mystery – Salvaged Faith

From Terror to Awe

Posted on December 4, 2022Leave a comment

Text: Luke 1:26-38, Isaiah 11:1-10

This morning, we find ourselves in the second Sunday of Advent… this season of waiting for the coming of Christ.

This Christmas story is so familiar and comfortable, we could curl up in it like a blanket.

We are ready for the heavenly choirs of angels mingling with the smelly shepherds in the field, for the time when wise men led by celestial signs witness the fragility of an infant of a manger.

It is a season of holy anticipation – not for experiences beyond this world – but ones that are embodied in things that we can touch and feel, live and breathe.

We are ready for God to come and be with us!

This morning, we hear again the story of the annunciation – the announcement! – from Luke’s gospel.

The angel Gabriel appears to Mary.

The angel proclaims that Mary is favored in God’s eyes – blessed among all women – for she will bear a child who will be called the Son of God.

Mary asks but one question: How will this happen?

After a brief and yet wholly inadequate explanation, she responds:

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

I first heard this story as a child and so the image seared in my mind of Mary is of a wise and beautiful woman, full of the grace of God, who was ready for whatever came her way.

She always seemed so much older than me, but truth be told, she was probably only sixteen or seventeen years old at the beginning of this story.

This young woman was living in a world of prearranged marriages and had likely been promised to her husband-to-be, Joseph, for many years.

It was a world where a woman’s only education would have been in the home.

It was a world of Jewish faithful living under a Roman occupation, a time of darkness and poverty, disappointment and despair.

And yet, she found the courage to say yes.

Because of the nature of the season, often we hear the annunciation on Sunday, and just a few days or weeks later we have a beautiful, bouncing, baby boy in a manger.

There are so many details we skip over… in part because we don’t know what happened.

The scriptures leave us to fill in the blanks.

Or as AJ Levine reminds us in her book, Light of the World, “Matthew and Luke are not writing for children… nor are they writing newspaper reports striving for historical accuracy. [They] are designed less to ‘record what happened’ than to set the scene: to explain to readers removed from that time and place what the birth of Jesus signifies.” (p. 11-12)

There are truths in this story that are more important than the details.

Truths we have handed down from generation to generation.

Last week, we heard the record of ancestry of Jesus Christ from Matthew’s perspective.

Matthew traces a Jewish history of Jesus from Abraham, to David, through Exile and to the father of Mary.

He shows the arc of the promises of the Jewish story and how Jesus is fulfilling them.

Luke is telling a different sort of story.

In the first verse of our reading for this morning, he notes that an angel appears to a virgin, engaged to Joseph, who was a descendent of David’s house. Her name was Mary.

Her name means Bitter Tears, but it also calls us to remember the “Mary’s” who would have been in her spiritual ancestry… like Miriam, the sister of Moses.

Miriam who rescued her brother from certain death, helped to lead the people out of Egypt, and was later known as a poet and a prophet.

The focus here is not just on the lineage from the house of David.

It is on the woman.

One woman.

And the decision that is before her.

But there is more to this one verse.

We often read it out of context, but this angel, Gabriel, is the same who showed up to announce the birth of John to Zechariah and Elizabeth… we heard a piece of that story earlier in November.

He offers a warm and joyful greeting, but you have to remember, this is not just a friendly neighbor stopping over.

This is an angel of the Lord.

When a messenger of God shows up in scripture, there is always a catch, as Levine describes it.

You are expected to give a response.

Our minds are taken to Abraham leaving behind everything he knows and moving to Canaan, or Moses leaving his quiet shepherd life to confront Pharoah.

When an angel of the Lord shows up, your life changes.

Mary’s response to these words is understandable.

She is filled with confusion and terror.

Everything that she has known in her quiet life in the small, quiet village of Nazareth is about to change.

Who will she become?

Where will she be asked to go?

What will she be asked to leave behind?

We all carry with us fears of the unknown, fears of standing out, fear of loss, fear of failure…

And… she doesn’t even know about the baby yet!

