Proper 27C / Pentecost +22 November 6, 2019

Prayer

Work in our times the wonders of your grace, so that the whole world may see that those cast down are being raised up, and what has grown old is being fashioned anew, and all creation is moving forward toward fulfillment through the One who is the beginning and end of all, the Christ who was, who is and who is to come. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on Luke 20:27-28

"However I feel about Jesus? reply to the Sadducees concerning the poor woman with seven consecutive husbands, I am glad that Jesus cited Exodus to demonstrate to his opponents why he believed that God 'is God not of the dead, but of the living, for they are all alive to him.' This is certainly my experience."

"Monastic Mentors," Roberta C. Bondi, The Christian Century, 2004.

"'He makes us no promises about death,' Joseph said. 'He makes us promises about life. I do not know what he promises to the dead if he promises them anything'."

"God of the Living," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.

"God is the certain detail which hope has. The rest one might add is speculation or the brushstroke of imagination."

"First Thoughts on Year C Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 25, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

For those of you who preached and celebrated the Feast of All Saints and are moving on with Luke, I have a few thoughts.

We cannot look at this story and not see the contrast between Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God and the religious institutions' understanding of it. The religious institution of the day sees the reign of God in political terms. Jesus is speaking in a wholly different manner.

You must read Luke Timothy Johnson’s perspective on this. It is too long to quote but he clearly puts forth the religious argument that the kingdom and politics are connected. I will give you only this quote from the end of his insightful paragraph: “Finally, we see the symbolic expression of such a closed-horizon religion: the professional religionists who find their reward in earthly recognition in public acclaim and prestige, but who cannot be content with that, and oppress others even as they parade a public piety.” (LTJ, Luke, 318) Ouch! These are strong words and powerful ones for those of us who sit in the seats of power in our congregations and in diocesan offices.

Jesus, instead argues is “expressing the deepest convictions of the Christian community concerning its understanding of the kingdom of God. God owns ‘all things’ and ‘all things must be given back to God, but this allegiance is not spelled out in terms of specific political commitment, rather it transcends every political expression. No king, not even a Jewish king, not even David’s son, can receive the devotion of ‘all the heart and soul and strength and mind’ but only God.” (LTJ, Luke, 318)

The point Jesus is making when he makes the reply is precisely this: our God is a God of the living. We cannot attempt to pin God down through the mechanisms of this world. The world that is being reshaped as the reign of God is a living world entirely new, completely redeemed, transformed, and restored from the life we experience today. Yes, we do experience the first fruits of God’s reign but at the same time, we cannot believe for a second that God does not have the power to restore all things to life. We see only dimly then what God sees and offers us in his son Jesus Christ clearly.

You and I get so caught up in the world and our cultural contexts that we at times foolishly believe we perceive as God perceives. Behold though, all things are being made new. It is the living, the Holy Spirit, and the Christ of God that we are to share. 

Can we in the days, months, and years to come share the living God more than we protect the church politic? Can we set aside the Constantinian notions of Christendom, which are as carefully guarded as those of Jesus' day sought to protect their own religion? Can we become missionaries once again? Can we dare to share the living Christ with all those who we meet? 

We are given the opportunity to lift our heads from the political infighting of our daily religious life to see that the living Jesus has left the church building and is calling us back out into the world in order to participate in the reign of God unleashed as a living spirit in the world. Can we reclaim the Pentecost moment not as the birth of the Church but rather as the beginning of a new missionary spirit, which is at work in the world around us?

I leave you with these words from Luke Timothy Johnson:

“Finally, this kingdom is symbolized by the widow, who though left all alone in human terms, is not only herself alive but capable of giving life by sharing ‘all her living’ with others.”

