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GOD IS GOD ... And We Are Not

10/25/2015

Job 38:1-11
And now, finally, God answered Job from the eye of a violent storm. He said:
“Why do you confuse the issue?
Why do you talk without knowing what you’re talking about?
Pull yourself together, Job!
Up on your feet! Stand tall!
I have some questions for you,
and I want some straight answers.
Where were you when I created the earth?
Tell me, since you know so much!
Who decided on its size? Certainly you’ll know that!
Who came up with the blueprints and measurements?
How was its foundation poured,
and who set the cornerstone,
While the morning stars sang in chorus
and all the angels shouted praise?
And who took charge of the ocean
when it gushed forth like a baby from the womb?
That was me! I wrapped it in soft clouds,
and tucked it in safely at night.
Then I made a playpen for it,
strong boundaries so it couldn’t run loose,
And said, ‘Stay here, this is your place.
Your wild tantrums are confined to this place.’

One of the first things I was told on entering seminary was to always remember that “God is God ... and you are not.” This is very much the message of today’s reading. I don’t like the book of Job. I may as well state that right up front. There are bits of it, like today’s reading, that I can read and accept, and even enjoy – but the book begins with a picture of God that I simply find repugnant. I understand that the form of this story is a literary device to allow the characters to say certain things and it is written from the point of view of a tribal culture – but, still.....

At a casual read the book of Job asks a question: Why do bad things happen to good people? It’s the age old problem of theodicy. But on a more careful reading it turns out that is the wrong question. The real question asked here is: Why are good people good?

At the beginning of our story God recognizes that Job is good, but wants to know why he is good. It is to make himself feel good about himself? Is it to look good in God’s eyes? Is it because, seeing God’s goodness, he wanted to look good too? Or maybe Job believes that we are good for goodness’s sake – that this is, in truth, our natural state?

The story begins with a discussion between God and Satan (who is described here as the “Designated Accuser” - I love that title) as to just why Job is such a good man. Satan declares it is only because God has spoiled him rotten by showering him with riches and good things and never letting anything harm him. By this time, God is somewhat wondering God’s self and this is the point where the story loses me, because God tells Satan he can do whatever he wants to Job. The image of a being who would so casually toss aside all that Job loves just to settle a philosophical argument is not one I can reconcile with the God I love and serve. As I said, it is a literary device ... still...

Because, taking God at God’s word, Satan does every rotten thing he can think of. Within the course of one day
• marauders slaughtered all Job’s farm stock as well as his field hands
• lightning struck and fried all his sheep – as well as all the shepherds
• Chadean raider stole every one of his camels and massacred his camel drovers
• as lastly, word came that every one of Job’s children, who were gathered at the eldest son’s house for a party, were wiped out when a tornado hit the home,
but even with all this Job refused to sin by blaming God – he remained true and faithful. So ... on another day, God told Satan to take it even further, and Satan inflicted Job with boils – running, open sores all over his body – but Job remained true.

At this point three of Job’s so-called frends come to him and begin grilling him, claiming to comfort him but actually trying to convince him that somehow he must have done something wrong to bring this all on himself. The story goes on for many, many chapters but that is the drift of his friends’ counsel - somewhere you brought this on yourself. And Job holds firm that he did no such thing – he has done nothing wrong and he does NOT deserve this. He even calls God to listen to his testimony of innocence and then demands that God justify God’s self to him – Job.

Which God does by asking a series of questions: Where were you when everything that is was created? Did you set the stars in the skies? Do you control the tides? And so on ... And after a few more chapters, Job agrees, yes, you can do what you want because all that exists is yours – it was never mine. And, finally, having made his point, God restores all that was taken from Job – and that appears to strike many as a happy ending.

I have never understood or found any satisfaction in this resolution to the story of Job. It may have made sense in a tribal culture in which the idea of individuals mattering didn’t really exist, but somehow, the idea that you can wipe out a man’s family and then simply plug in a new one later on and every thing is peachy keen just doesn’t work for us today.

This is one of the primary differences between the Old and New Testaments – the role of the individual. Sometimes in the Old Testament God seems invested in individuals, such as David the shepherd boy who became king, but then God will turn around and slaughter hundreds of innocent people with no apparent thought for the human persons involved. The Old Testament God is often very puzzling to us today.

Historically, the role of the individual person didn’t really begin to flower fully until the late Middle ages and the Renaissance - but the idea that God sees and cares for each of us individually is a goodly part of Jesus’ message. We are no longer interchangeable cogs in a machine. We matter.

When we speak of Jesus as the bridge, the great high priest, the one who stands between us and God, perhaps this is what we mean. When Jesus says he is bringing us a “new thing” maybe this is it. What he brings is the Good News that the same God who created all that is – the One who created the dolphins and the field mice, the One who moves the tides, the One who set rings around Saturn and placed the stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka in Orion’s belt – this same One, Jesus tells us, sees every sparrow and cares about me ... and you ... and values even the least among us -- especially the least among us.

God is God ... and we are not – this is absolutely true, but this God that Jesus showed us knows and names us and loves us.

Thank God. Amen.

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HOLY GROUND

10/11/2015

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Exodus 3:1-5 .....
Moses was shepherding the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the west end of the wilderness and came to the mountain of God, Horeb. The angel of God appeared to him in flames of fire blazing out of the middle of a bush. He looked. The bush was blazing away but it didn’t burn up.

Moses said, “What’s going on here? I can’t believe this! Amazing! Why doesn’t the bush burn up?”

God saw that he had stopped to look. God called to him from out of the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

He said, “Yes? I’m right here!”

God said, “Don’t come any closer. Remove your sandals from your feet. You’re standing on holy ground.”

