1 Samuel 1:4-20

The town of Manchester, England once knew some very good times. It was the hub of the Industrial Revolution and the home of Rolls Royce automobiles. Although its past was remarkable, its present is simply a sad reflection of the depressed economy affecting similar towns around the world, not to mention towns all over Ohio. For now, the only thing the residents of Manchester can count on is this: their town’s future is uncertain.

Stefani Schatz is a young Episcopal priest serving a working-class church in Manchester. Most of the members of her small church are unemployed and have been for years or, in some cases, for generations. Many of them know only the loneliness and shame of never having meaningful work and they find solace in drugs and alcohol. The region, and its people, are depressed.

“There is no sense of hope,” Stefani says. “So many people believe that nothing will change, nothing will get better...This feeling pervades everything.” (1)

That feeling of depression, hopelessness, and despair for the future was exactly what had defined the life of Hannah, whose story we just heard. Where our culture values above all one’s ability to be a productive, working member of society, Hannah’s culture valued a woman’s ability to bear children, and particularly sons. Hannah had a husband who loved her, she had food and shelter, but none of this could make up for the fact that she did not have children. And she couldn’t even speculate that the fault lay with her husband, Elkanah, since his other wife, Peninnah, had multiple children, both boys and girls. Hannah knew that whatever the reason she didn’t have children, the fault lay with her. Even worse, there was no knowledge of the many biological reasons she may have been infertile; in those days people believed if you couldn’t have children, God was simply punishing you. So Hannah believed that nothing would change, nothing would get better...and that feeling pervaded every moment of Hannah’s life.

The Bible tells us that Hannah was miserable, she cried all the time and had no appetite. Hannah’s present, even though she had a loving husband, was gray and colorless, and her future, no brighter. And things were bad enough at home, where Penninah was always making snide comments, but the worst was the one time each year when the whole family travelled together to the temple at Shiloh. There, in public, Penninah made sure everyone knew that the children with them were hers, not Hannah, and that Hannah was barren, that God was punishing her. Every year, Hannah dreads this trip.

Then, one year, at the annual pilgrimage to the temple at Shiloh, she decides she can’t stand her own despair one second longer. After the misery of having to share a celebratory meal with Elkanah and Peninnah and their noisy brood of children, listen to what the text says happened: “After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah rose.”

The preacher James Forbes says that he tells every couple who is expecting a baby girl that they should name her Hannah Rose. Hannah rose. Finally, after years of depression and despair and staring into a hopeless future, Hannah made a decision to act, and she rose up from the table. Hannah rose and she went to the Lord’s house, the temple. (2)

And as Hannah rises and goes to the temple, a glimmer of hope enters our story.

Hannah enters the temple, and once inside she worships, she prays, she weeps, she spills out her despair to God. Perhaps she has simply grown weary of acting like she has it all together, of putting on a happy face for her husband, of trying not to react when Peninnah cruelly provokes her, pouring salt in the wound of her barrenness. Maybe she has had enough of her own tears. If God is punishing her, then she is going to share those tears with God. Hannah even goes so far as to bargain with God, promising that if God grants her a son she will return the child to the temple and dedicate him to God as a nazirite, a servant. Hannah prays so fervently and with such passion that the priest who sees her accuses her of being drunk! But she assures him otherwise. “I am not drunk,” she says, “I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.”

“I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.” Maybe that’s an experience you have had yourself or maybe you’ve even witnessed someone else doing it. But in Old Testament times, people didn’t go to the temple to pour out their souls before the Lord. They went to the temple to bring sacrifices, the first fruits of their harvest and their livestock, and to present these sacrifices to the Lord in the hope that God would bless them. When Hannah rose up from that table and entered the temple to pour out her soul before the Lord, that is the first time in the Old Testament someone uses the temple to directly petition God. No wonder Eli thought she was drunk! Even the priest didn’t have any idea what she was doing!

