I am God and you are NOT!
October 16/15 21st Sunday after
Pentecost
My family and I went for a
walk on the Bruce Trail yesterday. It
was overwhelmingly gorgeous, in this beautiful season of fall, it is one of the
times that I completely see the glory of God displayed in the colours or the
leaves, the bright brilliant blues of sky and shimmer of Georgian Bay, the
greys and greens of the rocks – all that surrounded us from the sky to the
earth to the water was a wondrous reminded of all that God has made, of the intricacies
of the Creators handiwork. It was a
great and glorious day to spend time in the forest and praise God for Creation.
But remember I said that I
went out with my family – five of us – a three year old, 9 year old and a
fourteen year old – and it is when I am trying to mold my children into an
activity that is more my idea than their idea that I learn pretty quickly that
what I want to do and what they want to do is often two different things. I like to walk on a walk, to move at a pretty
quick pace, I like to cover ground and breath in the fresh air and get as far
as I can in the limited time we have. My
three year old on the other hand does not seem to have my goals in mind when we
walk. She likes to explore, she takes
times to look in holes and pick up leaves, and have stick fights in the middle
of the trail. She also likes to change
her mode of transportation, sometimes she likes to walk, sometimes she will
ride on shoulders and other times insist on being carried. A walk with my three year old takes tons more
time than a walk on my own.
And the 14 year old, we are
never sure what a walk with a 14 year old will mean – it could be quick with
her trudging on ahead of us and waiting for us as we catch up or just the
opposite where she will trail along behind us, kind of slouchy and sullen. And the 9 year old is anybody’s guess often
she is a delightful companion who loves to hang out and hold hands as we walk,
but yesterday the path was too rocky so she led the way following the blazes –
a couple of time we had to call her back because she had veered off the trail
and was headed in the wrong direction.
The wonder of creation, the
majesty of the Almighty, the sacredness of the land we were walking on was lost
in the midst of the keeping the family on track and safe and in motion We were not a quiet crew, with our banter
and our bickering, the quiet peaceful cooperative family moment I was hoping
for did not materialize. I was reminded
of just how little control I have. I cannot
control how my children will behave, I cannot control whether my children will
have a good time, I cannot control their bickering in the car. I cannot control very much actually and to
top it off - I did not make the trees and rocks that we walked amongst, and I
did not paint the sky nor did I fill the bay with water. I did not turn the
season into autumn. Yesterday’s walk was a really good reminder to
me of just how much I do not control the world.
It was one of my God speaking into the crisp fall afternoon air moments
for me, reminding me that God is God and I am not.
Job’s
whirlwind experience seems quite a bit different than mine, but both of us come
to the same conclusion. It is a really
intense moment for Job after such a long period of suffering. What is immediately striking about what God
has to say to Job is the powerful images that are focused almost entirely on
workings of the universe itself, on things which humans know little about and
over which we have no control. – God is the one calling creation into being and
setting it in motion before humans even existed. This God, our God, just has to
say the word and the forces of nature obey.
We can’t do that. We do not
control that. God is saying to Job today
– hey buddy who do you think you are?You may wonder though, how these words of God serve as an answer to Job? Remember how we got to this reading today, Job had everything, a great life, lots of kids, lots of livestock, lots of prosperity and it was all taken away from him. And then if that was not bad enough, he was inflicted with a dread disease and he ends up on a ash heap at the gate of city, poor and sick, dressed in rags with nothing left except a wife who advises him to ‘curse God and die’. And the thing that is really difficult about this story is that all of Job’s problems come about because God is trying to prove to Satan that in a world filled with wickedness and distress Job is the one human - being that is faithful and good - when he has prosperity and wealth and health and also God will prove that he is faithful and good when he doesn’t. So as he sits on the ash heap, Job has had four friends come to him and try to convince him that he must of done something bad to deserve this treatment, that God was punishing him for some misdeed or another. And all through the attempts of Job’s supposed friends Job remained loyal to God and argues why he was not unfaithful, and all he wanted what for God to come and speak to him about why Job’s life had bottomed out. And today, in our reading this morning – God comes – God’s comes as Job wished. God comes in a whirlwind. But God does not exactly come as Job wished him to.
