Job 42:1-6, 10-17 Mark 10:46-52
Please pray with me:
From the cowardice that does not face the truth
From the laziness that accepts half-truths
And from the arrogance that thinks it knows the whole truth
Lord, deliver me. Amen
In Portland there is a famous bookstore that fills an entire city block. Powell’s Books. Old and new books on four floors covering every category you can imagine.
Once while checking out of Powell’s Books with another armful of books, which I hope to read some day, I saw a collection of magnets with witty sayings on them. One in particular got my attention. It simply said, “Don’t make me come down there.” God.
Today we will be completing our study of a man who got God to come down here, Job.
For any here not familiar with the Book of Job, it is a fictional narrative about a man who was inflicted with sores all over is body, who loses his wife, family, and home. He has three friends who counsel that he must have done something wrong to offend God and he should confess his sins. But Job, was a good man, so he refused to confess for something he did not do. He argues with his friends’ conventional wisdom. and through expressing his grief and his anger Job comes to have a first hand experience of God.
In my sermon two weeks ago I spoke about Job’s lament as an act of faith in God. I said that,in spite of experiencing the “heaviness” of God’s hand, in spite of wishing to vanish into darkness, Job clings to God as the One who can be reasoned with; as one who can hear whatever we have to say, whether in anger of fear or grief, as the one who can offer an answer.
When Job is finally finished with chapters and chapters of lament, and argument and self-defense and angry questions, God speaks out of the whirlwind, with a dizzying rush of questions. But the intent of God’s question are to provide Job with an insight that will go beyond the limits of Job’s previous understanding of God and life and suffering.
Two weeks ago I said that I would share with the response that God gave to Job. And true my word, here it is, in verses selected from Chapters 39-41 of Job.
Job got God to come down and this is what God, a voice in the whirlwind said,
Job, I have heard your questions. I have some of my own for you.
4‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
8‘Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?—
11 and said, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped”?
19‘Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness,
24What is the way to the place where the light is distributed,
or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?
25‘Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a way for the thunderbolt,
26to bring rain on a land where no one lives,
on the desert, which is empty of human life,
28‘Has the rain a father, or who has begotten the drops of dew?
31‘Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion?
36Who has put wisdom in the inward parts,*
or given understanding to the mind?*
37Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?
Mighty heady questions, aren’t they. Can you imagine having these on a final exam?
Then God goes on to name the animals and how they are cared for. The raven, mountain goat, wild mule and ox, ostrich, horse, hawk, eagle, crocodile and hippo are each identified.
God goes on to name the great mythical sea creature Leviathan, symbol of chaos, being overtaken by order, form, and beauty. In the time and place that the book of Job was written, the majority of people believed that Leviathan was a god. But God who is speaking to Job encompasses all of life’s energies; including chaos.
When speaking of the land creature Behemoth, God says, “Behold, Behemoth, which I made as I made you.”
Through all of these verses lifting up the wonders and realities of creation
God is saying, “Job, I heard your question.”
As I made Behemoth, and I made you.
As I made the oceans that sometimes flood the shorelines, I made you.
As I made the great Sierra Nevada Mountain range with volcanoes and earthquakes and massive amounts of land forces meeting in one place, turning over and over, pushing higher and higher, and created Yosemite Valley, I created you.
As I made the basic elements of the universe from the intense heat of a dying supernovae, I made you.
Do you see all the beauty that is all around you? And the death and the sorrow?
Job I made the eyes that you see all of those things with.
Job I made your heart which breaks when you lose someone you love.
Job the way that life is, is exactly what it takes, to make life what it is.
"Death is the mother of beauty."(Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning)
Would you avoid death, Job?
Would you really want to create a world without it?
And then gets a little cheeky and says something like,
Next time a universe is going to be created I will remember to give you a call and let you be in charge.
In the meantime, live with this one.
Live with life, Job. As it is in this moment, live with it.
This is holy ground Job.
This is a sanctuary Job, true to life. Be true to life, Job.
You need help? There is help.
You have questions? Ask them in the right places and the right time and answers will come.
Live life, with all that you have got. With humility, compassion, gratitude and in community.
How does Job respond after hearing these words from God, describing the creation of universe?
Job says,
"I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you; I despise myself and I repent in dust in ashes." (Job 42:5-6)
Through the questioning, debating, arguing, with God, and then the listening to God, Job sees God clearly, he wants to turn around, his old self is in ashes.