Stefani Schatz, that Episcopal priest in Manchester, has witnessed people pouring out their souls before the Lord, and she says she most often sees it happen, not in the course of Sunday morning worship or during weddings or baptisms, but at funerals. Since she became the pastor of the Manchester church, she has done a lot of funerals, nearly one a week, not because the church is so big, but because the congregation is older and generally not in good health. But in the midst of all these funerals, she has discovered something: when people bring their sorrow and despair into the church for the funeral of a loved one, God meets them there. The minute they enter the church to worship and pour out their grief and sadness -- to pour out their souls -- before the Lord, they are changed. “Men cry, people comfort each other,” Stefani says. “Submerged in the mourning, I see such joy.” (3)

Although Hannah didn’t enter the temple at Shiloh for a funeral, she buried something there when she poured out her soul before the Lord. When she left the temple after receiving the assurances of the priest that God heard her cries, she was able to return to her family, to eat and drink with her husband, and, the Bible tells us, she was no longer sad.

Did you notice what happened there? Before her prayer was even answered, Hannah was no longer sad. The joy that had been submerged in Hannah’s mourning surfaced because she rose and entered the temple and when she did that, God entered her story. And when that happened, Hannah’s understanding of herself changed. She was no longer defined by the value afforded to her by her society; she now knew that she belonged first to God, the God who received her prayer. And she knew this even before that prayer was answered.

And indeed, Hannah’s prayer was answered. “In due time,” says the text, she conceived and bore a son. And Hannah kept her side of the bargain and took her son to the temple of Shiloh. She rose up again and offered her son -- her first fruits -- to the Lord.

If that was the whole of the story, if the story simply ended there, with Hannah taking her son to the temple and presenting him to the priest, nearly bursting with pride, it would be a story worth telling and a story worth preaching. Hannah’s story reminds us that when we rise up and go to God’s house, which for us is here, the church, and when we present our whole selves to God, not just our reverence and our gratitude but our depression, despair, and anxiety for the future, God receives us. When we enter God’s house to pour out our souls before the Lord, God enters our stories and brings new life from our barren soil.

So if the story ended there it would be enough, but it doesn’t end there. Hannah’s son, the one she dedicates to the Lord, is Samuel, and Samuel will grow up to be the last of the judges over Israel. Samuel will oversee Israel’s transition from a group of tribes ruled by judges to a nation ruled by a king. Samuel will be the “kingmaker,” anointing first Saul and finally David, who will rule Israel for more than forty years.

At the beginning of 1 Samuel, Hannah isn’t the only one waiting on God to deliver her from an uncertain future. As Walter Brueggemann puts it, “Israel is a community in moral chaos.” (4) So when Hannah enters that temple in Shiloh and pours out her soul before the Lord, she is playing out her particular story, yes, but she also represents this particular historical moment in the story of Israel. At this moment, Israel is barren, its future as a nation, as a people, is by no means certain. It is not until the appearance of David that Israel’s story begins to change, and without Samuel, there would be no David.

Behind Samuel and David, two heroes in the story of Israel, stands a depressed, bereft, barren young woman named Hannah. Like Hannah, Israel must pour out its soul before the Lord and wait for God to enter the story and bring the first fragile green shoots of new life from its barren soil.

*****

At the 1996 summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, things were tense for the American women’s gymnastics team. The team competition had come down to the Russians and the Americans and on the last day of competition, with just one rotation left for each team, the Americans had a slight lead. The Russians’ last rotation was floor exercises in which they were very strong. So if the American gymnasts did not perform exceptionally well on the vault, they would lose the gold medal to the Russians.

Kerri Strug was the last member of the team to vault. But on her first attempt, she under-rotated the landing and fell. When she stood up, she was limping on her left foot. But with a look of steely determination, Kerri sprinted down the mat again and launched herself into the air. She executed a spectacular vault, stuck the landing and then immediately began hopping on her right leg, clearly in agonizing pain.

In that moment, overcoming her injury to capture the gold medal for her team, Kerri Strug gained the love and affection of the entire country she represented. It wasn’t just because it was a great story; it’s because it was our story. She overcame adversity, she “pulled herself up by her boot straps,” “she took one for the team.” Announcer John Tesh even suggested that Kerri’s story went beyond her country when he said, “Her story is an inspiration to every adult, to every youngster who has ever had a dream.”

