Suffering and Entrance into the Priestly

21 Pentecost Cycle B Proper 25     October 28, 2012

Job 42:1-6, 10-17  Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22)
Hebrews 7:23-28  Mark 10:46-52

Lectionary Link

  Unfortunately it is hurricane season and Sandy is in the Atlantic this week.  She has already caused damage and loss of life in the Caribbean especially in Haiti and now she’s headed toward the New Jersey Coast.  Our prayers ascend and also let’s hope that every two bit prophet out there will just keep their mouths shut about knowing God’s will regarding suffering.  It is bad enough that terrible things happen; it is made worse when someone thinks they can know precisely why it happened and in accordance with God’s will.  The politicians who have opined about God’s will have not done a truly worshipful God any favors.  Really bad theology can keep people away from the God of love whom many of us believe that Jesus came to reveal.

  The Book of Job was written precisely for the people who thought they knew God’s will and why bad things happened.  It could have been written against some of the simplistic, cause and effect writings of the prophets who preached that Israel was suffering because of her sins.  Now this may be true in a general sense because we might say that if a person has a bad character that person is going to get into some trouble at some time; it is not true always in the specific sense of knowing how the conditions of freedom manifest prosperity and suffering in specific cases.

  And so we have the ironic writing of the book of Job.  The writer writes a story that goes against the common “popular theology.”  What was that theology?  God blesses good people.  So success means that you must be good otherwise God would not let you succeed.  And if you suffer, it means you must have done something wrong, even if you don’t know what you did.  Or you just might suffer collateral damage because of something done by someone else.

  The plot of Job tells us that Job is a righteous man but also a fortunate man.   You know the saying, “I’d rather be lucky than good,” well, Job was both good and lucky.  So in the heavenly council Satan says, “Of course Job is good, he’s good because he’s been lucky.  But if you take away his good luck, he will curse God.”  What does God say, “The bet is on; have at it with Job but just spare his life.”  And so a hurricane of woes hits Job’s life.  He loses everything and everyone and even his own health; but he did not lose his theological friends who were present to tell him the meaning of his suffering.

  If you and I actually thought that God and Satan were in some heavenly place putting wagers on whether we would have faith, I doubt if anyone of us would believe in such a God.  But the point of the story is a satire on people who believed that events in people’s lives were precisely coupled with specific knowable actions and knowledge of God's personal disapproval. The writer of Job used a satire of this theology to put this theology into question. The writer used an exaggerated simple cause and effect theology to challenge how such theology was not honest to compassion in the suffering situation.  I also wonder if the writer was not a woman?  Did you notice how the writer made a special point of mentioning the inheritance of Job’s daughters?  Could be that the story was also taking a swipe at inheritance practices of the time as well.

  The punchline of the story of Job for me is this;  “The Lord restored Job’s fortune when he prayed for his friends.”  And I think that fuller notion of prayer is not just religious acts that we do in church;  prayer is how our entire life is offered to God on behalf of others.

  When someone is suffering what is needed?  Does a person need friends who come to be completely awkward at giving care and comfort?  Suffering brings a crisis to a person and their family and community and those who are not immediately affected stand outside of the suffering.  And in their uncomfortable “rubbernecking” on the suffering of another, they often offer awkward and unhelpful advice.  We've all been in situations where we don’t know how to react or what to say and so we just open our mouths and say something that ends up being really inappropriate, stupid or not very helpful.  Friends who offer easy answers to suffering are not very helpful.  But Job survived his suffering and he did it in part for his friends.

  The Lord restored Job’s fortune when he prayed for his friends.  Did we ever view our lives as life experience that prepares us to be with the people whom we are called to help?  This is the wise theory and practice behind specialized “support groups.”  Support groups are most often closed groups; you can’t be a survivor of cancer if you have not had it yet.  And what is the message of most support groups?  We will not let our suffering make us victims.  We will let our entire life inform the meaning of our lives, not just the event of suffering that we experienced.  Support groups are based upon what I call oblationary prayer; it is when your life experience becomes shared with others.  
  People suffer because of the incredible freedom that is abroad in this world that results in all sorts of things happening.  One can say that God is pure creativity.  Another way to say that is that God is pure freedom and God shares a degree of that freedom with everyone and everything in this world.  And in a world of such freedom we can observe laws of consistent patterns in behaviors but we can also see human suffering when systems come into conflict.  An Oncologist can be fascinated with the performance of cancer cells even while such cells are monstrous in the human body.  Freedom results in the conflict of systems; freedom results in suffering.

  So the question is not why suffering happens; the question is when it does occur, what do we do?  And what is the biblical answer?  Well, there are many biblical answers.  The reason that we have so many prophets today making simplistic pronouncements is because they existed in biblical times too.  We know that because the Book of Job had to be written to counter the simplistic formula of suffering and blessing.

  My preferred biblical answer to the problem of suffering is this: God restored the fortune of Job when he prayed for his friends.  "Job, your suffering gave you experience that you have that is so unique but it will make you available to other people in ways that you have not been available to them before.  Your suffering has now made you a priest to people."

  Jesus was not a priest in the Temple during his life, but the writer to the Hebrews believed that Jesus was the very essence of what defines a priest.  His life, death and suffering were viewed as his life offered on behalf of humanity and that is what made him a priest.  We, the church are too hung up with the priestly office, when we should emphasize that the entire nature of the church is priestly.  Your experience as it is offered to the people to whom you are called is what makes you priestly.

  I would like for everyone of one us to embrace our experience and come to understand that we are valuable to the rest of the community because of our experience.  The question for each of us is this:  Can I embrace and accept my experience in all of its breadth?  Can I accept that I am not an island in this world?  Can I accept that my experience can be a gift to others as I offer it as a prayer to God and to the community?

  If you and I can offer our lives, with its suffering and joy to God and to our community, we have entered the priesthood of Job and the priesthood of Christ.  Can we do that today?   If so, in a very, very unofficial way, I, with no authority at all, now so ordain into the priesthood of Christ, every person here who is willing to offer their lives as prayers for the community.  Amen.