Michael and Job (a sermon)
After Hurricane Michael, we published a “Phases of Disaster” chart that helped me understand my emotional meltdown into shock, rage, and grief - - that my bitter, searing fury at Nature and Heaven was okay, and that in Time I also would be okay.
We copied that chart and put it in your bulletin this morning to remind us, and to show us on this third anniversary of Hurricane Michael, that if emotions take a nosedive, it’s right there, a down-curve on the timeline, it’s okay, I’m okay, you’re okay, as we progress into what the chart assures us is Reconstruction, A New Beginning.
I’m grateful to have reached this point, my grief abated, no longer driving around town and suddenly erupting into tears of rage: that’s gone; my anger at Nature, Creation and Creator is no longer the major force in my daily life, as Reconstruction continues toward making things better than new even if it can never make things the same as they were.
It has been interesting! For a year of it, we had scaffolding from ground on the Bay shore beach, to the roof above the eighth floor, completely encasing our condo buildings. The scaffolding invited squirrels to make their way up to our 7th-floor porch, which they did nightly.
For more than a year, from our ravaged condo, an uninstalled toilet waited outside on the porch, a reminder of the Old South of my growing up years.
In one case while everyone was away, burglars stole up the scaffolding one night to enter the apartment of residents who’d left their sliding doors unlocked. The burglars discovered a stocked bar, had a party, made a mess, and left with whatever booze they had not drunk up.
For myself, my joy in the infernal, eternal scaffolding was to constantly visit the geometry shapes I learned in high school and had not thought of since 1953. Amy Moody is right: Math IS fun and good.
At Holy Nativity School that was Cove School to me as a schoolboy through the nineteen-forties, though the hurricane ravaged us, reconstruction has given us a building far better, stronger and safer than 1937 when it was new.
Holy Nativity Church? Father Steve was correct in his sermon last week: things are better and stronger than ever.
Followed by covid19 into the mix, with dreadful sickness, grievous mortality, social, economic and political discombobulation, here we are - -
the sufferings of Job visited upon us in OUR Time, God help us, - -
and God DOES help, in the lovingkindness of family, friends and loved ones, neighbors far away who never heard of us but sent lovingkindness in so many ways.
Nevertheless, as Job found, God can be elusive, absent, prayers streaming off into the darkness of empty space and no response or echo. Oddly, Job’s lament OFFENDS God at Job’s boldness in complaining: did you HEAR and SEE and COMPREHEND, did you GET IT? Listen again:
"My complaint is bitter;
his hand is heavy despite my groaning.
Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
that I might come even to his dwelling!
I would lay my case before him,
and fill my mouth with arguments.
I would learn what he would answer me,
and understand what he would say to me.
Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? !!!!!!!
If I go forward, he is not there;
or backward, I cannot perceive him;
on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;
I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.
God has made my heart faint;
the Almighty has terrified me;
If only I could vanish in darkness,
and thick darkness would cover my face!”
Except for the piously Simple who try to rationalize God out of every outrage, the Job drama (which, as Bishop Duvall said, is not “history” but a stage play about human experience with God) the Job drama is profoundly loaded with troubling theology of our relationship with God, and God’s with us.
God shamefully giving Satan his blessing to torment Job beyond human endurance - -
God lacking the introspection to conceive of himself as capable of error and sin against us.
God taunting, bullying Job-his-Creature with God’s Immensity. Not until the Nativity of Jesus Christ did God have so personal a relationship with humans as to find out and experience and understand how passionately we love - -
watching Job’s love for his family and servants, God did not realize the intensity of human love for each other. In the Job drama, written by a brilliant playwright, God behaving as if, being Creator, it would be easy to make it all up to Job the Creature, make everything right again by replacing all that Job had loved and lost, with new and better: love don't work that way.
From our perspective as humans, the Job drama shows that God had a lot to learn about human love, and then God trying to make amends without remorse. Carl Jung says God finally offered penance through Christ on Calvary. (Make of that what you will).
Do I Tom Weller believe in God? Yes, I do, or my integrity would not allow me to be here worshiping God with you and proclaiming that Christ is risen.
Christ raised by God the Father and sent back to us for one reason and one reason only: because God loves us, to SHOW us that God loves us no matter what; that love (which is not a feeling but how you treat others) love is greater than hatred or indifference; that God loves us no matter how cruel and unloving we are to God the Son. God loves us and every Sunday is Easter to celebrate God’s love for us. Every Sunday morning is Easter to celebrate God’s love for us, if you did not know that, know it now.
But calamities: the hurricane, the pandemic, our personal nightmares, where is God in all that? and in human life, where is God when we need God present and active, God responsive, God answering prayer?
What we find out in life, in our darkest night, after violent storm, in sickness of pandemic, in personal tragedy, is that God is present for us in each other, as friends and neighbors and people in the community. God present in people near and far who pray for us, who send their love, who reach out to help us, comfort us, encourage us not to lose heart. Enable us to go on.
After Hurricane Michael we learned this in other people’s lovingkindness; as we are now helping other people damaged by hurricanes. God is present in those who love us in so many ways, in what we do in Jesus’ name.
So a poem, and a reflective prayer:
From St Teresa of Avila:
“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
And another, taught to me by a friend at summer camp my lifetime ago:
“God has no hands but our hands to do his work today; God has no feet but our feet to lead others in his way. God has no voice but our voice to tell others how he died; God has no help but our help to lead them to his side.”
Life IS short, and we HAVEN’T much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us, so be quick to love, and make haste to be kind, because you are God’s head and heart and hands and feet - -
you ARE the love of God,
you are The Christ, and
if you will not BE Christ,
then Christ IS NOT risen.
+++++++++++++
"Michael and Job". Sermon/homily on Sunday, October 10, 2021, Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida, the Rev Tom Weller, Episcopal priest (retired), Priest Associate of the parish. Text:
Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Job said:
"Today also my complaint is bitter;
his hand is heavy despite my groaning.
Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
that I might come even to his dwelling!
I would lay my case before him,
and fill my mouth with arguments.
I would learn what he would answer me,
and understand what he would say to me.
Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power?
No; but he would give heed to me.
There an upright person could reason with him,
and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.
"If I go forward, he is not there;
or backward, I cannot perceive him;
on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;
I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.
God has made my heart faint;
the Almighty has terrified me;
If only I could vanish in darkness,
and thick darkness would cover my face!"