The story of Kerri Strug wasn’t just about Kerri Strug. It was about her team, her country, and even all humanity. Stories like that are bigger than just one person. That is also true of Hannah’s story. The story of how barren Hannah rose and poured out her soul before the Lord, and then conceived and bore a son who grew up to anoint the great King David is not just Hannah’s story. Her story was also Israel’s story, the story of how God creates life where it looks like all hope for the future is lost. And later, a barren world would discover that Hannah’s story is not just Israel’s story, but the story of a world, mired in chaos and confusion, who received not an earthly king, but Christ the King, God in human flesh, come to show us that what is so hard for us to believe is indeed true: that God longs to stand with us in our despair and hopelessness and make a new way where we thought there was none.

When, like Hannah, we have been driven to despair trying to understand where God is in our stories, we need to rise up and enter the church, plant ourselves in a chair in God’s waiting room, and pour out our souls before God, no matter how foolish or intoxicated we might look to anyone who sees us, trusting that God will grant us the gift of seeing how our stories are part of God’s story, the gospel story, in which poor, barren women are lifted out of their despair, a young shepherd boy becomes a mighty and powerful king, a tiny nation of chosen people shines a light to all the world, God takes on human flesh and walks among us, and when Jesus is unjustly condemned to death, after three days he will rise. Hannah rose...and so can we. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. 1 Howard, Anne Sutherland, Claiming the Beatitudes. The Alban Institute, 2009, p. 34.
2. Forbes’ sermon on this passage, “Hannah Rose,” can be found online here.
3. Howard, p. 35.
4. Brueggemann, Walter, First and Second Samuel (Interpretation commentary series), John Knox Press, 1990, p. 10.

Going All In (sermon, November 8, 2009)

Mark 12:38-44

On June 10 of 2000, a new pedestrian bridge opened in London. The Millennium Bridge is a high-tech structure consisting of an aluminum footbridge spanning the Thames river with steel beams projecting out from the sides.

The architects who designed it spent enormous amounts of time anticipating the effects of people walking across the bridge. But on the day the bridge opened, as thousands of people streamed over the bridge at the same time, something totally unexpected happened. As people walked, the bridge began to sway ever so slightly. In order to keep their balance, people changed the way they normally walked. They spread out their legs and adopted a movement that was more side to side than up and down. The resulting lateral force caused the bridge to sway even more. In response to that swaying people began to move, simultaneously, in ways that preserved their own ability to stay upright and keep their balance. These movements, rather than being random, which the engineers had expected, were synchronized. This caused the bridge to sway even more significantly and authorities eventually had to close it down. It was two more years before the bridge could be used safely. (1)

In today’s passage from the gospel of Mark, we have another example of how individuals looking out only for their own interests can bring down a major structure. “Beware of the scribes,” Jesus says, and then he goes on to point out that these scribes, these religious leaders are despicably self-centered and hypocritical, doing everything they can to preserve their status and their way of life. And by doing so, they put the institution they are supposed to serve at risk.

In contrast to the self-centered scribes, Jesus points out to his disciples the poor widow who places into the treasury -- the ancient equivalent of the offering plate -- her entire net worth, which is worth almost nothing.

Now most of us have probably heard this passage about the poor widow many times before. Often it is used to encourage us to give more than we think we are able, to be more generous than we have been in the past. The widow in this story has for centuries been the poster girl for sacrificial giving. After all, if she can give her last two coins worth barely a penny, then surely we can do better ourselves. And to be sure, Jesus does seem to hold her up as an example. But it is often the case that our basic assumptions about a biblical passage are challenged if we look at what comes before and after it, and that is certainly true here.

Before this story about the poor widow, as we have already noted, Jesus reveals the hypocrisy of the scribes, who insist on having people acknowledge their special status and seat them at the head tables at banquets. They pray, yes, but their prayers are empty, said only so that other people can hear them and admire them for their apparent piety. But even worse, Jesus says that the scribes “devour widows’ houses.” It’s not clear to biblical scholars what that phrase means exactly, but we can safely assume that it has something to do with the scribes not caring for the poor and vulnerable in their midst, a group exemplified by widows and orphans. According to the laws and prophets of the Hebrew Bible, caring for the poor, and particularly for widows and orphans is one of the most important responsibilities of faithful Jews and particularly for religious leaders. So whatever it meant that they were devouring widows’ houses, it wasn’t good. As one of the elders put it at session this week, surely it had something to do with sub-prime mortgages.

