LECTIONARY TEXTS: Job 38: 38:1-7, 34-38; Psalm 104; Mark
10: 35-45
REFLECTIONS
ON TWO ANCIENT POEMS (Job 38 and Psalm 104)
In
response to Job’s pitiable pleas, the thundering voice of God might sound to us like “the great
and powerful” Oz addressing Dorothy. I can almost hear the voice of the God-Behind-The-Curtains
booming back at Job: “What gives you the right to question your lot in
life? ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?’ Have
you forgotten who I am?”
Maybe
Job has. Maybe we have. Maybe the writer of Job has forgotten God’s
tender compassion.
Or
maybe the ancient storyteller is simply describing a very human moment when
shallow theology built on fairy tales, really, has left us unprepared for the terrible parts of life.
Maybe
you and I come to God expecting a magical wizard who can send us home to a safe
place—but terrible times have no simple solutions. And sometimes we may need to work through still unresolved childhood or young
adulthood issues of self-identity and self-acceptance. But we expect God
to hand out wisdom, love, and courage as if they are items on a shelf. Instead,
back into the scary world God sends us, sniveling like a cowardly lion, feeling
as loveless as a tin man, as clueless as a scarecrow. We find ourselves in dark
regions far off the beaten yellow brick path to face our lacks and losses, to learn
who we are, to give up what we thought mattered. We’re not in Kansas anymore. Before we can “ease
on down the road" into adult faith, before we can make the journey into
what Richard Rohr calls “the second half of life,”[i]
we may need to think of God as something
other than a cheap magician and approach prayer as something other than a plea to
a good wizard.
“Have
you forgotten who I am?” God asks me. Like
Job, I, too, often name God as Creator, although I understand the basic
scientific principles of evolution. I still
see the primary works of the Spirit as ongoing creation and connection—creation
meaning life; connection meaning love.
Life and love are risky enterprises. If constancy were the prevailing law
of the universe, there would be nothing new created, there could be no
life.
So
if God is that creative, life-giving force, then there
must also be within the life of God some element of randomness and freedom,
because both constancy and surprise must exist for life to continue. Without risk and unpredictability, nothing
new could happen. Without the accident of genetic mutations, for instance, humans
could not have evolved. Without chance there
can be no change. The very “laws” of
science, it turns out, are not without exceptions.[ii]
I
don’t imagine Creator God to be the designer of a fixed road without dangers, but more like the force that imbues us with and lures us on in love and growth. Although God does not create the pitfalls, God’s
creative and loving spirit can redeem those falls, making it possible for us to
transcend the terrors and hurts and move into a deeper spiritual realm. Christianity, at its core, affirms that death
leads to rebirth.
Each
of us finds a way—sometimes various ways—sometimes mutually conflicting
theories—to understand how a loving and powerful God can allow suffering. The
theodicy question is not, for me, entirely resolvable. But the God I serve neither causes suffering nor leave us alone
in our pain. I believe that ordinary or extraordinary
healings and rescues occur. But even
when they don’t, the loving and life-giving Spirit keeps moving through the
universe through a persistent agenda of life and love.
Annie
Dillard also believes God “does not direct the universe” but “underlies it.” She
offers: “The more we wake to holiness, the more of it we give birth to, the
more we introduce, expand and multiple it on earth, the more God is ‘on the
field’.” But Dillard has given up on the
God who is “that tasking and antiquated figure . . . who sits on the throne of
judgment frowning and figuring, and who with the strength of his arm dishes out
human fates, in the form of cancer or cash, to 5.9 billion people—to teach,
dazzle, rebuke, or try us, one by one, and to punish or reward us, day by day,
for our thoughts, words, and deeds.”[iii] Most of us would agree. Though our prayer life may suggest otherwise.
