Knowledge of Salvation: A Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent

 Preached at Prince of Peace, Wasaga Beach, and Church of the Good Shepherd, Stayner, Sunday, December 8, 2024.  Texts for this Sunday (Yr C): Mal 3.1-4; C 19 (Lk 1:68-79); Phil 1:3-11; Lk 3:1-6.

 

⁷⁶And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, ⁷⁷to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. (Like 1:78-79)

“To give knowledge of salvation”.   These words are given by the Holy Spirit to the priest Zechariah after the birth of his son John, who we know as John the Baptist.   Now the birth of John to two aged and infertile parents was miraculous enough, but, says Zechariah, an even greater miracle is coming and John will be its messenger.    John will bring “knowledge of salvation” to his people by the forgiveness of their sins”.

Advent is, as I said last Sunday, many things besides a Christmas countdown.   Chiefly, I think, it is when we the church celebrate the message of the John, spoken in the wilderness, that we “shall see the salvation of God” (Lk 3.6).   Advent is about salvation, and Advent tells is that salvation is something real and certain and factual, something that we can have knowledge about and something that we can see with our own eyes.

Salvation is what we celebrate.   It’s what we’re all about as church and as disciples of the one we call our Saviour, Jesus Christ.  So what does “knowledge of salvation” mean to you?   What does salvation look like to you.   Do we understand salvation?  Can we be certain of our salvation ?   Can we explain salvation to others?

This last week I had the amazing experience of being in a room full of people who know what their salvation looks like and who can talk about salvation with confidence.

I met these people at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, the first one I’ve ever attended.   Someone who is dear to me had asked me to come as a guest and see them receive their One Year Sober medallion.   I was not prepared for what a powerful experience this would prove to be. There was so much spirituality, honesty, courage and love in the room that I walked away thinking, “if church was like this, we’d have standing room only on Sundays”.

Here's three things that I admired about these people.  

First, I admired their total honesty.  Every one who speaks has to begin by admitting their addiction: “Hello, I’m Joe, and I’m an alcoholic”.   Each time someone introduced themselves that way, it didn’t seem rote to me.   Each speaker seemed to recognize that they had been in the thrall of something dark and powerful that had blighted their lives.   Often they spoke with a fearlessness that took my breath away. 

The guest speaker, a former policeman, told of how he had hit bottom in his career, about to be fired as a hopeless drunk, and one night he found himself on a meaningless duty in his cruiser with his gun in his mouth while trying to pray the AA serenity prayer.  As he said in his simple, matter of fact way, he felt that prayer was answered, and day by day since then he turned his life around.  That man knew about salvation.

Secondly, I admired their belief in a higher power.  You don’t have to be a Christian to be an AA member.  In fact, the person who invited me calls themselves an atheist.   However, if you know addiction is a power that can control you, as every AA member is painfully aware, then it stands to reason that you believe in a higher power (addiction), and so you believe only an even higher power can save you. 

In place of our psalm this morning, we heard the Canticle from Luke’s gospel, when old Zechariah blesses his son John the Baptizer and Herald of God.  Zechariah says “In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shone on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Lk 1.78-79).  That cop with the gun in his mouth eventually passed out, and woke in the morning with his gun on his lap.  In his despair he had reached out to the God of compassion and in the breaking dawn he found a new life waiting for him.  That man knew who had saved him.

Finally, I admired the love in that room.    Everyone in that room showed obvious and sincere love and support for one another.   I don’t think you could stand up and speak with such vulnerability and honesty without that love and support.  People spoke with pride of how far they had seen one another come, and what a difference they had seen AA make in one another.   I saw this especially in the sponsors, for every AA new AA member is paired with an experienced member, usually an older person, who promises to be there day and night to offer support, help, and advice. 

I think that of that night when I hear St. Paul in our epistle today pray that God make the Philippian church “overflow more and more with [love] and knowledge and full insight” (Phil 1:9).   I think had Paul been there, he would have thanked God for what he saw in that AA meeting.  In fact, another invited guest there with me, a person who knows nothing about church or faith, said afterwards, “I don’t drink but I want to join this group, just because they’re such nice people!”  These people took joy in their salvation.