Immediately after the story of the poor widow, Jesus’ followers admire the majestic temple. “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” one of the disciples gushes. But Jesus is unimpressed. “Do you see these great buildings?” he snaps. “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” In other words, the temple itself and the institution it represents will soon be nothing more than a pile of rocks. And when we pair those words with Jesus’ disgust for the temple leadership, we get the feeling that Jesus might just think that the destruction of the temple is the natural consequence of selfishness and greed -- not unlike the consequences of hundreds of people on a bridge all trying to keep their balance and thus causing the entire bridge to sway.

So it is between Jesus’ criticism of the scribes and his prediction that the temple, corrupt as it is, won’t long remain standing, that we hear this story about the poor widow who gives her last two coins to that corrupt institution, to those hypocritical leaders. And so we have to wonder: is Jesus really holding up this woman as an example of faithfulness? Or does he want us to take pity on her because she has somehow been manipulated into giving away what little she had -- manipulated by the very people who were supposed to be taking care of her? As one commentator suggests, maybe when Jesus said “that’s all she had to live on,” he said it not with amazement in his voice, but exasperation -- “She out of her poverty has given everything she had. That’s all she had to live on,” the implication being, “she should not have done that. She should not have been told to do that.” (2)

*****

After church today, you are each invited to pick up an envelope in the back of the sanctuary that has a card in it, a commitment card. I want you to take that card home and sit down with your spouse or your children or simply by yourself and prayerfully decide how much of your financial resources you will commit to the church in 2010. I want you to do this not because the church today is an institution cleansed from all the hypocrisy and corruption that so upset Jesus about the temple. Frankly, it’s not. We can all get frustrated from time to time with the church, both our individual church, our denomination, and the whole institution of the Christian church. There are certainly good reasons for this frustration. But there are also good reasons, important reasons, for each of us to sit down and prayerfully consider what portion of our financial resources we will commit to the church. The most important reason is that there is a direct correlation between how we spend our money and what we value. In fact, before you even pray about what to give the church, do this: look at a recent bank statement or credit card statement or checkbook and see where your money went in the past month. That will give you a clear indication of where your priorities lie.

There is a story told about the Gauls, a warring people who in ancient times lived in what is now France and Belgium. As the Roman Empire spread, Christian missionaries entered Gallic territory and convinced many of the Gauls to be baptized. When a converted warrior was baptized in a river, he would hold one arm high up in the air as the missionary dunked him under the water. The missionaries discovered why he did this the next time a battle broke out. Then, the warring Gaul would grab his club or sword and destroy his enemy in a most un-Christian way, shouting “this arm is not baptized!”

You may think that when you were baptized, your entire life was given over to God, but the reality is many of us hold something back. Most of us aren’t warriors, but all of us are consumers. And all of us probably use our money, at least sometimes, in ways that are decidedly un-Christian. In our English translation of the story of the poor widow, Jesus says that the widow puts into the treasury “all she had to live on.” But the literal translation of that phrase is “her whole life.” She doesn’t just give her last two coins, she gives her whole life, her whole being to God. She goes all in. It may not have been a smart thing to do, giving all her money to a corrupt institution that was supposed to be caring for her, not taking from her, but still it was a remarkable act of faith.

That is true giving. That is the meaning of stewardship. We are called to go all in, to bring every part of our lives into our life of faith, including our financial resources.

But didn’t I just say that the church is still misguided at best and hypocritical at worst? Yes, I said that, you heard me right. It doesn’t change my message, though, except that when we see the church as a flawed human institution, we may find that it is even easier to give. Because the church needs us, it needs us to work and pray and seek justice and look out for the poor and vulnerable among us. The church needs us to challenge its outdated thinking and misguided doctrines. The church needs us to give, not just our money, but our lives, so that the church can give itself to the world. If we hold something back, if we refuse to go all in, if we delude ourselves into thinking that we can be faithful to God with everything but our wallets, then not only will we suffer the greater condemnation Jesus predicts for the hypocritical scribes, we will also magnify the suffering of those people the church is called to care for, the widows and orphans of our time who rely on the kindness of faithful strangers for their well-being. Because if we, the followers of Jesus, don’t care for them, then who will?