He doesn’t give up, he gives in, to God.
Surrendering into God Job is ready to live life with eyes wide open.
Job no longer desires to make the world in his image.
Job is ready to go a new direction,
and give his complete attention to God’s image revealed in creation.
And how does God respond to Job now?
As God does time and time again in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament. God responds with mercy.
As in the story from the Gospel of Mark that we heard read this morning, The blind beggar calls out from the crowd, “Son of David have mercy on me.”
Jesus calls Bartimaeus.
The crowd around Bartimaeus says, “Take heart, he is calling you.”
“Take heart, he is calling you.”
God did not cause Bartimaeus’ blindness, any more that God caused the Loma Prieta earthquake. But in the way the earth is made, earthquakes happen. Blindness happens. And mercy happens.
“Jesus is “another wave of mercy, the kind of mercy that God has been doing all through the Hebrew Bible….waves and waves of mercy, because God’s mercy is given continually in the world and has made all things new.”
Here, at the end of a long journey full of healing and teaching, at the edge of what is to come – suffering, death, and resurrection – we remember that Jesus “gave his life as a continuing act of mercy.
“Mercy, is that strange transformative reach
from a center of strength
to a center of need that changes everything and makes all things new.”
(Inscribing the Text: Sermons and Prayers of Walter Brueggemann).
And …”Grace is the mysterious strength
that God lends human beings
who commit themselves to the work of transformation.”
(Anthony B. Robinson Changing the Conversation)
Job learns that…
“God is not a hypothesis or a good idea, but a power in the universe who turns what was, into what will be.” (Inscribing the Text: Sermons and Prayers of Walter Brueggemann).
Bartimaeus believes that mercy is passing by and calls out. The crowd says, “Take heart, he is calling you. Mercy is calling you.”
Bartimaeus is brought before Jesus who asks, “What do you want me to do for you?”
Bartimaeus is responsible for asking for what he needs.
Jesus does not presume to know.
Jesus does not fix what he believes needs fixing, Jesus asks Bartimaeus to name it.
Bartimaeus replies to Jesus, “Teacher, let me see again.”
And his sight is restored.
Just as Job, who had been operating only on a hearsay understanding of God, now sees God.
God, let me see again.
Lord, have mercy on me.
Job and Bartimaeus were surrounded by friends who told them to be quiet.
But Job and Bartimaeus knew their need, they called out, and they received mercy.
“Those who received mercy are formed into a new community.
That would be us, in the church, a community of people who have received mercy and now have the opportunity, the responsibility, the call, to extend mercy to all of God’s children in need.” (Breuggeman)
Job got God to come down.
And God got Job to look around
to see that our love of God and compassion for our neighbor eases the suffering the world and restores the balance that we need to move with grace and mercy.
Bartimaeus got Jesus to stop.
And Jesus got Bartimaeus
to trust that his giving into Jesus would enable him to see the road that leads to healing.
I invite us, one and all, to take whatever burden we are carrying, for ourselves, for our community, or for our world, and take a good look around at the world, as it is. And ask God all the questions that you want to, wait for an answer, receive the new insight in humility, and then trust that mercy and grace will surely follow you all of your days.
And then do whatever you can to continue to build and grow this transforming community of faith where God’s love echoes through us to all creation.
Let the people say,
Amen
Monday, October 26, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
The Strength That Empowers Us
Psalm 19 Mark 5: 24-34
March 15, 2009
Rev Alan Claassen
Did you know that going to church is good for your health? Faculty at Duke University did a study and they found that:
1) People who attend church regularly are hospitalized less often than people who never or rarely participate in church services
2) People who pray and read the Bible have lower blood pressure
3) People who attend religious services have stronger immune systems than their less religious counterparts.
So it’s healthy to come to church. Research proves it.
And there’s no Waiting Room.
So if you are looking to improve your health this morning, you’ve come to the right place.
The Gospel reading this morning tells of a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. “A long succession of physicians had treated her, and treated her badly, taking all her money and leaving her worse off than before…” (The Message, Eugene Peterson)
“She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in crowd and touched his cloak.”
Unlike Bartimaeus in our scripture reading from two weeks ago,
the blind beggar who called out from the crowd,
“Jesus, Son of David have mercy,”
this woman, whose name we do not know,
“moved toward Jesus silently, secretively, and in shame.
