An Inheritance

Scripture Lessons: Job 1: 1-5 and Job 42: 1-6 and 10-17 Sermon Title: An Inheritance Preached on October 28, 2018 John Michael just read the beginning of Job, and I just read the very end, and I wanted to read the beginning and the end together because a couple weeks ago I heard an Old Testament Professor, Dr. Bill Brown, explain that the book of Job ends almost exactly where it began. After all the suffering in the middle, his fortunes are restored, the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before, but the way Job acts in the end is pretty different from how he acted in the beginning. Did you notice that? I never had before, but Dr. Brown points out this significant difference – in the end of the book we read that “Job gave his daughters an inheritance along with their brothers,” but in the first chapter of Job, Job is described as a man so “blameless and upright,” so consumed with “fearing God and turning away from evil” that when his seven sons would “hold feasts in one another’s houses” inviting their three sisters “to eat and drink with them,” afterwards “Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” That was what Job always did.”” That’s a nice idea, but there’s a problem with that. There’s a problem with sacrificing one animal for each of your kids, because there are some things that you just can’t do for them. You can’t be a Christian for your kids, you know? There’re all kinds of things parents are tempted to do for their children, but the line between helping and enabling is thin but crucial. Imagine that your 6th grade son leaves for school but left his homework on the kitchen table. You know that he needs to turn it in that day, that he’s worked hard on it and will be penalized when he can’t turn it in, so you’re tempted to bring it to him at the school, but you don’t want to get in the habit of doing things like that, because if he’s 35, living in the basement, and you’re still bringing him his brief case at the office when he forgets it on the kitchen table that’s embarrassing for everybody involved. Last Wednesday night our District Attorney, Vic Reynolds was here at the church. He was in a panel moderated by the always Honorable but recently retired Chief Justice Harris Hines, and on this panel that was discussing the opium epidemic facing our community Mr. Reynolds said, “There’s nothing that will give a human more dignity than a job.” Everyone on the panel was talking about drugs, and why people use drugs, and Mr. Reynolds said that if people don’t have anything to do with their lives, if there’s nothing there to fill their days; if they’re not just lonely but also disempowered, a good way to build them up is to get them a decent job so they’ll see what they’re capable of, but Job got in the bad habit of doing too much for his children. That’s not good – but it happens. There’s a quote on our plaque honoring all the boys who earned the rank of Eagle Scout through our Troop 252. My brother’s name is on there. If you look at all the names you’ll recognize a bunch of them, and on there is a quote at the top from Teddy Roosevelt: “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” But I know some of those Eagle Scouts rendered that quote ironic, because the work done to earn the rank was done by their daddy. We parents can’t do too much for our kids. Especially, we can’t be Christian for them. An old preacher used to say, “God has children, but no grandchildren.” Just because his mama was a prayer warrior and his daddy was an elder and they both sat on the front row every Sunday, that doesn’t mean that their son’s relationship with God is taken care of because God has children, but no grandchildren, and all of us must be washed in the blood of the Lamb for ourselves. We all must walk that lonesome valley, and nobody else can walk it for us, you’ve got to walk it by yourself. But parents try to walk it for their children. I try to for our kids – but even if their daddy’s a preacher they’re the ones who are responsible for their relationship with God. We can help – and God’s always reaching out to them, but nobody else can do it for them. On the other hand, Job offered those sacrifices just in case his kids might have sinned. You know, we can encourage our children, but we can’t do everything for them or they’ll get all messed up. A son who got a small loan from his father when he was a young man that he turned into a fortune is one thing. The father who made his son a millionaire by the time he turned three is something entirely different. There are some things that everyone has to do on their own – and if too much is given to them they’ll take all the credit without doing any of the work. “Some people are born on third base and think it’s because they hit a triple,” is what a preacher I know likes to say – and that’s true. I do it all the time. I walked into a Bible study last Tuesday. I was supposed to start the class right at 12, and there I was. I walked into that room right at 12 to start the class and as I did all the ladies in there clapped. I thought they were clapping for me, and when I got home I told Sara, “You can’t believe how much those ladies love the way I teach Revelation. They clapped when I entered the room.” Turns out they only clapped because I finally showed up on time. You see – people take credit for too much. And when we do everything for our kids they don’t grow up grateful. They grow up entitled. So, the way Job ends is different from how it begins. In the end – Job doesn’t offer sacrifices for them, he gives all of them, even his daughters, something to inherit. The trick that the book of Job teaches then, is giving them enough help that they can do it themselves. Enough money so they can go out and make something of themselves. Enough opportunities for education that they can get educated. Enough