If a bunch of people walking in the same way can together cause an entire bridge to sway, imagine what we can accomplish when we work together toward a common cause. When we pool our resources, when we combine our energies, we are capable of remarkable achievements. When we consider what financial resources we will commit to this flawed institution we acknowledge that giving to the church is not just about money, it’s about caring for others. The poor widow is here to teach us that we may not all be called to give more, because certainly God does not want us to give so much that we have nothing left, as the widow did. But we are all certainly called to care more, to work for justice for all. For those of us with more than adequate financial resources -- and even in today’s economy, many of us here have more than enough -- caring more does mean giving more. This is not just so that the church will have adequate funds for necessities like utilities and payroll, but also so that collectively, as a church, we can reach out to the needy in our community and world and ensure that they are well cared for. This is not just a nice thing to do, it is a crucial aspect of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, to be a baptized Christian. Even as we work to keep our doors open and our ministries thriving, we need to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves with all the resources we’ve been given. Jesus has no patience for religious institutions that devour widow’s houses, and neither should we.

Over the last month, first at our fall retreat and then last week with Dan Schomer, we have had some great conversations about the future of FPPC. It is obvious to me that you are proud of this church and you are committed to ensuring that this church is going to be here for a long time. Well, for that to happen, you are going to have to go all in together. You are stepping onto a newly constructed bridge in faith that the engineers have done their job. And if each of you only look out for your individual needs to find security and balance, then you risk making that bridge sway so dangerously that you’ll never make it to the other side. But if you commit together to looking out not so much for your well-being as for the well-being of those around you and the strangers who aren’t even with you on the bridge but who need your kindness and grace the most, I have no doubt that you will cross this bridge safely into a bright and blessed future. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Cassidy, John, “Rational Irrationality,” The New Yorker, October 5, 2009.
2. Scott Hoezee, This Week in Preaching, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/viewArticle.php?aID=343

The Deep Water (sermon by General Presbyter Dan Schomer, November 1, 2009)

Luke 5:1-11

When I was a small child, I learned the dangers of deep water. I was a preschooler and, like most small children, I wasn’t terribly conscious of my surroundings. In the midst of playing on a boat dock, I apparently stepped off and fell into water that was well over my head. To the best of my recollection, my whole life passed before my eyes. Given my age, that didn’t take very long; but before I got to the end of my life story, my father had reached down and pulled me out of the water blubbering and sputtering. During the remainder of my childhood, I was not at all fond of docks, boats, and water that was over my head. But as I grew older and learned to swim, I learned that deep water offered adventures that were simply unavailable in the shallows.

The text from Luke 5 begins with a sense of the familiar. A group of fishermen are washing their nets after a long night of fishing. It was a routine they had carried out daily for many years. It felt right and it felt comfortable. Routines are like that. Familiarity and normalcy help us feel safe and secure.

When Jesus asked Simon Peter to take him a little way off the shore of the lake so that he could use the boat as his pulpit, it added a little adventure to the day. Jesus sat down in the boat and taught the people who had gathered on the shore. As Peter listened, his heart and mind must have danced. How wonderful were Jesus’ words. How wise were his teachings. Jesus had given this hard-working fisherman much to think about. But Peter was still in the shallows.

Congregations are often faced with the temptation of staying in the shallows. Worship that is uplifting, comforting and familiar is well received; but let the sermon become too challenging or the music move too far out of people’s comfort zones, and the session is likely to hear about.
Speak of the generosity and grace of God and there will be smiles all around; but move on to suggest that our response to God’s generosity is to be generous in our giving of time, talents, and, yes, money, and a few frowns may develop. Suggesting that the church needs to meet the needs of its members will gain many nods; but suggest that the church is called to reach out to people who aren’t just like us, and there will be some squirming in the pews. We start in the shallows with Jesus. He is our source of comfort and security. He does provide generously for us. But Jesus is not content to stay in the shallows for long.