She had reason for her silence. As a bleeding person, she was considered by the orthodox to be unclean, contaminated, and untouchable.
For twelve years she had not been embraced or touched, even by her family.
As she walked down the street, people carefully moved aside, …” (Miracle, pg39 Wuellner)
Flora Wuellner, in her book, Miracle, sees in this woman a pain deeper than the chronic illness and loss of resources, namely, loneliness and a sense of shame. “It is hard not to internalize what others think of us. [The woman] probably thought of herself as unworthy and unclean.
How could she possibly believe that Jesus would deliberately touch her or encourage her to touch him?
If others saw her touching Jesus, they would consider him contaminated also, unfit to do God’s work until he had been purified. Jesus was on his way to the dying daughter of Jairus, an important man in the community.
If by her touch [the woman] prevented this, she would be blamed. She might be cast out of the community altogether.
Hers was a silent cry for a secret healing—a quick, shamed, touch on the outer garment. She hoped no one would notice, especially not Jesus.” (Miracle, pg 40, Wuellner)
This connection between the woman’s faith inspired by belief in Jesus fascinates me. When the woman reaches out to touch Jesus, he feels the spirit go out our him, he calls out who touched me, he sees the woman, hears her story, and says,
“Your faith has made you well.”
There are two active participants in this story, Jesus, a man who completely embodied the life-giving love of God and a woman who completely embodied desire for healing and faith that just the cloak of Jesus could heal her.
And even though I can only humbly approach this story at that level of mystery and grace, not really being able to understand it, I want to remember it.
I want us to remember for those in moments in our lives of not knowing where to turn.
When our own power is gone, when we feel like all eyes upon us a critical,
when we feel like everything in our lives is telling us to withdraw within ourselves
we have available to us the invitation to reach out to another source of power, the healing presence of God.
In that moment our prayer may simply be:
God, please send me guidance,
the open heart to receive it
and the courage to act upon it.
We may only be given the courage to move silently in the direction of silence. There are many good things that begin in silence. But don’t be surprised when healing comes and the light shines on the darkness. And don’t surprised in how good that will feel.
When the woman is brought out of her closet of shame by Jesus asking, “Who touched my cloak, the woman identifies herself. She became visible to the entire community.
The invisible takes center stage.
What will happen?
Her hemorrhaging has already been healed.
Then Jesus to woman, “Your faith has made you well.”
In that pronouncement she is restored with her community. She is different than she was. She is healed. She is no longer the untouchable that she was before. She is no longer to be seen.
She no longer assumes that she will be greeted with judgmental stares or rejection.
She receives more than just the healing of her illness; she is also reunited with her community.
Jesus restores her health and announces to the community that she is well.
This connection between healing and community is the one that I find compelling.
Because for a moment I take seriously the statement that we make about ourselves that we, the church, are the body of Christ.
I ask myself how we can live our lives as a faith community that would encourage someone to reach out to us in hopes of healing, friendship, and affirmation.
The woman who had been suffering physically and emotionally for twelve years needed more than bodily healing.
“She needed also to hear Jesus tell her openly,
in front of everyone,
that she was a worthy, faithful person.
[Jesus] called her daughter. Only in this particular story does Jesus refer to a woman as daughter. How deeply she must have needed that word of intimacy and respect. With his tenderness and peace, Jesus gave her not only bodily healing but also a deeper healing of her heart and spirit.
The community members need to see and to hear that God’s love excluded no one. They needed to learn that compassionate mercy matters for more than rules. They needed to hear that it is not God’s will that for anyone to remain sick, drained, lonely, uncomforted.
As Jesus challenged the ancient cruel laws he was revealing to them, to us, what God’s kin-dom really is.” (Miracle, pg 45, Wuellner)
This year, for this church’s observance of Lent, many of us wrote on pieces of cloth, the places in our own lives that are in need of healing, body, mind, and spirit. Those pieces of cloth, which we touched, our draped around the cross.
We touch the outer garment of Jesus’ cloak, and we wrap our places of need, brokenness, and separation, around the cross trusting that this is a place of healing, of strength beyond our own and yet within our reach.
What shall we reach out for?
The Holy Healing Spirit that was in Jesus and through Jesus for that woman who touched his cloak, is still within reach.
