November 7, 2004
By Jack Price

The recent presidential election results were, for some, a tremendously good thing.  For others, they were catastrophic, a bad thing!  In the early 1980’s, Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book When Bad Things Happen to Good People was immensely popular.  It may have a certain relevance to the current situation.  A book of real grace, Kushner helped people come to grips with calamities both large and small.  It helped people resist that ancient, yet still powerful, myth that prosperity is a sign of God’s blessing and failure and suffering are signs of God’s absence or curse.

            Job is the original “when bad things happen to good people” person.  Job was likely not a historical character, but rather a dramatic figure, a mythic hero, and the central character of an epic poem.  Job is the story of an innocent person suffering.  It questions that culture’s assumption that suffering always results from sin.  Job is “helped” by three friends who offer advice and try to analyze Job’s problems.  He seems to reach his limit for receiving help in this passage from Job 19. 

Job resists his friends’ efforts to get him to admit whatever sin it was that brought calamity on him.  He reasserts all his “words” of resistance until there is no argument left.  Finally, there is no answer left but “I just know it!  I know my Redeemer lives!” 

What does the phrase “my Redeemer” mean?  In the Old Testament, one of the clear meanings is “blood avenger”.  That is a relative to justify his existence even after his death.  Job’s children had all died.  There seems to be no one to avenge his unjust demise.  Yet, Job still trusts in ultimate justice.  In this terrible life crisis, Job claims his culture’s promise that his life will not be forgotten nor will it be ultimately meaningless.  Job stands alone, bowed but not broken, and proclaims, “I know my “blood avenger lives”  I claim my dignity as a human being.  In so doing, Job challenges us to claim (or reclaim) our humanity and human dignity in a culture, society, and world that moves to dehumanize us – to break our will, diminish our sense of wonder, flatten our imagination, and lower our expectations.

Job’s faith has no external basis.  It comes only from his inner conviction of his innocence and of God’s justice.  His is a radical faith that proclaims, “I Know that My Redeemer Lives”.  For Job, this is obviously not a Christological proclamation.  It is a desperate affirmation of faith in God who is just, even in the midst of horrible injustice and frightening calamity.  His is a faith born of desperation.

            The story is told of a famous acrobat who had stretched a tightrope, and was walking, across Niagara Falls.  After walking back and forth several times, balancing a variety of objects, the acrobat asked the crowd, “Do you think I can push this wheelbarrow across on this tightrope?  Without hesitation, the crowd should, “You can do it!”  “With a person seated inside?”  “Yes!  We believe in you!  You can do it!”  “Well then,” replied the man, “who will volunteer to sit in the wheelbarrow?”  There were no volunteer.

Job stepped into God’s wheelbarrow because he had nowhere else to go.  His was a desperate faith.  Getting even for Job was not revenge.  It was, rather, a deep trust in justice and in the source of justice.  His was a radical hope in justice.

Getting Even is the title of this sermon.  There is a modern proverb that advises us, “Don’t get mad, get even.”  Certainly in Job’s mind, he desire vengeance for the injustice to his life, his family, and all his property.  Yet, vengeance is much of the problem in the world today.  We people seek to justify ourselves by getting even with those who have wronged us, even a perceived wrong.  This “mimetic violence,” literally mimicking or mirroring the violence done to us, never leads to peace.  Witness the examples of the Middle East, Columbine, Oklahoma City, of youth gangs, and the plethora of domestic violence.

People of faith, however, too often promote a “get even” mindset in terms of revenge.  Even our depiction of God as the great judge seems to be for the purpose of getting even with bad and unfaithful people who don’t see things “our way”.  Yet, getting even does not have to be revenge, though there’s plenty of that in the Bible and today as well. 

