Community Church Sermons
Year B
October 18,
2009
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost Sunday
Psalm 91:1-12
Job 38:1-7
Rev. Martin C. Singley, III
Poor Job!
He’s lost his family. He’s lost his wealth. He’s lost his
health.
He is the living illustration of Murphy’s Law. Everything
that CAN go wrong HAS gone wrong – and there’s not much poor ol’ Job can do about it except complain.
And complain he does – to everyone who will listen. He
complains to his friends Eliphaz, Bildad
and Zophar who are pillars in the church of “blame
everything on the people who suffer.”
You know that church. I know that church. Most of us have
been members of that church at one time or another. And we LOVED the message
preached from its pulpit about how bad things happen to people as a direct
punishment from God for the bad things they’ve done. The church of “blame
everything on the people who suffer” is very popular because it offers the
illusion that we are in complete control of our lives and can successfully
manage them to exclude bad things from ever happening. And it offers us the enjoyment
of judging those who can’t.
But then the economy crashes, and the pink slip comes, or the
401k dries up. The perfect child comes home from college covered with tattoos
and body piercings and far adrift from your family’s values. You wake up one
morning feeling blue and can’t get out of it. Or you go to the doctor and she
speaks the word “cancer.”
And all of a sudden, you
are among those who suffer. And when Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar from the church
of “blame everything on the people who suffer” show up on your doorstep,
comforting you with trite, insensitive, meaningless words about how you brought
it all on yourself, you know you need to go to another church!
Poor Job!
Life has caved in, and there’s nothing he can do about it but
complain. So he complains to his so-called friends who are not any help at all.
And he complains to God.
Do you ever do that? Do you ever complain to God?
The prayer of complaint is one of the most common prayers in
the Bible. There is Jesus’ prayer from the cross when he cries out, “My God! My
God! Why hast thou forsaken me?” That’s a prayer of complaint!
Psalm 13 is a song of complaint: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”
Complaining to God. You cannot have a true relationship
with another – even God - without the ability to complain.
Moses complained to God about the people he was leading out
of Egypt. Numbers 11 is a blazing complaint Moses files against God:
“So Moses said to the LORD, “Why have You
afflicted Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your
sight, that You have laid the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people? Did I beget
them, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your
bosom, as a nurse carries a nursing child,’ to the land which You swore to
their fathers? Where am I to get meat
for all these people? They keep wailing to me, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ I am not
able to bear all these people alone, because the burden is too heavy for me. If
You’re going to treat me like this, please kill me here and now—if I have found
favor in Your sight—and do not let me face my own ruin!”
Now that’s a complaint!
And then there is Adam’s complaint in Genesis 3. This is my
favorite! He and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit. God finds out about it and
is not pleased. So God says to Adam, “Have you eaten from the tree I commanded
you not to eat from?”
And Adam complains:
“The woman YOU put here made me do it!”
It’s okay to complain to God. Sometimes it’s important to
voice your anger. And when life falls apart like it did for Job – and like it
sometimes does for us - going to God with what is truly in your heart is the
kind of honesty that is needed in any healthy relationship.
So don’t be afraid to question God like Job did.
But…
Healthy relationships require reciprocity. And in Job 38 –
after Job has voiced all his complaints, asked all his questions, made all his
protests to a silent God – guess who shows up?
God.
“Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm,” the chapter
begins.
And God surprises Job. God does not punish Job for complaining.
God does not strike Job dead for questioning God’s role in all his misery. And
most important of all, God does not even answer Job’s question, “Why?”
One of the great ministries we have in our church is Stephen
Ministry. Stephen Ministers are people just like you who receive 50-hours of
training in the art of Christian caregiving. One of
the most important - and difficult – skills Stephen Ministers learn is to not
try to “fix things” for hurting people by offering cheap advice and easy
answers to life’s difficult questions.
“Why did my loved one die?
“Why did I get this illness?”
“Why is God doing this to me?”
“Why is there so much suffering in the world?”
We join Job in asking all these kinds of questions, but at
the end of the day, God does not answer.
As a Pastor, one of the most difficult things I have to do
when I’m with people whose lives have fallen apart is to respond to their “Why”
questions” with, “I don’t know why.”
I wish I did. But I don’t. Maybe someday we will. But right
now, I just don’t know “why.”