Somehow, in ways that no one can explain, we are able to touch the garment of the risen Christ, just as that woman touched the robe Jesus was wearing.
To make this seeming impossibility more real for us, Jesus gave us each other in this community of faith.
We bring ourselves, as we are, and as we want to become to this sacred place. We ask to be guided on the level path.
We asked to overcome fear and judgment and give ourselves to love. We are given an opportunity to be with Christ Jesus who knows our goodness and wants us to step forward, in love, for whatever life brings us next.
I said at the beginning of the sermon that church is good for your health.
Well rather than telling you take two aspirin and stay in bed,
I am going to give you one prayer and a way to remember it.
Say these words while doing the corresponding action:
God, please send me guidance, (Make eyeglasses over eyes)
the open heart to receive it (Place hands over heart, then open)
and the courage to act upon it. (Quickly extend hands directly forward)
Let the people, who love mercy and seek justice say,
Amen
___________________________________________________________________________
The Message, The New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs, Eugene Peterson, Navpress, Colorado Springs
Miracle, When Christ Touches Our Deepest Need, Flora Slosson Wuellner, Upper Room Books, Nashville
March 15, 2009
Rev Alan Claassen
Did you know that going to church is good for your health? Faculty at Duke University did a study and they found that:
1) People who attend church regularly are hospitalized less often than people who never or rarely participate in church services
2) People who pray and read the Bible have lower blood pressure
3) People who attend religious services have stronger immune systems than their less religious counterparts.
So it’s healthy to come to church. Research proves it.
And there’s no Waiting Room.
So if you are looking to improve your health this morning, you’ve come to the right place.
The Gospel reading this morning tells of a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. “A long succession of physicians had treated her, and treated her badly, taking all her money and leaving her worse off than before…” (The Message, Eugene Peterson)
“She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in crowd and touched his cloak.”
Unlike Bartimaeus in our scripture reading from two weeks ago,
the blind beggar who called out from the crowd,
“Jesus, Son of David have mercy,”
this woman, whose name we do not know,
“moved toward Jesus silently, secretively, and in shame.
She had reason for her silence. As a bleeding person, she was considered by the orthodox to be unclean, contaminated, and untouchable.
For twelve years she had not been embraced or touched, even by her family.
As she walked down the street, people carefully moved aside, …” (Miracle, pg39 Wuellner)
Flora Wuellner, in her book, Miracle, sees in this woman a pain deeper than the chronic illness and loss of resources, namely, loneliness and a sense of shame. “It is hard not to internalize what others think of us. [The woman] probably thought of herself as unworthy and unclean.
How could she possibly believe that Jesus would deliberately touch her or encourage her to touch him?
If others saw her touching Jesus, they would consider him contaminated also, unfit to do God’s work until he had been purified. Jesus was on his way to the dying daughter of Jairus, an important man in the community.
If by her touch [the woman] prevented this, she would be blamed. She might be cast out of the community altogether.
Hers was a silent cry for a secret healing—a quick, shamed, touch on the outer garment. She hoped no one would notice, especially not Jesus.” (Miracle, pg 40, Wuellner)
This connection between the woman’s faith inspired by belief in Jesus fascinates me. When the woman reaches out to touch Jesus, he feels the spirit go out our him, he calls out who touched me, he sees the woman, hears her story, and says,
“Your faith has made you well.”
There are two active participants in this story, Jesus, a man who completely embodied the life-giving love of God and a woman who completely embodied desire for healing and faith that just the cloak of Jesus could heal her.
And even though I can only humbly approach this story at that level of mystery and grace, not really being able to understand it, I want to remember it.
I want us to remember for those in moments in our lives of not knowing where to turn.
When our own power is gone, when we feel like all eyes upon us a critical,
when we feel like everything in our lives is telling us to withdraw within ourselves
we have available to us the invitation to reach out to another source of power, the healing presence of God.
In that moment our prayer may simply be:
God, please send me guidance,
the open heart to receive it
and the courage to act upon it.
We may only be given the courage to move silently in the direction of silence. There are many good things that begin in silence. But don’t be surprised when healing comes and the light shines on the darkness. And don’t surprised in how good that will feel.
When the woman is brought out of her closet of shame by Jesus asking, “Who touched my cloak, the woman identifies herself. She became visible to the entire community.