In summary, these people knew they needed saving, they knew who it was who had saved them, and they took joy in one another’s salvation.   I came away grateful to God for this experience, but as I said I also left wondering how attractive church would be if church people acted this way.

There are reasons why we don’t act this way, of course.    Some are just cultural.  Anglicans are usually restrained people, we let the liturgy carry our emotions and feelings for us, and we don’t use the language of “being saved” or “being born again”.   Fair enough.   Christianity is a big family, and different denominations have different spiritual gifts and languages.

I wonder, though, if we just haven’t thought enough about what salvation really means.    Do we think of salvation as a customs inspection, where our passport of faith and good deeds on earth are checked before we can enter heaven?  If so, then I suggest that this afterlife-based understanding of salvation is impoverished, and ignores Jesus’ many calls to think about the kingdom of heaven as happening in the here and now.

One of my favourite ways of thinking about salvation comes from Jesus’ words in John’s gospel: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10.10).    There are so many dark things and forces in our world that steal and destroy the best things in life.  Addiction is one, as our AA friends know all too well.  But we can find ourselves also hurt and isolated, distrustful, without meaning or purpose or hope, overwhelmed by guilt and self-hatred and doubting that God, if God exists, could ever love us and forgive us.

My friends, this Advent, I encourage you to ask yourselves, what does salvation mean for me?    What is it that I can’t control or handle by myself that I need God’s help with?   Have you asked God for help?  Have you prayed, simply and urgently, for salvation?  I believe that salvation is there for the asking, and there are lots of people in our church who could help you pray for it.

If you know what salvation looks like, if you’ve experienced God’s help and power, then I encourage you to ask yourself,  do I show joy in my salvation?  Do I rejoice that others are here with me, here in the family of God?  Have I done what I could to come alongside someone who is seeking salvation, to be a friend, mentor, and companion?

Let me finish with the same thought I finished with last week.   A church that could talk about salvation with the same confidence and knowledge that an AA meeting talks about salvation would be an awesome and attractive place, because joy and confidence in salvation is the best form of evangelism.

Keeping Our Heads Up: A Homily for the First Sunday of Advent

Keeping Our Heads Up:  A Homily for the First Sunday of Advent

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 1 December, 2024.  Readings for Advent 1C: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36

Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Lk 21.28)

In my first parish, there was an old gentleman named Tom who would often say goodbye with these words: “Keep your stick on the ice and your head up going into the corners”.  It’s good advice for hockey players:  be ready for the puck but also be aware when you’re vulnerable to being checked.  It’s also good advice for Advent.   Hockey and Advent are both about being ready and being alert.  Today I would like to think about how Advent invites us to be spiritually ready for the Savour whose coming we long for and should await with confidence rather than fear.

Readiness, the Advent idea of preparation and getting ready,  I think we can all understand.  There is a satisfaction in hanging lights, wreaths and greenery, even as we sometimes debate the appropriate date to decorate! There’s a joy in seeing the church decorated by faithful hands, and knowing that more - the tree and the creche - is still to come.   As the beloved Advent hymn says, “make your house fair as you are able, trim the hearth and set the table”.    Just as we prepare for friends and family, Advent calls us to prepare our hearts to welcome our beloved, Jesus, for again to quote the hymn, “love the guest is on the way”.

Advent is also a way to understand exactly who it is that we are getting ready for and why that’s important.   Advent is a gentle correction to our cozy and sometimes sentimental ideas about baby Jesus in the manger, who comes predictably in late December.   This season reminds us that that babe is also the king of the universe, the holy one of Israel, the Lord of justice and righteousness that Jeremiah spoke of in our first lesson.   Advent reminds us that just as he came to Bethlehem, so this Lord of righteousness will come again. 

Jesus tells his disciples in today’s gospel that they will see  “the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory”, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to us, because Sunday by Sunday we acknowledge Christ’s return.  Likewise our Advent hymns have words like “Lo, he comes, with clouds descending”, to remind us that we do await the coming again of Jesus in glory.     Jesus tells his friends that they may see signs of this final day,  but he warns them to “be on guard” and “be alert at all times”.  This theme of alertness and vigilance is quite common in scripture.   Paul tells the Thessalonians that “the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (1 Th 5.2) and warns them to stay awake spiritually.

