October 7, 2012, Testimony and CounterTestimony

Job 1:1 Mark 10:2-16 The Book of Job begins, and we know something is wrong, there is going to be a set up. “There once was a man from Uz, blameless and upright before the Lord, he did what was right and he was blessed!” Each of us at times have perceived there being someone who was always blessed, born with a silver spoon in their mouth, like a cat always landing on their feet, where other people seem to stumble into trouble, these always are blessed. As a pastor of 29 years, I can tell you that behind the facade is one who stares out the window sleepless nights, that despite the smile and grace of lines in another's face, the staring at the floor rather than looking others in the eye, tell the story of worry and doubt and fears. There is an ancient Sioux Indian prophecy that we need to expect bad things to happen, only when we have endured getting through the hardships are we ready and able to find and appreciate the good. The alternative would be the question many of us find ourselves asking, why do bad things happen to good people, what is the will of God, is God good or evil, is life cruel or are we set-up for challenge? 30 years ago Rabbi Harold Kushner published a bestseller in which he explained When Bad Things Happen to Good People? Yet even to this day, if you ask the title of the book, most will respond Why Bad Things Happen? Many came away from reading this saying, “Yes But,” he told stories of people struggling, and it is true that misery loves company, but we were looking for Why bad things happen to good people. The answer to WHY is what the Book of Job and Jesus' Hard Teachings are about. When I was in 3rd Grade, we were carefully instructed in learning The Scientific Method...that there are GIVENs about the way the world works, and whenever we create a new THEORY about what could be true, we need to test our theory with a HYPOTHESIS, we operationalize a test with STANDARDIZED QUANTIFIED METHODS, we OBSERVE, we draw CONCLUSIONS, and we prove or disprove our Hypothesis allowing us to believe our theory identifying new Givens, or we disprove this as wrong. All through Junior and Senior High and College and Grad School, we followed the procedures of The Scientific Method in both Natural and Social Sciences. When suddenly in the mid 1980s someone asked whether all the results always fit the Hypothesis? And the answer was NO, for nearly every question that is asked, every hypothesis, nearly all of the results fit but there are routinely a few that do not, these are categorized as spurious, random chance, fate. The question then became, if there are always some results which are spurious, maybe it is not that some individuals are wrong, some circumstances do not fit, but rather that we were asking the WRONG QUESTIONS, possibly event that our Scientific Method does not provide a complete understanding. Those researchers determined that rather than writing Theses PROVING CONCLUSIONS the purpose of research was to document and describe Case Studies, and the reader, the observer, the listener seeking answers would be able to determine for themselves if this answered their unique experience. Many approach reading the Bible as if a Book of Law, Instruction. That reading the Bible, we would know right and wrong, and how we are to live our lives. There are books, like Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, which are books of Law, naming that when you do right you will be blessed, and when you do wrong you bring curses upon yourself. Like a Two year old being told “Must Not Touch! The Stove Will Burn You” we tempt and test. If I touch the handle of the stove? If I touch it when it is turned off? How about when it turns Red? We learn there is Testimony that is true, but there also need to be Counter-Testimonies which together provide a more complete understanding, of what is true and what might be when what we assumed would be true happened differently. A week ago, meeting with the Confirmation Class, we reviewed the first half of the Book of Genesis, asking the question WHY? Why is Creation described in seven days, the very last thing named before the Sabbath being Humanity out of the Humus; and why, in the next section is the Human the first thing created and God brings everything to the Human? Suddenly it occurs to me, that perhaps the Biblical Testimony is Genesis 1. The Biblical TESTIMONY of TRUTH is that all life is this interconnected web, with the seeds of the future in each. But that rather than our being the center of our universe, long long before we ever existed, at the foundation of life itself, before there was an Atmosphere, or Matter, or Life, at our very Core Our World was a Dark and Shapeless Void, a place of Nothingness and Fear, AND there was and Is GOD. And with a word, speaking an idea, God rules Creation, to balance everything, and in that balance is the answer to our fears and to life. This Testimony explains all of life, as named in Genesis, AND IT WAS GOOD, VERY GOOD. But in our world, we also know ourselves to have a dominance, control over life and death. So what is the COUNTER-TESTIMONY that is also true where we are the center, the foundation, the first thing? There is the story of Creation at Chapter 2, with Adam being the first Creation, naming all the creature God creates, and through naming giving each identity in relationship to us, and following the story through with Humanity placed at the Center of the Universe rather than God, this also becomes the creation of Sin, as we seek to make decisions, to live life without God. The delicate balance of Testimony and Counter-Testimony is when the world begins to believe the Counter-Testimony only, to take the Exception as if The Rule. To do so is to ask Wrong Questions. The Covenant with God is often described as being THE LAW. However, the failure of religion has been that rather than perceiving the Covenant with God as Relationship, as a give and take tension of life, The Law became codified as an absolute. When we break the Law, we must confess, we must make an offering to demonstrate both our humility before God and our Thanksgiving to God, so in every worship service, there needs to be Confession and Offering and Thanksgiving, regardless of what we believe, or have done, or feel. In the time of the New Testament, the Lawyers (the Pharisees) brought to Jesus a question of Law. If Religion is The Law given by God, and if you are the Messiah, the Son of God, then interpret the Law! Much like our own time, for humanity is humanity, Divorce had become common. Men routinely went into marriage with the assumption that if it does not work, all I have to do is appear before the Rabbi and state three times I want a Divorce from her, and being in control of my life I can create my reality. Rather than a purely Jewish State, this was now a Roman Culture with Roman Laws, one of which was that Women could also bring suit against their husbands for divorce. With this new Roman interpretation added to the laws about Divorce, the Pharisees brought question to Jesus: What do you think about Divorce? Jesus' point is not to Condemn Divorce, or to condemn those divorcing. I remember when I was first Ordained, a woman in the congregation asked “DOES DIVORCE MAKE ONE A SINNER?” What she was asking was “My daughter is in abusive relationship. She took her children and left her husband. Regardless of who did what, because she is getting a divorce, does this mean God does not love her anymore, and that I cannot love her?” I have to believe that the answer is “GOD LOVES YOU!” The agony of this passage in Mark, is that the Pharisees assumed the reality of Divorce, assumed marriage was all about the division of assets and property and what belongs to whom to which Jesus replies THE INTENT OF GOD IS THAT YOU WOULD CLEAVE TOGETHER. Counter-Testimony is important. Counter-testimony provides balance with the Truth and Givens as we know them. The story of Job is Counter-testimony, when the LAW is questioned whether doing right you will be blessed and doing wrong you will be cursed. What happens when one who was blameless and upright and blessed has pain and sorrow heaped upon them? In C.S. Lewis' classic Screwtape Letters the old devil:Screwtape mentors the young devil Wormwood and describes “Evil is never more in danger, than when a human no longer wanting to be on God's side looks round upon the universe from which every trace of God seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, yet still believes in God and obeys. Such a testimony of Faith is much more than a means to a selfish end.”