Some Thoughts on 2 Thessalonians 2:1-17

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

Recently a friend told me that they are not worried about the end of the world because the bible says it won't happen until Damascus falls. (Isaiah 17)  A week later a woman told me her son-in-law believed we were in the midst of the end of the world...so I told her that the bible says that Damascus must fall before that happens.  She was comforted and it enabled us to talk more about what was really troubling her.  I tell you this story only because concern over the end times is not something new by any stretch, and perhaps is only more prominent because of the many start-up churches and internet sights willing to talk about it, the successful series of books entitled "Left Behind", and our culture's fascination with post-apocalyptic movies!

One of the key theological issues Paul is dealing with is in the idea that the end is here.  He instead begins:  As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here."

Paul is aware that there are people spreading such news and with it panic.  He offers to them examples of signs that must occur but have not yet occurred.  Paul is clear that the "lawless" one is not yet among us and therefore that we should not be concerned with such things but rather redouble our efforts in other areas.

Paul reminds the people of the Ephesian church that God has already chosen them, that God is even now blessing them and revealing himself to them.  That God calls and invites participation in the good news so that they might in the end participate in the heavenly kingdom.  Their work is to stand firm in their faith and their traditions. They are to remember, concerning these things especially, what Paul and others have taught.  They are to be about the work of spreading the gospel.  

They are to be comforted and strengthened in their work by the very words of God which offer hope for them - even in an age of anxiety.

This passage works well with the Gospel of Luke passage in that both are about living in response to God's good news.  People who follow Christ are to be concerned with life and the living of it as examples of Christ's love. Their actions are to glorify God.  They are not to idle away the days and years concerned about events that they cannot possibly know the hour or day upon which the Lord will return.  This is in simple fact not the business of the church; the mission of the church is reconciliation in our time through a ministry that always and everywhere reveals God's mercy, love, and forgiveness.

Some Thoughts on Haggai 1:15 - 2:9

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Wil Gafney, writing for Working Preacher, helps me think about the message of Haggai to the people regarding their temple:

'How many of you remember the good old days? Does this new temple hold a candle to the previous one? Buck up Z! Hold your head up Josh! Everyone, keep working! You have nothing to fear, I am here and I am with you all. And it won’t always be like this. I will bring resources – treasure – from far away lands and in its final form, this holy house will be even better than the one Solomon built!'

She writes, 'In some ways, each successive generation of Israelites tried to live into this promise by continually expanding and renovating the temple, as did Herod in the New Testament. (This is one thread underlying the synoptic story in which the disciples swell with pride when they show Jesus the fancy work on the perpetual temple project and their horror when he says the whole thing will come tumbling down, see Matthew 24:1-2; Mark 13:1-2; Luke 21:5-6.)... It is easy to focus on the material promise: one day the returnees will be more prosperous.'

I was also struck by these words from John Holbert writing for Patheos, 'Yes, Haggai wanted a rebuilt temple, but clearly not for its own sake. The bricks and mortar of any building have no meaning apart from the conviction that God has brought us out of the bondage of Egypt and remains with us still. No matter what this building looks like, God is here, and God is working.'

Haggai was one of the last prophets before the age of sages in the Jewish tradition. We often break this up between major and minor prophets in Christianity. Yet was seems very important is that the age or break concludes as God comes and dwells in the temple. We get so focused on the nature of the temple in Haggai's writing that we miss some of what is to come next. The people of Israel after the destruction of the first and second temples will have to make sense of the events. Their understanding will begin to shift to the attitude that there is shared responsibility for the living word in the midst of the people. 

Here is how Rabbi Jonathan Sacks spoke of the change, 'Note the difference between the two approaches. The Prophet takes a heroic stand but does not take responsibility for whether the people listen or not. The Rabbis do not take a heroic stand. In fact, they democratise the responsibility for rebuke so that it applies to everyone. But they are ultra-sensitive to whether it is effective or not. If there is a chance of changing someone for the better, then you must try a hundred times, but if there is no chance at all, better be silent. This is not only a wise approach; it is a highly effective one.'

