October 18, 2015

                  Fall is a time to gather in the harvest. We take stock of all that we have. Most of us do not depend on the success of the harvest and we have lost our connection with the land. We can still marvel at the colors and the smells of autumn. We can drink cider and crunch leaves underfoot. The natural world is approaching the end of seasons and a long winter’s sleep. Our liturgical calendar follows the agricultural rhythm. We are approaching the end of things and taking stock.

                  We continue to follow the story of Job. He is wrestling with the question of why people suffer. He is a good man. He was once richly blessed and now he has lost everything. Either God is cruel and unloving or God is powerless to protect Job from the terrible losses he faces. Job knows he is a good man, so he is even more perplexed. His friends answer that he must have done something to deserve his fate. There must be some secret, hidden blasphemy. Job wishes to see God and set out his case.

                  God answers Job. It is not what he expects. Eventually, God does tell Job’s friends that they are way off track, but to Job, God pretty much says, “I’m God. What do you think you’re talking about?” We marvel at the beautiful poetry about God’s creative power and God’s power in sustaining the universe. Does this answer the problem of suffering?

                  Many Christian apologists, including C. S. Lewis, follow just this line of reasoning. We believe in an all-powerful God. We believe in an all-loving God. We wonder why God permits (or seems to cause) suffering. The pain we feel is real. It is not an illusion. The injustice is real. What do we mean by all-powerful or all-loving? Do we mean that God should do exactly what we want? Our idea of love is so far from Gods that we hardly mean the same thing. I think this is shown in how God gives us Jesus to show us love and we hardly understand what Jesus is saying – and we object to what Jesus asks of us.

                  Jesus has just had an encounter with a rich young man. He seems to do all the right things. Jesus tells him to sell everything and give his money to the poor, then come and follow him. He can’t do it. We are scandalized. It’s entirely impractical. Jesus said this because he loved him.

                  Jesus again tells the disciples that he will suffer and die and rise again. The disciples hear doom and revolution. James and John assume that this will mean a new order of things and they want to make sure they have good jobs – so they ask Jesus, “Let us sit at your right and left side when you come into your kingdom.” Maybe there was a sort of piety in this request. Maybe they sought to be with Jesus through the toughest battles. Maybe they had no idea what they were asking.

                  We see a need and we want to help. We see a group of people trying to accomplish something and we think, “I could do that better.” It is not unheard of for people to seek positions of power in the church. We know how to get things done. (We certainly couldn’t do any worse than those idiots who are running things now!) We would expect that Jesus would thank them for their offer. Maybe he should gently remind them that he hasn’t made up his mind or that he needs to explain the position a little better.

                  Jesus doesn’t deny their request. He promises that they will drink from the same cup as him (is that what they really wanted?) He promises that they will be baptized with the same baptism with which he has been baptized. He is promising suffering and death – and resurrection. The new order of things will not be the same old ways with different leaders. Jesus is promising a completely different way of being together.

                  Whoever wants to be a leader must be servant of all and a slave of all. We think of a leader as one having power over others. We think of charismatic gifts that persuade and win others over. We think of a compelling message or even raw power that makes people do things. Jesus is telling these would-be leaders that they have to serve.

                  This involves suffering. So not only are we puzzled when an all-powerful and an all-loving God allows suffering. It seems that God is inviting us to take on suffering: not as a kind of abuse but as a willingness to risk loss and status for the sake of something else. Job catches a glimpse of God, who is bigger and more mysterious than he had imagined. Jesus is offering a larger vision of what it means to be gathered in faithful community.

                  It’s not enough to be a nice church. There is much we could do to be popular and successful. We could be friendly and convenient. We could put on a nice show that makes everyone feel good. The truth is that we all suffer loss and we all have questions that are not easy to answer. We don’t need an escape from the troubles of life. We need to make sense of what it means to live. We need a community where we can seek meaning together.

                  Jesus is not setting up a perfect church that will make us happy and fulfill all our needs. He is promising loss and brokenness and death. He is not setting up a new order of things where his chosen few get all the rewards. He is sending us out into a broken world to lose ourselves for the sake of the good news. From close up we will wonder why it is so hard and why we see so little reward. At that moment we are closer to being who Jesus wants us to be.