God’s words are clearly not a response to Job on Job’s terms or even to Job’s particular concerns. In fact, God’s many questions seem to be a pretty straightforward way of showing, according to biblical scholar Carol Newsom that “God is God, and Job is not.”
What the book of Job is clearly showing the reader that the understanding that the world is a place where the good prosper and the bad get punished is a false understanding of the world. It is hard sometimes when we witness tragedy, when our own world falls down around our ears, we look for a reason, we look for something or someone to blame. We may even search inside our previous behaviours to see if we have done something that God is punishing. This is a false assumption, God does not punish us for misdeeds and bad behaviour – Our God is a God of forgiveness and understanding. Nevertheless, our lives can be blown apart by misfortune and there is no reason or no one to blame. Sometimes bad things happen and there is no good reason. And this is what happened to Job. Sometimes your world falls apart and your life ceases to exist as you know it.
Just like l could not control the atmosphere of our walk yesterday, and just like Job did not create the circumstances to which he suffered through, and just like the situations the surround us often are not of our making – we live in context and we choose how we will respond in to our life conditions.
Last Sunday night when all
the turkey had been eaten and the pie plates polished clean, and after the kids
were in bed, my family and I sat down and watched the movie ‘Selma’ on
Netflicks. Selma is a movie about Dr.
Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. We were overwhelmed by the film, even though
we all had a basic understanding of the events that were happening in Selma in
1964, even though we had heard about the oppression and the segregation and the
prejudice and powerlessness of the African American people – watching this
movie shocked us with the hate and the intolerance and the bigotry of the white
people towards the Black people. And so
much was carried out in God’s name with people believing that they were doing
God’s work when they blew up churches and killed little girls, and beat people
up just for walking down the street. So
many bad things happened with no good reason.
It was remarkable to watch how these incidents of hate and maliciousness
galvanized the people to protest in peaceful ways, to use their disadvantages
to their advantages. It was a powerful
movie and it really brought into focus the character of Dr. King – you watch
him struggle with the decisions that needed to be made about how much danger to
place people in – you witness to the his popularity among his followers and
also you see just how much some hated him. You also observe his questioning
himself about his loyalty to his family and his dedication to movement for
equality and justice. The underlying force
though, of Martin Luther King’s power was God; his deep connection to his
Creator is the strength that carried him through all of his struggles.
In the speech called the Drum Major’s Instinct,
spoken about two weeks before his assassination, Dr. King says that the great
task of life is essentially to transform our ego, by redirecting our desires
away from selfish, competitive goals and towards our spiritual growth and
service to others.
“He says before we judge others for their
selfishness, “let us look calmly and honestly at ourselves, and we will
discover that we too have those same basic desires for recognition, for
importance… We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve
distinction, to lead the parade…”[1]
Just like James and John in this morning’s gospel
reading – wanting to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus, and just like Job
being reminded that he is not God, and Job’s understanding of the way the world
should be – is not how God created the world into being. We all want to feel important. But we need to remember who God is and who we
are. And that our importance is not
because we are God. Our importance is
about how we can love and serve others.
And these are Martin Luther King’s words: “It’s a
good instinct if you don’t distort it and pervert it. (wanting to be
important) Don’t give it up. Keep
feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first.
But I want you to be first in love. (Amen) I want you to be first in moral
excellence. I want you to be first in generosity.”
·
Be first in kindness
·
Be first in caring
·
Be first in loving our neigbours
·
Be first in forgiveness
·
Be first in understanding
“If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want
to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize
that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. (Amen) (and whoever
wishes to be first among you must be slave of all) That’s a new definition of
greatness.”[2]
The
world is not centered on human beings. Nor is it an entirely safe or
predictable world, but the world is beautiful and the world is good nonetheless.
And God invites Job, and God invites us to live in this wild and beautiful
world.
So let us all aim to be truly great, so our lives
may be a blessing in this unpredictable wild and beautiful world. Amen.
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