Tests and Testimony – sermon on October 4, 2015
Job 1:1, 2: 1-10 There once was a man named Job who lived in the land of Uz. He was blameless—a man of complete integrity. He feared God and stayed away from evil. One day the members of the heavenly court came again to present themselves before the Lord, and the Accuser, Satan, came with them. “Where have you come from?” the Lord asked Satan. Satan answered the Lord, “I have been patrolling the earth, watching everything that’s going on.” Then the Lord asked Satan, “Have you noticed my servant Job? He is the finest man in all the earth. He is blameless—a man of complete integrity. He fears God and stays away from evil. And he has maintained his integrity, even though you urged me to harm him without cause.” Satan replied to the Lord, “Skin for skin! A man will give up everything he has to save his life. 5 But reach out and take away his health, and he will surely curse you to your face!” “All right, do with him as you please,” the Lord said to Satan. “But spare his life.” So Satan left the Lord’s presence, and he struck Job with terrible boils from head to foot.
Job scraped his skin with a piece of broken pottery as he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, “Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die.” But Job replied, “You talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” So in all this, Job said nothing wrong.
Hebrews 1: 1-4, 2: 5-12 Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe. The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven. This shows that the Son is far greater than the angels, just as the name God gave him is greater than their names.
It is not angels who will control the future world we are talking about. For in one place the Scriptures say, “What are mere mortals that you should think about them, or a son of man that you should care for him? Yet you made them only a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You gave them authority over all things.”
Now when it says “all things,” it means nothing is left out. But we have not yet seen all things put under their authority. What we do see is Jesus, who was given a position “a little lower than the angels”; and because he suffered death for us, he is now “crowned with glory and honor.” Yes, by God’s grace, Jesus tasted death for everyone. God, for whom and through whom everything was made, chose to bring many children into glory. And it was only right that he should make Jesus, through his suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation.
So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters. For he said to God, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters. I will praise you among your assembled people.”
Sermon: Tests and Testimony by Rev. Doreen Oughton
When I was in graduate school getting a degree in counseling psychology, I did an internship at a university. One of my tasks was to run workshops on managing test anxiety. Has anyone here ever struggled with that? I couldn’t really relate. I don’t recall ever being panicked about a test, at least not while taking it. The Psalmist, whose plea we used as a responsive reading also doesn’t seem to struggle with test anxiety. She is begging to be tested. This person is confident about passing any test God might have for her – confident about motives, about purity of heart. This person is always aware of God’s love, lives constantly in God’s truth. Such confidence can be off-putting, right? Like the kid in class with hand waving, practically jumping out of the seat – “pick me, pick me; I know the answer!” Or, heaven forbid asking for quizzes or more homework or extra credit assignments to move from an A to an A+. As was noted in the bible study, perhaps she may be a little overconfident, as such perfection seem unlikely. And I should tell you that I left out some verses to make it fit in the space available, but also because I didn’t like the verses, which bad mouth others – “I don’t sit with the worthless or consort with hypocrites. Do not sweep me away with sinners.” The Psalmist is making a case to God that she is better than those others and deserves God’s mercy, perhaps even God’s favor.
Then we have the story of God and Satan and Job. Job has not asked for any tests. Job is not presented as confident or eager to prove anything. He is just going about his business, stewarding wisely all the blessings he’d received, worshiping God and even making burnt offerings on behalf of his children, in case they weren’t doing their part to honor God. It is God who is confident in this story. As the Psalmist boasts about her innocence and purity, so God boasts to Satan about Job’s purity and faithful devotion. I wonder why. God asks where Satan, the accuser, has been, and Satan says he has been patrolling the earth… perhaps looking for people to accuse? Is Satan God’s enforcer of sorts? But God points out Job – no trouble there.
But the Accuser is skeptical. Satan says that of course Job is blameless and upright – look how he lives! So many blessings! Of course he would be always thanking God. What we acted out today was the second part of a 2-part test carried out by Satan with the okay from God. In the first part Job’s children and wealth were wiped out, and when Job responded by blessing God anyway, Satan says it wasn’t a hard enough test. People can lose anything, he says, as long as their own bodies aren’t affected. So God gives the okay to mess Job up physically. And through all this, Job does not curse God, not even when his wife suggests he should do so and die. So did he pass the test?
I had the thought that in a way, it wasn’t Job being tested. The Accuser wasn’t accusing Job so much as he was accusing God, or at least challenging God on the divine policy of exchanging blessing for praise, favor for burnt offerings. The Accuser says, basically, that God buys love, and that people praise and thank God only when things are going well for them. The faith that God engenders, he seems to say, is like dust – blown away with the first wind. So we’ve got the Psalmist trying to earn God’s favor with her pure heart and steadfast holiness, and a God accused of using blessings to acquire praise and thanks.
Thank goodness we have the letter to Hebrews that gives a different take on blessing and glory, hardship and favor. The letter lifts up Jesus, Son of God, so full of glory, Sustainer of all things, the one who cleansed us of sin and sits at the right hand of God. And then it says that we humans are, in time, to be given authority over all things – not the angels, but people. We’re not there yet, but we have the model, Jesus, who shows us how to do it, how to have authority over all things in a way that shows God’s glory. Jesus is the perfect leader. Jesus is God incarnated, and incarnated to experience and perfect personhood. And what does the letter say brought about the perfection? Suffering. It was through his suffering and death that Jesus leads us into divine life. His suffering was not in any way connected to having fallen out of favor with God. It allowed him to better show the glory of God.
The readings all talk about integrity, which is about wholeness, completion, nothing missing. And wholeness includes suffering and hardship. It is part of the human condition. This letter says it actually works to perfect the human condition. Without suffering we cannot become like Christ in showing God’s glory. When we experience hardship, it is all the easier to be recognized as Jesus’ sister or brother. We might consider, when we suffer, that we are not being punished, have not been abandoned by God, not even being tested by God, but instead are being perfected. Even if we can’t see how, even if we feel horrible, resentful, angry, bitter – absolutely unholy – perhaps it is what our soul needs to work through.
And I think this is what God was up to with Job – not defending himself against the Accuser, but allowing Job to have the experience of finding God right there in his suffering, allowing himself to be overwhelmed with God’s greatness which transcends any temporal troubles we encounter. And perhaps the Psalmist was also moved to see the wholeness and perfection. Perhaps it wasn’t just that she made a great case and felt confident she’d persuaded God to bless her. Maybe just by engaging God she experienced God’s holiness. Perhaps that is what got her singing God’s praises and testifying to God’s love.
We can remember this when we suffer on a personal level – physically, emotionally, materially, or with family. And we can remember this when we go through hard times as a church – when our numbers and bank accounts dwindle, when we have less energy to do things, when our future is so uncertain. We are being perfected. Hard times are part of the wholeness of the Body of Christ. I suspect we are exactly where we are supposed to be, and the Spirit is working right through us. We are part of something bigger, and we can’t know all the answers at this point. But we are God’s assembled people, brothers and sisters to Christ, joining him in singing God’s praises. Perhaps we can’t live up to the Psalmist’s ideal of living always aware of God’s love, and always in God’s truth, but perhaps we can remember a little more often.