Gabriel sees the fear flicker in her eyes and reassures her even while sharing the news.

“Do not be afraid.”

These words come to us in the scriptures 365 times.

One for every day of the year.

“Do not be afraid.”

Dr. Christine J. Hong writes about how these words don’t actually make us less afraid.

“Every day, people are faced with untold grief and pain, and the gospel, or the good news, is not enough to take that pain and fear away. Hope sounds hollow to those who are enduring the wretched parts of life… courage rises despite our fear, not in its absence.” (A Sanctified Art Sermon Planning Guide)

And I think courage rises out of our fear when we know that we are not alone.

When we can trust that we will be given what we need to move forward.

As the angel Gabriel speaks, “Do not be afraid,” Mary is also given a glimpse of the future that awaits her.

She will have a child.

Not just any child, but the Son of God, who will inherit David’s throne, and reign over an eternal kingdom.

In other words… everything that they have been waiting for will come to pass.

And that can be scary.

And it will take acts of courage in order to bring it into being.

So Mary has a very important question to ask.

“How?”

She isn’t focused on the whole eternal reign of David’s kingdom piece… but wants to know what is going to happen to her own body.

As Wil Gafney notes, “Before Mary said, ‘yes,’ she said, ‘wait a minute, explain this to me.’”

“In a world which did not necessarily recognize her sole ownership of her body… this very young woman had the dignity, courage, and temerity to question a messenger of the Living God about what would happen to her body before giving her consent.”

Gabriel’s answer is less about biology or the mechanics, and more about a spiritual reality.

It is about the presence of God with us.

It is about the action of the Holy Spirit – a core theme in the gospel of Luke.

It is about impossibilities becoming real – evidenced by the pregnancy of her very old cousin, Elizabeth.

It is about a kingdom of oppression being taken over by a kingdom of love.

When we find the word “fear” in our modern translations of scripture, it can come from two very different root words.

Here, in Luke, we find the Greek word, phobos, from which we get the idea of phobias today.

Fear stops us in our tracks, holds us back, and can be destructive.

But we are also told to fear God in other places in scripture.

In Isaiah 11, we are reminded of this shoot growing from the stump of Jesse… a symbol of the heir of David’s Kingdom.

The Spirit of God will rest on him… a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord and he will delight in fearing the Lord.

The Hebrew word here is, yirah, and it implies a sense of reverence or awe.

I think part of what happens in this moment, and in the angel’s answer to her question is that Mary moves from terror to awe.

She moves from a fear of the unknown to a sense of awe about the impossible becoming possible.

In her memoir, This Here Flesh, Cole Arthur Riley writes, “I believe fear has the holy potential to draw out awe in us. To lead us into deeper patterns of protection and trust. To mold us into people engaged in the unknown, capable of making mystery of it instead of terror.” (p. 86)

As Isaiah tells it, and the hymn “O Come O Come Emmanuel” reminds us, God will come to be with us.

Christine Hong writes – “God’s spirit will intervene, leading to a world of righteousness and peace. Prey will no longer fear their predators. The vulnerable will be protected. All of creation will be filled with the wisdom of God.”

You see, God enters our fears.

God enters our struggle.

God enters our grief and pain.

It doesn’t always go away… but God is with us in the midst of it.

And in that presence, our fear is transformed.

We find the courage to say, “yes.”

We find the ability to say, “Here I am.”

We are given what we need in order to move past our apprehension and accept God’s invitation.

Two thousand some years ago, a young woman, a girl really, said “yes” to God’s invitation – and just look at how the world has changed.

It is how God has always worked.

From the very beginning, ordinary nobodies who hesitantly said “yes” to God were transformed by the spirit of God.

From the nomad Abram, to the murderer Moses, and shepherd boy David.

Each of them, in their own way, said “let it be with me according to your word.”

They opened themselves up to God’s will in their lives, despite their fears.

They answered the call and tried to live obediently.

And God accomplished amazing things through them.

Does that mean it was easy?

Did they suddenly face straight paths with no obstacles?

