June 2024 Newsletter

Dear Friends,

         As I continue to reflect on my upcoming departure from JPC and from congregational ministry, one biblical story keeps coming to mind. In Deuteronomy 32-34, Moses sings the swansong of his leadership of the Hebrews. He blesses the people. Then he dies on Mt. Nebo. From that mountain peak, in the land of Moab, Moses could see Canaan—the Promised Land—but he would never enter it.

         Now, in no way am I claiming Moses-caliber leadership. Over the last 28 years, I did the best I could. Mostly. But I’m no Moses. And, no, I don’t plan to die. Yet. I expect to keep moving just like you. Though in what capacity I don’t yet know.

         What I am saying is that, like Moses, most pastors experience Mt. Nebo moments—revelatory moments at which they can see, on the horizon, a future they know will forever remain beyond their reach. They recognize that new territory as one charged with unmet challenges and unrealized possibility. And while it’s a land toward which they have been leading God’s people, it’s also a land into which others will be called and equipped to lead those same people. Through Moses’ story and my own experience, I’ve also learned that leaders of all kinds may achieve specific goals, but they never really complete the work. They simply hand it off to new generations—like Moses handing off the leadership of the Hebrews to Joshua.

         My prayer is that, during my time with you, I have cooperated with the Holy Spirit faithfully enough to have helped you—a vibrant, blessed-to-be-a-blessing faith community—to recognize your new threshold.

I have tried to preach and teach Jesus and a Jesus-following faith.

I have tried to emphasize God’s incarnate love and reconciling grace not as soft words on which to rest, but as compelling and empowering antidotes to the world’s thunderous din of selfishness, fear, and violence.

I have tried to guide you to a sustained and sustaining sense God’s presence with you and purposes for you in this particular place and time.

And I pray that you sense the future as a realm of possibility and hope.

         While Mt. Nebo is an actual location in the Kingdom of Jordan, it’s place in Moses’ story makes it a metaphor, as well. From any mountain summit, we can only travel downhill, with the force of gravity fueling our steps. And on that journey, we can move toward the new horizon, or we can fall backward toward some familiar and comfortable default. That is to say, toward the past. And gravity can pull us back toward the past as surely as it can urge us forward into the future. The past is a rich storehouse of memories that can define and guide us. So, while it deserves to be remembered with gratitude and piercing honesty, we can never return to the past. In the grand scheme, there is no “again” that can hold us.

         In love, God can and does hold us. And in that love, God calls us forward, creating the future as an eternal realm of ever-expanding, ever-demanding, ever-welcoming, ever-redeeming grace.

         As I say my goodbyes to you over this coming month, and as our relationship shifts from pastor/parishioner to neighbor/neighbor, I pray that your memories of the last 13+ years help you to focus your gaze on the future. And while the specific twists and turns of the path toward that territory lie beyond my sight, I fully trust the Spirit to provide leaders to move you forward. I also trust that all of us—you on your path, and Marianne and me on ours—will be accompanied by Jesus.

         I am now, and will forever be, grateful to each of you and to Jonesborough Presbyterian.

 

         Peace,

                  Pastor Allen

The Eastering of Job (Sermon)

 “The Eastering of Job”

Job 42:2-10 and Colossians 3:12-17

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

5/26/24

 

¹²Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. ¹³Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

¹⁴Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. ¹⁵And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. ¹⁶Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.

¹⁷And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:12-17 NRSV)        

 

Before reading today’s sermon text, let’s remember that, at the outset, Job is a man of means—lots of money, lots of property. The storyteller also implies that Job’s superabundant holdings are signs of God’s favor. So, as ancient as this story is, chapters 1 and 2 of the Book of Job presents pretty much the same idol as today’s prosperity gospel. And such deities inevitably prove all-too-human. What besides pride would allow a god to do something as un-godly as agreeing—on a devil’s dare—to test Job?

This story vividly illustrates the way that humankind creates all manner of gods in our own image. And for 37 chapters the characters in Job continue to assume this human-imaged god. Then, in Chapters 38-40, something catastrophically glorious happens. As Forrest Gump says when the hurricane hits his shrimp boat, “God showed up.”

“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

‘Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place…Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?

‘Have the gates of death been revealed to you…?

‘Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the deer?

‘Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?’” (Selected verses from Job 38-40)

 

These three chapters expose the impressionable, small-g god of the early chapters of Job as an absurdity, and they introduce us to Yahweh—the Creator, the eternal and capital-G God.

