Job 38:1-11
Mark 4:35-41
People talk about the patience of Job. As for me, I don’t know if he was patient or not. I mean he was abused for the amusement of Satan, which is more than just a proper name. Satan means “opponent” in Hebrew. Job was surely opposed. He lost everything but his wife and the servants who told him his kids were dead, his slaves were slain, and the livestock that wasn’t dead was taken.
To add insult to injury, he was then infected with enough boils that he must have looked like a steroid abuser without the muscular development. In an effort to help, his wife advises him to curse God and die. Then three friends show up and after waiting together for a week they ask him what he did wrong.
No wonder Job cries out, “Let the day perish in which I was born.”
So was Job patient? It sounds better than other things he could have been called. It sounds better than what he was called by his so-called friends. His friends blame him for what is happening to him. “You must have done something wrong.” “Your kids must have done something wrong.” “If you hadn’t done something wrong you could stand confident in your innocence in the presence of the Lord.”
They say, “Your sin undermines your worship.” “You must not know God at all” and the kicker, “your piety is the reason for your punishment.”
Job’s had enough of his so called friends. He argues back like a man with nothing to lose—and in an earthly sense he doesn’t. His friends are miserable at consolation. They actually speak falsely. They’re not helping. Job wants to know what in the wide, wide world of sports is going on.
The Lord hears it all.
Last week I told you in passing that I was a business major, but my first major was meteorology. Storms fascinated me, in fact, they scared me to death. I thought if I understood them better they wouldn’t frighten me.
Now, this was in a time when the radar products we have now wasn’t available. The paths of storms might have been known better to the professionals at the National Weather Service, but that sort of information wasn’t making its way to our homes. The first time I saw anything with storm tracking technology on television was in 1998. Then last month when Marie and I were here worshiping with you, while we were having lunch I got an alert on my cell phone about a Tornado Warning in Marion County and I could see the Hook Echo, a radar indication of a tornado, on my phone.
I feel better knowing where the chaos is and where it’s going, especially when it’s not heading for me. Who doesn’t? Working at the Motel 6 in Marshall, people are happy when I can tell them if the storm is bearing down on us and when it has passed.
Chaos, power, death; this is the whirlwind. The Hebrews knew this. The Hebrews knew the whirlwind was powerful. They knew it was mysterious. They knew it was unpredictable.
The voice of the Lord comes out of the whirlwind. Job wants to know what’s happening and why it’s happening to him and the Lord answers. Sort of. The Lord answers by showing Job how little he knows about the mystery of creation. Forget the mystery of God, forget the mystery of life, the Lord begins to tell Job how little he knows about creation.
Mark’s gospel gives us the Lord Jesus and another storm. Jesus and the disciples are on a boat on the sea during a tempest. Let’s remember that several of these disciples are fishermen, these guys know the dangers of the sea. These men knew that every year craft capsize and are lost. They knew people die every year on the water during storms just like this one. So what’s their Lord doing in the midst of this terror? Taking a nap.
Jesus is on the stern, resting on bags of ropes which could not have been comfortable. On that lumpy bag, being tossed on the sea; Jesus is sleeping while all around him is going to thunder. Finally someone asks the question of the hour, “Do you not care that we are perishing?”
I’m going out on a limb here, but that seems to be a universal question. “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” We have times in our lives, times of illness when we ask “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” There are times of oppression when we ask “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” There are times of anxiety when we ask, “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” There are times of fear when we ask, “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?”
In those times Jesus looks at the chaos and says, “Shalom, peace,” and the storm is stilled.
Amazed and afraid the people ask, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" A meteorologist can forecast the weather. A meteorologist can run a storm track to show where the storm is going, what way the wind is going to blow. Only God can calm the storm and the sea. Who is this? Who is this indeed. To take a line from C. S. Lewis, the disciples knew Jesus was good, but at this moment they could also tell he probably wasn’t safe.
Where is God? God is in the stern of the boat. God is in the whirlwind. Emmanuel, God is with us. When life has fallen apart around us, God is with us.