Of course not.

Mary could not know the course her life would take.

She would have to struggle to protect her child by fleeing to Egypt.

She would live to see her son crucified by the Romans.

Still fearing the unknown, she said, “let it be with me according to your word.”

The Word came and lived among us.

God took on flesh – God worked through human lives, and God’s will was embodied in the small “yeses” of many insignificant people.

And the world was changed.

Each of us have fears in our own hearts.

But God shows up in the midst of those fears and invites us to be transformed.

We find the ability to say yes, because we know the stories of these faithful ancestors who said yes.

But we also find the ability to say yes, because we hold onto beautiful impossibilities and the promises of what God’s love means in our lives.

In the midst of our grief and struggle and of all that is unknown, we know who holds the end of our story.

We stand in awe and reverence of what we know we are working towards:

A world where righteousness and equity reign.

A world where the wolf and the lamb sleep in peace.

A world in which we are led by a little child.

The fears of my heart cannot be quieted by anything I have at my disposal in this world.

But even in those fears, I need the Holy Spirit to do something new in our lives.

To do something new in our community and our world.

It is terrifying to think about what that might mean.

Because God doesn’t want to change the world without us.

And that means letting the Spirit of God dwell in my heart.

Not just on Sunday mornings, but every day, every moment.

Because if I… if you… if we really said yes, then everything would change.

That’s the point, isn’t it?

We don’t say yes because we are afraid of the risks.

We are afraid the path will be hard.

We are afraid to leave behind what we know.

And it will be.

And that is all hard.

But we don’t do it alone.

The angel Gabriel whispered to Mary, “Do not be afraid.”

If we say yes, God will be with us.

If we say yes, God will give us everything we need.

If we say yes, and face our fears, we might just see them transformed into the impossible.

May it be so.

Sing! Play! Summer! – Hymn of Promise / In the Garden

Posted on August 11, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Isaiah 46:8-13

I’m just going to say it out loud…
these have been some difficult weeks we have shared together:
The loss and grief we have experienced…
The pain in the world in the wake of mass shootings and the crisis of migration and climate…
The sense of helplessness about being able to do anything to make it better…

When I find myself feeling discouraged, vulnerable, and down about the world, it is usually the church that helps me to feel better.
The people… the songs… the prayer… the time spent in the presence of God.
But as United Methodists these days, there is also a sense that the church itself is stuck. Broken. Falling apart. We are so busy arguing about who is right and what should be done that we are completely out of tune with the real, deep needs of the world.

But then I sat down and began to study a number of chapters from our lesson for this morning.
God called this prophet to speak a word of comfort and release to a community in exile:
“Speak compassionately to Jerusalem and proclaim that her compulsory service has ended.” (40:2)
“I am the Lord your God, who grasps your strong hand, who says to you, Don’t fear; I will help you.” (41:13)
“I, the Lord, will respond to them; I, the God of Israel, won’t abandon them.” (41:17)
“I announced, I saved, I proclaimed, not some stranger among you. You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and I am God.” (43:12)
“Look! I’m doing a new thing; now it springs up; don’t you recognize it? I’m making a way in the desert, paths in the wilderness.” (43:19)
“Listen to me, house of Jacob… who have been borne by me since pregnancy, whom I carried from the womb until you grow old. I am the one, and until you turn gray I will support you.” (46:3-4)

“Remember this and take courage; take it to heart, you rebels… I am God! There’s none like me who tells the end at the beginning… saying ‘My plan will stand; all that I decide I will do.’” (46:8-10)

God, through Isaiah, is not speaking to a bunch of people who have it all together.
This is not a message for the perfect or the righteous.
This good news isn’t offered to people who have never known pain or hardship or frustration or grief.
No… they are wallowing in it.
Their country has been destroyed. Their loved ones killed. Their very way of life has crumbled.
They are struggling to make sense of what it means to go on, to take the next step, to move forward when everything familiar has been taken away.

