Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Satan has already stripped Job of all worldly possessions. He’s taken this wretched man from riches to rags, robbed him of everything (sheep, camels, servants – even children), yet Job persists in his devotion to God. “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away,” he says.
Satan’s losing the bet. So when the heavenly council meets again, and God boasts again about Job, Satan (rather than admit he’s lost) raises the ante: “Skin for skin,” he says. “All that people have they will give to save their lives.” “… touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” God takes the bet, and Satan inflicts Job, head to toe, with loathsome sores. Job’s wife tells him to curse God and die. But Job remains faithful. “We take the good days from God,” he says to her, “-- why not also the bad days?”

The question of suffering, why bad things happen to good people, dogs monotheistic religion. Polytheists, believers in many gods, have no problem. They simply conclude that some gods bring about good and others bad, some bring happiness and others suffering. But when you say there is only one God (as do Jews, Christians and Moslems), it’s hard to explain the existence of both good and evil in the same God-created and God-controlled universe. And if you say, “God is love,” it’s the evil, the suffering that has to be explained. That, of course, is the subject of the Book of Job. Job demands an answer from God. But an answer never comes. God has to appear to Job, or (to say it another way) Job has to experience God personally, before he can let the question go.

Our faith embraces the suffering. (I want to say that again, because it’s important: Our faith embraces the suffering.) When Christianity has been at its strongest, when it has changed the world, it’s kept both eyes on the cross, and then on the crown. It’s called people to lives of sacrifice, self-denial, servanthood, suffering and even death, if necessary. In the Gospels you can find an interesting little cadre of disciple want-ta-bes, men who didn’t make it. Why? They could have been famous! They failed, in every case, when Jesus reminded them of the sacrifice involved. How they would have to sleep on the ground, give away their riches, even neglect family duties. Being his disciple was a hard road and a narrow way. Whenever we’ve forgotten the cross, the sacrifice, the suffering we’ve become the namby-pamby, strawberries and cream religion seen in so many places today, utterly worthless in a world already full of false promises.

In October of 1978, when all the cardinals were gathered at the Vatican electing (as it turned out) Pope John Paul II, a television reporter was walking the streets of Rome, outside, asking passers-by, “If you were elected Pope, how would you change the church?” One fourteen-year-old girl answered, without hesitation, “I’d coat the communion wafers with chocolate.” I’m afraid we’ve already done that. We’ve candy-coated the major elements of our faith, and by doing so, robbed it of its integrity. The central symbol of our faith is a cross (and it is a “rugged” cross, as the old hymn reminds us). The central service of our faith is the Eucharist, the Holy Communion – a remembrance and a reenacting of Christ’s sacrificial death. Where did we ever get the idea that this faith of ours is an elixir of happiness.
We believe that good things happen through sacrifice, not through self-service. Through denying oneself, not through spoiling oneself. Through giving and not through getting. In that we are at odds with the world, and always will be. David McKechnie, in his book, Experiencing God Pleasure, writes: “Mark it down. Anytime you see a happy family, it did not happen by accident. Somebody sacrificed. That person sacrificed convenience, comfort, time, power and the right to make unilateral decisions. There is no success without sacrifice.” And then he says something beautiful: “Sacrifice is the sacrament of love.” For Christians love is not so much feeling as doing. And when we do love, we sacrifice ourselves. When God did love, he sacrificed himself. “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends,” Jesus said. “And I am your friend.”

On the surface we are divided into groups, and these groups make us who we are. At least that’s what we’re told. We are men or we are women. Men think like this and women like that – and a man can never understand what it is to be a woman, nor a woman a man. Or so we are told. We are white verses black. Whites are like this and blacks are like that, and ne’er the twain shall meet. Or so we are told. We are young verses old. Rich verses poor. Israeli verses Palestinian. Developed countries verses developing countries. And we can be counted on to act and think as our group acts and thinks. Or so we are told.

The stereotypes, themselves, are more often wrong than right. But that’s not the worst of it. They deny our common humanity. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” the Bible says. All! Not “all women,” not “all blacks,” not “all rich.” All! All are sometimes afraid and feel lost in this world. All want to be loved. All want to find meaning and purpose. All feel disappointment and shame. All grieve death. All feel joy. All envy. All hate. All love. All weep. All know the difference between serving others and serving self, between making a living and making a killing, between helping the helpless and exploiting them. And we all, like Job, like Christ, know what it is to suffer. It is at this human level (where all are one) that Christ meets us, all of us. That’s what it means that at Pentecost the disciples spoke one language but people of all nations and tongues could understand. The gospel of Jesus Christ overcomes differences as nothing else.

One bread, one body, one Lord of all,
One cup of blessing which we bless.
And we, though many, throughout the earth,
We are one body in this one Lord.