What we hold in our hand here is a shift from a centralized view of the Temple to a means of understanding the living word of God in the midst of the people. That the major prophets had a vision for the whole, distant, and present regardless of the action of people. Yet as we see in these verses a change is occurring wherein the people are invited to be representative of the 'temple' in the world. They are to be neighbors to one another and to seek to build a particular tribal society.

What we then begin to understand about Jesus, from this revelation, is that he comes to fulfill this work. He further takes the shape of the great high priest, the temple of the body (not only an ecclesia or church) itself becomes the place in which the living Word is present through our actions. We are not building a throne/nation in league with Christianity - as in the lie of Christendom. Instead, we have in the Haggaic invitation an opportunity to be a different people within the world that we find ourselves, whatever context.

 

Some Thoughts on Job 19:23-27a

Oremus Online NRSV Text

"The first two chapters of Job are the curtain raiser of the drama, the opening act of the play, designed to present to us the old God, the God whom Israel so often claimed to know and worship. A new God is set to emerge later in the play."

"Just Who Is God, Anyway?" John Holbert, Patheos, 2015.

"Perhaps the biggest question for people of faith is this: How can a God whom we believe to be good and just allow or even instigate what we see and experience as evil?"

Commentary, Job 1:1, 2:1-10, Karla Suomala, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"We enter this week into one of the most difficult and theologically sophisticated books of the Old Testament: the book of Job."

Commentary, Job 1:1, 2:1-10, Kathryn Schifferdecker, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"The idea that God blesses the faithful, rewarding the righteous with what they deserve, and that the opposite, trials and tribulation, are signs of being out of sync with God?apparently the prosperity gospel is nothing new under the sun?is rejected outright by Job."

Commentary, Job 1:1; 2:1-10, Karl Jacobson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

So let us talk about Job the devil and me. 

We have a precious few weeks to talk about Job as it is rare that the book comes up in our reading. This is a very important biblical text, almost always misunderstood, and avoided because of its odd nature. Job is God's suffering servant. Quotes about Job fill our cultural vocabulary like "suffering like Job" or the "patience of Job". 

The text is a really a tale, a story, a narrative with characters of virtue. It is one meant to be told and listened to. I find it loses a bit when it is read. There is some biblical criticism that seems to prefer the unity of the soliloquies of Job to his friend's speeches. Moreover, there is some critical argument about the integrity of the text. There is a popular theological view that winds its way from the discourse that invites us to think that Job is God's suffering, patient, and faithful servant. 

We in church have a kind of popular sentimentality towards Job's cause. We recognize his complaining in our own complaints. We make Job into a modern man with modern sensibilities and philosophies. His internal angst is appealing and his speaking out against God gives voice to our own hostility towards transcendence. In Job we project all of our post modern anxiety. Out of his mouth we hear our own frustration with our adopted therapeutic moral deism. In Job we see our frustration with God's distance and our fractured narratives.

We enjoy the friends' taunts and their holding him accountable. We allow him to be our psychological scapegoat for our feelings of theological discomfort with a God who allows evil in the world. Job is a book that allows us to in a sense put God, the Bible, theology, and religion on trial for the horrors we find in the world around us.

When we do this, and this is how we so often read and talk about job, we engage, as René Girard the religious philosopher explains, 

"a naive theodicy that would serve as a paradoxical pretext to its contrary, the questioning of this theodicy, and from there the shaking up of religion, which modern interpreters consider the necessary goal of all sincere reflection on the misfortune of human beings... So concerning what is essential in the book of Job, there are two responses. The first is the patience of Job, his obedience to the will of God. The second, the modern response, is Job the rebel, Job the protester en route toward the virulent atheism of the contemporary Western world."

There is a second reading here as well. Perhaps it is a subtext to the first. This reading proposes that Job is actually poorly treated by God. This may appear like the same argument. It is but from a slightly different angle. But the angle is important. The first reading allows us to focus on God and God's seeming injustice. This second subtext is about how evil and bad things are completely exterior to human control. In other words, evil in the world is divorced from humanity. It is independent. Such a reading verges on the ancient heresy of dualism where God and the Devil have equal power and humanity is caught in the middle. You can read about dualism here or here.

