Proper 27 Year C

 Here is yet another oldie. From November 10, 2013. I focused on the reading from Job- and on a letter that maybe you can still find on stannholytrinity.org--I will try to find the exact link to Rosanne's letter. During our stewardship drive, we asked parishioners to write letters to the congregation. Rosanne's was about her work as the co-chair of the outreach committee. 

Here is the link to the readings

Our short little passage from Job left me a little confused. What is it Job so urgently needs to write down? Why does he seem to go from wanting them in a book to wanting the words inscribed in a book? And which words is it anyway? All of these questions remind me of how little we know about the book of Job. Well—we know the words “the patience of Job” and we might have some sense that bad things happen to Job. We might even know that God does these bad things to Job because God is trying to prove that Job will love God even if things are just terrible in his life.

Some of you might know that I have a dog named Job. Most people misunderstand the name and assume I said “Joe.” A few will ask if he has the patience of Job. No. He does not. He has nothing like the patience of Job. And you know what? Neither did Job. I want to spend a little time this morning telling you about the Book of Job because it is pretty different from most other books in the Bible, and it doesn’t come up all that often in our lectionary, so it provides a teaching moment here this morning.

            Job is not a book about being patient through bad times. It’s not a book about patience at all. It is a book in the wisdom tradition written between 4^th and 7^th century BCE, and was likely written while the ancient Israelites were in exile. The book seeks to examine undeserved suffering, and it hope to both talk about this on an individual basis: why does Job suffer unduly, but also on a communal basis, why is Israel in exile again? And the book of Job hopes to discover what God’s role in human suffering is too.

            The setup is that an accuser is talking to God about Job. The accuser suggests that Job is loyal, pious and good because God has blessed Job. His life is full of bounty, his herds and cattle are doing well, he has healthy children. The accuser suggests that if all the blessings were taken away, Job would no longer be the loyal pious man that he seems to be. So then Job is stricken with disease, his cattle die off, his children all die. It’s just awful.

            The book then moves into a cycle of dialogues between Job and his friends. Each of his tree friends insist that the terrible things that are happening must be divine retribution for something Job has done. They insist that because of the covenant that their people have with God, Job’s extreme misfortune must be tied to his actions. Job’s reaction to his friends is to again and again insist upon his innocence. In the 19^th chapter, from which our short passage I taken, Job is again recounting all of this things that God has done to him unjustly. He says, “God as put me in the wrong, and closed his net around me. I call aloud, but there is no justice. He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, he has uprooted my hope like a tree.” It is these words, Job’s utter and complete frustration with God that he wants to write down. Job is so angered by God, so completely hopeless that he feels just writing them on paper will not be enough, these feelings should be carved in stone.

            Job’s desire to write out his anger and frustration at the injustice of what he (rightly) pins on God is shockingly close to Job’s assertion that Job will see God by his side. Job thinks that it will be after he is already dead. He says, “ For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh shall I see God.” The proximity of the relief Job feels knowing God will be by his side, (even if it isn’t until after he is dead) with the anger that Job feels is fascinating. In reflecting on the closeness of these two seemingly hard to put together feelings and in thinking about the long dialogues that Job has with God, I have come to the realization that among other things, the Book of Job encourages and insists upon an active relationship with God which is not afraid to call out for help, and cry out when life is unjust. The activity that Job takes is a very dialogical one—Job talks to his friends, he talks to God.

In our struggles here at St. Ann’s, and I am particularly thinking about the big tower and organ fund, we need 30 million dollars to really fix this church up right, I have heard a few people say, “well—we’ve got to rely on God to provide.” And while it is good and right to acknowledge our dependence on God and remember that all things come from God, this does not mean that we don’t have responsibilities too. What if relying on God to provide means that we as a community do some serious fundraising. We would be relying on God to provide the strength we might need to undertake a big project. But we shouldn’t rely on God in a passive way, waiting for a check to materialize from thin air. Our reliance on God is in the love we get from God, in the encouragement we get from God

            In Rosanne’s letter to St. Ann & the Holy Trinity I am reminded of the active role we are playing as a congregation in our outreach efforts. Our work of making sandwiches shows me that we understand we are in relationship with people throughout our borough and that we are connected by God. God helps us to be able to take on big challenges. How do we help when there is so much to do? How can we connect to the needs of those who need help the most? God gives us the strength to be more and more active participants in our city, and to cry out for justice when we see fit. I don’t think we have yet felt Job’s frustration so much so that we want to carve into stone.

            Another demonstration of our active role in our relationship with God is our commitment to support St. Ann & the Holy Trinity financially. Our moth long stewardship drive is a time to reflect as Vladimir did last week, and Rosanne has this week on the many gifts that being a part of this community provides for each of us, and for us to offer our support back to the church. Our active relationship here requires us not only to show up on Sunday mornings and pull out whatever loose bills are in our wallets, but it asks us to consider how we give of ourselves, and what amount that giving will look like. It asks us to consider how we will give our time, will it be as a singer in the choir, or will we volunteer to bake something for the bake sale this month, how we will give our talents, how our art or teaching skills might be of use here, and finally how we will give our treasure especially at a time when the parish has some particularly difficult years up ahead.

             We can do this in the hope that Job shows us: the hope of having God by our side even while encountering the most frustrating, unfair circumstances. This is the same hope that Jesus is talking about in the Gospel this morning too, the hope of the resurrection. We are people who know that our relationship with God changes how we understand the physical world. When the Sadducees try to trick Jesus with this question about the woman with seven husbands—they are of course missing the whole point of the resurrection and how it will function. They think the rules of this life still apply. But the special knowledge we have as Christians. We know that God is on our side, and with God on our side more is possible than we know because the rules of our physical world no longer apply. Death is defeated in Jesus’ death, and hope is restored in the hope for the resurrection of the dead to come.