What does this mean for us?    How are we supposed to stay awake spiritually?  Should we scan the headlines for signs of the Second Coming, as some Christians do? (No, I don’t think so).  I would say instead that we can be spiritually awake and alert without being fearful or anxious about the end times.   Our faith should not make us nervous wrecks!    Part of being Christian is to wake each day knowing that God is Lord of heaven and earth, that all is in God’s hands, and that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.  Always hang on to those truths!

I believe that spiritual alertness is actually not so much about waiting for the Second Coming as it is about being open to signs of God’s presence in our lives.   Jesus promises us that he will always be very much with us, here, in the present.  We meet Jesus at the altar during communion.    Through the Holy Spirit we can pray with Jesus, even imagine him in conversation with us as Rev Amy preached here recently.    As individuals and as church, we need to be open to what Jesus through the Spirit is calling us to do, watching for signs of God’s activity in the community, listening for calls to new ministries.    

This kind of spiritual alertness requires that we keep our heads up and our ears and hearts open to the Spirit’s promptings.   This receptiveness to God’s actions is what scripture calls wakefulness, and the opposite is that we are spiritually asleep, switched off and oblivious to God’s presence.  Remember that Jesus told his friends to see that their hearts are not “weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life”.    In his online Advent teaching last Tuesday, Bishop Andrew talked about the many ways that people can dull their spiritual senses through self-medication, consumerism, and anxiety.  When we’re sleepy, depressed, or when we lose hope, our heads tend to droop. Jesus wants believers whose heads stay up and whose hearts and ears are open to his voice.

As an aside, I think there is another kind of dullness of sleepiness that we can fall prey to, and that is indifference to the world around us.   We have ample signs that the world is corrupt, unjust, inequitable, and cruel.   We can easily numb ourselves to these things or ignore them.  But, as we heard Jeremiah say in our first lesson, our Lord is justice and righteousness.  Part of being spiritually wakeful is caring about and striving for justice and caring about our neighbour, as God surely does.

The final thing I want to talk about is confidence.  Jesus said, “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near”.    When we hold our heads up, we display confidence and assurance, it’s a sign that we’re not just alert but we are unafraid, even amidst the kind of troubles that Jesus describes.   Jesus promised that we would live in fearful times, and he was right.   We live amidst wars and natural disasters, climate change and political anxiety, but Jesus says, even so, keep your heads up.

We keep our heads up because Advent reminds us that we wait and hope for God in good company.  Noah waited and hoped for the flood waters to recede until the dove returned with the olive branch.    Simeon and Anna waited and hoped for salvation and finally saw the baby Jesus in the Temple.   John the Baptist waited for the Messiah until they met at the Jordan and the dove came down from heaven.   All these people waited and hoped because they knew God was faithful and would rescue them.   So we keep our heads up because we look to God who is faithful for our rescue and our salvation.

Finally, we keep our heads up because we know that in Jesus we can see God face to face.   Jesus telling his followers to “raise your heads” must have been a remarkable thing at the time.  It must have been dangerous for a Jew to look a Roman in the face, or for a slave not to keep their eyes lowered before the master.   Learning how not to be seen is a survival technique for people at the bottom, But Jesus is saying, even when you see God returning in glory, raise your heads.  Don’t be ashamed of yourselves or of your sins.   Paul prays that the Thessalonians “may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus”, and so can we, because of the love and forgiveness shown to us by God through the babe born in Bethlehem, the Lord of Heaven and Earth.

And so, dear saints, let us remind ourselves this Advent to be spiritually ready, awake, and confident in God’s faithfulness.  Let’s listen to how God is calling us, let’s be attentive to what God is doing around us, and let’s be unafraid despite what might happen around us, for God is faithful, Jesus has come, Jesus is with us now, and Jesus will come again.   Or, as my old friend Tom liked to say, “Keep your stick on the ice and your head up going into the corners”.

Perfected, Not Perfect: A Homily for the Twenty-fifth Sunday After Pentecost

 Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, and St Luke’s, Creemore, Anglican Diocese of Toronto.