In the past several years Marie and I have been overwhelmed. Two churches have closed while I was their pastor. Medical bills reached epic and epidemic levels. We were covered in a mountain of debt. It wasn’t like we spent money on lavish vacations or high living. We even became homeless for a couple of months, with thanks to my boss for allowing us a room at the motel until we moved into a new apartment just yesterday. J. R. Briggs’ book “Fail, Finding Hope and Grace in the Midst of Ministry Failure,” calls this “non-moral failure.” I didn’t steal money or someone else’s affection, and yet…
Where was God? It was hard to see. It is hard to see, but God is right beside us. What if I hadn’t been working at the motel when we lost our old apartment? Marie was finally approved for full social security disability. It took way too long and that had financial consequences of its own, but she wasn’t denied in the end. As bad as our situation is, it could be far worse.
Last week I was working at the motel and got a Facebook post from the Rev. Sharon Risher, a seminary classmate and friend who is a hospital chaplain in Dallas. At 9:30pm on Thursday she posted this, “There had [sic] been a shooting in Charleston, SC @ Emanuel AME church. My home church! Please pray for all. Don’t have much info.” Eight hours later she posted this, “My mother was one of the nine victims killed last night in Charleston, SC. I’m at a loss and only know that the God I serve will receive her. Momma loved The Lord and her church. I know where she is, God will see my [sic] and my family thru. Thanks to all for your prayers, calls, and FB post. To God Be the glory. Pray without ceasing!”
I now have to add, it wasn’t until yesterday that I discovered that not only was Rev. Risher’s mother a victim of the shooter, so was her mother’s cousin. One family member is tragic. Two is reaching for a Job-like level of loss.
Where is God? In the midst of the whirlwind, chaos blows. The President calls for gun control. Fox and Friends calls for arming preachers. (Can you imagine me trying to get a “Dirty Harry” hand cannon out of these robes? I have enough trouble shutting off the microphone!) In the midst of the storm a lone gunman longs to ignite a 21st Century race war. In the midst of the danger lives are lost for the most flimsy of reasons and fingers are pointed for worse ones.
Where is God?
In the midst of terror and horror, in blood and death, as people use the tragedy of others to promote political agendas, where is God?
All I know, all I know is God is with us. God is with Job in sackcloth and ashes. God is with the disciples being tossed on the sea. God is with those who mourn in Charleston. God is with my sister Sharon. God is with us.
God is faithful when others are not. God is present when your friends judge you wrongly. God is with you when your closest confidants blame you for what get called “acts of God” which are anything but. God is with you when danger threatens your very being. God is with you when your livelihood is gone.
God is with you when a man who—I don’t have the words to describe—rips your mother and her cousin from this life because they’re black and love Jesus. God is with us when people take holy and personal tragedy to make political hay.
In our pain, in our suffering, when we are in the whirlwind being tossed like a salad, Emanuel, God is with us. God suffers with us. God mourns with us. God whose loving kindness is without bounds takes us and opens us and touches us.
The disciples ask who is this who can take our fear, or suffering, or pain, who is this who can take this away with a word of shalom, a word of peace? He is Jesus Christ.
Does this mean tomorrow I’ll be called to a new church for a wage that will settle my family’s financial woes and make student loan people will happy? No, but after not preaching for months, over the past several weeks I have served as a guest in three different pulpits and will be preaching and celebrating the sacraments over the next two weeks, so yes, we have been blessed.
As for what happened in Charleston, people are coming together in the name of the Lord to serve God’s people. Another seminary classmate has even put together a PayPal account to help Sharon with travel expenses. The President of the Carolina Panthers is paying the funeral expenses. God is with us calling us to be a blessing. We can’t bring back Rev. Risher’s mama or her mama’s cousin, but by the grace of God we can help her be with her family at this tragic time.
As for the mystery of the whirlwind, a friend shared these words from Rabbi Harold Kushner, “The role of God is not to explain and not to justify but to comfort, to find people where they are living in darkness, take them by the hand, and show them how to find their way into the sunlight again.”
We all live in the darkness, may we reach for the giver of light. May we then be the hands that takes others into the light again.
Amen.
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