Who Are You, Are You Able? October 18, 2009

Job 38
Mark 10:35-41
The questions of God to Job from the Whirlwind are the most basic questions we ask ourselves:
Who Are You? Were You There When? Are You Able? These are the questions we struggle with when filling our College Applications, and Job Applications, When Getting Married and Having Children, and Looking at our Reflection in the Mirror, Determining whether we can trust another with our greatest stories of suffering and of pain, and When we Retire and When we reach the end of Days.
Who are you? Were you there? Are you able? These are questions of identity, but even more of Honor, of Vocation and Call, not just of Career and Paycheck but of whether life has meaning and purpose, and what do we do about, what can we say about: Chaos.

We have become acculturated that if you show up at the right time, in the right place, and do what is expected, everything will work out. Follow the rules, meet and surpass the expectations. 90% of life is just showing up. We live in a disposable world, where everything is a facade, nothing in life is supposed to have meaning. I wish that all the world could have four days, on the first day to sit on a cliff at the shore watching the waves roll in and the tide go out, or to sail feeling the wind and the waves and charting a course to tack back and forth. The second day, to sit in the depths of a forest or stand in the center of a wheat field, watching and listening as the wind furrows and that which we thought was all the same is distinguished by a bird or a chipmunk or a deer. The third day, to sit on a mountain and look over the range of mountains, to witness how insignificant we are, but also that we could be part of any and all of those places. The fourth to stand in the midst of a cemetery, Arlington or Gettysburg, or even Lakeview, to read the inscriptions and families of so many who have gone before.

I recall a few years ago, climbing a mountain with my son and his friends. I thought it would be following a path, but this journey was straight up. Within the first hour, I determined that if I could keep pace for the day, we would get to the first night's rest, and I would not have embarrassed him, so I could climb down while they went on ahead. But about mid-morning we stopped to rest, and I looked over the range of mountains, and realized two things, first that there was no way down you had to follow the path and continue, and second that we were on this journey together dependent on one another's abilities. Who are You? Were you there when? Are you able?

God provides a wonderful response to Job in the midst of his chaos. Job has witnessed the loss of his career, his honor, his sons and daughters, his fortune, his body is covered sores and illness, and Job reaches back to the most basic understanding of the Old Testament: The Exodus. Job demands that according to Moses you were going to hear our prayers and respond. According to your giving Israel your name at the Burning Bush, we would call upon you especially in times of suffering and you would care, you would redeem, you would be God. It appears as though God has created chaos to balance God's blessings. Where is God? Where are you? Are you there? Are you able?

God undercuts, Job's identification of Who God is in the Exodus, with a more basic foundational identity, Were you there at Creation? God is the Redeemer who heard the people and led the nation out to a Promised Land, but God is also The Creator, Who are you? Were you there at Creation? Are you able to Create? Do you realize all Creation was chaos, and order and balance were made out of chaos.

James and John make the same assumption of Jesus, enabling them to make a juvenile request. As parents, we have each been trapped in the request they make... “We want you to do whatever we ask.” To which Jesus responds “What would you like?” Even more childish they reply, “We want to share your Glory, we want to sit one at your right and one at your left in heaven.” Time after time throughout the Gospels Jesus had described the suffering and disgrace and death he would have to endure, yet they had not listened. James and John and Simon Peter were among the inner circle of the twelve disciples, who were the core of the crowd of followers listening to Jesus. They imagined that by relationship, they could receive his glory, his honor.
In reply to James and John, Jesus did not rebuke them. The other disciples and the crowd become indignant, that James and John asked for favors they would have wanted, but Jesus takes these two seriously and questions them: Who are you? Will you be there? Are you able to drink the cup I drink? These are not rhetorical questions, but assessment, reflection, and asking more of the petitioner than showing up. The point of Jesus' assessment is that James and John will follow Jesus not only as Disciples and as Apostles, but as Martyrs as well. And yet the point of Jesus incarnation is not simply that he gave us Baptism as a Sacrament for the Remission of Sins, and Communion as a Sacrament for Forgiven Eternal Relationship with God, for us to follow by example, but that he did so in his own life. He was/is the pioneer and perfecter for us. In the only occurrence in all the New Testament, Mark uses the word “Ransom” to describe Jesus paying to redeem our lives. Yet in this conversation what Mark reveals is that James and John, like all of us are Very Human, wanting Honor, Glory and Respect, and also this moment's hesitation as Jesus assesses Who they are? Whether they can be there when he needs and Are they able? The persistent question of Christian faith today is not whether we understand, not whether we want to be baptized and to drink from his cup, but what difference it makes for us?

Reading these passages over and over this week, something occurred to me that I had never seen before, something which is not recorded in any commentary, but reading these two passages together seems to make sense. Jesus' reply to James and John, and God's reply to Job from the Whirlwind are not rebukes. God was not saying “Who do you think you are? You were not there at Creation! You are not able!” Not an indignant condemnation: “Silly Rabbit, Tricks are for Kids!” But rather, an appraisal that Job could be able to do more, to believe differently.

The Response of God to Job from the Whirlwind is reference not to Exodus but to Creation; However, rather than Genesis 1 where the last Creation formed after light and dark, and dry land from Water; Rather than Genesis 3's Adam & Eve and questions of Good/Evil and Perfection; the Creation God is recalling from the Whirlwind, assessing Job, is Genesis 2. “When in the day God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant in the field was yet in the earth, no herb had yet sprung up, a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground – then the Lord God formed Humanity from the Humus, dead decaying dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.” The answer to God's question of Were you there at Creation? is Yes!

The question that is left is “Are you able?” Having faced the struggles of life, can you face chaos? Before God can restore Job, Job has to witness God's most terrifying creatures “Behemoth” and “Leviathan”. At which point we understand that God is God and we are Human, but we are in the image of the creator, we were there at Creation, and we are able to be far more than those who show up and those who consume.

The last several months our Session has wrestled around the question of “Who are We?” The Episcopal and Lutheran Churches have chosen identities as Social Witness Churches. The Pentecostal and Baptist Churches have claimed identity as Conservative Churches, with only male leadership. The Methodist and Episcopal and Pentecostal Churches have become Praise Churches. So “Who are We?” The identity we have discerned is that we will live and die as an INCLUSIVE CHURCH, where all are welcome, Conservative and Liberal, and we will go out of our way to HOST and Welcome. We are a PERMISSION GIVING CHURCH where all things are possible. We are a MISSIONAL CHURCH who serve both locally and around the world, who give of ourselves, our time and talents and money and relationships because we are able. We are a CHURCH which both has RESOURCES TO SERVE and USES them. We are a TRADITIONAL CHURCH in that we follow a liturgy which is Transformative, Confessional and Redemptive, we like hymns that tell a story and are not simply popular they are good music. We are the Church, which has been and is Reformed, and We are Able.