Readings for the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost: (Proper 33B):  1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10 as canticle; Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18), 19-25; Mark 13:1-8

“For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified”.  (Heb 10:14)

We have a complicated relationship with the idea of the perfect.   We can admire perfection in highly technical and measured ways, as in sports; Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton’s “perfect tens” in Olympic gymnastics come to mind.   Perfection might be worth striving for in school exams or in cake baking competitions, but in most of life, which is messy and chaotic, perfectionism can get in the way of just getting things done on time, hence the expression, “perfect is the enemy of good enough”.   Perfectionists can be wonderful people until you have to work with them!

I’m not sure that we’re very comfortable with the idea of “perfect” in our faith lives.   Because we often understand the word “perfect” as being “faultless”, we doubt that we can ever be good enough or holy enough to please God.   Today in our first lesson we hear that Jesus “has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” and we wonder, does that apply to me?  Am I one of the perfected?  one of the sanctified?  Because I don’t think I’m perfect or especially holy.   We may want these qualities, but we doubt that we possess them, and we tend to distrust those who act as if they are perfect or holy.

And if we are confused about perfection and holiness, then I think we might be excused, because scripture can seem to give us mixed messages.   On the one hand, during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us to “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5.48).   But, on the other hand, we hear in Romans that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3.23).  These conflicting messages seems to suggest that, spiritually speaking, we can’t get there from here.

The good news is we don’t have to get there by ourselves.  The big idea in the letter of Hebrews, made repeatedly, is that Jesus is the perfect priest who allows us to come to the Father.   Earlier in Hebrews tells us that “We have  a great high priest who has passed through the heavens” (Heb 4.14).  Later on in the Letter, Jesus is described as  “holy, blameless, undefiled” and “perfect” (Heb 7.26-28).  Jesus is the high priest who brings us out of our sins and who leads us to the Father.

Somewhat startlingly, the author of Hebrews says that all the efforts and all the sacrifices of all the earthly priests could not rescue us from our sin.   Only Jesus can and will do this.   This week we as Anglicans especially needed to hear this message, because our earthly high priest, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, resigned this week.   

As you may have already learned, the Archbishop took responsibility for failing to investigate a powerful layman, John Smyth, who had abused many minors in the English Church, and who had then allowed to find more victims in churches in Zimbabwe and South Africa.  A document called the Makin Report found that the English Church had known about Smyth’s “prolific, brutal and horrific” crimes since the 1980s, but had covered them up.

The Makin Report was especially damning because, for decades now, the Church of England has said it is committed to prevent abuse and misconduct, but totally failed in this one case.   In his weekly letter to the Diocese, Bishop Andrew wrote that all of us, clergy and lay leaders, have a “duty to serve one another, in particular the most vulnerable. We must always be vigilant and aware of the safety of others in our care.”

I’m grateful to Bishop Andrew for addressing this story, because the danger of this story, and the danger of any story about abuse and sin in the church, is that it might lead us to give up on the church.   If the church is imperfect, if it is contaminated by human sin and frailty, then what good is it?  How will we draw closer to God?

In the Jerusalem Temple, the one that Jesus and the disciples are looking at in today’s gospel, there was a thick curtain that separated the people from the innermost room, the sanctuary or the Holy of Holies, where God was thought to be present.  Only the High Priest could go in, on behalf of the people.   There are other kinds of curtains that keep the people from God.   They are curtains of abuse, curtains of secret and scandal and coverup, and they lead to fear and mistrust, they shake the people’s faith in church and in God.  They are curtains of sin, and Christ will always pull them down to let the light and the truth in.

The author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus opens the curtain of the temple“through his flesh”, a reference to Christ’s sacrifice of himself on the cross.      In Hebrews, Christ becomes both priest and temple, he opens the way to God, so we can enter with “confidence”.    The big idea of Hebrews, indeed of Christianity in general, is that Jesus will allow nothing to separate us from the love of God.  

And the good news is that we don’t have to be perfect to go through the door that Christ opens for us.  We don’t have to be faultless.  We don’t need a 100% score on some spiritual test.  Christ will look after that.  “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified”.   

