Job 1:1, 2:1-10 Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12 Mark 10:2-16
“I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man!; how noble in reason!; how infinite in faculty!; in form and moving how express and admirable!; in action how like an angel!; in apprehension how like a god!; the beauty of the world!; the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
That is, of course, part of Hamlet’s speech to his friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as he attempted to explain his recent behavior. While none of us have had our thrones usurped by a power-hungry uncle, there are many that feel dismayed this week. Emotions are raw for those who have survived assaults and for those who feel manipulated by the media.
All in all, there is such confusion over who can and should claim to be victims and survivors in so many different conflicts that a word from the book of Job seems like a good idea. In our reading, he has lost all he has and is left to scrape boils from his skin. He is utterly miserable. His wife – who shares his fate – has had enough and tells him just to curse God and be done with it all.
Now, before we deal with that, let’s back that story up a bit. It starts with Satan on a walkabout. This is not the “evil overlord, Paradise Lost, Lord of Hell, contender against God” Satan. This is the “Old Testament member of the heavenly host that only has the power to do what God allows him to do” Satan.
The reason I say it this way is that the book of Job was written for a people and at a time when they did not have a binary concept of the universe. What I mean is that, even though they knew there was good and evil, they did not believe in a God in competition with others. Sure, there were other spiritual forces – and perhaps even spiritual beings like gods and angels – but they were all part of the heavenly host. They were all subject to the one true God – the One who is.
So, Satan asked God to test Job by taking away all of his possessions and his family, and then again even his health, to prove that people just can’t be trusted. Job’s wife definitely took the bait. She said, “Just curse God and die already!”
I like to think that Job cleared his throat, sat up a bit, and said, “Just don’t go there.” Was it fear? Was it reverence? He’d pretty much lost all he could lose. Yet this is a man who always “turned from evil.” So, he did not curse the One whom he knew to be the source of joy and sadness alike.
That’s a tough pill to swallow. How could a good and just and merciful God be OK with a tsunami, an earthquake, and a volcano hitting the same chain of islands? How could a God of love and providence be OK with people living for generation after generation, locked into a cycle of poverty and violence? How can the God I pray to for parking spaces and sporting events be OK with a justice system in which some people are more likely to receive higher sentences than others?
Trying to figure out where God is in all these issues often leads us to one of two conclusions – cat videos or discussion threads. Now, I know that some of you avoid these traps altogether, but it comes down to this: do you want nothing more to do with the struggles of others than to expect personal choice and the grace of God to work things out, or do you believe the Kingdom of God requires something more of us?
Each of those choices can be made faithfully, but I have an obvious bias toward the latter. I have this bias – not because I think I’m very good at it – because I believe scripture proclaims that God has set the Kingdom in motion from the very foundation of creation.
Paul’s letter to the Hebrew followers of Jesus tells us that God set things in motion from the beginning through Jesus and that it is the sacrificial quality of Jesus’ death and resurrection that makes us one. It matters that Jesus was a person and not a burning bush or an angel to wrestle with or even a pillar of fire on a mountain! It matters because we understand things better when they come from a human point of view.
Case in point, when I tell you that Jesus’ teaching on divorce is hard for those of us (not you, but us) who have been divorced, then you know that I know first-hand what brokenness feels like. So, Jesus is the one who created a new way for us to know that God is with us and loves us and was willing to suffer and die to prove the point.
But here’s the good news. He also came to let us know that there is another way. There is another way to respond to anger and abuse and poverty and even the attitudes that allow and promote these things. There is another way beyond cursing the image of God in one another! There is another way other than responding to brokenness with legalism. There is a deeper law written in love on the foundations of creation!
That deeper law commands us to realize that our sins and our salvation are not limited to our own experiences. Yes, we must be responsible selves, but we must also remember that we are a part of something much greater than ourselves. That’s what Jesus wanted the Pharisees and even his own disciples to know when they asked about divorce.
My best guess (and that of many actual scholars) is that divorce was a big deal at the time of Mark’s gospel. The Pharisees were the keepers of order. They would probably have made really good Presbyterians! We don’t actually know if they were concerned about cultural issues like intermarrying with non-Jews. We don’t know if they were concerned with the shift in practice from the Old Testament standard of polygamy versus the Hellenized form of monogamous marriage.
What we do know is that Jesus made a clear distinction between what Moses had provided for their hardness of heart and what God has provided in the intimacy of marriage. What we do know is that all of our relationships, especially those closest to us, have lasting effects that require God’s grace to move forward when damage has been done.
It is by the grace of God alone, and probably no small accident, that all this serious, eternal consequence, adult stuff is interrupted by children. Perhaps they are the cat videos of Mark’s gospel. I say that because of the way they are woven in and out of these stories, but I don’t think they are there to distract us.
If anything, they are there to remind us of what’s really important. Children approach with wonder. They aren’t prewired for anger or hate or any of the “isms” we create. Children are full of joy. They come into situations expecting good things to happen. Children are usually focused on one thing: one activity, one person, one new idea at a time.
Jesus knows this. Jesus knows that we go through life adding up scars from reaching for stars and falling and rising and making plans for the next attempt. He knows that we long for a world where we can be at peace. He knows that we cannot help but expect that peace to mean that things go well for us and our tribe regardless of them and theirs. Yet he calls us to approach the Kingdom like children. He calls us into wonder and joy and focus. Can you hear it? Can you see it?
Today we see it around this table. Today, we celebrate the peace that we have through the Eucharist, the meal of thanks, the Lord’s supper, and our holy and common union with God and one another. On this day there are people of Christian faith across the world who will share this bread and this cup. I dare you to approach it with wonder. I dare you to approach it with joy. I dare you to approach it with a focus on one thing – the calling associated with our salvation.
Today we will also take up the Peace and Global witness offering. This offering extends our reach out into the world through grants in local congregations to combat bullying and violence. It funds global mission partners, and by the way, it will also help fund our water purification system in Cuba.
There is one more thing that I want to share with you, though, as we consider a response to God’s grace in our lives together. While this congregation does have its financial struggles, we are a very generous congregation. One of the items the Session approved some time back was to have some money available for a project that we might do as a congregation.
We’ve used a little here and there in the past. Some were used to kick-start our flood recovery work. Some were used for a hard freeze overflow shelter. If you have an idea for some other way that we can impact the community together, talk to Jan or to me. We’ll share it with the Outreach Committee and see what we can get done together.
The point of it all is this, we have been given one another to move past all the blessing and cursing of this world and into wonder and joy and the expectation of good things. If you don’t believe me, then believe one of my favorite voices from childhood, Shell Sylverstine.
Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
Listen to the DON'TS
Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WONT'S
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me-
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.
Amen.
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