Job 38:1-7, (34-41) Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b
Hebrews 5:1-10 Mark 10:35-45
In the wisdom book of Job which challenges the shallow idea that good luck is the defining sign of God's love and blessing, Job is presented as the example of bad things happening to a good person.
The various dialogues between Job and his friends, God and Satan, and Job and God are warnings to human beings about being too certain of causality in all manner of things, especially in presuming to know in precise and full ways why bad or good things happen to anyone.
In the last dialogue of God speaking to Job, God does so from the whirlwind, the storm, the tempest. In a twister all things are put in motion and they lose their permanent location. All one can do is to watch the spinning and wait for things to land into a location. The realm of probabilities is the possibility of all things in time getting shuffled and rearranged, particularly from the perspectives that have been familiar to us. What probably can happen to us and anyone can and will surprise and baffle us at times in our lives particularly when we've gotten used to sameness of the things which have been happening to us.
God from the whirlwind bespeaks to me of the great whirlwind of the body of probabilities which confronts us at anytime in this life. In this great body of probabilities, all infinite things are in infinite causal relationships with each other, so how can we as particular and limited beings understand precise causality in the great realm of probabilities?
The writer of the book of Job essentially proclaims that Plenitude of Possibilities and Probabilities is too great for us to know because we don't have the capacity to bear them. Hence, we need to be very careful about presuming to know too much about what causes all specific things.
Bad things can make us victims, but when people assume that bad things happen because we have done something bad, then we are made twice the victims. How can coping and healing and recovery happen when we are made twice the victim by people who victimize people with bad luck by piling guilt upon them?
How are you and I to relate to God as this great realm of probabilities? We cannot help but be worshipful like the Psalmist. "O Lord my God, how excellent is your greatness! you are clothed with majesty and splendor." God's greatness is the complete realm of probabilities of creative freedom and this is awesome. We cannot help but be humble and humbled about the genuine freedom of things to happen.
Like Job, we can often wonder if we have an advocate, a lawyer, a redeemer, in the midst of this great realm of what can probably happen.
The witness of the Gospel is that Jesus is the advocate and redeemer of humanity. How so? By being the priest of God to humanity. The writer of the book of Hebrews understands Jesus to be the priest of God to humanity? And what does being such an eternal priest mean, as opposed to the mere temporal priesthood of the Levites or of the church? It means God taking on an intercessory identity with human experience. It is the emptying of omni-probability into a particular probable person Jesus who is made completely vulnerable to the human cycle of birth to death. And he is known in the afterlife as a foretaste of our future afterlife. In short, Jesus is the funneled emptying of the divine into serving the entire human condition, to show a way to live through the varying probabilities of what can happen to any of us.
From the Gospel of Mark to the writer's community, the words of Jesus re-echoed the service nature of what it means to best as a human being. The disciples of Jesus are presented as people who want to be served with high positions in a triumphant Christ the King Empire. And Jesus said, "Wrong, my kingdom, my realm is within the actual conditions of human probabilities, and within this realm, to be your human best is to be one who serves others.
Jesus says that we are given ministry as wisdom, power, knowledge, and material resources to serve those who do not have the same to experience the needed dignity and joy of life. We are called to an enlightened view of causality which is: We are to exercise the ministry of causing justice, forgiveness, peace, and the well being of the vulnerable people in life with the gifts of our lives.
Jesus was the priest of God to this world, the church is the priest of Christ to the world, and the church has particular ordained priests, not to exhaust what priesthood means, but to remind the church about her priestly ministry. Our priestly ministry is to have a identity with people for the purpose of intercession and insightful service to their needs.
Let us embrace the service ministry to which we are called and commissioned by Jesus Christ. We do not know all probabilities in the whirlwind of life, but we do know that with the gift of service to others, we can be in the flow of causing future goodness. Amen.
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