[Before we go much further, I want to be transparent and say that the most influential writing that has both enlivened a rereading of Job and challenged me is the work of René Girard. If you are not new to the blog you know that I like his writing a great deal. As we parse out this passage I am going to lean heavily on Girard here - shall we say exclusively? I am going to paraphrase Girard's argument in part to continue to deepen my own understanding and in part to connect it to our present day work. I am writing with with the following in mind: Chapter 12 - Job as a Failed Scapegoat, by René Girard found in Excerpt from The Voice from the Whirlwind: Interpreting the Book of Job, edited by Leo G. Perdue and W. Clark Gilpin, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992, pages 185-207. You can read this chapter here.]

The problem as Girard points out is that both readings don't actually go with the book/story. Satan is not equal to God and must get God's approval to act. This leads us down the road that God takes our parents and our children from us. "God needs them in heaven" we suggest poorly. Or, "God is punishing us", we tell ourselves. This of course is hogwash theology and really bad pastoral and self care!

There is another problem as well. We are tempted to put Job in the part of a character in a Greek tragedy. He was happy, now he suffers. Job was a good and faithful man. Job had friends, family, and wealth. He was looked to as a leader and a man of honor. All of this is lost. In his lostness he must be being punished. The friends who taunt, cajole, and practically celebrate his demise are those who appear to speak for God. What is interesting though...is that in the Greek tragedy the hero who falls quickly understands his place in the drama. He agrees with the voices of the God's. Girard exegetes Oedipus as an example of a Greek character who "quickly agrees with his persecutors."

Job on the other hand does not do this. Job takes the role of living out the psalmist's cries to God. In this way the place of Job and his suffering in the world rejects the notion that God is the one who is making the suffering happen. The psalmist, like Job, defends himself against the "collective" voices and ideas of those who surround him like dogs surround carrion.

What do we have left? Who is this Job? How are we to interpret the texts over the next few weeks? How do we do so with integrity to the tale as a whole steering clear of poor dualistic theology and even worse pastoral approaches to evil?

What the friends mimic an perpetuate is the misinformed notion that religious violence is acceptable. In this way the friends see Job as the scapegoat. He protests his innocence, which is not a lie. Yet his friends offer a theology of violence where God punishes the deserving. But this is not at all what is happening in the story! Not at all.

What the friends do is what people do when they perpetuate mimetic violence in religion, they side with and justify the idea of a violent God. They have a false piety that places them with the lesser mythological gods of violence that demand sacrifice. Girard writes, "

"...The theology of the four friends is nothing but an expression, a little more refined and evolved, of the theology of violence and the sacred. Any sufferer could not suffer except for a good reason in a universe governed by divine justice. He is therefore punished by God, and pious conduct for those surrounding him consists in their conformity with the divine judgment, treating him as guilty and so multiplying further his sufferings. This is indeed the theology of the hidden scapegoat. Every sufferer must finally be guilty because every guilty person ends up by falling into misfortune, and if God delays a little too long in executing his justice, human beings will take it upon themselves to speed up the process. Everything is thus for the best in the best of worlds."

The poor, the migrant, the homeless, the hungry, and the abused (sexually, violently, and psychologically) must in the end deserve what they get. This is how pervasive violence is in the subtext of our religion and how it misinforms the subtext of politics and societal norms. Again, Girard,

"The evil one is cursed by God, and the worst disasters will certainly befall him. And when the friends of Job speak to him, they evoke plague, the sword, fire, flood, famine, and poison (see 20:22-29)."

Why is Job so difficult? Because we in our own time perpetuate mimetic desire, that leads to violence, and scapegoating. In this way our society and culture informs the narrative of Job instead of the other way around. 

But the theology is clear once the enmeshed culture of violence and its hermeneutical lens is removed. In this way we cannot preach this first passage without first removing the lens of religious and cultural violence; and secondly, without reading the whole passage. 