The invisible takes center stage.
What will happen?
Her hemorrhaging has already been healed.
Then Jesus to woman, “Your faith has made you well.”
In that pronouncement she is restored with her community. She is different than she was. She is healed. She is no longer the untouchable that she was before. She is no longer to be seen.
She no longer assumes that she will be greeted with judgmental stares or rejection.
She receives more than just the healing of her illness; she is also reunited with her community.
Jesus restores her health and announces to the community that she is well.
This connection between healing and community is the one that I find compelling.
Because for a moment I take seriously the statement that we make about ourselves that we, the church, are the body of Christ.
I ask myself how we can live our lives as a faith community that would encourage someone to reach out to us in hopes of healing, friendship, and affirmation.
The woman who had been suffering physically and emotionally for twelve years needed more than bodily healing.
“She needed also to hear Jesus tell her openly,
in front of everyone,
that she was a worthy, faithful person.
[Jesus] called her daughter. Only in this particular story does Jesus refer to a woman as daughter. How deeply she must have needed that word of intimacy and respect. With his tenderness and peace, Jesus gave her not only bodily healing but also a deeper healing of her heart and spirit.
The community members need to see and to hear that God’s love excluded no one. They needed to learn that compassionate mercy matters for more than rules. They needed to hear that it is not God’s will that for anyone to remain sick, drained, lonely, uncomforted.
As Jesus challenged the ancient cruel laws he was revealing to them, to us, what God’s kin-dom really is.” (Miracle, pg 45, Wuellner)
This year, for this church’s observance of Lent, many of us wrote on pieces of cloth, the places in our own lives that are in need of healing, body, mind, and spirit. Those pieces of cloth, which we touched, our draped around the cross.
We touch the outer garment of Jesus’ cloak, and we wrap our places of need, brokenness, and separation, around the cross trusting that this is a place of healing, of strength beyond our own and yet within our reach.
What shall we reach out for?
The Holy Healing Spirit that was in Jesus and through Jesus for that woman who touched his cloak, is still within reach.
Somehow, in ways that no one can explain, we are able to touch the garment of the risen Christ, just as that woman touched the robe Jesus was wearing.
To make this seeming impossibility more real for us, Jesus gave us each other in this community of faith.
We bring ourselves, as we are, and as we want to become to this sacred place. We ask to be guided on the level path.
We asked to overcome fear and judgment and give ourselves to love. We are given an opportunity to be with Christ Jesus who knows our goodness and wants us to step forward, in love, for whatever life brings us next.
I said at the beginning of the sermon that church is good for your health.
Well rather than telling you take two aspirin and stay in bed,
I am going to give you one prayer and a way to remember it.
Say these words while doing the corresponding action:
God, please send me guidance, (Make eyeglasses over eyes)
the open heart to receive it (Place hands over heart, then open)
and the courage to act upon it. (Quickly extend hands directly forward)
Let the people, who love mercy and seek justice say,
Amen
___________________________________________________________________________
The Message, The New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs, Eugene Peterson, Navpress, Colorado Springs
Miracle, When Christ Touches Our Deepest Need, Flora Slosson Wuellner, Upper Room Books, Nashville
We Are Who We Entrust
Job 23:1-9, 16-17 Mark 10:17-31
Rev. Alan Claassen October 11, 2009
We are in our second week of our Annual Stewardship Campaign. This year’s campaign is a little unusual as it based on a song and a dance, the Hokey Pokey. The focus line of the song that is the key to the campaign is, Put Your Whole Selves In.
You begin the dance by warming up slowly: right hand, shake it all about, left hand, shake it all about, right and left leg, front side, back side, warming up slowly until you are ready to put our whole self in, shake it all about, and then turn it all around.
What if the Hokey Pokey is what it is all about? What if the journey of our lives is to see, that each moment of our lives, tears and joys, successes and failures, is always turning us around until we see what it is really all about?
Like whirling dervishes we are spun around and around by the circumstances and choices of our lives.
What keeps us from getting dizzy and falling down?
On each Sunday of this five week Stewardship campaign we are focusing on one way in which we live and grow together as a community of faith. We began last week with the word connecting.
Today’s focus is on Learning.
And I want to suggest to you that what keeps from getting dizzy and falling down with all the twists and turns of life is Wisdom.