In the original Greek, the word “perfect” doesn’t necessarily mean “flawless”.   It can have the sense of being made whole or being made complete, even of just growing up.    We get into trouble when we confuse perfect with flawlessness, which is why some people avoid church, because they fear they will never measure up.   Instead, think of how God gives us what we are lacking, fills whatever spiritual holes or incompleteness that might trouble us, so that we can be whole, healthy, and happy, the way God always wanted us to be.

How do we get there?  How do we become compete?    The author of Hebrews gives us tons of good advice.   Be confident in God’s love.  Don’t doubt how much God loves you.   Trust that your baptism has made you clean and a loved child of God.   Don’t give up on hope.  Trust in God’s faithfulness.   And meet together.   Be church.   Church at its best is a place where we can encourage one an other to “love and good deeds”.   In other words, be a community that helps one another to show love and hope in its actions.   You’re not in this alone.   We have Christ and one another, even if the approaching days seem dark and uncertain.     Doing all these things, always trusting in the love and work of Jesus is how we become complete.  This is how we become perfect.

In his resignation message to the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Welby confessed his sin and imperfection, but he also lifted up this hope.  He ended his message on a note of hope, saying that “my deepest commitment is to the person of Jesus Christ, my saviour and my God; the bearer of the sins and burdens of the world, and the hope of every person”.   He spoke well, and he spoke for all of us.

The End of History? A Homily for the Twenty Fifth Sunday After Pentecost (Yr B)

A Homily for Remembrance Day and for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 10 November, 2024.

Year B Texts for this Sunday:  Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17; Psalm 127; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44

One of my abiding memories of Remembrance Day is of standing beside my father at the cenotaph.   Even in old age, he would stand erect, as he was taught as a youth on the parade square.  Remembrance Day was the only day I would see his medals, pinned to his coat - medals from the Second World War, from Korea, and from his Cold War service.

The men and women of his era are almost all gone now, and yet they gave us the world we grew up in and took for granted.  It was not a perfect world, but it was a reasonably stable one.  We had clear ideas about freedom, democracy, human rights, and international law.   We believed that smaller countries should not be invaded and brutalized by larger ones.   Then, in the 1990s, the Berlin Wall fell, the Cold War ended, and we all thought we’d come to a good place,  thanks to the work started by the greatest generation.  Some people even said that we had come to the end of history.

History never goes away that easily, and this week it seems like we’re in a new and ominous era of history.  On this Remembrance Day, it seems as if all the good work and sacrifice we remember is in danger of being lost. The world is getting darker, and is being carved up by despots and strongmen.   For decades we looked to America to protect and defend us, but after this week it’s clear that America is turning inwards, trusting in a strongman for protection and greatness.   Smaller countries like Canada now feel exposed and vulnerable.  If anyone is going to protect our values, it will have to be ourselves, assuming that we can still agree on what our values are.

Where we go from here is a conversation about civics and politics, and indeed, Remembrance Day, at least at during public services at the cenotaph, has always been about civics and politics.    Remembrance Day for the church, well, that’s a little more complicated.    Yes, we want to give remember and to give thanks for those who went before us, and yes, we pray that something good may come of their sacrifices.

At the same time,  I think that we the church must never forget that that God is greater than human history.   On Remembrance Day we are Canadians, but we are also followers of Jesus Christ and citizens of his kingdom.  We never see the kingdom of God clearly in this life, we only catch glimpses of it.   That’s because the kingdom of God  is found somewhere between hope and future, but it is real and it is the answer to all of our fears and darkness.    Our second lesson from Hebrews reminds us that “has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb   ).    In other words, the forces of fear, darkness, and hatred have already been defeated because Jesus carried them to the cross for our sakes.

Because the letter of Hebrews was written to a Jewish audience that understood the rituals of the Temple in Jerusalem, the message for that audience would have been clear: Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross  is the only sacrifice that matters, because it was done once for all.  Without the cross, all the efforts of all the priests, all the rituals, all the animal sacrifice, would be in vain, and sin and suffering would continue.

For us as Christians at Remembrance Day, I think we can draw a similar conclusion.    While we honour the sacrifices and the victories of the past, we also acknowledge the final sacrifice and the victory of Christ.   Without Christ, we would be trapped in an unending history of sacrifice and suffering, but, as Hebrews reminds us, we are “eagerly awaiting” the return of Christ that will truly be the end of history.