As you do so you will no doubt see at the climax Job is surrounded by his frenemies and begins to echo their own words. Here is the high point of the false God proclaimed, here is the climax of religious violence sanctioned, and here is the worst of prehistoric violent religion. See 19 when Job himself echoes the words of his friends: "Pity me, pity me, you, my friends,for the hand of God has struck me.Why do you hound me down like God, will you never have enough of my flesh?" (19:21-22)

Yet this is when things change radically. As if waking from a dream Job realizes that this theology, his religious understanding of suffering and who God is, is quite different. Here then is the God of the Bible. Here is the God of peace. Here is the God of love. Here what was hidden by our human blindness, our own self orientation, is now seen clearly. Job, as if having his eyes open, rejects the hermeneutic lens of religious violence that his friends have suggested. Job instead sees the situation that he is in as that which is perpetrated by humanity. He sees that his suffering is not condemnation by God but instead a deep theology of shalom. Job sees clearly he has been a pawn all along in the game of religious violence. Here then he takes up this theology over and against those that surround him. Job reveals, what Jesus reveals, and that is that God and God's ways are stumbling block for humanity.

Job says that the people have made him a dung heap, a burning pitch, a burnt offering. (17:6) Job has become, he suggests, their scapegoat. he has become their example. Societal violence, political violence, justifies itself by suggesting the guilt of the innocent. Here is an important precursor to Jesus...is it not? 

Job has been the sacrificial offering to help purify his community, he has been the exemplar of what happens when you do not behave, for surely this man is guilty say his friends. This is of course the opposite of the servant girl's words at the thought of Jesus unjust death, where at the same moment Peter (Jesus' friend) denies him, and should these not be the words of the reader of Job, surely this man was innocent!

Girard picks up Aristotle here and points out that we need, like his friends, for Job to be guilty. There is a lesser god mythology played out in our religious violence when we read the text. That is one of greek katharsis. This of course is not at all what is going on. Yet, so pervasive is our own civil myth and cultural religious and societal violence that we must read see Job as God's victim so that we might live just lives. Job himself points out the truth of his friends' theology, and the truth of our own when he says,

As for you, you are only charlatans,

physicians in your own estimation. (13:4)

And in a passage of closely related meaning he says:

You would even cast lots over the fatherless,

and bargain over your friend. (6:27)

The friends themselves are the ones who perpetuate the myth. Read now again, as for the first time, their words:

Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?

Or where were the upright cut off?

As I have seen, those who plow iniquity

and sow trouble reap the same.

By the breath of God they perish,

and by the blast of his anger they are consumed. (4:7-9)

In this theology, as we have said above, only the wicked suffer. God punishes the wicked and Job must be wicked for he is suffering. This is the lie that unravels the Gospel paradox: in death one gains life, in suffering one is Christ like, in being lost one is found. What becomes ever more clear then as we read our passage for this week and over the next few Sundays, is that Job sees clearly that humanity relishes violent religion. Moreover, the lesser violent gods of society, politics, and religions are not the God he worships. In this way Job suggests (13:7-8) that humans are taking the role of the satan - of the accuser.

Girard is brilliant in framing what happens next. He writes,

"Unable to find a defender among human beings, Job has no choice but to address himself to God. It is there that the Judaic religious genius shows through so brilliantly: Job addresses God against every probability, so it seems, for everyone agrees in saying that God himself punishes him, that God himself puts him on trial. Very often he bends before it, and the appeal that he launches is so contrary to good sense (even he himself thinks) that it sounds almost ridiculous:

Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven,

and he that vouches for me is on high.

