22nd Sunday after Pentecost: a Reflection St. Luke's and St Luke's Roper, Grace Plymouth
October 6, 2024 Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant
Job 1:1; 2:1-10 Psalm 26 Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12 Mark 10:2-16
“The Job Of Job”
From the Book of Job in today's Hebrew Testament lesson: “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”
One of these days when I get rich and famous being a Priest, I am going to really retire and I am going to put on and act in a play called J.B.by Archibald MacLeish. Usually I write a poem first to try to make sense of the lessons for that Sunday, but if you have a world class poet like MacLeish, lets use him. The play is in verse and begins:
“If God is God He is not good,
If God is good He is not God;
Take the even, take the odd,
I would not sleep here if I could.
Except for the little green leaves in the wood.
And the wind on the water."
Louis Kronenberger wrote a summary of the play:
J.B. was Archibald MacLeish's re-enactment, in a contemporary setting, of the Book of Job. It was also, in a double sense, a theatre piece: the action took place inside a night-lit circus tent where a sideshow Job had been performing. Two out-of-work actors, Zuss and Nickels, toying with the Biblical masks of God and Satan they find lying around, are suddenly aware of a Voice from outside them and are caught up in a story near at hand. In the story, J.B. is a rich, admired American industrialist with a devoted wife and five children. Then disaster looms and mounts: his children are senselessly killed or brutally murdered; his possessions are lost, his house is destroyed, his wife goes away, his body festers. All this happens against a crossfire, Biblical and profane, between Zuss and Nickels; then J.B. wrestles with his soul, with his comforters, with his God, till at the end his health is restored and his wife returns
How does God allow evil to happen? Most people think that any first class God worth its salt could be counted on to fix things, like our mistakes or hurricanes, before they happen. Even if the power of hurricanes are increased by our disregard of global warming and our refusal to change the way we pollute; we want God to be like a genie in the bottle and fix things.
The ancient Greeks used to do plays, called Comedies, because they end up well, which would be finished with a “Deus ex Machina”, a God in a Machine, where an actor dressed up as a God would be lowered in a basket from a high pillar, hanging over the scene like a God in the palace of the Gods, and explain how the problem is being fixed by heavenly power. Except if God is not fiction, we need to come to grips with a God that does come down in a machine to fix things. The crowds at the feet of the cross taunted Jesus that if his God loved him, that God could fix things to turn it into a comedy.
The play was MacLeish's attempt to come to find meaning in the events of his life living through (1) his serving in France in World War 1, (2) going through the post war economic depressions and hatreds, (3) the slaughter of World War 2, and (4) the insanity of Cold War. Poetry Foundation wrote of the poetry:
Like Job, J.B. is not answered, yet his love for Sarah affirms, in the playwrights phrase, “the worth of life in spite of life.” That worth is found in a love that paradoxically answers nothing but “becomes the ultimate human answer to the ultimate human question.”
In the Gospel lesson for today There are two different strands of the teachings of Jesus. On the one hand, he is asked about divorce and he answers that divorce is a sin. Every three years I have to hear that; it is not what I want to hear. The day after I graduated for college, I was anxious about living an adult life, so I married my girl friend who was a divorced woman. Jesus is reported to say that was adultery. We lived together for 19 years until our daughter went off to college; then we got divorced. Count 2 for my adultery. Later, I married another woman who was divorced. In baseball that is strike 3. Pat and I were wonderfully blessed and married for 36 years until she died 15 months ago. We learned how to love and forgive each other, every day of that marriage. Instead of being satisfied with a legal agreement, instead of moaning about the past, in spite of being failures in marriage; we learned how to give blessings to each other. We shared what MacLeish called the “worth of life in spite of life”.
In the play and in the Book Job has "comforters" come to him, but they want to get God off the hook and want Job to admit that God must be punishing Job for a sin he must have committed. But Job was blameless. - the word “comfort” does not mean providing soft things but it comes from two Latin words “com”- which means “with”, and “fort” which means “strength”. When my wife died, I had comforters that were true to the meaning of the term; I was the recipient of lots of moments when I was prayed for, hugged, fed, helped by the sitting with, in loving silence by, friends, family, neighbors and former parishioners. It was the worth of life in spite of life. They did the job of Job.
In the second part of the Gospel passage for today, Jesus, in the viewpoint of his disciples, is interpreting the serious work of Jesus' teachings. The disciples are centered on getting the important tasks done, but some pesky children are in the way. But Jesus rebukes his disciples saying:”Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” The author continues “And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.” He loves them and he is teaching his disciples and us that love is a gift; it is never earned or to be earned – only given freely. It was the worth of life in spite of life. It is a job of Job.
In this country we have an economic system that says you get what you earn. Except I do not work for a living; I am retired and I get pensions for (1) the work I did as a priest, and (2) the work I did as an Assistant Professor in a college in which I taught before I went to seminary and (3) social security for all the jobs before then since I was 16, 61 years ago. One of the things I do two to three times a month is to get in my car and drive here, charging you with my mileage and doing holy work around an altar and make with a message, for which I pay taxes. You are paying me to to keep my mind and soul alive. So I thank you for helping me, your neighbor, The job of Job is to give thanks to God for whatever you have received, both good and bad. It was the worth of life in spite of life.
I am especially proud of these two congregations. When the storms hit Western North Carolina, a couple of hundred miles away, not your next door neighbors, you dug down deeply into your hearts and pocketbooks to comfort and renew, You received the bad news of what was happening to your neighbors far away, and you heard in your hearts God's good news about being comforters, “strength givers”, to those neighbors. You opened your mind to pray for all those facing difficult days ahead. It was the worth of life in spite of life. You were living into the job of Job.
As I was writing this reflection I got word that another hurricane called “Kirk” was east of Bermuda and was expected to keep heading toward Ireland. The weather warning says: “Impacts with the highest likelihood are an increased Rip Current Threat and rough surf. Ocean-side coastal flooding impacts are also possible with the increased wave action bringing potential for ocean overwash and beach erosion, greatest chance for eastward facing coastal areas.”
Life happens and this hurricane will probably only cause me minor inconvenience, but I need to pay attention to my neighbors. I live on the Outer Banks, facing east and like you, “live in the worth of life in spite of life” and am “living into the job of Job”.