Eagerly waiting for Christ’s return does not mean that we are fatalistic, ignore the problems of the world,  and wait for pie in the sky.   Jesus gave his followers work to do in the meantime, the work of loving God and loving our neighbour.  In our gospel reading today, when Jesus notices the widow, he isn’t just praising her piety, he’s asking who has reduced her to such poverty (Mk 12:38-44), because the kingdom of God is also a kingdom of justice.  So yes, we have good work to do. We need to notice those that Jesus notices, and care for those he cares for. A dark world needs those who witness to the light, as Christians have been doing for two thousand years.    Maybe now more than ever, our neighbours need us to be a people of light and hope.

As I noted this week in our parish newsletter, we are a few weeks away from Advent.    Advent is a time of waiting for the return of the king.  It’s a time of trust that God will set the world to rights.   It’s a time when we light candles to show that we keep faith in the darkness.      So if the events of this week have left you troubled and fearful, then let us keep Advent with hope and confidence, trusting that Christ, the Alpha and Omega, will come to free us from darkness, free us from sin, and free us from history.

 

Rector's Message on the US Election

 This short piece appears in this week's parish newsletter and is offered here for wider circulation.  MP+

6 November, 2024

Dear Saints:

 As I write this I am, like many of you, I suspect, digesting the news of the American election.    Today some will be elated by the outcome, and others will be dismayed.   In the short term, I think it’s likely that the animosity and grievance between these two groups will only increase.  In the longer term, it’s easy to see only cause for fear and pessimism.

As Canadians, we are not insulated from how our American friends and neighbours govern themselves.   We are tied to them in so many ways, from culture and trade to sports and holidays.    For decades we’ve depended on America to guard our freedom and to uphold human rights, fair trade, and international law.    Who knows if these certainties will continue?   Perhaps, as it feels, we are on the brink of some new and ominous chapter in world history.

I draw comfort from this coming Sunday’s second lesson from Hebrews, which promises that “Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (Heb 9.28).  

Hebrews assures us that Jesus, who was present when God “created all things” (Heb 1.2), is our faithful king and high priest who will return to set all things to rights.   We may find ourselves living in dark and sinful times, but Jesus has already saved us from our sin and darkness.   Our task is to wait patiently, to obey Jesus’ command to love God and our neighbour, and to trust that light will prevail.

In a few weeks we will be in Advent, a time for patient waiting and trust in Christ, the light that no darkness can overcome.   It may well be that in Advent we find our true politics.

Fr Michael

The Whirlwind and the Lamb: A Homily for the 22nd Sunday After Pentecost

 Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, on 20 October, 2024, the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost.

Readings: Job 38:1-7 (34-41); Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37B; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45

Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind? Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? (Job 38: 36-37)

Three Sundays in a row now, we have heard readings from the Book of Job, which, as you may have noticed, I have been studiously ignoring.  Partly I’ve been avoiding Job because the gospel readings, as beating heart of our faith, should command our attention.   But, if I am honest, I’ve also been avoiding it because it is a difficult, even mysterious book of the Bible.  Like God speaking from the whirlwind, the book of Job does not give up its secrets easily.    Even so, what I hope to say to you today is that for all of its difficulty, Job encourages us with the promise that our lives, as painful and as incomprehensible as they may seem to us, are held in and surrounded by the divine love and wisdom of God

As I noted, the Book of Job is a difficult and challenging book.  It begins with Job, a genuinely upstanding and good man whom God loves and even admires.  However, God allows Job to be put into the hands of Satan, who appears to function here more as a courtier of God than as the demonic figure known to Christians.   God allows Satan to test Job, thus introducing the mystery of why God allows good things to happen to bad people, a problem known as “theodicy”.  

We all wonder how certain things can be allowed to happen, and not just war or famine.  A beloved and dear person comes down with a terrible disease, or a sweet child is killed in an accident, and we naturally reach for the question, “what did they do to deserve that?"