And the words they hear from their God… The words WE need to hear from God…
“this, too, shall pass.”
“Don’t be afraid.”
“Remember.”
“Look around for the gifts in the grief.”
“I’ve got you.”
“In the beginning is the end, in the end is the beginning.”

Do any of those words offer answers? No.
Do they make it better right now? No.
But they do remind us that we are not alone.
They remind us that human life and institutions are fragile… just like the grass that dries up and the flower that withers (Isaiah 40:8)… but that we have been and are and will be held by and sustained by a word and a promise and a plan and a power that has always been and always will be.
These words of comfort offer strength when we might collapse in despair.
They invite us to be present. To pay attention. To embrace the unknown.
To trust that this moment is not all of the story or the end of the story.

This summer, we have been exploring the favorite songs of Immanuel and today we have grouped together two hymns that sing aloud those truths: “Hymn of Promise” and “In the Garden.”

When Natalie Sleeth wrote, “Hymn of Promise,” she was inspired by a line from T.S. Eliot that “in our end is our beginning” and the way the world itself reawakens with every spring. What is the nature of life and death when we hold in our hearts the promise of resurrection?
This hymn is yet another of these great songs we have been sharing that was written by a United Methodist. Her husband was a UM pastor and taught homiletics at Perkins while she shared her love of music in a local church and began writing anthems and hymns. She is the composer who brings us “Joy in the Morning” and reminds us that songs rise from silence, darkness becomes light, and death gives way to the victory of life.
But what I appreciate the most about Sleeth’s work is that it doesn’t paper over our grief or our discomfort or pain with flowery words.
It dives right into them.
She acknowledges them.
And she creates room for us to embrace that even in that brokenness and apparent death the mystery of wholeness and life and peace that is on the horizon.

We need to hang on to that mystery of the unknown.
I’m reminded of the words of Matt Rawle, whose book, “What Makes a Hero?” we studied over Lent a couple of years back.
He talked about the reason why it was so difficult for people to embrace Jesus as their Savior because we want a magic wand. We want a superhero savior who “will just swoop in and fix [ our problems].” (p. 125)
But if that savior is headed towards the reality of death – there is no saving there for us.
The crowds of people drastically misunderstood how Jesus saves us.
The kingdom Jesus ushers in doesn’t start in some heaven far away, but right here and right now.
Like a mustard seed planted in a garden or yeast hidden in flour, the kingdom breaks forth out of what we thought was dead, buried, hidden away.
The kingdom is the power of new life rising out of death.
The kingdom says that in every end there is a new beginning.
Our God can take any and every broken and painful moment we experience and redeem them.
They don’t go away.
But they are transformed.

Even the death of Jesus unexpectedly brings something new out of what we thought was over and done with.
Not immediately… but with time and work and patience and not a little bit of grace and power and glory.
The mustard seed becomes a great tree.
The yeast causes the bread to rise.
In the bulb there is a flower.
The stone that sealed the tomb is rolled away.

Which takes us to that other beloved hymn of Immanuel – “In the Garden.”
I say it is beloved, but the truth is, there are probably just as many people who despise “In the Garden” as cherish it.
I remember working to plan Dorie Campbell’s funeral and as we were deciding on what songs to sing, we picked “In the Garden,” fully knowing that she would have been upset with us for doing so because she thought it was grammatically inaccurate. Others find it to be too overly personal and ever erotic.
C. Austin Miles wrote this hymn after a mediation upon the resurrection story in the gospel of John. The language he uses is personal and intimate and it draws upon a tradition of devotional poetry where one imagines themselves in the story itself, part of the scene, walking and talking with Jesus.
We are invited to step into the shoes of Mary… to enter that garden filled with grief and love… and to encounter the resurrected Christ and the joy of new life.
But we also can’t stay there.
You see, in the third verse of that hymn, we find ourselves with a dilemma.
Sometimes we want to stay at the tomb with the stone rolled away.
That one perfect moment of hope when everything had fallen apart.
It’s better. We tell ourselves.
I’m going to stay right here forever.