guidance that they can meet God on their own – because we can’t do it for them. You know what happens – we drag them here, and then they finally get confirmed in 7th grade and we treat it like they’re graduating from church. A youth minister told me that one time. Be careful about honoring High School Graduates in a worship service, because some of them will think that now they’re done with religion just like they’re done with High School. That’s what will happen unless we can find a way to make this house of worship their house too. So, we’ve asked John Michael to read Scripture this morning. That’s an important job, and we didn’t ask him because he looks sharp up here behind the pulpit – we asked him because he has something to teach us – because he has something to give this church too. Everyone deserves the chance to give. I gave blood in-between services today. Sara asked me if I thought that was such a good idea. I said, “No, it’s not.” If I pass out John Michael’s taking over – but the thing about it is – is it’s easy not to give blood if there are plenty of people who will do it if I don’t – but this time, if we didn’t make 32 pints the Red Cross was going to quit having blood drives at our church – so I rolled up my sleeves and did it. I’m glad I did – because I’m 0 negative and they give baby’s my blood. It makes me proud to give, but I have a million excuses why I can’t – then when I know I’m needed it feels so good to make my contribution. That’s what Job gave to his children in the end – the joy of doing work worth doing. And that’s what Stewardship is about – and I know there are a million reasons not to give to the church this year – but don’t let the reason that you don’t give be that plenty of people around here will do it if you don’t, because this church is yours too. I say that to you if you’re 98 and if you’re 8 months – you have something to give this church. You have something to contribute, and you can’t let anyone else do it for you. When I was 17, the Youth Group of this church elected me to be their president. Now before that time I hadn’t really been that big a part of things. My parents taught Sunday School, and because my grandmother pinched my mother during the sermons when she was a child, we didn’t make it to worship when I was a kid a whole lot. She didn’t want to have to pinch us. Somebody said, the best thing about being a preacher is you don’t have to sit next to your kids in church. Staying out of here during worship when I was a kid was nice – but you know what was better? When the youth group elected me to be their president. That was a big deal – and I don’t even really know what my official role of youth group president was, but I can tell you what I thought it was. I thought I needed to be at everything, and so, when I was Senior in High School and my parents were all set to take us all to London for my cousin’s wedding, but it was the same week that the youth group was going to Montreat for the Youth Conference and I said, “Sorry mom and dad, but I can’t go. I have presidential responsibilities.” I might not have said it exactly like that – but what I’m trying to say is that instead of this church doing everything for me, all at once I was put to work – and that work, being asked to contribute made all the difference in the world to me. We wonder why young people have this problem with commitment – but why should they if in the end we’ll just do it for them? That’s what changed with Job. Bill Paden has an even better story than mine. He had tickets to Super Bowl I. He was already in Los Angeles on business, and he had tickets, but you know what he did, he flew back here and missed the game, because on that Sunday he was to be ordained as a Deacon of First Presbyterian Church. Two of his grandsons have just been asked to be deacons for the first time as well, and Bill’s passing something on to them – this church is passing something on to them – it’s an inheritance like the one that Job gave his children in the end of the book. It’s not the kind that’s so big they’ll never have to work again. This inheritance puts them to work; this inheritance enables them to contribute to make this church their own. That’s the big difference between what Job does at the beginning of the book compared to what he does at the end. After all he suffered, at the end of the book he’s given up making sacrifices on behalf of all his children and decided instead to give his daughters an inheritance along with his sons. Now that’s a revolutionary thing to do. But think about what it would have meant to them – instead of trying to protect them from the world, now Job’s given them a chance to make their own way in it. Instead of doing everything for them, now Job’s given even his daughters the means to do for themselves. Instead of making sacrifices on their behalf, now they can make their sacrifices, live their lives, and worship their God. It’s a major difference – and you can’t help but think that this difference is the result of all that’s happened to him, for when we are faced with the chaos of the world, the devastation, the hardship and injustice, the choice we often face is whether we’ll hide the world as it is from our children or give them the tools to deal with it. This week, as a church we face just how hard the reality of our world is. David Blake, a child of our church, was finally found near Little Kennesaw Mountain – and we all must wonder how to talk with our kids about it, because the reality of depression can’t be hidden, or it will take even more. Job tried to do it all for his kids. He tried to protect them, but far better is to pass on an inheritance – so that all our children and our grandchildren might make this faith their own and say of their own volition despite all the storms of life, still: “I know that my redeemer lives.” Amen.