That question hangs over the middle part of the book of Job. His three friends, while well-meaning, try to persuade Job that he has somehow done something wrong and is being punished by divine justice.   Job stubbornly asserts his innocence, and insists that he has done nothing wrong.   Last Sunday, we heard Job say that if only he could get to speak with God, then he could prove that there was some miscarriage of divine justice:  “There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge” (Job 23 :1-9, 16-17).  At the same time, Job doubts that he will ever get his day in court, because he does not know how to find God:  “Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling!”

So the first thing we can say about today’s reading that is encouraging is that God shows up.  God does speak to Job, although Job does not get the day in court because God says, in effect, that God does not owe Job an explanation.   Essentially what follows is a longer version of what God says to the prophet Isaiah:  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, (neither are your ways my ways” (Isa 55:8-9).   But, as they say, tone matters.  While God begins by telling Job to “gird up your loins” (essentially telling him to buckle up),  I think we could imagine God speaking to Job in several ways.

One way would be for us to imagine God speaking imperiously and arrogantly to Job, in the sense of “how dare you question me?” as if God was some toxic boss.  We could, but that would validate images of God that aren’t helpful to our faith lives.  Another way to imagine the voice from the whirlwind is to hear it as a voice that is challenging but also amused, perhaps even following phrases such as “Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements - surely you know!” with a gentle chuckle.  Perhaps I have in mind some of the passages from CS Lewis’ Narnia book, where Aslan speaks in a way that is majestic but also kindly. And if Aslan does show up in Narnia when he is needed, so too does God show up.  God has heard Job’s plea for an audience, but God is not going to give Job an easy or satisfying answer.

We ony get a sense of it in today’s first lesson, but God’s speech in these last chapters is replete with nature imagery.   These chapters range from the stars in the heavens to the depths of the sea, to the calving of mountain goats and deer to the strength of horses and the farsightedness of hawks.  There is even an entire chapter (Job 41) dedicated to Leviathan (whales), handiwork of which God is especially proud.    Like our psalm today, the effect of these chapters is to celebrate the complexity of grandeur of creation.   Forget for a moment that it is God who is speaking, and we could be listening to a nature documentary as narrated by a Carl Sagan or a David Suzuki.

But the difference between these last chapters of Job and a nature documentary is that here, God is the creator and the architect of all: from hawks and whales to stars and galaxies (as well acknowledge in our Eucharistic Prayer).  In other words, nature is creation and creation is full of God’s presence, and we must trust that God is both present and benign.  Note that God does not feel the need to explain Job’s current misfortune, any more than God needs to justify earthquakes and cancer cells.  It is enough for Job, and perhaps for us, to know that we not are alone in a random and meaningless universe, where our cries go unheard and where our suffering can never be redeemed.  At the end of the day, the consolation of the Book of Job is that God is present and God shows up.

Let me finish with some thoughts how the Book of Job speaks to us as Christians, and it’s simply this.  If the God of the universe is present to Job in whirlwind, how much more present is Jesus, the Son of God, present to us?   Take today’s gospel.  James and John, who Jesus nicknamed the “Sons of Thunder” (Mk 3.17) want the God of the whirlwind.  They want to be raised up in the whirlwind, to have seats in the heavens and to be masters of the unverse, something that Job never dreamed to asking for.  And instead Jesus tells them that the way of God is to serve others.a message of humility that we could never reconcile with the God of the whirlwind.

Sometimes, mostly around Christmas, we talk of the Incarnation, the mystery of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us.   Job invites us to consider that mystery from another angle, to think of God stepping out of the whirlwind and to sit with us and console us, as Job’s friends tried but failed to do.   The God of the whirlwind felt no reason to explain human suffering.  The Son of God comes to be with us, in a way that Job’s friends could never do for Job.   In his humility the Son of God, the Son of the Whirlwind, accepts service and suffering on our behalf, so that he might save us.  

The Book of Job is thus I think an important part of our Christian Trinitarian faith.   it tells us that the God who made the heavens and the stars was also born under one star in Bethlehem for our sakes.  It tells us that while the universe may seem vast and indifferent to our loneliness and suffering, we are not in fact alone.  The universe is full of God, God is with us, and God loves us, for the God of the Whirlwind is also the Lamb of God.