Oct 4, Job, Ps. 26, Heb. 2
Surely the theme of suffering runs through these passages like a bright line.“perfect through suffering” and Job’s inexplicable suffering on a wager suffering of divorce The adversary in the divine counsel asks if Job’s goodness is in relation to his blessings. What if he suffers, will Jobe remain loyal to you?
Ps. 26 wonders about trouble given a good life.I have real problems with the notion that we learn through suffering. first, it seems to me that we learn from success well. Second, the lesson plan seems to not teach many people much of anything except their own breaking point. suffering teaches about the fragility of human beings. suffering seems to destroy the capacity of people to learn much of anything except about the depth of pain. When I was a child people spoke of being graduates of the school of hard knocks.
Undoubtedly, the bible makes a good life open to and deserving of blessings. We find it in many proverbs, and we certainly see it applied to a nation in the historical chapters, punishment follows apostasy-relief with repentance.At the same time it is well aware that the good stumble and the evil propser.
Rabbi Kushner had a huge success with his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I continue to think that it was snatched up due to its title. Kushner comes to the topic personally. their young son was afflicted with a premature aging disease.He picked up the perhaps repressed bargain that we acquire from part of the bible, the good are blessed and the evil are punished. Job challenges the structure of it with its imagined dialogue with God and the great inspector general (no, it should not be read as Satan,the devil)
World Communion Sunday-fellowship of the suffering -united through brokenness
In communion we again face the reality of Jesus Christ. We are in direct contact with the same cosmic christ of Hebrews who suffered and died, in one person. We take into our own bodies participate in and with that same life.the Hebrews reading calls Jesus brother and liberator, along with the number of titles of the divine one and the human one .I tis a direct challenge to our view of god to consider that suffering is part of human life, but suffering as part of the divine life, of experienced by Jesus. that terrible event is in god’s hand salvific, healing.Not only doe sChrist live, christ’s work lives.It offers healing to the suffering.We belong to christ; we belong to each other, not in sin, not in separation, but in baptism into grace.Suffering is not the last word.taken up in the sacrament, the humiliated, the lost, th esuffering are given a promise an dat times a relaity of transformation. “restored, exalted, filled with good things” just as the ending of Job will show.
Ethics of Communion-
the god of Jesus Christ does not play games with human destinies.
Just as we speak of Jesus as fully human and fully divine in the Chalcedon document of 451, this is a good way to explore communion.Communion puts together the shards of our lives. It underscores the good and the bad together. After all, the bread of life had a body crucified, and the cup of healing had blood shed.”sorrow and love flow mingled down” this morning.I want to be careful here. Please do not see the sacrament as glorifying or condoning suffering.The sacrament feeds our spirits so we can continue to fight against it or heal it and to find the strength to endure it ourselves.
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