And I want to suggest to you this morning that the Book of Job is an excellent source of Wisdom, even though today’s passage, taken out of context, might make you doubt that claim.
In our adult Bible study, Listening to Scriptures, we are learning that knowing the context of the author of a book helps us understand the text so much better. We are learning to ask such questions as,
“When was this book written?”
“What, if anything, do we know about the author or authors of the book of the Bible that we are reading?”
“What do we know about the community that the author was writing to?”
“What literary form is being used? Is this passage history, myth, poetry, parable, part of a worship service or ceremony?”
Bob gave us some context for the reading from Job this morning. I want to add a little more to what Bob said, because I love the Book of Job.
So some context. When was the Book of Job written?
During the time of Jewish exile. In the 6th century before Christ the great ancient civilization of Babylon was rising and it swallowed up Israel. As a means for controlling this province the victorious army took all the significant leaders of the Southern Kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem to Babylon.
And the exiled leaders were treated well. They were allowed to live together, and worship together.
But these 50 years of exile was a very challenging time. They had equated their connection with God in relation to the promised land.
Now that they were in exile, where did that leave them in relation to God? Had God abandoned them? Could they maintain the covenant while living in a strange land? Were the gods of the Babylonians more powerful than their God? Many questions came up for the Jewish people at this time. That is the historical context for the Book of Job.
What is the literary form of the Book Job? Two answers to this question.
“There is a body of literature in the Hebrew Bible that stands apart. It is often referred to as “wisdom literature,” and has little to do with Israel’s distinctive sacred history or the prophets’ call for return to the covenant. Books like Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the Psalms fit here. And because it raises philosophical questions of God’s justice, … so does the Book of Job.” (pg 95, Understanding the Bible, John A. Buehrens)
Wisdom literature both advises us on what it takes to live the good life, as well as questioning the assumptions of our best made plans and formulas.
The Book of Job calls into question the assumption that if you do the right thing you will be rewarded, and the corollary, if your life is going miserably, then you must have done something wrong to deserve punishment.
The Book of Job, was asking the question that the Judean exiles must have wondered, “What did I do, what did my innocent children do, to deserve this?” Centuries later this question is still being asked and Rabbi Harold Kushner is famous for addressing this question in his popular book,
“Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?”
Which brings me to the second answer to the question, “What is the literary form of the Book of Job?” The particular passage that was read today is a lament.
“Lament is one of the most important, and often most neglected, forms of prayer in Hebrew Scriptures. Nearly one third of the Psalms are laments. The responses of Job to his three self-righteous friends are laments.
“Laments are protests and complaints raised in times of need or crisis, whether of individuals or community. One reason for their neglect comes in the manner the laments address God. These are not polite, soothing words, rendered in timid submission to God. The emotions are on the surface and God is sometimes depicted, as in Job 23, with images that are not easy to hear.
“God’s hand is heavy… the Almighty has terrified me.”
“Psalm 22 begins with some of the most devastating words of any lament, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Laments cut across the grain of culture and religion, that doesn’t want to hear distressing things. Those who raise laments are counseled, as Job was by his friends, to stop saying such words.
“The fault must be yours Job. Be quiet.”
Taken out of its historical and literary context, this lament of Job may appear to be a denial of faith or avoidance of relationship with God.
But quietness in this case is not faith. Lament is faith.
Why?
Because it keeps the dialogue with God alive.
Lament does not throw hands up in the air and walk away unheard.
Lament hangs on to God, pleading and protesting in hope of a response to the need or crisis that overwhelms.
In spite of experiencing the “heaviness” of God’s hand, in spite of wishing to vanish into darkness, Job clings to God as the One who can be reasoned with; as the one who can offer an answer.
And though he could not have known it at the time of his lamentations, God is going to provide Job with an answer that will bring an abiding connection with eternal life, no matter what the outward appearances, wealth or poverty are.
And that leads to the one of the most characteristic and surprising elements of lament in Hebrew Scriptures. Once the protests have been sounded, once the rawness of the complaint has been laid open, lament typically ends in trust and in hope of God’s action.
And there also comes a deeper sense of wisdom, of understanding the limits of one’s previous understanding of the situation at hand. A new insight is awakened in our heart of hearts.
What comes of Job’s lament? We will discuss that in two weeks. Of course, if you can’t wait that long for the answer, you can always read the Book of Job.
