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Sunday, March 29, 2009

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I CREATED ALL THIS?
13th in a series on Questions from the Bible

By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: JOB 38:1-4 New Revised Standard Version 1 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: 2 "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? 3 Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. 4 "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

We are coming to the end of our sermons on the questions from the Bible, and today’s question comes from God, to the character Job, in one of the most troubling books of the Bible. Job has been a faithful man who has become the subject of an experiment cooked up by Satan or the adversary. God is willing for Job to be afflicted with various misfortunes and tragedies to see if he will turn his back on God. Job then loses his family, his fortune, his health and wealth. He is ill and depressed and lonely. Then his “friends” come to him and make long speeches about how, if all these bad things have happened, surely, he must have deserved them. He must have done something to offend God. They stay with him to help him figure out what bad he has done so he can repent and make things right with God. Of course he has done nothing to deserve the misfortunes. Probably the reason the book of Job is written is to poke fun at that simplistic theology that says every tragedy comes for a reason. For 30 plus chapters we have to endure the rants of Job’s friends who want to blame Job for what is happening to Job! During that same period Job is dramatically proclaiming his innocence and asking for an audience with God so he can question God and accuse God in a court of justice. Job is saying, God you owe me an explanation and I need to hear it from you right now! In chapter 38 Job gets his wish for an audience with God and it is more than Job expects! God comes to Job out of a whirlwind, a storm, and God has even more questions for Job, 43 to be exact. The questions have this underlying tone: Where were you Job when I created all that is and who do you think you are to be accusing and questioning me? On one level, this interchange, at the end of the book, is unsatisfying. Job does not get an answer to his questions of WHY ME? And perhaps in that we can identify with him. We ask that question when illness or accidents or tragedies befall us. There probably is no terrific answer to, WHY ME, if we are in pain. Sometimes the answer is, Why not me? Accidents happen. Illness happens, brain tumors and blood clots occur, and I believe that God does not send those but that God is on the side of the doctors and researchers and health professionals who care for us when we are ill. God is on the side of the people working to cure cancer and not on the side of the cancer. The dialogue between Job and God does not provide a satisfying, theological, solution for Job to finally say, OH, NOW I GET IT! But Job does come away from his conversation with God feeling very different. Job comes away humbled and peaceful and not as self absorbed. After God has reminded Job of his smallness and fragility, Job says to God: I spoke foolishly. I will try not to say anything else. I have already said more than I should have. Then at the end, Job says: I have talked about things I do not understand. You told me to listen while you spoke, and to try to answer all 43 of Your questions. Here is the important part: In the past I knew only what others had told me about you, but now I have seen you with my own eyes! So I am ashamed of all I have said, and I repent in dust and ashes. In the past I knew only what others told me about you, but now I have been with you, I have been in your presence, and I feel different, I feel humbled and small. Job says: To hear from God and to be with God is enough. We will be hosting the Rev. Richard Rohr at the end of April as a joint venture with Montview Presbyterian Church. Father Rohr will be at St. Andrew on Friday night, April 24, and at Montview Saturday, April 25. Here is what Richard Rohr says about what happens to us when we, like Job, feel like we have been in the presence of God: People who have met the holy are always humble. People who have had any genuine religious experience are utterly humbled before mystery. They are in awe before the abyss of it all. (NPR interview) What changes Job is his feeling that he has been in the presence of a power that is vaster than himself; that he, like Moses, has stood on holy ground. He has experienced mystery and wonder and awe. All those feelings are spiritual feelings, religious experiences. We have also had them, although, perhaps, not in the same way. We have been in places and times when we feel small and insignificant and when we know there is a power larger and more lasting than just us. One of those times is when we are able to get far enough away from the lights of a city and, on a clear night, can look at the sky and know that some of the stars we see actually burned up thousands of years ago, and we are just now able to see their light. Think about what it must have been like to live 3000 years ago in the desert of Palestine and to lay on the ground on a warm and cloudless night, like the psalmists, and see the canopy of the heavens surrounding us from horizon to horizon. They had a much more intimate relationship with nature than we are able to have, or at least it was probably easier for them. Many of us try to find opportunities to see the nighttime heavens in a similar way so we can know that experience of awe and mystery. I remember visiting family members in Texas when our children were small. We were driving across north Texas at night and there were almost no town or city lights to obscure what we could see. We stopped the car by the side of the road and I got the children out of the car because we had the rare opportunity to see the stars and a planet or two from one horizon to another without urban lights changing what people have been able to see for thousands of years, views that inspired a feeling of mystery and wonder. That part of Texas is very flat so we could see a great amount of sky! Those of us in Colorado talk about other experiences in nature that have taken our breath away and awakened in us the feelings of reverence that Job felt when God rehearsed the story of the creation of the universe. The last four chapters in the book of Job are really the third creation story in the Bible after the two different stories in Genesis One and Genesis Two. When have you experienced feelings of reverence and humility and wonder; not only in the mountains and at the top of a ski slope, when you were are able to look around and see two or three other ski areas, but in the significant transition times of life as well? I tell the couples whom I am privileged to marry that when we get to the part of the wedding service where they exchange their vows and make those awesome promises to love the other person equally as themselves, and to stand with each other and practice patience and kindness, they should not be surprised if there are tears, even the minister’s eyes might not be so dry, because we know that this is one of the times we are on holy ground, and one of the times of mystery and wonder. We hear people talk about two other places where they feel God close to them, places that Marcus Borg calls, “thin places.” This is when we know that the barrier that we believe is between this world and a more eternal world, is very, very thin. One of those times is when we are with a person whose life is ending, when we are just present and perhaps holding hands around a bedside or saying a psalm or prayer. When we have been there we know there is a Presence larger than we are and this Presence is the source of life, the One who receives our lives at the end. Another time is when we get to hold a newly born person who has been in the world for only a minute or two and we realize that, without the love and commitment of two other people, this new human could not, would not, exist. It is at this time we feel a reverence and a deep feeling that we are in the presence of God. What are the times for you, when like Job, you knew you were so close to God that you had to see yourself differently, see the universe differently and you just had to be quiet? Where were you Job, when I created all this? Can you now see your place in the universe, this awesome, wondrous universe? Can you see how miraculous it is, how miraculous life is, how miraculous you are?