When he had finished teaching, Jesus turned to Simon Peter and said, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch”…which must have been a real surprise to Peter.
After all, who was the preacher and who was the fisherman? Peter knew the best time to let down your nets for a healthy catch and this wasn’t it. Peter and his partners had fished all night and come up empty.

Sound familiar? How many times is a ministry not attempted because someone warns, “We tried that before and it didn’t work.” The deep waters look kind of risky. We’ve had bad experiences out there. Everyone will feel a lot better if we just stay in the shallows.

There may be times when the church is open to risk-taking, but this isn’t one of those times. We live in a time of rapid change and many of these changes challenge our fundamental values. Peter Steinke, well known for his application of family systems to the life of the church, indicates that rapid change tends to breed anxious congregations. The more anxious congregations becomes, the more people crave familiarity and certainty. And the more anxious the church becomes, the less likely it is that risk taking will be attempted. When Darryl Royal was the coach of the University of Texas Longhorns, he developed one of the best rushing offenses in the country. Royal was famous for saying, “When you throw the ball three things can happen, and two of them are bad.” When we are anxious, when we focus on our own comfort and security, we tend to exaggerate the risks and diminish the possibilities that can be discovered by venturing out into the deep water.

Of course, Simon Peter could have brought this story to an abrupt end. He could have turned to Jesus and said, “Rabbi, you are no doubt a great preacher, but you are a lousy fisherman.” He could have rowed back to shore, bid Jesus farewell, and headed off to his bed to catch a little sleep before another night of fishing. And that would have been the end of the story…a story not worth telling in the pages of Scripture.

But motivated by little more than respect for Jesus, Simon Peter half-heartedly did move out to the deep water and let down the nets. Now things get exciting. The net is filled to overflowing with fish. Simon Peter calls his partners to come and help. Simon falls to his knees in awe at the power of God revealed in Jesus. And Jesus commissions Peter and his partners to go into a new kind of fishing business. But it begins with a little risk taking by one who at least shows enough faith to put out into the deep waters.

So what do the deeps waters look like for Presbyterian Churches today? Let’s be honest—they look scary. We have no desire to get in over our heads. Risk taking means that we cannot be in total control of what happens. Add to all this the rapid changes with which we have been confronted, and no one would blame us for staying in the shallows. Except, we don’t find Jesus in the shallows.

Brian McLaren, a leading spokesperson for the emergent church movement, calls the contemporary church into the deep waters by encouraging a radical faith that takes the example of Jesus seriously. In his book Everything Must Change, McLaren reminds us where we find Jesus and with whom he associated throughout his ministry. Jesus was an agent of change and transformation, confronting the religious community of his day and advocating for those on the fringes who were either rejected or forgotten. That sounds like deep water.

Diana Butler Bass in her book Christianity for the Rest of Us speaks to mainline denominational churches that seek to relate to the world around them in new and vital ways. Bass encourages churches to celebrate and learn from their heritage while also developing a deep spirituality. One of the primary characteristics of a vital church, according to Bass is hospitality. Bass writes, True Christian hospitality is not a recruitment strategy designed to manipulate strangers into church membership. Rather, it is a central practice of the Christian faith—something Christians are called to do for the sake of that thing itself…Christians welcome strangers as we ourselves have been welcomed into God through the love of Jesus Christ. Through hospitality, Christians imitate God’s welcome. Again, that sounds like deep water.

So what do the deep waters look like for the Firestone Park Presbyterian Church? That’s something that you are best equipped to discover for yourselves. I say that because ministry today is radically contextual. There is no one-size-fits-all ministry these days. Today effective ministries are those that are responsive to the needs of the community surrounding the church. Those who live in the community and know the community are best equipped to develop ministries to and with the community. But, if Jesus was to walk the streets of Firestone Park, Akron, where would we likely find him? Would you find him across the street at the park shooting baskets with some teens, telling stories to children, or listening sympathetically to a single parent that is at the end of here rope? It’s hard for me as an outsider to guess where Jesus would be. But this much I know--We would find Jesus with the people with whom we often do not associate. That’s why we call it deep water.