But we can’t stay at the empty tomb.
We need to listen to the voice of Christ calling us to go.
Go out into the world.
Go and tell others what we have experienced.
Go and share the good news.
Go and offer signs of life and hope.

Like the prophet Isaiah, in the midst of the grief and pain of the world, we can’t keep the hope and promise to ourselves. It is our duty to head back out there and offer it to everyone we meet.
“this, too, shall pass.”
“Don’t be afraid.”
“Remember.”
“Look around for the gifts in the grief.”
“I’ve got you.”
“In the beginning is the end, in the end is the beginning.”

Mystery: Restored!

Posted on November 25, 2018Leave a comment

Text: Job 42:1-6, 10-17

This morning, I want to tell you a story about little Henry.
Henry walked to school every morning with his grandpa. And along their way, Grandpa would stop at the neighborhood store for a newspaper and a cup of coffee.
At the register, there were bins full of candies and gum and chocolates and every single morning, Henry would ask Grandpa if he could have some.
Every single morning, the answer was no.
Well, after several weeks of watching this, the cashier started to have a soft spot in her heart for the little boy. So one morning, as Grandpa and Henry came up to the register, the cashier said, “Good morning, Henry! How about this morning you reach in and get some of that candy you want… on me!”
Oh, he was SO excited! He reached out his hand to get some candy and then quickly pulled it back.
Instead, he grabbed Grandpa’s hand and shoved it into the bin with all of the sweets.
Grandpa was a bit stunned, and pulled back a whole fist full of candy.

As they kept walking to school, Grandpa was a bit puzzled. “Henry,” he asked, “Every single morning you ask me for candy… this is exactly what you have always wanted… why didn’t you pick out the candy yourself?”
Henry looked back at Grandpa with a grin on his face. “It is, Grandpa… but your hands are so much bigger than mine! My little hand was too small to get everything I wanted!”

There is a sense of Henry’s wisdom in our story of Job.
You and I, we are so small.
Compared with the stars and the oceans and the mountains and the vast diversity of creation, we are tiny specks of dust.
We might want to reach out and grab knowledge and answers and truth and faith… but our little hands are too small to get everything we want.
God’s hands are much bigger.
God’s wisdom is far greater.
God’s power is beyond our comprehension.

Last week, our youth took us through some of the mystery of God’s power and might.
We were reminded through song of just how powerful God is and how through the grace and the love of God, we can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and not be afraid.
When oceans rise, we can rest in God’s embrace.
In our troubled seas, God is our peace and God’s love will lead us through.
When we can’t feel a thing and are falling short, God says that we are loved and that we are held.

These messages of power are so important to the story of Job that we have been following these last few weeks.
At the beginning of November, we began to explore this little morality play in which a perfect, upright man, Job, is tested by God.
The Accuser has this question… will Job continue to be perfect and upright and faithful if things start to go badly for him? Or is he simply a fair-weather friend?
God allows this little experiment to proceed and Job’s flocks and livelihood and children are taken away from him. Even his own bodily health is impacted and he is covered in sores and finds himself in pain all day and night.
But still he refuses to turn his back on God.

The second part of our story involved Job’s friends.
They are convinced that Job must have done something wrong in order to have all of this punishment brought upon him.
They, like Job, firmly believed that good things happen to good people and that bad people get what they deserve. They see God as being the arbiter of retributive justice – where punishment and blessing is given out based upon someone’s faithfulness and goodness.
But for every one of their speeches, Job has one of his own.
He has done nothing wrong. He is innocent. If only he could have his day in court and stand before God, he could make his case and God would have to relent.
Job still believes at this point that God gives people what they deserve… and if he is being punished it is undeserved… and therefore… God is wrong.
Job is actually putting God on trial.

And as Isabel and Olivia reminded us in their message last week… God might be annoyed and a little upset at Job’s whining… maybe even perturbed at Job’s accusations… but the message God speaks out of the chaos and directly to Job’s heart is this: I created this whole world. I made everything in it. I understand how it works and am the very power that sustains it all. And… I love you. I’ve got your back.

