The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, October 6th, 2024
“Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” Job 1:1; 2: 1-10
How can we profess that God is good in the face of all the human suffering we witness every day? Wars rage around the world, people die from starvation, and hurricanes wipe out whole communities. The list goes on and on. Some suffering that we experience in life is the result of our own actions. And that requires us to take responsibility, asking for God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of those we have hurt and asking God to help us live differently going forward. But so much suffering in this life just happens to us. It has nothing to do with anything we have done and is totally undeserved. That is the central dilemma that he Book of Job explores.
Job is an upright and righteous man. And God has blessed him. He is wealthy, heathy and happy with his life. He has a large family, and lots of land and livestock. He is well respected in his community and widely regarded as a deeply faithful man. But then one day, a heavenly council comes before the Lord and Satan, or more precisely, the Satan, meaning the prosecutor or the adversary, takes on the challenge of testing Job, this upright, righteous and blameless man. And it will be a big challenge. Immediately before today’s reading, Job’s children have been killed, and his lands destroyed. And what is Job’s response? He falls to the ground and worships, saying “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” So Satan knows he has a big task ahead if he is to entice Job to turn away from God. Satan proceeds to cover Job in horrible, painful sores from head to foot. And still Job persists in his faithfulness. “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God and not receive the bad?”
I don’t know about you, but I cannot honestly say that I always have that response. The normal human response to extreme hardship is to ask “why”? Why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to someone I love? Why is this happening in the world?
We are generally programmed to operate within a reward and punishment paradigm. If we do the right things, we expect to be rewarded. If we do the wrong things, we expect to be punished. So, when things happen that are not cause and effect, it throws us into a tailspin. But when we can stop living out of that angry place of “I don’t deserve this, why is this happening” and move into a place of “Lord, I don’t understand why this is happening, but please be with me in my turmoil and help me to get through”, we know we are making progress. Sometimes it takes a while to make that transition, but if keep our connection with God and other faithful people, it can happen. It’s not easy, but it is the way that we find meaning, support and a path forward.
Back in 1981, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” It was an immediate bestseller and quickly become a classic because of how difficult that path is. And it came out of his own intense suffering. Rabbi Kushner wrote this book in the aftermath of his son’s death. His son was diagnosed with a degenerative disease when he was 3 years old and died at age 14, after years of suffering for both he and his family. And it’s important to note that Rabbi Kushner did not name the book “WHY Bad Things Happen to Good People” but when. Even though it is completely natural to ask “why” during times, it is wasted energy to spend too much time in that head and heart space. The title “WHEN Bad Things Happen to Good People” suggests that we know suffering is going to happen. We can expect it because it is part of the reality of human existence. The more fruitful question to ask when undeserved suffering comes our way is “how can I respond to this horrible circumstance in a way that is lifegiving?”
There was a parishioner some years ago that I visited in the months before his death and he suffered horribly during that time. And every time I came to visit and we shared communion, he had a big smile on his face and told me how much he was looking forward to being with God when he died. He wasn’t being pious or self-righteous. He was just being genuine. He would also tell me how terrible his pain was and how much he was going to miss this life, but he didn’t spend time wondering why he couldn’t just die a peaceful, painless death. He was accepting of his situation and hopeful at the same time.
There is a difference between acceptance and fatalism. When we accept, we are in a trusting place with God and others, a hopeful place that we will get through and find meaning in time. Fatalism is about being resigned and hopeless. It cuts us off from God and others, whereas acceptance connects us to others and allows them to support us.
When we sit in the ashes with Job, holding our situation with open hands, we become attuned to the mystery of God and of the vast universe of which we are a part. It takes us out of our self-centeredness. And our dualistic, black and white thinking. It helps us to see that we trust in a loving God and recognize that our loving God also allows suffering.
Some of the suffering we endure is because of the effects of the poor decisions of other human beings. God allows for that. God does not control us like puppets. We have choices in this life. And some of our suffering is a result of the freedom of creation. The universe was given life by our Creator and that life continues to evolve. Volcanoes suddenly erupt and as a result they sometimes kill people, but that doesn’t mean that God desired that to happen. And that is a lot to get our heads and hearts around.
That is one of the main reasons we come together in Christian community every Sunday. When one of us is suffering, we offer hope. When we hear the story of salvation in the Eucharistic prayer, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” It puts our trials, tribulations and joys in a much larger context and it helps us get through. When we worship each Sunday, we are aware that people have worshipped in this nave since 1958, and the first Saint Georgians started worshipping in our chapel in 1907. People have been bringing their hurts and sorrows, their hopes and dreams, into this sacred place for 117 years. That’s a long time. That’s two world wars, a major economic depression, vast social change and a lot of sickness and death. It also represents an incredible amount of faithfulness, love and joy. Shared faithfulness. Shared love. Shared joy. Shared meaning.
That is an aspect of stewardship that we often don’t think about. When we hear stewardship, we usually first think about money, and money is certainly important. We want to support our ongoing life for years and years to come, and financial support is a foundational part of that. But it is also vitally important to care for our life together in other ways, by developing relationships with others and really listening to their joys and sorrows and sharing our own. That happens in our small group ministries, our house churches, our 20s 30s group, our men’s group, our LGBTQ+ group. It happens on special trips where people are spending a lot of time together, like during the choir’s Gloucester Cathedral residency and the youth service trip this past summer. It happens when people work together in our food pantry, bringing sustenance and hope to others while also feeding our own souls. It happens in our race and reconciliation ministry as we work to create the Beloved Community God intends for us. When we make our pledges each year, on All Saints Sundays, Nov 3rd, we are supporting that life, our life of worshipping God, upholding one another through thick and thin, exploring the big questions of human existence, and offering life to the world beyond our doors. And that, my friends, is a beautiful, hopeful, wondrous thing.