme. He focuses on God's supreme greatness, beyond what we can understand.

Elihu’s speeches immediately precede the reading we had today.

Arguments advanced in later centuries

Down through the ags, humans have made the same kind of presumptions the first three friends of Job had. I cannot begin to count the times I have heard people say in response to some terrible event or circumstance in their life the kind of rhetorical question aimed at God, “why me? what have I done to deserve this?”

There have, however, been other arguments made in response to the suffering the innocent.

One approach is to argue that God causes people to suffer so that they can be stronger. Or to understand Truth more fully. The argument would maintain that suffering is for education. Another variation is to posit another force in the world that is in opposition to God. That’s where the devil comes and the mis-reading of the title “Ha Satan” in Job. Such a dualism understands the forces of good and evil to be at war with one another, and at one time or another one force may be stronger than another. A Christian dualism would always maintain that good (or God) will prevail in the end.

A 3rd argument that one encounters frequently has to do with “free will.” This view argues that at the creation, God recognized that “free will” was a supreme good for humanity and so it was built in. This view would describe the suffering and evil in the world as the product of “free will” rather than of God’s omnipotence. The final chapters of the book of Job gives us another alternative response to evil and the suffering of the innocent. In a nutshell this response says something like this: God is a mystery beyond understanding and explaining. God's ways are not our ways. The only way to find some understanding before the incalculable suffering of the Innocent ones is to see with new eyes, with mystical eyes, of the sort that Jesus brought to his followers.

Lord spoke out of a whirlwind

As I said I understand the book of Job to be a very important book in the Bible. I’ve taken some time to present an overview of the text up to the point where we begin today’s reading. I want it to carry some of the solemnity that’s required if we’re going to even begin to imagine what is happening in chapter 38.

I imagine God running out of patience with Job. As if he were to say, "Enough already. Enough of trying to understand, to follow the rituals, to do the right thing, or blame the right figure."

"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding…”

I think of this moment as not unlike the earthquake that Matthew describes in his gospel at the time of the Resurrection. This is a big deal.

Mystical awareness

If we are to rightly understand these words we have to be able to see and hear and speak with a new awareness. It takes a mystical awareness. It takes a sensitivity that is comfortable with living with questions and not needing the answers, at least not right away. It’s almost not human, because we instinctively want to know the answers, we want to know the solutions, we want to know how the story ends.

James & John want to tell Jesus what to do

We are like the disciples that we also heard about today. James and John want to be able to tell Jesus want to do. They want things to be my way or the highway, love it or leave it. They want to be able to sit with Jesus at his right hand.

I recognize that impulse within me. Perhaps you do as well. And it makes total sense that the disciples were not pleased with James and John. But they could not really understand Jesus’ response either.

The son of man came to serve not to be served. The tables are turned upside down, and our expectations are turned on their heads. To see and recognize this is to see with mystical vision, as if we get a glimpse of what it was like to be there when God laid the foundation of the earth. This is what happened to Job when he ran out of arguments. This is what happens when God speaks from the whirlwind and the earthquake. But it also happens in the still small voice that Elijah heard. It happens in untold, countless ordinary events and circumstances that becomes luminous with the presence of God.

The intensity of the Resurrection is what makes real the movement that motivated us last week as we claimed the promise of God: that our Lament might live into the Hope of our Longing.

We live in a time of unfolding mystery. In so many ways we don't know what tomorrow will bring, but with Job we can bow in reverence because we can see and hear and know that God is God.

It is no time to be demanding that we are right and they are wrong, whoever the "they" is. Like James and John we really want to be right, we really want to be -- well, at least, equal among equals.

Like the moment when Job was touched by God's voice in the midst of the storm, Jesus speaks to us in the midst of our lives. We have our plans or expectations. We have our hopes and the expectation that they will be fulfilled according to our specifications. Like Jesus' disciples through the centuries, we must hear his response with new ears and listen with new understanding:

"The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

It is in fact great good news that we don't have to be right. We don't have to be "top dog." Jesus has put everyone above him. The Lord himself has made everyone more important than he. If that is where he is -- how much more do we need to be there with him.

Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

---

1. What did Job’s three friends have wrong, and what did they have right? | GotQuestions.org↩

Proper 22b: Lament, Longing, and Hope

Proper 22b 2021

Next week:

Next week we will have a liturgy, a special liturgy. My hope is that we will be able to be outside. My hope is that we will get some participation from friends and neighbors outside of the congregation. We’re going to do our part since our plan is to bring Mary Pat‘s brother and his wife who will be with us that weekend.

You may have read in my journal blog about how the word liturgy means the people's work. Next week the main work is intended to be yours. We will have a kind of guided exercise that will give us away to symbolically offer to God our Laments, our Longings, and our Hopes.

Our experiences will be clustered around four parts of our lives that have had a particular focus for us over the last couple of years. We will hold up and offer to God our Lament, Longing, and Hope as we experience it related to four areas of our common life:

1. There has been an explosion of different reactions as we have all been confronted with the pandemic of Covid 19 in our consciousness and lives.
2. Civil Divisiveness: all of us, no matter our political persuasion can look at our country and observe a level of division that has not been present in generations.
3. Again, regardless of political persuasion, it is easy to see the pointed strife between so-called different races and ethnicities.
4. Fourth, the level of change in our lives has been accelerating for decades at an exponential pace. Our experiences of the last few years has made us even more conscious of the uncertainty "change" brings.

