St Brendan's Anglican Church
 

Transparency

By Gerry Swieringa,

Sunday June 21st.

The love of light and breadth of vision.  We love transparency. Whether it be in public life, or insurance forms, or light gathering walls of new museums. We like things out in the open. No secrets hid.  In broad daylight.

We dislike darkness and those things that limit our vision. We cannot imagine that we may be wrong or that our vision is not complete or whole.  We usually have a hard time imaging that someone else may have a different vision from us.

Paul links both darkness and childhood together as incomplete understandings. “When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face.” 1 Cor. 13: 11,12.

Generally speaking, this push for understanding, clarity, and transparency is a good thing.  As Christians we walk in the light of Christ. We cast our doubts and fears and sins into the darkness from whence they came. We seek to be prisms through which the light of Christ is magnified and focused to a waiting world. We repeat joyously the Nunc Dimittis “For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see: A light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.”

The problem for us comes when we acknowledge that our light, our vision, is not always God’s vision.  Today’s Old Testament and Gospel lessons speak to just this conflict.

Throughout all his afflictions, and against the wisdom and counsel of his friends, Job yearns for his moment in court. His own vision serves him well and tells him that his friends are wrong. God is not displeased with him for a sinful life and punishing him as a result. He does not have to search his past and find that great unforgiven sin for which God now torments him.  But neither does he claim to have a deeper understanding of God’s  ways and purposes. At heart, he is as befuddled as his friends. But he does not accept their easy answers. He knows there is more to the matter than he is witnessing and all he wants is to ask God, Why?

Why do good people suffer? Why does it often appear that God is indifferent to our needs? We ask the question in contemporary language: Where is God when it hurts?

In today’s Old Testament lesson Job finally gets his moment with God.  He’s like a lawyer who for years has pursued his case and finally gets a hearing before the Supreme Court. He’s finally going to get an answer and he’s going to accept that answer whatever it is. He’s not going to challenge it any further. His reward for his perseverance is not that God will show him mercy. He’s not asking for mercy. Neither is he going to change God’s mind. There’s nothing he can tell God about his plight that God doesn’t already know. No, the thing Job most desires, and the thing that would justify all that has happened to him and make it all worthwhile is that he will finally get to see a glimpse of God’s mind.  

Job stands in a long historical line of those who would know something more about the magisterial, complex, unknowable, awesome mind of God. The line includes the builders of Babel who sought to reach up to God by building a tower into his presence. It includes the psalmist who prays: Teach me your ways of Lord.  It includes  Jacob who wrestled with God at Peniel.  It includes Moses who entered into conversation with God in the cloud on top of Mt. Sinai.

And it includes us when we are up against the unimaginable. When have you faced something so big  that you can’t get your hands around it? What are those things that life throws at us that go far beyond our understanding and leave us looking up and wondering God where are you?

Grave illness. The death of a friend or loved one. Especially those who died too young, or when they still seemed to have so  much more of offer.   

Persecution in Jesus’ name.  The ongoing martyrdom of Christians in Africa and the Middle East.

Natural disasters: famines, earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes with the destruction and loss of life that they bring.

Threats and saber rattling that even today make us wonder about the future of the World.

The loss of our own foundations through sickness, job loss, economic upheaval.

And powerful goodness can also bring us into confrontation with the enormity of God. A  life transformed and redeemed. An addiction cured and replaced by loving service to Christ.  Let me give you an example from my own life.

I know of no reason why God chose me to stand before you here today. I am painfully aware of every reason why I should not be here. When I read the first words of the collect for today: “O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name,” I’m reminded of how often and profanely I once took God’s Holy name in vain.  God would have been quite justified in not showing me his mercy and forgiveness over that sin, but He did. When I think of all the excuses I threw back at God when I first sensed his call to ministry there was every reason for God to stop pursuing me and select someone more compliant, more ready to serve Him. But he didn’t give up on me.  And all the times when I’ve held something back, when I didn’t give my all. God never abandoned me as a lost cause. As one who just would never get it.

So here I am. And like Job I’d sure like to ask God why me? Because if I knew God’s purpose for me I’m sure I could do a better job in making that purpose a reality. If I just had a better idea of the Big Picture, then I’d know how to fit in. How to maximize my input. How to make it all come together. I can’t let the moment pass on this father’s Day without recalling something my Dad and I talked about in his last days before he died several years ago. Dad recovered from colon cancer and wondered over the additional years God gave him, why? What was it that God had saved his life for?  He was a fine singer and he continued to sing in several community choirs. He spoke of his faith with friends and strangers alike. He enjoyed life and travel and watching his grand children grow up. But he always wondered what it was that God had saved his life for. Until finally he stopped wondering and just thanked God that he had been so blessed. I believe God saved his life so that he would be blessed. That simple. And I think dad figured that out and accepted it and it prepared him for his death and entry into the eternal Kingdom.

The disciples in today’s Gospel lesson  are also up against something bigger than themselves. In this case it is a storm of Biblical proportions that threatens to swamp them on the Sea of Galilee.  Where was God when they needed him? Well, God was right there with them, asleep in the stern of the boat. Now you would think that finding God asleep in their boat would have a passivating effect on the disciples. Hadn’t they just witnessed healings, throwing out of demons. Hadn’t he been unlocking the secrets to the Kingdom of God by revealing to them the meaning behind his parables? And now to find Jesus peacefully sleeping should have given them assurance that things were not as they seem to be. The chaos of their world is under the control of the One who comes to bring peace.  But no. The reality of the storm is too great. It’s not a question of faith really. They believe Jesus can do something. They just needed to wake him up to the peril surrounding them. Job never doubted God’s omnipotence, just his involvement. The disciples never question Jesus’ power and authority, just his awareness.

And, finally, we come to the point of these lessons and we see something of the nature of God and of ourselves. We are obsessed, it seems, with moving God onto our agenda.  If we can just get God to see things as we see them, then together we can accomplish great things. But this is a false and vain appropriation of God’s will for us. It is sternly rebuked by God in his response to Job’s  demands. It is a painful lesson for the disciples in how far removed they are from their Lord’s expectations of them. “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” Jesus asks.

Henry and Richard Blackaby address this false teaching in their book Spiritual Leadership.  They write, “The role of spiritual leaders is not to dream up dreams for God but to be the vanguard for their people in understanding God’s revelation. The Christian leader is far better described as a servant of God.”  Put in those terms,  we see how preposterous the notion is that we can even begin to “dream up dreams for God.”

God dresses Job down in no uncertain terms.  “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man. I will question you, and you shall declare to me.”  And to his credit, Job relents and falls before God in obedience and submission. In worship. His response, from Job 42:4-6.

You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.

The disciples too are left with a revelation of God. “And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’

Both Job and the disciples receive a blessing. They are no wiser to the ways of God than they were before their experiences. But they have a revelation that they are in the presence of God. And as with all of God’s blessings, it is richer than they could have imagined.  Ask as I might, study and pray as hard as I may, I am not going to know why God placed me here and gave me this task to perform.  And as long as I persist in asking that question, I’m avoiding the real call: to live and love in the presence of the risen Christ.  There’s only one thing asked of us, and Paul sums it up at the end of today’s reading from 2^nd Corinthians. “In return- I speak as to children- open wide your hearts also.”  With wide open hearts then we will know all we need to know.  

Amen.