This is not one of the lectionary readings for this Sunday. I was led to it by a conversation I became part of on-line this week. I’ll get into all that a little later, but I want to begin by setting the stage for this reading with a little background material.

We all know the story of Moses. Born in Egypt as a next-best-thing-to-a-slave at a time when male Hebrew babies were being killed to keep their population down, Moses survived when his desperate mother placed him in God’s hands and tossed him into the Nile in a floating basket. He was rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised in the royal court, as part of the family. We then skip a number of years until he is a grown man who, witnessing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew to death, intervened and then beat the Egyptian to death himself.

Later, when he was threatened with “outing” by a fellow Hebrew who had witnessed his act of violence, Moses fled from the royal court into the wilderness, somewhere on the far side of the Red Sea, met Jethro, the “priest of Midian,” married one of his daughters, and became part of the family there, as well.

It’s easy to skip over this part of the story in order to get to the “good stuff,” but this part has some interesting points to it. First, it doesn’t appear to have been any secret in Egypt, at least among the Hebrews, just who Moses really was. Second, when Moses ran into trouble it wasn’t the Egyptians who threatened him - that was his own people. When he tried to break up a fight among Hebrews, the combatants basically told him to bug off because they didn’t need to listen to him, they had watched him murder a man. That was why he fled Egypt.

This was a first of the many times the Hebrews would reject Moses’ right to lead them. It would be the Midians – strangers – who would take him in and make him one of their own. Most likely these people didn’t even worship the same god as Moses, but they made him part of the family. Rejected by his own people – the people he would be sent to save – Moses was welcomed and accepted by non-Jews – a story line that would be repeated about 1500 years later by another Hebrew leader named Jesus.

The third point of interest here is that Moses’ encounter with God took place on “holy ground” and that patch of holy ground was not in a temple precinct or within royal walls. There was no gold, no cedarwood, no pews, no organ. It was just a random someplace out in the middle of pretty much nowhere, where the sheep and goats grazed. And that leads us around to the point I originally chose to talk about...

Holy ground – what makes a space holy and how do we recognize it?

As I said, I got into an on-line conversation occasioned when a fellow pastor commented that she often hears people talk about how the "church is dying" but that she doesn't believe it is the church itself that is dying, but instead, the way we view and use church - specifically addressing old single-use church buildings. She then went on to articulate her vision for a multi-purpose setting for church -- one where the hungry would be fed and the homeless cared for. What she described didn't sound much like our traditional image of the church of the past, but it was an appealing (to me) image of what the church could be.

Another pastor then chimed in with a question concerning "sacred space" and many people's need for a "set-aside" ambiance for worship, and asked where we find a balance between service and sacred worship. [I did not ever get around to asking any other these pastors if I could quote them here and so am not including their names -- if you recognize yourself in here, thank you so much for your thoughtful contributions...]

Others then came in with descriptions of the churches they serve...and they were the most wonderful mixed lot of descriptions! One church meets each week in a parking lot and shares a full service with all the usual parts, followed by a potluck lunch -- all with no building at all! Another described a traditional large church building, but one that serves as a community center -- being used all week by many different groups. I offered a description of our church setting, where we look like an ordinary strip-mall office, but where we gather to feed the hungry and clothe the naked -- and come together to share our lives and worship God.

Each and every "church" described in this conversation was "sacred ground" because in every one the people come together in love and service to the One who gives us life and hope. Our churches are many -- and they are varied -- and it doesn't seem to matter so much what they look like -- it's the hearts of the people of God that make any place and every place holy ground.

The "church" is alive and well -- we just need to open our vision to what we are really seeing when we look at them. Thanks be to God.

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WORLD COMMUNION SUNDAY 2015

10/4/2015

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Mark 10:13-16
The people brought children to Jesus, hoping he might touch them. The disciples shooed them off. But Jesus was irate and let them know it: “Don’t push these children away. Don’t ever get between them and me. These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom. Mark this: Unless you accept God’s kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you’ll never get in.” Then, gathering the children up in his arms, he laid his hands of blessing on them.

Today is World Communion Sunday and I do not have a sermon, per se. Instead I have a poem and a couple of questions...and one observation. Observation first, because I want you to hold this thought while you listen to the poem.

In today's reading, Jesus appears, at least, to clearly be speaking about actual children -- but in other places in the gospels Jesus when Jesus speaks about children, the little ones, he is speaking more of the powerless, those with no status in society, those without political or cultural clout of any kind -- the poor, the voiceless, invisible people. Listen to the words of our scripture in that light ... and then listen to this poem by Jan Richardson:

“And the Table Will Be Wide”
A Blessing for World Communion Sunday

And the table
will be wide.
And the welcome
will be wide.
And the arms
will open wide
to gather us in.
And our hearts
will open wide
to receive.

And we will come
as children who trust
there is enough.
And we will come
unhindered and free.
And our aching
will be met
with bread.
And our sorrow
will be met
with wine.

And we will open our hands
to the feast
without shame.
And we will turn
toward each other
without fear.
And we will give up
our appetite
for despair.
And we will taste
and know
of delight.

And we will become bread
for a hungering world.
And we will become drink
for those who thirst.
And the blessed
will become the blessing.
And everywhere
will be the feast.

© Jan Richardson, The Painted Prayerbook

I'm not sure that I could say anything about World Communion Sunday that says it better than that ... so I will ask my two questions for Reflection: 1) With all the best will in the world, with whom would you still find it difficult to share God's table? 2) Are you willing to do so, when Jesus invites them anyway?

And I will leave it at that. May there be blessing and plenty for all of us.

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GOD IS GOD ... And We Are Not

HOLY GROUND

WORLD COMMUNION SUNDAY 2015

Rev. Cherie Marckx

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