Readings

• Job 38:1-7, (34-41)
• Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c
• Hebrews 5:1-10
• Mark 10:35-45

This week I was reminded by the Working Preacher team of the Triangle of Job, where one point is God is good, another point is that a good God rewards the righteous and punishes the unrighteous and the final point is that Job is righteous. The thing about the triangle is that as we tell the story of Job we’re only ever able to hold two points of the triangle.  

Job and his friends each decide to hold different points of the triangle at the same time. The friends choose to let go of the idea that Job is Righteous while Job lets go of the point where God is Good. I wonder, if you had the chance which points would you choose? I wonder, if you’ve ever suffered, or sat with another who has suffered and made a decision to hold onto two of these points? I wonder if we’re only ever able to hold two points of that triangle… unless something can challenge the idea that we’re only ever given these three options.

This is the part of the story where God responds to Job’s questions and the words of the friends. To the friends, God’s response reminds them that they aren’t in control, that they should have been sitting and suffering with Job rather than putting words in God’s mouth, that God doesn’t need them to justify God’s actions. 

To Job, God responds, not in anger, but with understanding. Job, as we are aware is righteous, however he, and his friends seem to have an image of the creation where they’re at its centre. Here God’s response puts them back in place, not everything happens because of you, or because of anything you’ve done. 

God reminds Job, his friends and the listener that while we may occasionally think that we’re the centre of the creation we’re not.

It’s not about you.

God’s response offers us a third viewpoint, where God is good AND Job is righteous while letting go of the righteous are blessed and the unrighteous are punished.  How does that play with your imagination? What feelings does that arouse in you?

In the end Job is a work of ancient fiction, ancient wisdom literature that’s designed to invite us to ask these types of questions. And, because it’s fiction, it’s ok to not agree with any of the character’s responses, it’s even ok to not like the image of God we’re given. I personally have great difficulty with the image of God portrayed in the story, maybe because I’d like to hold onto the same points of the triangle as Job, or his friends.

But I love the story, the challenges it poses, the questions it invites me into, and the conversations it inspires with others.

What about an alternative image of God to that shown in Job? Perhaps I can encourage you to head to this week’s Gospel reading where Jesus is again, challenging peoples assumptions and offering the image of a servant God who asks each of us to be servants also. Is this an image that also challenges you? Is this an image that you’re pleased by? Is this an image of a God you can follow?

And if you’re able to follow this God, how will you serve the creation this week?

Readings:

• Job 23:1-9, 16-17
• Psalm 22:1-15
• Hebrews 4:12-16
• Mark 10:17-31

There are no stupid questions… perhaps you’ve heard that before and maybe you didn’t believe it when you heard it, because deep down you might have a question you’re too afraid to ask, for fear of being seen as stupid.

What about feelings? Are there any stupid feelings? Are there any feelings you’re afraid to share with friends, family, your faith community or God? Are there any feelings that aren’t welcome in worship, perhaps you’ve stayed away from worship before because of some of these feelings, thinking they’d not be welcome.

The story of Job shows us that there are feelings that friends might find uncomfortable, but that God is able to carry. This shouldn’t be a surprise, the Hebrew Scriptures are full of stories of God’s people arguing, and fighting with God, there’s even a form of Psalm called Lament which is specifically a song / prayer of complaint, check out this week’s Psalm as an example.

Even Jesus cried out on the cross to God asking why he had been abandoned.

Perhaps it’d help to remind ourselves that, as the readers of Job’s story, we’re aware of the bet made and know that Job is completely in the right here, he’s done nothing wrong, yet, he finds himself suffering. So while his friends find the conversation uncomfortable and try and calm him down, offering advice and platitudes, perhaps we might be able to sit with his anger more comfortably because we know he’s right.

In my experience, however it doesn’t tend to make us feel much better, because as much as we try, we still struggle with the idea that God cannot handle our real self, our real feelings, our real anger. Perhaps, Job’s complaint still makes us uncomfortable because, maybe, we have problems with naming our own feelings with God. Or, perhaps we’re more like Job’s friends than we are like Job.