For three chapters, God goes on and on and on about “the incomprehensible magnificence and immeasurable power of divine majesty.”
Were you there when I laid the earth’s foundations?
Have death’s gates been revealed to you?
Where’s the road to the place where light dwells?
Can you guide the stars at their proper times?
Do you know when mountain goats give birth?
Did you give strength to the horse?
Is it due to your understanding that the hawk flies?
Can you control the great beasts of the earth like the behemoth and the leviathan?

Job is stunned into silence.
He thought he had God all figured out… that God’s justice was some kind of divine math in which your goodness earned you points and blessings.
It actually reminds me of the television show, The Good Place, a comedy that explores ethics and morality and what we owe each other. The foundation of the afterlife in this universe is that for every good thing you do with selfless intent, you rack up points that allow you to enter “the good place” a place of eternal satisfaction.
But when you cuss, or stiff a waitress, or murder someone, points are deducted and without enough points, you end up in “the bad place.”

Job is living his life in a certain way, following all of the rules, making sacrifices for not only his potential sins but also those of his children, because he thinks that is what faith is about. Trying to earn God’s favor and blessing.

What he didn’t realize is that he already had it.
We all do.
The God who set the stars in motion and who knows about the birth of every mountain goat and how to direct the flight of a hawk also knows you and me intimately.
God knows every hair on our head.
God knows the divine plans in store for each of us.
And God’s justice is not a math equation.
Rather, it is a complicated, holy, grace-filled effort to take every broken, hurting, sinful thing in this world and to redeem and transform it back towards its holy purpose.
Job had only heard about God before… but now Job has seen God.
And God is far bigger, greater, more awesome than he ever imagined and his tiny way of grasping and understanding the world has been torn apart.

I think, if anything, this morality tale we find in the book of Job was an effort by early Jewish theologians to take apart what they believed was a very limited way of seeing God in the world.
So many people think that God is an impersonal judge who tallies right and wrong and who sits on the divine bench handing out punishments and rewards. And with such a calculated understanding of the divine, we can make no sense of that ancient question of why bad things happen to good people or why there is suffering in the lives of innocent people.
But our scriptures of our faith have a vastly different message for us about who God is and how deeply God cares for us.
Our God got down in the dirt and formed the first humans and breathed into them the breath of life.
Our God took imperfect people like Abraham and Noah and Jacob and through them, in spite of them, because of them, set in motion the divine plans for all the people of the world to be blessed.
Our God heard the cries of the people when they were caught in slavery in the land of Egypt and raised up a leader to bring them home.

In the end, what we find in the Book of Job are not easy answers to the question of why there is suffering. In fact, Job gets no answer or explanation for why so much was taken from him.
Instead, Job discovers that we are allowed to cry out when we suffer.
We should protest against injustice.
And we should open our lives and our hearts up to discover the ways that God is far powerful and more holy than we could ever imagine.
Before, Job had only heard about God.
But in the midst of his suffering and his yearning for truth, he encountered the very presence of God.
God reached out to him and in the process, Job found himself having a real, deepened, humble relationship with the Lord.
In our lives, we will face difficulties.
We will encounter diagnosis and questions that we cannot comprehend.
We will find ourselves asking why such awful things are happening in the world.
In these last few weeks, I have heard this very community raising up cries of concern for the death of loved ones, illness, wildfires, mass shootings, war, hunger, and homelessness.
None of these situations are deserved.
Innocent lives are impacted or harmed or taken far too soon.
We want answers and solutions.
And I think what we discover in the Book of Job is that there is no quick fix for the problems of this world. We can’t explain away why these things happen in a few words.
What we find instead is the presence of a God who is with us in the midst of it.
A God who hears every cry.
A God who seeks, in the words of Sharon Lynn Putt, “not to condemn and punish but to reconcile, to redeem, and to restore all of us to each other and to God.”