When I was a boy growing up in the First Methodist Church in Butler, Pa., one of the highlights throughout the year was when foreign missionaries would come to speak. I would listen attentively, captivated by these brave people of remarkable faith who would sooner laugh in the face of death than abandon their mission to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to the four corners of the earth. Now, we are the missionaries called into the mission field that, in your case, is called Firestone Park. There are plenty of people out there who are not just like us and the challenges we face require courage. But that’s where Jesus calls us to be, out there, demonstrating the good news of God’s love through Jesus Christ.

I didn’t learn to swim until I was 11-years-old. I stuck around the shallow end of the pool while my friends were doing cannonballs in the deep end. I practiced swimming—putting my face in the water, kicking my feet, and making my hands go. Then, one day, I took the risk of walking down to the deep end where my feet couldn’t touch and the water was well over my head…and I jumped in. That was a day of joy and freedom that I will never forget.

Put out into the deep water!

Happily Ever After? (sermon, Oct. 25, 2009)

Job 42:1-6, 10-17

These days there aren’t many things you could say with confidence that all Americans have in common, but here’s one: we love happy endings. If you need proof of this, look no further than some of our most popular movies: Miracle on 34th Street, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, and, of course, every Disney movie ever made -- I’m sure you can add your own favorites to the list. Part of this, of course, is that the movie industry is in the business of making money and, as one movie critic put it, “you don’t build [movie] franchises on bleak conclusions.”(1) Some argue that the reason for our love affair with happy endings is that the American Dream itself is a happy ending: the little guy overcomes adversity and hardship and makes it big. Deep down, we all believe that we are the little guy, and we dream of facing down our adversity and one day making it big,

While we may think this affinity for happy endings is particularly American, the Book of Job suggests otherwise. After all the suffering, after the painful process Job goes through that ends in his admitting that he really knows nothing about the ways of God, what do we get but a Hollywood-worthy happy ending. And not only that, we get an ending that seems to directly contradict the message in the rest of the book, in which Job and God go to great lengths to prove that the theological belief that the righteous get rewarded and the wicked get punished is flat-out wrong. The last seven verses of the Book of Job suggest that in fact, that is exactly how God works. Job perseveres through his suffering, keeps hold of his faith and in the end everything he lost is restored to him.

Am I the only one here who finds this ending deeply disappointing?

Well, whether you are disappointed or relieved to find that the end of the book of Job suggests that God indeed rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, we all need to look a little more closely at this ending which, at first glance, looks like a happy one.

First of all, before the seemingly “happy” ending in which Job’s fortunes are restored, we hear a final speech from Job. In this speech Job finally finds words with which to respond to God’s long monologue on creation. Although God never once addresses Job’s suffering or his guilt or innocence, Job still learns something from what God has to say: he learns that God’s power is far beyond Job’s ability to understand. Yes, we are unique and special in God’s sight, but that doesn’t mean that we are equal to God or capable of understanding God. As God speaks Job discovers the limitations of being human. “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know,” Job confesses. “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” In other words, Job has experienced God in a completely new way; he now has a whole new perspective, not just on his own life and faith, but also on God’s relationship to creation and to humanity.

To understand what this experience must have been like for Job, let me ask you a question: who here remembers where you were on September 11th, 2001? Let’s see a show of hands. And why is it that everyone remembers this? It’s because that day changed our lives. Even if we didn’t personally know someone who was hurt or killed or involved in the tragedy, the events of that day drew a permanent line in the calenders of our minds. There is life before September 11th and life after. And every American knows that we can never go back to life as it was before September 11th, no matter how much our lives today resemble our lives then. That is what Job is expressing in his words to God: both because of his suffering and because of God’s response, Job’s perspective has permanently changed.