Now, Job is still suffering, still feeling broken and defeated, but he also begins to feel enlightened and hopeful. He realizes that the idol whom he has blamed and to whom he has complained is decidedly not the God who will redeem him.

In chapter 42, the final chapter, a humbled and emboldened Job opens himself up to Yahweh.

Listen for God’s word.

 

²“I know that you can do all things,

and that no purpose of yours

can be thwarted.

³‘Who is this that hides counsel

without knowledge?’

Therefore I have uttered

what I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me,

which I did not know.

⁴‘Hear, and I will speak;

I will question you, and you declare to me.’
⁵I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

but now my eye sees you;
⁶therefore I despise myself,

and repent in dust and ashes.”

⁷After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. ⁸Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering, and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done.”

⁹So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the Lord had told them, and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.”

¹⁰And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends, and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. (Job 42:2-10 NRSV)

 

         Now I know, Job says to God. You overwhelm every human image and expectation of power. Yours is the realm of mystery and grace.

Job realizes that all of his furious ranting against God rose from an understanding of God based solely on projections and rumors.

         “But now my eye sees you,” says Job. “Therefore I…repent…”

Having desired death, Job has now experienced a death. And while this death does not release him from life and its bitterness, it does give him a new lease on life through a whole new kind of faith. He dies the death that we all must die in the process of living into more authentic images and mature understandings of God.

         Awakening to this new revelation is a kind of resurrection experience for Job. And once he staggers out of his tomb, God puts that new faith to work. Just like Jesus forgiving his disciples for their betrayals and denials, Job finds he must forgive and intercede for the friends who condemned him in his suffering.

         To experience resurrection here-and-now, we forsake all those small, vengeful gods of reciprocity. To live an Eastered life is to live sacramentally—forgiving the unforgivable, loving the unlovable, giving voice to the voiceless, recognizing God’s holiness in the midst of the mundane, and discovering life in the throes of death. This is to have our “fortunes” restored.

         While Job has his material fortune restored, being freshly-Eastered, he handles his new wealth very differently. In Job 42:15 we read: “In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers.” This detail may seem trivial, but Job’s radically new generosity reveals the effects of his awareness of a holiness and a wholeness in the Creation that the god of chapter 1 cannot offer. Surrounded by and saturated with the God-who-acts-within-yet-exists-beyond human comprehension, Job subverts sacred tradition and makes his daughters equal to his sons. This revolutionary act foreshadows Jesus healing on the sabbath, talking alone with a Samaritan woman, and “eating with tax collectors and sinners.”

         In their narrow confines, self-serving theologies always try to distort God into something friendly to any status quo that exalts privilege and ignores injustice and suffering. For instance, don’t we understand that the phrase God helps those who help themselves is not biblical? That idol dies a memorable and transformational death in the pages of Job—and alongside Jesus on the cross.

         Both Job and Jesus live and die in ways that proclaim a God who helps those who cannot help themselves. Their stories reveal that true knowledge of God includes the embrace of suffering as well as happiness. And both stories reveal that blessings are only truly blessings when they are shared in humble and generous gratitude and when they become acts of justice and peacemaking.

That’s especially true when they’re shared with people who don’t “deserve” them—like Job praying for his friends and Jesus’ living his life for all Creation. And don’t such things demonstrate grace?

         Richard Rohr is fond of saying that Jesus comes not to change God’s mind about us, but to change our minds about God. It seems to me that Job’s story has that same mission. It has become, for me, a kind of CliffsNotes version of how individuals and faith communities progress from Santa Claus and fairy godmother images of God to images that inspire awe, humility, hope, and action—images that inspire us to participate in God’s resurrecting presence in this beautiful if all-too-broken world.

         I usually cringe when I read sayings posted on church signs. Too many of them express theology worthy only of the god of Job 1 and 2. Some years ago, though, I did see a sign that caught my eye. It said very simply, “The struggle is real. So is God.”

         When a congregation reveals itself as a vibrant, relevant, real faith community, it’s because all of its members—individually and corporately—work together to acknowledge and enter the suffering of the people next to each other in the pew, at the grocery store, the post office, the ball game, the coffee shop…

Job and Jesus both tell us that God is Eastering the Creation toward justice through the ways of love and the means of grace. Through many deaths and resurrections, God is transforming us into a people of gratitude and generosity in and for a world which sits among ashes, crying out for deliverance. And while wecan’t do the delivering, we can offer to God, for our neighbors, the prayers of our hands, our feet, our voices.