You see, God responds to Job, but not in the way Job
anticipates. Job is looking for answers, but God gives him something he does
not expect.
QUESTIONS!
Listen:
“Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without
knowledge?”
When I was a teenager, I thought my parents were pretty much
incompetent, irrelevant, woefully behind the times, and just plain not cool. Do
you remember those days when you went out in public with your family and asked
your parents not to look like they were with you? As kids, our parents were
so…embarrassingly ignorant!
But then, we became parents ourselves!
Mark Twain once said, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was
so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to
be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
“Who is this who darkens my counsel with words without
knowledge?” asks the Lord. We human beings love to shoot off our mouths about
stuff we really know nothing at all about.
And that’s especially true of religious people. We have many
more answers than there are questions, and many of our answers are just plain
ignorant.
“You’re suffering because you must have sinned and now God is
punishing you, Job,” said Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. “People of
other religions are not accepted by God,” say Christians, and Muslims, and
Jews, and many others. “Your baby died because God needed her more than you
did,” I once heard a couple say as they tried to comfort a grieving mother.
Words without knowledge.
Do you think it’s possible that a lot of the religious mumbo-jumbo
we hear in our world is “words without knowledge?”
And then God says to Job, “Let’s try something different for
a change. Instead of you always questioning me, let’s turn it around. “I will
question YOU, and you shall answer ME!”
Now listen to the questions God asks Job – and us.
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation – set its
cornerstone – poured out the sea – and made the dry land? Where were you?”
“Have you ever given orders to the morning – or created a sunrise?”
“Have you seen the gates of death – or found your way to the
abode of light? Have you ever brought forth the constellations in their
seasons?”
And as God asks the questions, Job learns the fundamental
lesson of life.
It’s not all about him.
When I think back over my own faith journey, it strikes me
that I often describe it in terms of me accepting God into my life. I invited
Christ into my heart. I yielded my life to the Lord. I accepted Jesus as my
Lord and Savior.
It almost sounds as if I think of myself as my own personal
universe into which I can let God come – if I need him, if he plays his cards
right, if he answers all my questions, if he meets my moral requirements, if he
fits my idea of what God ought to be, and most especially if he does everything
I ask him to do. And if God doesn’t…he’s out!
But Job shows us something deeper. It’s not all about us. We
are not the center of a universe into which WE invite God to come. No. GOD is
the Creator, the true center of the universe into which WE are invited to come
and dwell!
Which brings me back to Linda
Collins.
Linda is one of the most Christ-like people I’ve ever met.
She is a very talented musician, but even more significantly, she is a woman of
deep faith.
Back in 1997, when Linda applied for our position as church
organist, she touched my heart deeply with three things she shared about
herself. First, she wanted to do God’s will, and that meant that she was not
simply applying for a job that she wanted, but rather was seeking guidance for
what GOD wanted. Second, Linda disclosed to us that she faced some health
issues that would probably get worse over time, and she believed we needed to
know that because as tempting as it might be to just not say anything about it,
she felt it was important for us to know. And third, Linda said the time might
come when her health got in the way of her playing and we would all need to be
honest about that so our congregation would be well-served in worship.
Linda lives in God’s universe and not one of her own
creation. She seeks God’s will, and wants to serve God’s purposes, and
understands that life is about more than just herself.
And along the way of living in God’s world, I think it fair
to say that Linda has discovered a wonderful truth. It is a truth expressed in
the three hymns we sing today - hymns that Linda selected as her favorites.
“There’s Within My Heart A
Melody”…Jesus whispers sweet and low, “Fear not! I am with thee, peace, be still,” in all of life’s ebb and flow.
“I’d Rather Have Jesus”…than silver or gold, I’d rather be
his than have riches untold; I’d rather have Jesus than houses or lands, I’d
rather be led by his nail-pierced hands.
And the hymn we’ll sing in just a moment.
“Great is Thy Faithfulness.”
It is only when you let go of yourself, and give yourself
over to the larger purposes of God, that you discover a Love so deep and
profound that will never let you go – even through life’s tragedies, even
through times of loss, even through the experience of death.
God is faithful.
For 11-years, we have seen it lived out before us in Linda
Collins.
Great is his faithfulness.