I’m
glad the Bible shows God can take our complaints, the stern rebuff from Job’s
god notwithstanding. In fact, the Psalms
are full of complaints lifted up to God in faith that God is willing and able
to hear all that. Last Sunday’s Psalm,
you’ll remember, began with “My God, my God, why have you forsaken?” The very words Jesus quoted from the
cross. And words we can imagine coming
from Job.
But
the lectionary has fittingly paired today’s reading from Job with a praise Psalm
that uses the same imagery but a joyful tone in counterpoint to Job’s bitterness. In our Psalm it is not God who has to assert
God’s creative power but the human Psalmist who celebrates it.
So
while complaining to God is a legitimate form of prayer, praise is also
necessary and equally unstoppable. We cannot
keep from expressing gratitude and awe, even in dire moments, if we gaze upon
creation, if we join in the force for love and life.
I’m
not a “Praise the Lord” Christian. When
I hear religious clichés, I imagine folks lifting up the communion cup and
toasting their good fortunes, forgetting the chalice holds both joy and
sorrow.
But
praise—and its cousin, gratitude, —are important spiritual practices. Praise is
an ego-denying practice. I do need to praise
God. I need to express joy and awe and
thanks for this world. I need to
recognize that I am not the center of the universe. I need to acknowledge The More that is beyond
me and yet is sustaining me--because of who I am and because of who God is. The
Eucharistic liturgy says it well: “It is
right to give our thanks and praise.”
With
the words from Job and the Psalmist fresh in our ears, words of complaint and
praise, we prepare now to express our petitions and thanks.
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE . . .
[i] Rohr,
Richard. Falling Upward: A Spirituality of the Second Half of Life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011.
[ii] These
general ideas are influenced by John F. Haught, who sees God as vulnerable love
luring us into the future rather than as an intelligent designer. Thus,
evolutionary biology is compatible with Christianity. See Haught’s God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution.
Westview Press, 2007.
[iii]
Kathryn Huey (http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/october-21-2012.html)
quotes from "Holy Sparks: A Prayer for the Silent God"
in the collection, Best Spiritual Writing 2000.
GUIDED
REFLECTION ON THE GOSPEL LESSON:
Having
heard today’s Gospel Reading, I invite you to hear the story again as a guided
prayer. I’ll reread the scripture,
pausing at 3 different points to allow for reflection.
1. James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
came forward to [Jesus] and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for
us whatever we ask of you."
Let this simple stunning demand
speak to you about your own prayer life. Jesus might well have responded to their question with: "Who do you think you are?" or "Who do you think I am?" He did not, as we'll see in the next verse. For now, let's reflect
on the way we tend to approach God in prayer. (SILENCE.) Let’s
quietly rest in God’s presence for the next few moments: no agenda, no demands.
SILENCE
2.
And
Jesus said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you?" And they
said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your
left, in your glory." But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what
you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with
the baptism that I am baptized with?" They replied, "We are
able." Then Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink;
and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit
at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for
whom it has been prepared."
Reflect
now on what you really ask of God. Is it
possible we don’t know what we are asking?
In the Bible the cup and baptism can mean both blessing and
hardship. With blessing there is
challenge. Are we willing to accept both?
SILENCE
3. When the [other] ten [disciples] heard
this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said
to them, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as
their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But
it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be
your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.
For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a
ransom for many."
Once again Jesus reverses the world’s
ways and says that to be great we must serve.
If it is comfortable for you to do so, you might pull down the kneeler
in front of you to get into that traditional prayer posture, the posture of a
servant. With bowed head or bent knee, reflect
on Jesus’s way of leading by serving.
How might we at Open Table do a better job of enacting that visionary
and focused yet humbly serving model of leadership? (silence) How can we as individuals measure
our lives by Jesus’s standard of greatness? Consider how we as individuals sometimes,
for instance, expect others to do things to accommodate our preferences, to ‘serve’
us? Isilence)
Now think about people you might be serving.
How might you as a family member, as a neighbor, as a responsible voter consider
“the least” and serve their interests in the name of Jesus?
SILENCE
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