So, even now—whether through us or in spite of us—God is Eastering the Creation and making you, and me, and all things new.

Claim Your Voice - Share Your Gift (Sermon)

 “Claim the Voice, Share Your Gift”

Numbers 11:24-30 and Acts 2:1-13

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

5/19/24

Pentocost

 

²⁴So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. ²⁵Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.

²⁶Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. ²⁷And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”

²⁸And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, “My lord Moses, stop them!”

²⁹But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them.(NRSV)

 

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.² And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.³ Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.⁴ All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

⁵Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem.⁶ And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.

⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?⁹ Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”

¹³But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” (NRSV)

 

The stories we just read from Numbers and Acts are stories of God’s people in crisis. They show us the Hebrews wandering in the Sinai wilderness and the very first Christians in Jerusalem hiding in fear of Roman soldiers. Displaced and struggling, both groups are trying to discern new purpose and new identity.

As the respective leaders, Moses and the Apostles are facing emptiness and vulnerability. As faithful, diligent, and creative as they may be, they know that they cannot overcome their predicaments on their own. They need help.

         Leadership in any human community can be an intensely demanding responsibility. It requires gifts of discernment, courage, and decisiveness. And because leadership is fundamentally an act of service, it also requires mature sensibilities of empathy, humility, patience, and justice. Perhaps most challenging for individualistic and competitive cultures like ours, effective leadership requires a commitment to putting the well-being of others before one’s own well-being.

Without these attributes, leaders may become like Pharaoh, for whom slavery and genocide are simply the cost of doing business. Or maybe they become like Eli’s sons—spoiled, selfish, and deaf to holiness and wisdom. Or like King Saul who, lacking any real gifts for leadership, goes insane before everyone’s eyes.

All of these would-be leaders face crises, and all of them, ignoring the higher virtues, seek the guidance of flatterers and the illusion of security-through-violence. And their stories live on in scripture as cautionary tales.

Back to Moses and the Apostles.

In Numbers, the Israelites are newly-freed slaves. They’re on their own, on the run, and complaining about how tired and hungry they are. Their escape from Egypt has become a desert pilgrimage that seems crueler than Pharaoh’s slave drivers. Israel’s story illustrates that when something gets the best of us, only the worst remains. And when it becomes too much, the Hebrews project all their fear and anxiety onto Moses.

Did you bring us out here to kill us? they cry. We were better off in Egypt!

That same despair and craving for control would lead them to try to replace Yahweh with a golden calf.

         In Acts, the disciples feel all alone in the world. They had expected Jesus to do to Rome what Rome and others had done to the Hebrews for generations. After the crucifixion, though, the disciples had to have wondered if Jesus had been the kind of person Hosea warned about: “They shall be like the morning mist, or the dew that goes away early.” (Hosea 13:3a) Was Jesus nothing more than visible humidity? So, after both the resurrection and the ascension, the disciples still find themselves mired in wandering and indecision.

While Moses and the Apostles often appear flawed and fumbling, they’re still servants of God. During their crises, for all their frustration and helplessness, they begin to find themselves opened by and opening to something mysterious and moving—a dynamic Holiness, a Spirit who comes not to bring an end to crises, but to help guide God’s people through the uncertainties and complexities of crisis and change. In the process, the Spirit reveals herself as a gift being offered not simply to chosen leaders. The Spirit proves to be a gift made available to all people through leaders like Moses, Joshua, Peter, and Paul. True leaders—in the household of faith and elsewhere—are those who humbly embrace their own giftedness and who seek to recognize, nurture, and give voice to the giftedness of others.

         Remember Moses’ story: God takes some of the Spirit God has given to Moses and shares it with newly-appointed elders. And some of that Spirit leaks out beyond the designated seventy to a couple of nobodies named Eldad and Medad. And when word gets to Joshua, he says, Moses, stop them!

Then, Moses, learning more by the moment, scolds his reactionary assistant, saying, “Are you jealous for my sake?” Look, I wish God’s Spirit would fall on everyone! The Spirit makes prophets of us all!