In the verses that we skipped in our reading for today, God reaches out to Job and invites him to offer up prayers and offerings for those three friends who had such a limited understanding of what was happening in Job’s life.
You see, even in the midst of restoring Job’s possessions, God is also working to redeem those relationships between Job and his friends.
And God is working to help transform and expand their understanding of how this world hangs together, too.

Our task, as we live out the truths of the Book of Job, is to listen to the suffering of others. To listen to our own pain. To not hide it, but hold it up into the light where God can show us that we are loved when we can’t feel a thing. We are strong when we think we are weak. We are held when we think we are falling short. We belong to God even when we think we don’t belong.
In that moment, we, like Job, can relent. We can surrender. We can lay our whole lives at the feet of God… knowing, trusting, believing… that no matter what happens, we are held in the hands of God.
Like Henry, our little hands aren’t big enough to fully grasp and understand the ways of this world. But God’s are.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

illustration adapted from Discipleship Ministry preaching notes

Mystery: Disoriented

Posted on November 4, 2018Leave a comment

Text: Job 1:1, 2:1-10

Throughout this month of November, we are going to be exploring the mystery of God’s presence and power and how unbelievable difficult it is to wrap our minds around. Through the book of Job, we will let ourselves be taken through a range of human emotions: grief, anger, humility, and love.
But above all, we are going to be wrestling with questions and not answers.
God’s questions of us.
The questions Job gets from his friends.
Our questions of God.
The questions we share about the whys and hows of this world.

Along the way, I’m going to invite us to rest in the mystery of God’s presence and promise and power… instead of jumping immediately to the answers. In fact… we might leave here today with even more questions to wrestle with… and that’s not a bad thing.

Will you pray with me…

In my early twenties I was living in Nashville and attending seminary. I had a trip scheduled to head back home for fall break and I was looking forward to some time away in a familiar place.
While I was there, my grandfather took a turn for the worse. Deda had struggled for a long time with diabetes and after a number of surgeries and amputations, infection was destroying his body.
My dad and I were able to drive to the hospital and spend the entire day with him. We watched the Hawkeyes win and we held his hand and tried to just be there for him. Two days later, he was gone.
I sat with family and planned the service. I gave a eulogy at the funeral. We laid him to rest.

All of this happened while I was away on our holiday break and when I came back to Nashville, it was like stepping into a different world.
I was heading back to a place where no one knew my Deda. No one even really knew how sick he had been.
I hadn’t missed any classes. I didn’t have to check in with any professors.
Even my work-study job didn’t notice that a significant experience
And heading back to that place where no one else understood my grief or my loss was disorienting.
So disorienting in fact, that just a day after arriving back in town, I tried to leave church without talking to anyone. I just didn’t want to get into it and explain it over and over again.
This is going to sound strange, but I wanted comfort and condolences, but not if I was going to have to rehearse the story to get them. I wanted a hug… but no one knew that I needed one.
So I rushed out the door… I quickly backed out of the parking spot… and accidently ran into a large concrete parking barrier… doing a couple thousand dollars of damage to my fiancé’s car.

Every single one of us, at some point in our lives, have moments of disorientation.
The loss of a job.
The death of a loved one.
Sending a child off to college.
Stubbing your toe on a nightstand in the middle of the night.

Disorientation is when we lose our sense of direction and are no longer sure which way is up, down, or sideways.
We find ourselves unsure of the next step.
We can’t quite get a handle on how to function in a new or changing role.
And sometimes, in the process of being disoriented, we find ourselves turning away… running away… from the very things that have been our source of help and strength – our anchor in the storm.
Sometimes, we find ourselves stubbornly clinging to something we thought we knew or an old way of functioning… even when it no longer serves our needs in a new context.

We should expect a bit of disorientation from Job as we begin to explore his story this week.
There once was a man who lived in the land of Uz…
It sounds like the start of a fairy tale, doesn’t it?
And in some ways it is.
The book of Job is not meant to be a historical factual retelling of actual events, but a work of philosophy told as a drama… think of Antigone by Sophocles or Candide by Voltaire. Through the lens of the characters, the audience has an opportunity to wrestle themselves with questions of life.