Dealing Gently with the Ignorant and Wayward

Scripture Lessons: Hebrews 5: 1-10 and Job 38: 1-11 and 38: 34 – 39: 4 Sermon Title: Dealing Gently with the Ignorant and Wayward Preached on October 21, 2018 I titled this sermon, “Dealing Gently with the Ignorant and Wayward.” That’s a line from the 1st Scripture Lesson from Hebrews, where the author claims that Christ, our Great High Priest, deals gently with the ignorant and wayward, which is good news to me, because I am often both of those things. This is the third sermon on the book of Job. For the third Sunday in a row we turn to this book that’s hard to understand; a book that I’ve been wrestling with and trying to preach a good word from. I could have called an expert on Job for help, but I didn’t. That may be the very definition of ignorance – having the opportunity to gain knowledge but choosing instead to dwell in ignorance. I could have asked our resident Job expert for help but I didn’t. Dr. Brennan Breed is our new Theologian in Residence. He’s an Old Testament Professor at the seminary and he’s teaching a great Sunday School Class in the Sanctuary. You knew that already, but what you maybe didn’t know is that so much of his work as a scholar is dealing with how we should understand Job. He’s by all definitions a Job Scholar, but I was slow to ask him for help. Why? I realized that I wanted to write these sermons all by myself. Sure, I read some books, but I could have called one of the guys who wrote the books. I realized that last Sunday. Here I’ve been wrestling with Job, trying to understand it, and I could have just asked for help, but I was slow to do so, because I am often ignorant and wayward. And I’ve been this way for most of my life. My mother’s in town. She can tell you about other times I’ve chosen ignorance. Since she’s in town this weekend, so I’d like to tell you two stories about my mother that might embarrass her. The first takes place at a fancy restaurant, maybe the first fancy restaurant I’d ever been to. I was six or seven and my order came with a piece of parsley on it as a garnish. I’d never seen something so fancy before. I asked my mom what it was for and she said it was just to make my plate look pretty. I asked her if it was edible, and she said, “Try it and find out.” Not all of her parenting techniques are what you’d call typical. Then once, when I threw a temper tantrum, frustrated with something that she’d asked me to do, something really unfair like asked me to clean my room, she said something equally surprising. I was probably 6, and I told her I’d be running away. She said, “well, let me help you pack.” That was not what I was expecting her to say, but then it got stranger. “What are you going to eat out in the world all by yourself?” she asked. I didn’t have a plan for eating, so we made some crackers and peanut butter. She wrapped them in a handkerchief and tied the bundle to the end of a stick, just like the hobo’s used to do. Then I barged out of there to start a life on my own, living by my own rules without my mother interfering all the time. I walked up the sidewalk about 100 yards, but all that walking made me hungry, so I sat down and took out my crackers. Once I finished eating them, because I had depleted my store of food, I swallowed my pride and went back home, realizing I didn’t want to do things all by myself, and my mother welcomed me back in because she also deals gently with the ignorant and wayward. On a grander scale I believe God does the same for Job in our 2nd Scripture Lesson. It seems to me as though God is saying to our friend Job: “You don’t like this world I’ve created? Well, let me help you pack.” God shows up and says to Job (Job, this man who’s had all these complaints): “Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you… where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Surely you know!” And “what would you eat if I didn’t make it rain?” “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you?” “You don’t even know where the mountain goats give birth, but you’re ready to take issue with how I’m running this place?” It’s an incredible and beautiful speech – and surely it shook Job to his core, which is OK because sometimes we all get too big for our britches. We say: I don’t want to ask for help, I’d rather do it myself. Mom asks us to clean up our room, and we want to hit the road, but once we’re out on our own we realize how big the great wide world really