         Remember what happens in Jerusalem, too. While describing a fiery-tongued prophetic ecstasy, Luke names sixteen different Gentile groups who hear the gospel being proclaimed in their own languages. Those who watch all of this happen are bewildered. And who wouldn’t be? To see that God really does inhabit all people (Genesis 1:26a), that God’s Word is written on human hearts (Jeremiah 31:33), and that no one and no thing lies beyond the redeeming reach of God (Acts 9:1-19a)—such revelations affirm the all-embracing love of God.

In both Sinai and Jerusalem, God’s Holy Spirit initiates and is present through the outpouring of prophetic speech and action, through signs of grace demonstrated by folks who are ordinary, fallible, hesitant human beings.

Many voices in today’s world claim holy authority. And yet many seem diametrically opposed to each other. While we’re not called to judge individuals, we are called, individually and communally, to discern.

When I hear a voice claiming prophetic status, I listen for accents of Jesus—accents of fierce love, of fearless peacemaking, of forgiveness, compassion, and grateful openness to all of God’s Creation. Those things declare the presence of the Holy Spirit.

By contrast, when voices claiming prophetic authority provoke suspicion, fear, division, and vengeance, when they create barriers to relationship and wholeness, I trust those voices, but I trust them only to ravage the wounded, fragile body of Creation.

When certain voices within the Church declare that the God revealed in Jesus can be bought and satisfied with violence and bloodshed, the Holy Spirit calls and empowers us to bear prophetic witness to something entirely new and different and, at the same time, entirely ancient and eternal. She calls us to proclaim the God of Spirit and Truth, the God of deliverance, restorative justice, and hope.

In my observation, this congregation’s current session consists of women and men who are deeply gifted. As Holy-Spirited individuals, they are equipped to lead you into a period of discernment, discovery, and new beginning. That was evident to me at the officer retreat last February. And it remains the case as they lead ministry teams and as they handle deliberations as a body.

One very important thing this faith community will do in the next few weeks is to elect members of a nominating committee. And that committee will not only assemble a slate of officers for the class of 2027, they will assemble a committee to pick an interim pastor—someone who will help you perceive anew the Holy Spirit’s presence with you and her call to you for the coming years, and then prepare you to look for the one whom God is, even now, preparing to lead you into the future God has in store.

         This is Pentecostal work—living as ones who trust that the way through wandering and uncertainty is to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit who is being poured out in generous measure upon each of us, and all of us, for the sake of the entire Creation.

         Let’s also recall that Pentecost was a harvest festival. Through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we become laborers for God’s most gracious harvest in which all are welcome, and all are transformed.

May you recognize your gifts, claim your Holy-Spirited voice. And may you, now and always, follow the path of Jesus who leads you to do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.

A Bitter Intimacy (Sermon)

"A Bitter intimacy"

Job 23:1-9, 16-17 and Romans 8:31-39

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

5/5/24

 

³¹What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³²He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. ³⁵Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? ³⁶As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;
                  we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. ³⁸For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NRSV)

 

         Last week we began looking at Job. Much happens between the first two chapters and the twenty-third chapter. So, let’s begin with some review. 

         Job is a man of wealth and renown. He lives by rules of hospitality and generosity.

Then, twice, God brags on Job to the accuser. And twice, the accuser, doubting all human goodness and faithfulness, challenges God to make things difficult on Job. God relents, and in no time, Job has lost everything except one furious wife.

“Curse God, and die!” she screams. But even in his emotional, spiritual, and physical pain, Job does not “sin with his lips.” And a fierce conversation begins.

Cursing the day of his birth, Job wishes himself dead. Then we meet Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, all of whom say basically the same thing: You must be guilty of something. Confess it, accept your punishment, and move on.

Throughout the saga, Job maintains his innocence. Things reach a crescendo when Job speaks words that Handel completely misuses in the Easter portion of The Messiah. In 19:25-26, Job cries out, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been…destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God.”

Job is claiming a vindicator, someone who will help him get justice from God who has so uselessly and unjustly abused him.

In chapter 22, Eliphaz scolds Job yet again saying, “Is not your wickedness great? There is no end to your iniquities.”

And to Eliphaz, the ever-faithful Job says:

 

² “Today also my complaint is bitter; 
    his hand is heavy despite my groaning.
³ Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
    that I might come even to his dwelling!
⁴ I would lay my case before him
    and fill my mouth with arguments.
⁵ I would learn what he would answer me
    and understand what he would say to me.
⁶ Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power?
    No, but he would give heed to me.
⁷ There the upright could reason with him,
    and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.

⁸ “If I go forward, he is not there;
    or backward, I cannot perceive him;
⁹ on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;
    I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.