Job invokes his cultural expectation for a blood avenger to pay back those responsible and avenge his fate.  We see Job’s purpose more clearly in the light of Jesus’ teaching and Jesus’ life. Job’s example suggests that getting even does not have to be getting back, but getting beyond, beyond revenge to the heart of hope itself, to a reality deeper than we can see.  In trusting, like Job, in the reality of the ultimate justice of God, we can set aside desire for vengeance and wrap ourselves in the love and providence of God who alone justifies our existence

The essence of faith is radical trust.  This is not dogmatic belief in a doctrinal statement or concept.  Truth as a moral absolute cannot be captured in statements or positions.  Such beliefs can only reflect truth.  The One True Thing is love.  I mean love not as feeling, but as a matter of the will.  Love is revealed in how we treat each other and ourselves.  Such divine love indicates radical faith in the living God who has acted in human history in a decisive way through Jesus, for all creation and all people of all times and all places.  Our radical faith rests in God who is both radically loving and radically inclusive.

We live in a time of division in our culture, society, and within the Christian faith.  This division is complex and multi-faceted.  In the Church, the primary division seems to be between those who see God as primary exclusive and those who see God as primarily inclusive. 

God who is exclusive accepts only those who are “in,” who believe the right things and join the right group.  God’s judgment is condemnation.  This view represents a large portion of the Christian tradition, though it has a renewed fervor in our day and time.

            God who is inclusive is really inclusive.  Everyone is in.  The Christ Spirit is present in all.  God’s judgment is truth telling, revealing to ourselves the sin that divides and diminishes us.  Redemption is a process in which the whole of creation is engaged.  I stake my life that the God we worship is radically inclusive.  The church that reflects God is radically inclusive, not just of those who agree, but of all people.

            What does this mean for us?  Crossroads Church is a band of radical “trusters”.  We do not trust in what the Church has been or in a particular way of interpreting the Christian faith.  We sure understand that interpretations of faith are diverse.  We       trust God and that God has called, and continues to call us, to be church according to our particular giftedness. 

We are radical “trusters” in the reality of God and in the presence of the living God in our lives and in our community.  I am proud to share the journey with each of you.  I invite you to commit, or recommit, yourself to being on this journey together.  Ask yourself these questions: 

·        Where am I going?

·        What do I want?

·        On what values will I launch my present and future actions?

Let us also ask ourselves:

·        Where are we as a congregation going?

·        What do we want?

·        On what values will we launch our present and future actions?

Job models for us radical trust, radical faith.  When his world had fallen apart and everything was gone, he still hoped in ultimate justice.  In God, we will always in God, we’ll “get even,” not by vengeance, but by finding meaning beyond our present understanding.  In God, despite everything, anything that might happen – even if our lives are taken, still we will not be overcome.

Julian of Norwich, a Christian mystic during calamitous fourteenth century, relays a vision of God: 

This word, “You will not be overcome,” was said very distinctly and firmly to give us confidence and comfort for whatever troubles may come.  He did not say, “You will never have a rough passage, you will never be over-strained, you will never feel uncomfortable,” but he did say, “You will never be overcome.”  God wants us to pay attention to these words, so as to trust him always with strong confidence, through thick and thin.  For God loves us and delights in us; so God wills that we should love and delight in him in return, and trust him with all our strength.  So all will be well.” 

God invites us, in the living of our lives as individuals and as a body, to assume the posture of radical trusting.  Fear and anxiety are inevitably part of being human, inevitably part of being church.  God does not promise “no fear”.  In fact, God promises that there will be challenges and troubles, even defeats and failures.  Through Isaiah, hear God’s promise to us:

You [Crossroads Church], my servant,

[Crossroads] whom I have chosen…

You whom I brought from the confines of the earth and called from the ends of the world;

You to whom I said, “You are my servant,

I have chosen you, not rejected you,”

Do not be afraid, for I am with you;

Stop being anxious and watchful, for I am your God.

I give you strength, I bring you help,

I uphold you with my victorious right hand…

For I, Yahweh, your God,

I am holding you by the right hand;

I tell you, “Do not be afraid,

I will help you.  (Is. 41: 8-10,13)

We at Crossroads Church are a band of radical trusters.  We know the Spirit of God lives – and lives within and among us – that on the last day, as on this very day, we shall stand in the strength of the Spirit and be bathed in the love of God!