The Psalms of Lament, and the story of Job are strong reminders that God is bigger than we can comprehend and is able to sit with our complaints, our pain, our feelings and our questions, even if those questions are pointed directly at God. Why am I suffering? Why does Sam have cancer? Why is my child sick? Why did Judy die? Why, why why?

God is God and, unlike many of our friends or family is able to bare the burden of our feelings are of anger and frustration, of pain, grief and anguish, taking it all completely seriously.

Perhaps this week we might find time to have an honest conversation with God about the times where we felt we had to hide what we were thinking or feeling from God, and perhaps we might, like Job be confident enough that God is listening to our prayers and sitting with us as we do.

Perhaps this week we might be challenged to try and sit with another’s grief or anger and not, like Job’s friends offer platitudes and advice, just sit with those feelings, allowing them to be honoured.

The good news is that our God is a God who listens, and will sit with us and hear our complaints, our cries for justice, our screams and our shouting even when our friends, our family and perhaps our Church might find it difficult to do so.

This is a brief reflection on the Job reading from Sunday the 3rd of October 2021, Job 1:1, 2:1-10. The story of Job gets 4 weeks of our time over October, it’s a great story.

Have you caught yourself wondering why things keep happening to you? Why you have cancer, why you’re going through a bad break up, why you’ve lost your job, why you find yourself homeless, why you’re sick, why you’re in hospital after a heart attack…

It’s not your fault.

Perhaps you’ve been tempted to make up stories to make yourself feel better, perhaps you, or your grandparents did something bad, sinned, and now you’re going through this.

It’s not your fault.

Perhaps you’ve caught yourself thinking that God’s testing you, that it’s all a part of your faith being tested. God’s closing a door and opening another, there’s always a reason for people’s suffering…

It’s not your fault.

Perhaps you’ve sat with someone who’s life is hard, who’s going through cancer, or an illness, or grieving the loss of someone they loved and you desperately want there to be a reason for their suffering. You might even think about telling them that there’s always a reason for their suffering, perhaps because their suffering makes you a little uncomfortable and saying those words might make you feel a little better…

It’s not your fault.

It’s not their fault either.

Perhaps you’d like to come up with a story of a giant cosmic battle between good and bad, and that your suffering, their suffering, the world’s suffering is all a part of this battle…

It’s not your fault.

The story of Job is a story that’s written with that simple message. It’s not your fault, it’s not their fault, not everything has a reason, not everything has a purpose.

Not everything happens for a reason.

It also is a story where the main character, now suffering gets to confront and challenge God. I wonder if you’ve ever felt like you’d like to confront God about something you, or another is experienced, but felt that it was wrong to argue with God, to pick a fight.  The Hebrew Scriptures are full of stories of people arguing with God, in fact there’s an entire genre of Psalm called Lament, prayers of naming one’s anguish, pain, grief before God.  One could say that arguing with God is biblical, it also shows us that God is big enough to take our suffering seriously and to hear our complaint.

The story of Job is an amazing one, I love it.  

Job tells of a cosmic argument that brings torment, suffering and death… and I wonder if it’s because sometimes it’s easier to believe that suffering is because God’s made a bet with someone rather than believe the truth.

It’s

Not

Your

Fault.

And God is with you and is able to shoulder your anguish, your pain, your anger, your grief.

And anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. 

It’s not your fault.

Say it again.

It’s not your fault.

And again.

It’s not your fault.

Amen.

This week James invites us to pray. I don’t know if you remember ever being taught to pray, if you learned to pray when you were young, or when you were old, if a parent or elder taught you to pray, or if one day you found yourself looking to the sky crying out to God for something, anything, or maybe you found yourself walking along a path admiring the world and just thought “Wow.”

