Proper 25- B

October 25, 2009

The Rev. Dorian McGlannan

For the past month, we have had selections from the book of Job for our first reading in church and I’ve been engaged in this internal conversation with God. “I don’t want to preach on Job. Yes, I should preach on Job; No I don’t want to preach on Job; No, like I really don’t want to preach on Job.” And then today, the last Sunday which includes a reading from Job and … “Okay, God!  I’m going to preach on Job!” 

Job is the quintessential suffering person. And most of the book of Job is a long lament of Job about his suffering.  Job really struggles in this book as do most of us when life becomes difficult or disaster happens. Job endures the death of all of his children, goes from being prosperous to being penniless and suffers enormous health problems.  Life doesn’t get much worse than this. Placed right before the book of Psalms, Job is a place where we can hide when things that we don’t understand happen to us.  Deep in the pages of this book of anguish, we too can place our sorrow. Job is where I often send people who are looking for scripture that might help them when their world starts to unravel.  You won’t necessarily feel any better after reading Job; but you will know you are not alone in your experience of misery and that, my friends, is more important than you might think.

The Book of Job is not just about Job.  Beyond the character of Job himself, we also encounter Job’s friends in this particular segment of the Bible.  The friends are anything but helpful but they do reflect the real world when things go wrong.  Whenever we find ourselves in any kind of position of suffering whether it is the loss of a job, the death of someone we love or receiving a devastating medical diagnosis, people inevitably start showing up to tell us how to make things better.  They mean well but they are often anything but helpful.  In the words of Eugene Peterson, the author of The Message: “Sufferers attract fixers the way roadkill attracts vultures.” Job’s so called friends may have their hearts in the right place but they are not helping.  In my years as a priest I have had a lot of people ask what to say when someone suffers a tragedy.  I have vivid memories of the death of one of my daughter’s classmates when she was in an off-road vehicle with her father and the vehicle rolled over killing the little girl but not the father.  It was a horrible accident that impacted the community of that school for many months if not years. Because my daughter was in this little girl’s class, I was involved in this situation. A lot of people asked me: “What do you say when something like that happens?”   I responded by saying: “You can say: ‘My heart aches for you,’ ‘I am really sorry,’ ‘I can’t imagine what you are going through.’ ” But the absolutely wrong thing to do is to try to fix someone’s pain.  I never say this in one-on-one encounters but I will take the license to say it from the pulpit.  There are things that we really should not say to someone who is in grief. The things not to say include: “She’s in a better place.” or “God must have had His reasons.”  It is far better to live with the mystery of suffering than to try to come up with reasons for why suffering happens.  It is far better not to say anything and just be with someone than to try to explain suffering.  Remember the famous quote from St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel at all times; use words if necessary.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, a world-renowned Buddhist monk and teacher talks about how he would not want to live free of suffering because, if he did live a life free of suffering, he would not know compassion.  Thich Nhat Hanh, born in Vietnam in 1926, gained prominence for his work with the suffering during the Vietnam War.  People of all faiths have read his books and attended his retreats, one of his most interesting students being a Baptist police officer.  But how true Thich Nhat Hanh's words are…  Suffering teaches compassion.   

Many of the great spiritual writers of the middle ages actually prayed for bodily suffering because they felt it would bring them closer to Jesus.  A lot of these writers such as Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, and Hildegard of Bingen are widely read today.  Their writings reflect a spiritual depth for which people of today’s world long.  But the part that catches most people off guard is the desire for bodily suffering, and when I recommend these writers to people I always tell them about those sections; that they just might prove to be a bit challenging. But here’s the truth; we grow through suffering.  I don’t believe God causes suffering.   But when suffering happens, we can look for opportunities to grow.  Probably not right away, maybe we need to go through the kind of anger and lament expressed by Job.  But if we pray our way through whatever suffering might come our way, the wounds will heal and we will develop a deeper level of compassion such as what of which Thich Nhat Hanh speaks and writes. 

The book of Job does have a good ending.  Job moves through his anger and depression and builds a new life for himself.  His fortune and health are restored and he has more children.    This happy ending does not take away the horror of his earlier life but it does let him and us know that grief does not need to destroy our spirit and our lives.  We need to be willing to do the grief work that is before us and that is why Job is so helpful to people but eventually we need to move out of our grief.  Everyone is on a different time table; for some people it takes a number of years.  But life does go on and we need to make a conscious decision to live it and not let our grief live it for us.  This family that I mentioned at the beginning of my sermon, this family that suffered the tragic death of their daughter – they have built a new life for themselves – through the passionate faith they have learned to live with and live beyond their sorrows.

Our faith in the living Christ can make such a difference for us.  We can place our grief right there on the cross; we can place the grief of divorce; we can place the grief of sudden deaths of loved ones; we can place the grief of job loss; we can place the grief of devastating health problems right here on the cross and then we can keep on living and loving for whatever time we have left.  Because Jesus took that pain on for us and Jesus takes that pain away from us, we can keep on living with hope.  How we are internally; how we are emotionally and spiritually makes all the difference in the world.  Moses tells us in the book of Deuteronomy: “Choose life!” and when all is said and done, no matter what happens to us or to our loved ones, that choice is before us.  Moses told the Israelites: “Choose life so that you may live.”  For us Moses’ vital directive goes a bit farther. “Choose life in the living Christ” Jesus has and Jesus will take on all of our pain and suffering.  When you come up for communion this morning, bring your sorrows with you, place them in the bread of life, breathe them into the cup of salvation and walk from this church renewed and strengthened.  Walk forth from this church knowing that God and God’s community walk with you, now and forevermore.