is, so it can be comforting to be put back in our place. Embarrassing, but comforting. I think that’s what happened to Job. I remember something similar happening in an assembly at Hickory Hills Elementary School when I was a student there. The speaker was an inventor and she wanted to know if any of us kids had ever invented anything. She called up all the little inventors and one by one they went down the line, reporting on their inventions. One kid had invented a basket that went on the back of his bicycle and held his lunchbox. Another made pants with Velcro around the knee, so he could take the bottom part of his pants legs off and they could quickly turn into shorts (I hope that kid made some money by now, because now you can buy those things). But what I remember best was this little kindergartner who got up there and told us all that one time she and her grandma got a pitcher of water and a packet of mix and they invented Kool aide. We all laughed at that of course, but how arrogant all of us can be. While we didn’t create this world, so often we walk around like we own the place. God invited Adam to name the animals, so what do we do? We shoot them and mount them on our walls like we’re the King of the Jungle. The Lord spoke and created continents, but just because we draw borers upon them, that doesn’t mean that they’re ours. Stewardship Season is here again. And I know you don’t like Stewardship Season all that much. Believe it or not, I don’t like asking you for money very much either – but with Stewardship Season comes this very important reminder that’s so much like God’s reminder to Job. Stewardship Season is the time where we look at our pledge card and decide how much of our money we’ll so generously give to the church, but God is asking, “You think any of that money’s yours?” CS Lewis says it’s like our father gave us $10.00 and sent us to the store to buy him a Father’s Day Present. But we spend nine dollars on our self and one on the gift. We might as well be claiming we invented Kool Aid. God asks us: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out through the womb?” “And I know that you have that nice office and a fancy paycheck, but just who do you think you are and where would you be had I not given you the means to make that money in the first place?” In our Second Scripture Lesson for this morning, the Lord answers Job, but it’s the kind of answer that turns our lives upside down but right-side up, because all of a sudden, we realize that we’ve eaten all our crackers on the sidewalk 100 yards from our house. We can see how ignorant and wayward we really are. Trying to control. Fearing the truth. Have you seen the things that people do today to hold on to power? It’s time to go back home, isn’t it? To submit to the higher authority. It’s time to let him hold the whole world in his hands, because we can’t hold it ourselves. It’s a good thing “He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward,” because that can be us – and when God puts us back in our place we are free from all the anxiety that comes from trying to play God ourselves. There’s this great quote from GK Chesterton: “How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos”. That’s what God did to Job – and I’m thankful, for when God does the same for me, I see that the world He has created is so much greater than the little fiefdom I’ve tried to control. It’s a gift to realize how little we know – for in confessing our ignorance the world of knowledge opens up. Once we stop trying to control what the truth is – the truth will set us free. It’s also a gift to return to God, for when we remember that there is a God in heaven, we realize we don’t have to be Him. A grandfather told me about it last week. I was asking Andy Tatnall what it’s like to see his daughters hold his grandchildren, and he said, “I wish I could have seen that moment when they were younger. Had I had this picture of them being such wonderful parents in my mind while they were young, I would have been a more relaxed father, because when they were young, and I was their father I spent so much time worrying about how they would turn out. Now that I’ve seen them be these incredible parents I realize I worried over them when I could have been enjoying them.” May the Lord deal gently with us, the ignorant and wayward, and ease us all back from our desire to control what we cannot, that we might enjoy this world He has created. Amen.