We are introduced to Job, a perfect man, with a perfect life, and perfect wife and family. He was honest and he feared God. He even offered extra offerings on a regular basis on behalf of his children… just in case they had made a mistake and had been unfaithful to God.
But as the story unfolds, there is a sort of wager made in heaven.
The Lord is so proud of how faithful Job has been, but the Adversary – the Accuser – ha Satan – has some questions.
Is Job only able to be so faithful because he has never faced difficulty?
What would happen if he were truly tested?
The Lord agrees to let the Adversary bring destruction upon Job so they might see what would happen.
First, his herds are stolen and his servants killed.
Then, his children are killed when a wind comes and collapses the house they are in.
But instead of cursing God, instead of being angry, he laments and blesses God’s name.
Our scripture picks up after these events.
Alright, the Adversary, acknowledges… he was able to remain faithful – but those were just things. We took away from Job… but we didn’t actually harm HIM.
If he was truly tested… bodily tested… in the flesh… then Job would turn away from the Lord.

This is one of those places where I start to have more questions.
Job has done nothing wrong.
The suffering and the loss he is experiencing is completely undeserved.
And yet God allows it to happen.

Job is stricken with sores from head to toe – so severe that they are only soothed by taking a broken piece of pottery and scraping at them. I mean… gross…
And still, he refuses to turn away from his faith.
He refuses to be angry at God.
He clings to his beliefs – in good times and in bad, he says.

Job’s pain is so excruciating the scripture tells us that he couldn’t stand up or lie down. His friends couldn’t recognize him when they came to visit. He was utterly broken.
Can you imagine his pain?
Can you imagine his confusion – why are these things happening to me?
What did I or my children or my ancestors do to deserve this?
How can I possibly move forward or rebuild my life after what has happened?

Into this moment, his wife speaks.
Mrs. Job invites him to curse God and die.
Now, those might seem like harsh words… but remember she, too, has experienced unbearable loss.
Her children have died, too.
Her flocks and livelihood have been stripped away.
Her husband is suffering in unimaginable pain.
She is angry and heartbroken and confused and just as disoriented as Job.

And so she encourages him to let it out… let out all of that pain and grief and anger.
Shout at the heavens! she cries.
Let go of your stubbornness and integrity.
Demand that God tell you why you are being tested so.

We sometimes hear her words and cringe… We can’t question God like that!
Curse God? Doesn’t that lead to destruction?
And yet, the Lord has no harsh words for Mrs. Job.
As our story unfolds in the next few weeks, what we discover is that perhaps Job is stubbornly clinging to an old understanding of faith that is no longer adequate for the suffering of this world.
It will only be when he does open himself up to reach out and question God that he finally is able to re-orient himself to a new reality.

In the midst of the disorientation of our lives, it is hard to know where to turn.
Sometimes we are tempted to completely turn away from God.
Sometimes, we find ourselves stubbornly clinging to old ways and in the process close ourselves off from change and possibility.
In fact, I think that if Job simply sat there in the ashes and the dust and refused to engage God in questions, his relationship with God would have become stagnant, wrote, expected.

I think part of what we are invited to discover in these chapters is that things happen in our lives that are completely out of our control.
We don’t always know why.
We can’t always understand.
But every moment of disorientation contains within it the opportunity to re-orient ourselves upon our Creator, our Redeemer, our Sustainer.
If we are lucky, the relationship we have with God when it is all said and done will be deeper and more faithful than when we began.
We will let go of our assumptions and we will allow our lives and our hearts to be expanded in the process – to become more compassionate, more humble, more faithful.

So stick with us for a few more weeks as we continue this journey through Job. Next week, we jump a ways ahead to chapter 23 – so take some time this week on your own time to read some of these chapters in between.
Sit with Job in his suffering.
Listen to the words of his friends and ask how you would feel if they were spoken to you.
And open up your heart for how God might be speaking to your pain, your sorrow, and your disorientation.
Let yourself feel it.
Let yourself experience it.
Let yourself sit in the mystery.