Or hear this words from a man of great faith who endured great suffering, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “Let us remember that there is a great benign power in the universe whose name is God, and God is able to make a way out of now way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming a better people. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world.”
Though not as noble or historic I hear a similar faithfulness in the words of Jack Williams, a songwriter from South Carolina, who wrote a song of lament in remembrance of the disappeared cotton fields that he remembered as a young boy.
Cotton, high cotton. The more I see the less I know.
The well runs deeper than the bucket goes.
Swing high, swing low. High cotton.
The well runs deeper than the bucket goes.
The well runs deeper than our lamentations, our limitations, our mistakes, our anger. Even though we may be at the end of our rope that doesn’t mean that the well is empty. We may just need a longer rope, a deeper understanding. Wisdom.
The way to learn what you need to get your bucket deeper into the well is to put your whole self into your community that centers itself in God’s unconditional love.
As with the lawyer who asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus replies, keep the commandments and care for the poor with everything that you’ve got.
Today’s word is learning. What part of your life is asking a question that this community of faith might be able to answer? What wisdom do we seem to have a grasp on here that we believe would benefit our community?
Our beliefs are initially informed by what we are taught and we thank God for our teachers. But we are transformed by our experiences. Wisdom comes from being shaken up, turned around, and then hearing, from the whirlwind, God calling our name, saying,
“You are my beloved. I have been by your side all the time. Let me show you something you seem to have missed that is front of your eyes.”
And in sharing with one another, our deepest questions in ways that are honest, open, and safe, we will uncover the wisdom that we have been entrusted with, by the grace of God.
And that my friends, is what it’s all about.
Let the people say, Amen.
Rev. Alan Claassen October 11, 2009
We are in our second week of our Annual Stewardship Campaign. This year’s campaign is a little unusual as it based on a song and a dance, the Hokey Pokey. The focus line of the song that is the key to the campaign is, Put Your Whole Selves In.
You begin the dance by warming up slowly: right hand, shake it all about, left hand, shake it all about, right and left leg, front side, back side, warming up slowly until you are ready to put our whole self in, shake it all about, and then turn it all around.
What if the Hokey Pokey is what it is all about? What if the journey of our lives is to see, that each moment of our lives, tears and joys, successes and failures, is always turning us around until we see what it is really all about?
Like whirling dervishes we are spun around and around by the circumstances and choices of our lives.
What keeps us from getting dizzy and falling down?
On each Sunday of this five week Stewardship campaign we are focusing on one way in which we live and grow together as a community of faith. We began last week with the word connecting.
Today’s focus is on Learning.
And I want to suggest to you that what keeps from getting dizzy and falling down with all the twists and turns of life is Wisdom.
And I want to suggest to you this morning that the Book of Job is an excellent source of Wisdom, even though today’s passage, taken out of context, might make you doubt that claim.
In our adult Bible study, Listening to Scriptures, we are learning that knowing the context of the author of a book helps us understand the text so much better. We are learning to ask such questions as,
“When was this book written?”
“What, if anything, do we know about the author or authors of the book of the Bible that we are reading?”
“What do we know about the community that the author was writing to?”
“What literary form is being used? Is this passage history, myth, poetry, parable, part of a worship service or ceremony?”
Bob gave us some context for the reading from Job this morning. I want to add a little more to what Bob said, because I love the Book of Job.
So some context. When was the Book of Job written?
During the time of Jewish exile. In the 6th century before Christ the great ancient civilization of Babylon was rising and it swallowed up Israel. As a means for controlling this province the victorious army took all the significant leaders of the Southern Kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem to Babylon.
And the exiled leaders were treated well. They were allowed to live together, and worship together.
But these 50 years of exile was a very challenging time. They had equated their connection with God in relation to the promised land.
Now that they were in exile, where did that leave them in relation to God? Had God abandoned them? Could they maintain the covenant while living in a strange land? Were the gods of the Babylonians more powerful than their God? Many questions came up for the Jewish people at this time. That is the historical context for the Book of Job.
What is the literary form of the Book Job? Two answers to this question.
“There is a body of literature in the Hebrew Bible that stands apart. It is often referred to as “wisdom literature,” and has little to do with Israel’s distinctive sacred history or the prophets’ call for return to the covenant. Books like Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the Psalms fit here. And because it raises philosophical questions of God’s justice, … so does the Book of Job.” (pg 95, Understanding the Bible, John A. Buehrens)
Wisdom literature both advises us on what it takes to live the good life, as well as questioning the assumptions of our best made plans and formulas.