To Vanish in Darkness

Scripture Lessons: Hebrews 4: 12-16 and Job 23: 1-9 and 16-17 Sermon Title: To Vanish in Darkness Preached on October 14, 2018 I once spent a summer in a maximum-security women’s prison. I wasn’t incarcerated there, I was learning about being a chaplain by shadowing the one who served that prison, though I probably learned the most that summer from the women who were incarcerated there than the chaplain I was shadowing. There was one woman in particular. From her I learned a most profound lesson about resilience when I went to hear her sing on the second floor of the building where those inmates who, like her, suffered from mental illness lived. I was sent up there because all the women there liked to sing hymns, and somehow or another I was invited to hear them. They gathered in one room with me, they were all in their brown prison jumpsuits, and one of the women, she must have been seven feet tall. I heard later she was locked up because she had attacked a man with a rake. She sat down next to me. I introduced myself. We exchanged pleasantries, and then it was time to sing. One by one they got up to sing. I don’t remember who was first but there’s this one in particular that I remember. She wore thick glasses. She was probably 20, and she stood before us all and sang a song that defied the hopelessness and sadness of that whole prison. She sang: “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.” It’s a simple song, but it was a picture of defiance – because the hope that she embodied when she sang and those words that she brought to life challenged everything about those gray prison walls. I tell you this story because that woman showed me something that I’m still learning about. I’m still learning about what it means to be faithful regardless of where life takes me, and I want to learn how to be as faithful as that young woman, because for me, life is full of ups and downs and sometimes the way I feel about my place in the world goes up and down right with it. Take this last Monday. Last Monday started off great. I’m back in school working for my doctorate, and when I got to class on Monday our professor returned our first two papers and I got an A on them both. But the other thing that happened last Monday was I sat down on Cece’s bed to read her a bedtime story and heard a loud crack as her footboard broke and I ended up in the floor. Cece laughed at me. Sara and Lily came down the stairs to laugh at me too, and so a day of alchemic accomplishments ended in humiliation, but that’s how life is. And because that’s life – we can’t put too much emphasis on accomplishments – because accomplishments can be followed with failures. We can’t put too much emphasis on wealth or property – because what we have might be here one day and gone the next. That’s what happened with Job. The book of Job with this man who loses everything illustrates this important truth of life – that we can’t put too much emphasis on fame or fortune, youth or beauty, wealth or property – because we might be getting straight A’s one minute only to break the bed the next – but we can’t let a broken bed break us. The alternative is embodied by this woman who sang in the prison. Every day she woke up, saw the sunshine through bars on her window. Put on the brown jumpsuit of an incarcerated criminal. If you need help feeling like a looser, those two things alone will do it nearly every time. Put on top of that the stigma attached to mental illness and for most people – they’re scraping themselves up off the floor – but not her. No – despite everything that had gone wrong and every accomplishment that came to nothing, still she knew something that sometimes I forget, “That his eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.” That’s a powerful declaration of faith in a place like a prison. And it’s a declaration like that – a faithful conviction like that which will get you through a prison sentence or any of the other ups and downs of life – because while Christ watches over us always, we can’t always count on anybody else. Another thing about prisons is how easy it is for some people on the outside to forget about the people inside. It’s the same with hospitals and nursing homes. These are places where too many people are suffering all alone. No one by their side and no one really understanding. It’s just the opposite of when you have a new baby. Some major events we are surrounded – others we’re not. It’s a strange thing that when you have a new baby in the house everybody wants to come visit. Even when parents are weird about who touches the baby, still everyone wants to come over. It’s not always that way when people are suffering. You know, when Lily was a baby we bought these shoe cover things. These blue disposable things that we asked everyone to slip on over their shoes, so they wouldn’t track into the house any contaminates from the outside world. Getting in to our house when we had a new baby – it was like we expected everyone to suit up as though they were entering a sterile laboratory. We made everyone sanitize their hands, put those things over their shoes. We’d put you out if you sneezed. Visitors who had a runny nose could just leave their gifts and casseroles at the door. We made it hard, but people wanted to come see the baby any way. It’s not always like that when someone’s suffering. It’s hard to go visit people in the prison, in the hospital, or the funeral parlor but some people do it, and Job’s friends went to visit him too in the midst of his suffering. Scripture tells us that “when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air above their heads. [Then] they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.” I remember a professor in seminary telling us that this is one of the great examples of real friendship. They go and just sit with their friend in his time of need – this is just what we all long for when we’re suffering ourselves – “but then,” my professor said, “then, they opened their mouths.” Job dares to speak to his friends from the depth of his despair, but you know what his friends did? By their replies they made him feel even more alone. Job curses the day he was born, and Eliphaz tells him he suffers because he has sinned. Job says, “my suffering is without end,” and Bildad tells him he should repent. Job declares, “I loathe my life,” and Zophar tells him he deserves his punishment. It goes along like this from chapter 3 all the way to chapter 31 – for 28 chapters Job’s suffering is compounded because in his suffering he finds that he’s all alone. That’s why he says what he did in our 2nd Scripture Lesson for today: “If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face.” He says that because there is a place lower than the ash heap – that place where you suffer in silence – in looking for understanding from your friends, they instead try to explain your suffering away – that’s not just a place of sadness, that’s a place of disappearing into nothingness. Plus, he’s looking for God in the midst of all of this – and his friends tell him to straighten up. Get it together. You know what it is that’s just happened to him? He became the one everyone was praying for – but no one wanted to be seen with. And in chapter 32 they leave him all alone. You know what that’s like? Sure, you do. In class this week I heard from a friend who’s an associate pastor for this great big youth group. He watched as 30 middle school girls walked out of their cabin one Saturday morning at their youth retreat. 29 of them had on the same black yoga pants and a long sleeve t-shirt. One poor girl didn’t get the memo. You know what that’s like? We parents say that it’s what’s on the inside that counts, and we mean it. But how we contradict ourselves when we pay $400 on a homecoming dress that emphasizes more than our daughter’s personality. Why do we do that? Because no one wants their kid to be left out of the group. No one wants their kid to be the one that everyone turns their back on because she doesn’t have the right clothes or the right hair or the right car. We live in this world where we are always working to fit in. Always working to be accepted. But acceptance is just like so much else in this life – it can be here one day and gone the next. Consider Job. He’s not in the ash heap this morning. No – he’s actually some place worse. “God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me; If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness cover me face!” because in addition to losing all that he had he also lost his friends. Now here’s a place where many people go, but not all of them return. It’s the place where we’re stripped of everything. Everything that made us feel secure. Everything and everyone who gave us identity and worth. There, all alone we begin to vanish into the thick darkness. That’s what happens when the bed breaks and we break with it. We step on the scale, and that number determines how we’ll feel about ourselves for the rest of that day. We try to understand our place in this world and we use numbers – how many people liked my photo. How many friends do I have. What’s my score? And it gets worse. I remember once, when my grandparents wanted to take Sara and me out to dinner. We met at their house and right before we left he said, “Let me run upstairs and check my stocks so I can see how nice of a restaurant I can take us out to.” As he said that my grandmother was rolling her eyes, because she knew that some things go up and then they come down and should we be so foolish to place too much importance on such numbers than our worth will always be held captive by forces outside our control. But that’s what we do. Economic depressions inspire emotional depressions. Hard days make for hard looks in the mirror where we question ourselves. Suicide rates rise because this thick darkness covers too many faces and not enough of us know how to sing: “His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me.” But it’s not just that he watches – it’s that he’s right beside us. From Hebrews we read: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are.” We “approach” his throne of grace with boldness, because he’s walked a mile in our shoes and understands what others fail to comprehend. And his presence must be the solid rock that we build on our lives upon, because he gives us freely what this world tells us we must work hard to gain. The world tells us that to be somebody we have to make a great name for ourselves – but he’s already made us somebody. The world tells us that to be accepted we have to dress right and do what’s expected of us whether we want to or not – but he’s already accepted us. That’s what this woman in the prison knew so well – that even when she lost her freedom and was confined to a cell. Even after she was stripped of her clothes and given a brown jump suit. Even after her friends and family turned their back and left her alone – she knew something that too few of us remember – that his eye is one the sparrow, and I know he watches me. That’s what baptism means you see – all that we work for he gives so freely. Remember that – and be at peace.