¹⁶ God has made my heart faint;
    the Almighty has terrified me.
¹⁷ If only I could vanish in darkness,
    and thick darkness would cover my face! (NRSV)

 

         “If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face!”

Job’s accusatory lament reminds me of Psalm 139 when the poet says, “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you…for darkness is as light to you.”

Somehow, in the midst of his existential darkness, Job cannot not sense the light of God.

         Both Job and the psalmist acknowledge that the utter loneliness of human suffering still happens within the context of intimacy with God. It’s a bitter intimacy, but intimacy, nonetheless. And if we can’t share our deepest anger, fear, and hurt with those we love the most, do we truly love them? When we offer to God nothing but laundered and starched formality, aren’t we just trying to gloss over something?

         After my first year at Columbia seminary, I interned at a church in a small town south of Atlanta. During that summer, a church member died an untimely death. A few months earlier, the man had been a heart patient at a hospital in Atlanta—a good hospital, with a good staff, where a good person made a bad mistake and gave medication to thicken instead of thin the man’s blood. There were confessions. Tears all around. But the damage was done.

         A couple of weeks after the funeral, I went with my supervising pastor to visit the man’s widow. She greeted us with gracious melancholy. After pleasantries, the pastor read some scripture. He began with words of comfort, Psalms 23 and 42. Then he read from Psalm 44 in which the poet dares to name God’s shortcomings: “You have rejected us and abased us…You have made us like sheep for the slaughter…You have sold your people for a trifle… and covered us with deep darkness.”

         The lady squirmed in her chair and said, “O my! I don’t believe I could talk to God like that.”

         While I understand that, I also think we need to feel free to offer to God the rawest, most bitter intimacies of our hearts. Sometimes they’re the most profoundly honest prayers and most sincere affirmations of faith that we can utter. They take seriously our faith that God creates the world and declares it good. Bitter intimacy also takes seriously God’s steadfast presence in the midst of human suffering.

         Job’s tortured laments do all of these things. They also emphatically declare his innocence. Elie Wiesel says that Job felt troubled by his own innocence. It “left him in the dark…[Job] demanded…an answer that would show him unequivocally that [humankind] is not a toy…Job turned against God to find and confront Him.” Specifically, says Wiesel, Job “defied [God] to come closer to [God]…[Indeed] Job needed God because he felt abandoned by…his wife [and] his friends,” none of whom had anything to offer but sanctimonious pity and judgment.­¹

         Job’s anger and his stinging laments declare his absolute faith that his suffering does not reflect the will of God. As pervasive and inescapable as suffering is, it is not God’s desire for anyone. And very often, in our most vehement, unfiltered protests of God, we draw closest to the one who, as James Finley says, “protects us from nothing [yet] sustains us in all things.”

         People of wisdom know that truth, but one challenging annoyance in all of this is that God’s sustaining faithfulness becomes most real in retrospect. The writer of Psalm 23 would have nothing whatsoever to say without having already known the speechless despair in the “valley of the shadow of death.” He could “fear no evil” only by having already endured fearsome evils.

         For many in the world right now, these are times of darkness, uncertainty, and suffering. And it’s easier to act like one of Job’s “friends,” to cast blame and judgment. As children of God, however, one of our callings is to enter the bitter intimacy of lament, to lend our voices to the cries of suffering in the Creation, and in doing so, to help reveal the presence, the strength, the grace, and the love of God.

         And let’s remember, healthy lament always begins with our own intimate struggles with God. When people of faith do not feel free to be bitterly honest with God, we will almost certainly, like Job’s wife and friends, project onto others our anger at and fear of some deity we really have not known and are too timid to confront. Misdirected intimacies and bitterness can cause any of us to lay the burden of blame on people who deserve compassion, not judgment.

If the story of Job does nothing else, it ushers us into the deepest, darkest, most faith-threatening pain in our lives and in the world. And it calls us, in the midst of that pain, to draw near to God, who is nothing like the caricatured deity of Job 1 and 2.

Job also invites us to prepare for and to meet the God being revealed in Jesus of Nazareth—the God who comes to us as one of us, and suffers with us. The God who transforms even our deepest sufferings into sustaining wisdom and redeeming hope.

That God creates and sets the table before us today and invites all humankind to come the feast of reconciling and restoring grace.

 

¹Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends, Random House, NY, 1976, pp. 198-199