The Book of Job calls into question the assumption that if you do the right thing you will be rewarded, and the corollary, if your life is going miserably, then you must have done something wrong to deserve punishment.
The Book of Job, was asking the question that the Judean exiles must have wondered, “What did I do, what did my innocent children do, to deserve this?” Centuries later this question is still being asked and Rabbi Harold Kushner is famous for addressing this question in his popular book,
“Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?”
Which brings me to the second answer to the question, “What is the literary form of the Book of Job?” The particular passage that was read today is a lament.
“Lament is one of the most important, and often most neglected, forms of prayer in Hebrew Scriptures. Nearly one third of the Psalms are laments. The responses of Job to his three self-righteous friends are laments.
“Laments are protests and complaints raised in times of need or crisis, whether of individuals or community. One reason for their neglect comes in the manner the laments address God. These are not polite, soothing words, rendered in timid submission to God. The emotions are on the surface and God is sometimes depicted, as in Job 23, with images that are not easy to hear.
“God’s hand is heavy… the Almighty has terrified me.”
“Psalm 22 begins with some of the most devastating words of any lament, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Laments cut across the grain of culture and religion, that doesn’t want to hear distressing things. Those who raise laments are counseled, as Job was by his friends, to stop saying such words.
“The fault must be yours Job. Be quiet.”
Taken out of its historical and literary context, this lament of Job may appear to be a denial of faith or avoidance of relationship with God.
But quietness in this case is not faith. Lament is faith.
Why?
Because it keeps the dialogue with God alive.
Lament does not throw hands up in the air and walk away unheard.
Lament hangs on to God, pleading and protesting in hope of a response to the need or crisis that overwhelms.
In spite of experiencing the “heaviness” of God’s hand, in spite of wishing to vanish into darkness, Job clings to God as the One who can be reasoned with; as the one who can offer an answer.
And though he could not have known it at the time of his lamentations, God is going to provide Job with an answer that will bring an abiding connection with eternal life, no matter what the outward appearances, wealth or poverty are.
And that leads to the one of the most characteristic and surprising elements of lament in Hebrew Scriptures. Once the protests have been sounded, once the rawness of the complaint has been laid open, lament typically ends in trust and in hope of God’s action.
And there also comes a deeper sense of wisdom, of understanding the limits of one’s previous understanding of the situation at hand. A new insight is awakened in our heart of hearts.
What comes of Job’s lament? We will discuss that in two weeks. Of course, if you can’t wait that long for the answer, you can always read the Book of Job.
Or hear this words from a man of great faith who endured great suffering, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “Let us remember that there is a great benign power in the universe whose name is God, and God is able to make a way out of now way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming a better people. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world.”
Though not as noble or historic I hear a similar faithfulness in the words of Jack Williams, a songwriter from South Carolina, who wrote a song of lament in remembrance of the disappeared cotton fields that he remembered as a young boy.
Cotton, high cotton. The more I see the less I know.
The well runs deeper than the bucket goes.
Swing high, swing low. High cotton.
The well runs deeper than the bucket goes.
The well runs deeper than our lamentations, our limitations, our mistakes, our anger. Even though we may be at the end of our rope that doesn’t mean that the well is empty. We may just need a longer rope, a deeper understanding. Wisdom.
The way to learn what you need to get your bucket deeper into the well is to put your whole self into your community that centers itself in God’s unconditional love.
As with the lawyer who asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus replies, keep the commandments and care for the poor with everything that you’ve got.
Today’s word is learning. What part of your life is asking a question that this community of faith might be able to answer? What wisdom do we seem to have a grasp on here that we believe would benefit our community?
Our beliefs are initially informed by what we are taught and we thank God for our teachers. But we are transformed by our experiences. Wisdom comes from being shaken up, turned around, and then hearing, from the whirlwind, God calling our name, saying,
“You are my beloved. I have been by your side all the time. Let me show you something you seem to have missed that is front of your eyes.”
And in sharing with one another, our deepest questions in ways that are honest, open, and safe, we will uncover the wisdom that we have been entrusted with, by the grace of God.
And that my friends, is what it’s all about.
Let the people say, Amen.
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