Twentieth Pentecost
Mark 10:35-45; Hebrews 5:1-10; Job 38:1-7, 34-41
Grace and peace to you from the one who is, and who was, and who is to come.
For three weeks now, our Old Testament lessons have come from the book of Job. No one has preached on this book yet, and as I perused the texts for this week, I understood why. Job deals with that eternal and elusive question – why do bad things happen to good people? This question Job asks, and the predicament Job ends up in, speak to all of us in some way or another. An unfair decision against us from an employer, a slight from someone we’ve always treated well, a ravaging illness sapping our health and life, the death of someone we can’t imagine life without. Everyone one of us faces this reality of the world in one way or another. In theological terms, we could call this Law, the recognition that we are separated from God, and the problems this separation causes in the world.
As people living in the tradition of Luther and the Reformation, we preach Law and Gospel, and so the question follows, where is the gospel in God’s words to Job? This might be one of those passages that leads some people to say, “Well, that’s the Old Testament God, and we believe in the New Testament God.” Did God really change so dramatically between Malachi and Matthew? I don’t think any of us would say this is the case. (By the way, if you’re interested in the problems posed by this theology, make sure to join me next week for the beginning of our new adult education series on the early church.)
People who know about such things have suggested that what God is saying here is if Job can’t understand creation, it is not surprising that he cannot understand innocent suffering. This makes sense and helps shed light on one of the most difficult passages in the bible. But it still points to the separation between God and humanity, so the heart of this passage is still Law. I think the difficulty in finding a word of Gospel in Job is not as much in what God says, but in how the author’s experience of God caused him to depict God.
The book of Job paints a picture of a god who is far, far away from us. The story of Job is one of the oldest stories in the bible, but the version recorded in the book of Job seems to come from the time of the Exile, when the Hebrews were far from their home and far from their temple. Perhaps this helps explain the understanding of God the story portrays, but it doesn’t make it any less troubling. The story begins with the incredible scene of God and Satan placing a bet on Job’s faithfulness, and God giving Satan free reign to deal with Job. God sits on the sidelines as Job’s life falls apart, and when it finally looks like Job will get an answer, God appears as violent storm. This terrifying apparition answers Job’s question with questions, expounding on weighty cosmic issues in response to Job’s very concrete problems. All this comes together to tell us the experience of this author led to the perception of a distant God, one far-removed from the difficulties of day-to-day life.
What Job needs, what we need, is someone who can bring the awesomeness of God near to us in a way that shows us that God really does listen to us and care about us. It’s easy to say that since God knows all, God knows how we feel when face difficulty or tragedy. But do we really believe in our hearts that the God of the Whirlwind can feel what we feel?
Thanks be to God that our scripture records many other depictions of the divine. The anonymous author of Hebrews, like the author of Job, wrote at a time when the temple lay in ruins. The way of relating to God through sacrifices of animals and produce at that temple was also in shambles, as it was when Job’s story was written down. Yet Hebrews professes a God whose Word is “living and active,” who abounds in grace and mercy, and who is present with us always. What could have led to such a dramatic transformation of how faithful people saw God? Did God really change so radically?
Perhaps it wasn’t God who changed, but what we knew about God. It’s amazing how knowing a little bit about someone can lead to one perception, and how that someone revealing just a little about them self can upend that perception.
My wife has a cousin named Jose. Jose came to this country from Mexico to work. He found work here, he worked hard and he supported his family. One morning he was cutting the grass in front of a mansion in River Forest, an affluent, mostly white suburb south of here. Someone walking down the sidewalk stopped, came up to Jose and asked him, “How much do you charge for cutting the grass?” Jose turned to him and said, “This is my house.” The man’s perception changed instantly with that little bit of self-revelation; how about all of you? What if I also revealed that Jose came to this country to work as an engineer? Just a little revelation about someone can completely change how we see them.
In Jesus Christ, we see the ultimate revelation of God. In him we see a God of mercy, compassion, and forgiveness. It is this experience of God in Jesus Christ, and the experience of being part of the community called together around Him that the author of Hebrews is trying to convey. We see an acknowledgment of the change in how faithful people see God as the book begins with the words, “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.”
This change, not in God, but in how God speaks to us and how we relate to him, is at the heart of our reading for this morning. To cop a phrase from recent political parlance, Jesus hits the reset button on relations with God. The relationship we had with God before we came to know God better though Christ was mediated by the priest in the temple in Jerusalem. The understanding of the cosmos in the time Jesus was born saw humanity down here, and God far above, with the priest standing between the two, reaching up towards God. The author rehearses the qualifications for this esteemed office. The priest stands before God on behalf of the people, and helps the relations between God and people. He knows the life of the people, with its joys and its pains, because he is one of them. He is called to that office by God, not by self-selection.
In this way, our reading from Hebrews today walks in to the world of the high priest, but walks us out of that world and into the world of Christ in reverse order, perhaps a sign of the earth-shaking change that happened in Christ.
The Hebrews appointed their priests on a hereditary basis; the church speaks of an “internal” and an “external” call to ministry as a pastor. But here, today, we will confess that God became human in Christ, an infinitely better qualification for the office of priest. And God’s call to Jesus was very clear, and very public. And he is called to a higher order of priesthood than the one founded by Aaron, the one continued by the high priests. The “order of Melchizedek” is more ancient, going back to the time of Abraham, and even Abraham, ancestor of all God’s faithful people, presented offerings to him.
Like the high priests, Jesus lived much the same life as the people he served, though not by being born into human life like everyone else, but by his own choice. He lived the suffering of humanity as well, with ample reason for his loud cries and tears. Just as the priest’s high status could not insulate him from the difficulties of life, even Jesus’ status as God’s son could not keep him from suffering.
The high priest offered up sacrifices to God to atone for his sin; Jesus offered prayers to God to atone for our sin. The high priest was made an honored and respected man by his life. Jesus was made perfect, that is, he was made complete, by his life, having the complete experience of humanity – life, with all its highs and lows, death, and finally, resurrection. Having completed this life, he is now not just someone designated by the community to work towards maintaining the covenant with God, he builds a totally new relationship between us and God, one of abundant life. Because he did this for us, “he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”
Now I was tempted to leave out those last few words, including that one we have so much trouble with – obey. What’s the point of this new understanding of God through Jesus if it all comes down to obeying? But this is not advocating salvation by our own works. Obedience for Christ and obedience for us are very different things. As theologian Stanley Olsen wrote, “In his oneness with humanity, [Jesus] never lost his focus on God’s purpose – this was his obedience. Our obedience is to place our trust in him as the only one who can be priest for us.” That trust, that faith, is what allows us to “approach the throne of grace with boldness and trust in God’s mercy” as we said to begin our worship this morning.
Jesus changes how we understand God and how we relate to God, and this is a change that lives in our lives. The priest stood between; Jesus stands alongside, fully with us, fully with God, allowing us to stand as people of God with those who we bless through our ministry here and our support of ministries around the world. The priest had to make offerings on his own behalf; Jesus chose to offer himself on our behalf, allowing us to make offerings of time, talent and treasure on behalf of our neighbors. The priest solemnly entered the presence of God one day a year; we joyfully celebrate Christ entering our presence this morning at the table.
What we learn about God through Jesus Christ transforms our perception of God. We no longer see God as Shaddai, the Hebrew term for the God of the Mountain or God Almighty, but as Immanuel, God with us. When we are confronted by the distance between God and us that exists in the world – that’s Law. When God comes down to us across that distance in Jesus Christ out of love – that’s Gospel.
Amen