In each of these four areas we have experienced a range of emotions. We will be focusing on 3 emotions:

1. Lament: a sadness and a grieving over loss of all kinds. Anger and weariness over the chaos and uncertainty we face. We mourn and lament.
2. Longing: a desire for things to be different, second guessing what might have been, seeking a vision on the horizon of what new life might look like. We long.
3. Hope: because of who we are as followers of Christ, we bring an expectation and desire for something better. We bring a trust in God that what is possible only through divine action is not just possible but will happen. We hope.

Then the burden will be on you to identify and offer your own experiences.

We will offer and put ourselves before God in the passage from Lament and sorrow through suffering on to the wonder of fulfillment.

Something of the Christian proclamation

We will be following as it seems to me the very fullness of our Christian face, the very gospel itself.

What at first seems like the pit of demise, in the end becomes hope fulfilled beyond imagining. God does the work. We give ourselves to God, placing ourselves before the Lord, to be used and transformed into divine hope.

"God, you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve"

Job 1-2

For the next four weeks the lectionary provides for us a super highway pass through the book of Job. Today we have the opening of the book and the scene that sets the stage for all that follows. I find myself somewhat surprised to make the following claim:

In this book we can see the same fullness of the Christian gospel that we will discover together next week in our passage from mourning to hope.

The book of Job is a most surprising and unexpected book. It utilizes an image of God that is foreign and really unacceptable to most all of us. We get a glimpse of that in today’s reading.

"There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil."

Like so much of this book Job is over the top. His righteousness is over the top. But he reflects what all of us see in ourselves. Somewhere within us is someone trying to be and do the right thing. All of us could be Job.

But then today's reading exposes a scene that is beyond imagining. God is meeting with his executive council, "heavenly beings" it's translated here. And one of those beings by the name Ha-Satan. This is not what later became "Satan - the devil." This is one of God's counselors who is charged with rooting out all the forces that might work against God. In this case he makes a bet with God that if Job's riches and blessings were taken away from him, he would "curse" God, he would betray God.

So God takes him up on the bet and gives Ha-Satan leave to impose all manner of injustices on Job.

We are then exposed to an intense and unbearable series of losses and death inflicted on Job. Job responds with anger, frustration, indignation, and arguing with God. Finally the end of the book culminates with a dramatic reversal, with God responding to Job’s anguish, with an awesome demonstration of God’s supremacy of all creation. God wins in the end.

We hear in this ancient and strange tale, then, a re-telling of the Gospel itself.

1. I believe in one God.
2. If you would follow the Lord you must take up your cross and suffer loss.
3. Out of death, by God's grace, emerges life.

One of the great works of European literature follows the same pattern. In Dante's Divine Comedy the main character finds himself in the midst of life and can't find his way further. He is led from Hell to Purgatory and then to Paradise.

From Lament to Longing to Hope.

Such is the way that God's people have walked from ages past up to the present. Job has traveled there. Jesus traveled there. Dante traveled the path. And in our own day we know that path:

1. We have made a choice to be aligned with God's side.
2. We have suffered loss.
3. We have given ourselves to the hope that God prevails in the end.

Living the path

One of the unchangeable things about our life in these years -- especially in the last few years -- is change itself. We have experienced the loss attached to change. We long for a return to the familiar. We hope for the life that we hear and see in the promise from God.

In the words of our Presiding Bishop, our church is itself changing. The change is inevitable. Like Job we can have a wide range of emotional responses to the change, but change we will. Much of it is out of our control. One of the things we lament is our loss of control. But one of the things that is in our control is what we do with the change.

Bp. Curry is leading is to change with re-forming the church. In a recent message he puts it this way:

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Come and see ...

We are becoming a new and re-formed church, the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement -- individuals, small gathered communities and congregations whose way of life is the way of Jesus and his way of love,

• no longer centered on empire and establishment,
• no longer fixated on preserving institutions,
• no longer shoring up white supremacy or anything else that hurts or harms any child of God.

By God's grace ...

In a clear and concise way, Bp. Curry makes that vision seem real and achievable. He identifies 5 ways that go about putting into place that "re-formation."

1. Center on Jesus Christ.
2. Practice the selfless, self-giving way of the cross.
3. Unite around the practice of a rule of life in small gathered communities.
4. Reclaim our Christian identity as a Spirit-driven, counter-cultural, underground movement.
5. Live and bear bold witness to the vision and values of Jesus.

The old is going away — but a new way is being formed.

Closing

As we gather week by week we offer ourselves as partners with God in the re-formation of a Church that is called out to be something new and remarkable. We are called out -- the Greek is "ekklesia" -- to be witnesses to a new thing, to be agents of a new way of being, to be instruments of Grace in a world that too often looks like Job's world.

We lament what has been. We long for a time of peace. We hope for a life that has long-since been promised by a faithful God.

Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior.

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