I was taught to pray by my parents, and my church, but over time I found that my understanding of prayer, and how I’d pray would change.

Today I find myself praying, as if it were a conversation wth God as I drive, walk, shower, or even now as I type this reflection now.

Author Anne Lamott suggests there are three types of prayer;

Help. Prayers that ask for help from a higher power.

Thanks. Prayer offering gratitude for what we have.

Wow! Prayers that acknowledge the amazing world around us.

I think theres a fourth type of prayer, that of Sorry. Prayers that acknowledge the bad choices we’ve made, or that say sorry for systems of injustice that we participate in or benefit from.

So, there we have it, four ways of praying, Help, Thanks, Wow and Sorry, or in “church language” Intercession, Thanksgiving, Praise and Confession.

Sometimes we can over complicate prayer, thinking that we need to be great wordsmiths in order to pray. If you don’t find yourself to be very verbacious and believe your prayers to be less than worthy perhaps Anne’s descriptions can help.

One thing I really like about the descriptions of prayer as Help, Thanks, Wow and Sorry is that each prayer becomes only one word, perhaps one word is enough.

Or, in the case of “wow” prayers perhaps those times when we’re struck dumb with awe and can’t even manage a word then prayer is as beautiful as silence, or the breath of air you’re taking at the time.

Perhaps this week you might consider how you pray, and maybe you could write the church a letter, a story of how you learned to pray and what you’ve learned about prayer over the course of your life?

Or maybe you could just find the time each day for sharing those four words with God. Help. Thanks. Wow. Sorry.

For discussion at home.

• What are you thankful for this week?
• What has made you go “wow” this week?
• What would you like help with this week?
• What do we as a family need to be sorry for this week?

What would you say is the Gospel of Christ?
The good news of Jesus?

Personally, I find it quite easy to name what it isn’t…

It’s not about being saved
It’s not about the pits of hell and the gates of heaven
It’s not about a cosmic ransom paid
And it’s definitely not about abandoning the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures…

In fact, the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke & John) lean heavily into the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures, all the way to the very beginning…

It is Jesus who takes us back to the beginning,
And reminds us of the God who created us…

What if THE story starts with creation being all good
And not “the fall”
A time where all of humanity became people of shame trying to recover something lost?
And for that matter, what if the story of the fruit from the tree was not about how we are all sinful, evil or broken

But instead a story that tells us that we are all able to make bad decisions and be forgiven, not that we’re inherently evil…

What if the Hebrew Scriptures are a story of a God who abides with creation, and not of a God who continues to punish humanity for their bad decisions, or a God who acts out of jealousy?

Perhaps the cross isn’t about retribution or ransom

Perhaps Jesus is a reminder of the God who abides with creation

Perhaps the gospel of Christ is…

You are created by the God who created all things good, 
You were breathed to life by the breath of that same God, 
Filled by their Spirit.
Not to be slaves, not soldiers, not servants, but to be lovers, shepherds, neighbours.

And you are loved by that very same God who hopes and dreams that you will be people who love.

Love yourself
Love your neighbour
Love the creation
Love God
Love life
Love each other

That you, like the people of old have been set free to become people who free others.

From slavery
From abuse
From torture
From forced removal from land
From war
From armed strikes
From being taken from their people and family
From homophobia
From racism
From refugee camps

This has always been the good news of Jesus, every second of the day it’s been the same, unchanged, and that’s what Jesus preached, what he lived out. 

It’s all there in the book of Genesis, right from the very beginning.

Why wouldn’t you want everyone to know that?
Why wouldn’t you want to shout it from the hilltops?
Why wouldn’t you want to write it in the sky?
Even the rocks cry it out, so why don’t you?

I get that evangelism is hard,
particularly if your message is you must turn or burn, that message is abusive, it doesn’t set free, it captures, imprisons, binds. 

But for once let us dream of a place where everyone gets reminded over & over & over again. 

You are good

You are loved

You are magnificent

Shalom,

Darren