My friends scorn me;

my eye pours out tears to God,

that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God,

as one does for a neighbor. (16:19-21)

Here is what is so beautiful. The God that Job begins to speak about is the God of the victims. This is a God who takes up for the victims. This is the God who heard people crying out in slavery. This is a God who looks for the lost. This is a God who cares about the widow and the orphan. This is a God who is interested, very interested, in the victims of political, social, and religious violence. This is a God who weeps at the religious sacrifice of Abel by Cain who is jealous. It is the same God who rejects the religious sacrifice of Isaac.

Ahhhh...and here enters the Incarnation. Here enters the Christ! Job suggests that if God could be go'el (19:25), the redeemer, the defender of the oppressed, the advocate, then this god would be truly the messianic God.

I, like Girard, recognize conflicting material here. It is the same in the story of Isaac and elsewhere. Girard generously says, "the text hesitates." It is, Girard, suggests the Holy Spirit, that supports Job in this moment over and against his friends who so clearly want to see this as religious violence. It is the living word I believe that bolsters Job in this moment.

Girard points out that the traditional read deals with theodicy where in bad things happen to good people and the problem of evil in the world. But this is nothing more than repeated the ancient theology of the victimizing religion of Job's friends. Evil that is done by humanity is very present and to project that into the divine is to repeat the victimization and scapegoating of that old time religion. Girard puts it this way, "The evils due to human agency are the most terrible and must engage our attention more than the evils produced by nature." This becomes ever clearer when we put the hermeneutic of the gospel over this story. Think of Jesus speaking about the accidental collapse of the tower and how this is not divine action at all. (Luke's Gospel chapter 13) Jesus clarifies and puts an end to the theology that perpetuates that the good things and bad things that happen out of circumstance and context, by weather, by storm, by accident are some how divinely ordained. Here then is the affirmation of the Gospel lens attached to Job.

No, the true evils suffered by Job are those that come from his fellow brothers and sisters.

Girard has a great metaphor for the theology of the friends: tourist theology. They inhabit a metaphysics of those who think life is a deluxe voyage. Girard writes:

"To pose the question of evil as though evil were in every case a matter of one problem, that is, anything that affects my own precious self, making it suffer, or simply irritating me, is not to pose the question of Job. This self-concern is rather what I would call the metaphysics of the tourist, who conceives that his or her presence in this world is essentially like a deluxe voyage. He or she happily admires the lovely terrains and sunsets, is moved by the monuments left by past civilizations. He or she deplores modern ugliness and complains of the general insipidness, because now everything resembles everything else and there are no more differences. He or she becomes noisily indignant about the poverty encountered, is perpetually engaged in head-shaking, like Job's friends. But above all this tourist complains about the organization of the voyage and is going to transmit a complaint to the management. He or she is always ready to return his or her ticket, and the expression "return one's ticket" is typical of those who travel for their own pleasure or who go to a spectacle. This mentality of the frustrated tourist produces vehement curses concerning what is called the problem of evil. If God exists, how can he tolerate the evil present in the world? If God exists, he can be only the supercop, and in his mode of being as supercop he could at least protect us against the many disagreeable incidents of our passage through the world."

There is one response to this which says, "Yes, but what about death. No one escapes the grave." But the Gospel again comes to the Job's of this world with help. Christ is the conqueror of this death. Christ put the end to human sacrifice. Christ put an end to needing to adhere to religious scapegoating. Christ put an end to the violence of humankind (in word and deed) that works on behalf of powers and authorities. When we go down to the grave, making our claim, "hallelujah, hallelujah, death meets there not our fallen selves but the Christ of the cross, death, and resurrection.

Not even our sibling rivalry of mimetic desire can possibly keep us from an eternity spent in the grave.

What I am saying here, and I find myself in deep agreement with Girard, is that we must read the book of Job not as a text that in itself is self referential. To do so is just another humanism that pulls from the text the Gospel and incarnation that is present within the story. No, we are to read with the eyes of the Gospel of Resurrection and Jesus.  Girard concludes his essay/chapter on Job with these words, "In the world where the vicious cycle that imprisoned Job is opened up, everything becomes allusion to the Resurrection!"