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann suggests that in the book of Job there is a three-fold movement from orientation to disorientation and then to a new re-orientation. At the beginning of the book, Job’s life and faith make sense to him; when suffering hits, he moves into a period of life during which he is profoundly confused and disoriented and nothing makes sense any longer; finally, when his health, family, and wealth are restored, he moves into a new stage of life, a reorientation made possible by God. But within this reorientation there are “persistent traces of loss.” (2)

This three-fold movement in Job’s life is illustrated in the Pennyroyal Claxton Bible. In this Bible, three portraits by artist Barry Moser accompany the book of Job. In the first, Moser has drawn Job as a well-dressed, older man, looking down but with the slightest expression of condescension on his face. In the second picture, Job is naked and covered with sores, looking up with his jaw set. The determined look on his face shows that he wants an explanation for his condition. Moser’s final drawing is captioned “Job, Old and Full of Days.” Here is a man who has been restored to his prior life. He is once again well-dressed and, as in the first picture, he is looking down. But there is no longer any trace of condescension in his face; instead he looks almost confused but certainly humbled. (3) This is not the same Job as before his suffering.

If we return to that so-called “happy” ending, then, with this in mind, we realize that even when Job received back the equivalent of what he had lost, it doesn’t mean that his suffering has been erased or even somehow redeemed. For one thing, since Job knows firsthand that whatever you have you can lose in an instant, then surely he now lives with the persistent awareness that he could lose it all again. For another thing, Job may have been blessed with ten new children, the same number of children that had died before; and he may have had the most beautiful daughters in the land, but we all know those children could not totally replace the children who died, and whatever joy they brought Job, that joy could not take away or make up for the pain Job continued to feel over the absence of his first family.

Of course, the text doesn’t tell us any of this; in fact, it doesn’t give any hint at all that Job was haunted by the memories of his suffering. But, even if he is a remarkably righteous and faithful human being, he is still human. As Walter Brueggemann puts it, to be human is to discover that “the savage reality of loss eventually spares no one.” (4) And so we assume that Job’s experience is the same as ours. He lives fully again, he laughs again, he experiences joy again but he is never too far removed from that savage reality of loss and the pain it brought him.

The text does, however, make clear that Job’s suffering and the new perspective that suffering gave him changed him in another way. Listen again: “The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning...He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch...and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers.”

Not only does the text tell us that Job had three daughters, we find out their names. Usually, in the Old Testament, most of the named characters are men; it is rare that a woman has a big enough role to actually be named in the text. But that’s not all; Job also gives his daughters a portion of the inheritance which would usually be divided among sons. This was simply unheard of. Daughters were property to be married off in exchange for livestock or maybe land, and once they were married, they became someone else’s property. But not Job’s daughters. Something about Job’s orientation, disorientation, and reorientation has brought him to a place where he is no longer willing to accept the cultural norms. After discovering in his suffering that his prior understanding about God isn’t true, it appears that Job is no longer willing to accept as infallible the norms of his society, especially those that unnecessarily cause others to suffer. And so in his reoriented life Job seeks to remedy one such injustice, at least as much as he can within his own family.

In the end, then, perhaps the book of Job does offer us a kind of happy ending. As we come to the end of this book we must still hold onto the deep suffering and despair Job knew, just as, for Job himself, the reality of that experience will always be with him. But even as we refuse to forget Job’s suffering, we can also recognize that, because of his suffering, Job has changed in ways that have allowed him to look beyond himself and do what he can to alleviate the suffering of others.

And so this is the lesson Job teaches us when his suffering has finally ended and his wealth, health, and family have been restored. When we are confronted with the “savage reality of suffering,” -- and, eventually, we all will be -- then we need to be honest about it, honest about our pain and confusion, honest even about the anger we feel toward God. But even in that time of disorientation when we discover firsthand that we understand little about the ways of God, we must still trust that God is there and that there will be an end to suffering, whether or not we see it on this side of heaven.

If, like Job, we are fortunate enough to see the end of our suffering while we still have life left to live, may we embrace the knowledge our suffering gave us. May we embrace the awareness that life is terribly, heart-breakingly fragile, even without the suffering and injustices we inflict on each other. And embracing these difficult truths, may we do what we can to minimize the suffering and to remedy the injustices we see all around us. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Ansen, David, “Endless Summer.” Newsweek, April 28, 2008; online at http://www.newsweek.com/id/132858.
2. Brueggemann, Walter, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Westminster John Knox, 2003, p. 302.
3. Hoezee, Scott in the commentary at “This Week from the Center of Excellence in Preaching,” http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/viewArticle.php?aID=340.
4. Brueggemann, Walter, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Westminster John Knox, 2003, p. 302.