The 19th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, Proper 23

The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, Proper 23
Sunday Oct. 10, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Katharine C. Black

Job 23: 1-9, 16-17
Ps 22:1-15
Hebrews 4: 12-16
Mark 10: 17-31

This is the day the Lord has made, Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Amen.

Which man do you identify with more, Job or the rich young man? Which man do you think has a worse deal? Which man makes you, makes me, more uncomfortable? How does God come out in these stories? Does anything from this Gospel or others-or from the Church for that matter- persuade you to leave your house or brothers or sisters or mother or father for Jesus' sake and for the sake of the good news? Do we assume or are we resigned to being last, or do we this think this all really won't apply to us, and that our gifts to NPR, our college, or our church, will insure us as first into eternal life? Is any of this good news for us?

Job was an upright, good, and faithful man. Whether on a bet from Satan, or simply quixotically, by God's own choice, God agreed to test the true and faithful person, who had in fact done little wrong. He had worked hard, raised a good family, was loyal and faithful to his spouse, and was in good health. Whap. God took it all from him. God, in today's installment, takes God's own presence from Job as well. Job no longer feels that God listens to him, responds to him, or is any sort of dialogue with him; God appears to be absent, unreal, or gone for Job. God has made Job's heart faint, and has terrified him. For Job maybe there is no God. Job longs to vanish into thick darkness. The word of the Lord.

Skilled biblical interpreters do work on the beginning of the Book of Job, or on the slapped on ending, but there isn't much interpretive to say about today's portion of Job. It is many of our personal experience, from time to time, less dramatically, but nearly as emotionally. We, too, long for some dramatic, personal miracle, sign, or chat to assure us that God is not our own construct to take away either any of our own guilt for our own good fortune or blame for our bad luck. We were faithful so God rewards us, or we did bad, bad, bad, and so God deservedly punishes us in some way. Job was an upright person. He was slammed, not for failing to share his riches with the poor, but to prove that a really, really good man would keep the faith. Like the voice of the psalmist in this mornings psalm, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Does that make God admirable to us? Does that make such a God one we want to trust, believe in, or hang out with? Why would God set forth the experiment, of testing Job and why would Job's author publicize the test? Or is the Book of Job about the nature of God and the problem of evil?

In the psalmist's cry specifically, and Job's situation, we are reminded of and so think of the crucifixion-and again are set to thinking about Lent, and so we are preparing for Advent.

Jesus, in today's Gospel, talks decisively to a well set-up young man. Jesus acknowledges that the young man has indeed followed the commandments, as in a broad way, most of us have done, most of the time. Jesus does not criticize the riches of the young man. He makes no negative comment about the actual riches. "Sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven." "No one who has left family for the sake of Jesus and for the sake of the good news will not receive hundredfold in this age, and eternal life in the age to come. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first." These two pieces of today's Gospel are similar in meaning, and the vivid metaphor between them simply reiterates the point about a rich man getting in to heaven.

But Job was restored to his world (in one ending) of the Book of Job, or more likely the book is left with Job waiting to reaffirm God's presence and concern in his life, but what of the rich young man? What can we do, nearly every one of us a "rich young man" except to keep on keeping on?

We could give all we have to the poor, but all we have is impossible to give away. Sure, we could give away all our cash and even our stuff, and that always has a constant, if fleeting, appeal. We could, perhaps, give away some of our privilege, by dressing down, or as one of my critics suggested, I could drop g's when I talk, to sound more folksy. We can't give away our educations, although of course we can, in some way, not exercise them. We can't give away the generations of calcium, and nutrition, clean air and water and other health benefits, which have helped us grow. We can't give away being American, living in a system which has a safety net, maybe not one as sturdily woven as we'd want, but we aren't destitute and in refugee camps in southern Sudan.

I imagine the rich young man couldn't give it all away either. He was better nourished and educated, better situated than either the shepherds or the poorest of the sick and leprous of the slums of Jerusalem. When Job lost everything, he still wasn't illiterate, insensitive, or without community. Even when seemingly everything was taken, he still wasn't a poor person without resources or one who was last.

The rich man could have given away his stuff, but he still would have had his family, so the point can't be just what one can choose to give away, but rather what one chooses to do with the riches and gifts one has and the strength of the choice to serve others and to follow Jesus. The man's riches were an obstacle to his following. They held him, the way families can hold a person, or divert them from their vocation of service and following Jesus.

The Hebrews reading observes that, "we have a high priest who in every respect has been tested as we are," in and in last week's piece of Hebrews also says, that "for a while Jesus was made a little lower than the angels." These lines show that Hebrews is saying that Jesus started in heaven, came slumming, and then was reinstated back where he'd come from. This is identified as High Christology and, in a way, makes his work impossible or irrelevant for us. It means that Jesus started in heaven, in a way we cannot. Therefore we cannot be held to his standard of work and service. Low Christology says that Jesus started like us and did his human life so well he was promoted to heaven. That also doesn't seem available to us, or, for example, those who'd left everything to follow. These explanations of the way Jesus lived seem a kind of escalator picture-either Jesus started on the ground and zips up, or started up, and zips down and back. Both seem to guarantee to Jesus a journey narrowly taken, and protected from the stresses that we actually endure, particularly that of struggling and not knowing how to follow closely. How are we to focus on Jesus, rather than on family, riches, or other life diversions, or how are we to tell diversions from vocation.

Jung, in his book about the Book of Job says that it demonstrates an exercise which God does with God's own shadow-side. God tests the good to see whether or when it sinks to being bad. What does it take for the threats or challenges from the evil side to make a good person, like Job, lose heart, lose faith, or even deny God. That social experiment of what it does take is a way to describe the Book of Job as an examination of the problem of evil. There is no real reason for what assaults Job, nor can he earn back his former life. Instead God can choose to take his life away or give it back. Job can't earn it either way. Evil simply exists and it is totally within God's purview.

Similarly, the rich young man can't earn his place with God by what he has. Instead the rich young man could follow, and be chosen. Those who were last can be chosen to be first. Those who are first could or could not be chosen to be last. It's all in God's good choice, good time, good ultimate power and understanding. In different ways, Job and the rich young man make clear that the world is God's. We are invited to make choices to show our commitment to the path Jesus outlines for us, but the power and control, or the love and persuasiveness are all in the hands of the one who creates and saves. The rich young man went away sad, but that probably wasn't the end of the story. That sadness would have helped guide him back towards the path of following. He had to figure out how to turn his riches, his gifts, and his own best self, towards God's work for the world. The sadness could well have been part of his on-going choosing, his choice of what to do, and how to live. The choices are never irrevocable for anyone, because it is God's choice and God offers the moment of choice over and over, and people do choose repeatedly. The rich young man, who is us in many ways, had life and eternity to make new choices. Jesus lived a whole life with choice after choice, like ours. He didn't know of any guarantee of salvation, other than his total trust in, and reliance on, God. He was not on a pre-ordained heavenly escalator, shielded from the difficult human path of human choices and choosing. God is there for us to offer new opportunities, and Jesus is there to help guide us in those choices. Jesus experienced the difficulty in choosing or he wouldn't have been fully human. He understood human sadness, what is lost by one choice or gained by another. Jesus knows how complex living is, and he is with us in the choosing, the turning away and the turning back, remaining with us. He's not on an easy escalator, but lived as we do on a broad path of decisions and choices. He waits with us and for us, whether we're like Job, or the rich young person. Jesus stays with us constantly. He takes on himself our wrong life choices, all of them, all of our sin, and sin itself, and he remains with us now and always, and he's with us in paradise forever. Good News.

© Katharine C. Black, 11 October 2009