Turning to Job's Text this week

In today's passage we have the story's context set up for us. Job is from the land of Uz. He was blameless and upright. He was faithful and turned away evil.

Where is evil from? Evil is from humanity and has been dwelling in the midst of humanity. It is not an equal power God or even a creature of God. 

We then see in our passage that old time religion where God punishes humanity. That religion tells people that God allows Satan to test people through natural illness, plague, collapsing towers, and even human towers. This God becomes a sinister being and the preacher who undertakes this preaching must lean on the above and proclaim the Gospel that redacts this teaching. 

This is a difficult passage for you must redact the words of Job. Our lectionary does you no favors. And, to let Job's words echo in the ears of our people is to do perpetual religious damage. God does not give some evil and some bad; and, certainly not to test people. 

What you can do is speak to the fact that Job denies the idea that God should be cursed for the evil in this world - the corrupted human desire that uses violence for the gaining of powers. God is not to be cursed for human perpetuated evil and religious sacrifice. God is not to be cursed for our human love to devour each other, or enact the great sacrifice of Isaac. No, that is humanity's work. God is not to be cursed at all but instead praised for not allowing evil, violence, victimization, scapegoating, and even death to have the last word. 

No God in Christ Jesus becomes a fellow victim of human evil. The Christ becomes a scapegoat. Christ even joins us in the grave. Moreover, Christ suffers all at the hands of humanity's search for stable power and religion. Christ suffers all by the hand of human violence that seeks to quiet the truth of God's love. 

As we turn to Job 23:1-9, 16-17 we have skipped over a ton of material! Again, another disservice by our lectionary. It is difficult to take all of it in. But, I do think you have to say something. I don't think this passage stands alone very well. It certainly doesn't make much sense without a few brief comments about the chapter just before. So, let us start there.

Job's frenemies, Eliphaz the Temanite,  have challenged Job saying, "Do you really think that God has use of mortal creatures?" Of course, we know that God has created human beings as partners and invited us to be about the work of creating with God a garden social imaginary. God has invited us to be partners in building community. And, God is interested in having us in the midst of the creation so we can walk with God in this place. So, while oftentimes preachers use the friends as teachers of theology we need to be careful and this is true right off from the beginning.

Job's friends then twist their argument and make it about God's desire that we be "righteous". Which means to fulfill God's purpose for us. But this is not really what they are arguing. Eliphaz the Temanite is trying to make the case that it doesn't matter to God if we reject the mimetic sibling rivalry of the world and that it doesn't matter to God if we continue to perpetuate evil and brokenness in the world around us.

Then, though Job himself is blameless and has been living the life God imagines, out of desire and jealousy his friends suggest that Job is wicked after all. Then they make God out to be a God who desires human sacrifice for wickedness. "It is God that is sending this terrible time upon you", they quip. They even use scripture against Job to show that God is punishing him for untold inequities - which we know from the very beginning of our tale Job has not once committed. So it is that Job's frenemies suggest that he should curse God and be done with it.

Job then answers their twisted theology. Job is suffering and he wishes to go to God. He wants to know, "Is God with me in this suffering?" Job asks what so many people who are victims say, "Where is God?"

Then we skip several verses. The problem here is that if we skip these verses we are apt to let the people believe that Job has not been good and deserves this punishment. Therefore, talk about the missing verses! What they tell us is that Job has been faithful, he has followed God's ways to the very best of his abilities, he has spoken of God's goodness and love with his lips, and he has treasured God's story in his heart. And, like Moses Job tells us he has the fear of God within him.

And, out of his pain and suffering, he wishes that this would pass. This is how the passage ends. Job is in so much pain and suffering he just wants it to be over.

God hears such suffering. Remember, THE NARRATIVE people! God hears his people cry out. God desires healing, mercy, and forgiveness for all those who suffer. God on his cross is present with those who suffer.

This is a marvelous passage to preach the Gospel! So preach it. Do not let bad theology or Job's friends have the last word.