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
Hebrews 7:23-28 Mark 10:46-52
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.
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.