We Are Who We Adore

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