From the Ash Heap

Scripture Lessons: Hebrews 1: 1-4, 2: 5-12; and Job 1: 1, 2: 1-10 Sermon Title: From the Ash Heap Preached on 10.7.18 The whole month of September, Sunday after Sunday, I preached from the book of James, and I felt like after all the time we spent with James challenging us to be better Christians, we needed something a little uplifting – some encouragement, but now, here we are in Job. Job is another challenging book, but I’m thankful to be reading it, because if we find ourselves in the ash heap with Job this morning, we find ourselves in a place that we’ve all been before; a place that we all need Job’s help to understand. You know about the ash heap. The ash heap is a place where everything has unraveled, and we’re tempted to give up. To quit. If we find ourselves there, then things haven’t gone how they were supposed to go, and, what’s worse, not only are we broken down and discouraged, if not our spouse, then someone else is always there nearby the ash heap urging us “to curse God and die” as Job’s wife did. You know what I’m talking about, because everyone does. Consider our friend Dansby Swanson. Since the Braves are in the postseason, last Wednesday at all the Marietta City Elementary Schools, students were encouraged to wear their Atlanta Braves hats and t-shirts. Our daughter Lily wore her Dansby Swanson jersey, and all the kids in the school, who like her, chose to wear number 7, they were called out to the front steps of West Side school for a picture. Lily said there must have been 50 of them in all, all wearing their Dansby Swanson shirts. And Dansby’s mother, who works at the West Side school, she came out and when she saw them all she cried, because her son who’s worked so hard to make it to National League playoffs, has injured his left hand and doesn’t get to play. He might be sitting in the dugout later today for the game, but it’s really the ash heap. He doesn’t want to be in the dugout. He wants to be out in the field. It’s surely a big disappointment that he’s going through. I dare say, he’s going to be alright however, because some people – some people like Dansby Swanson - when they find themselves in the ash heap – despite the temptation to allow the injustice to consume them – they persevere. That’s why, as they interview candidates to be our next Associate Pastor, I asked the search committee to ask every candidate as the chair, Hal McClain once asked me, to tell the committee about the worst year of their life. You can tell everything you need to know about a person by hearing how they respond when they find themselves in the ash heap. When you’re in the ash heap, what will you do? And I say that Dansby Swasons is going to be OK, because he’s made it out of the ash heap before. His first season – he was a candidate to win the Rookie of the Year Award, and the Braves moved their stadium here to Marietta, to his hometown and made him the poster boy of their whole advertising campaign, but Swanson ended the season statistically as the worst defensive shortstop in baseball. Can you imagine what that was like? Sure, you can – because you’ve been there too. Everything was supposed to go one way, but the winds shifted, the tide went out, and all at once your boat runs aground and the clear skies became foreboding. To many such a change is interpreted as a tremendous injustice – an unfairness that they never get over, because they weren’t prepared for life to deliver lemons and they don’t know how to make lemonade. I’m reading a book about a mother, who in an attempt to encourage her son to pray, finds out that among his first prayers to God he voiced his greatest prayer request: to receive a bag full of apple flavored lollypops coated in caramel. So, she snuck the lollypops under his pillow that night – which on the one hand seems like a good idea. We want our kids to pray, so why not encourage them by finagling a way for a prayer here and there to be answered? But the problem is that sometimes we pray for lollypops and we end up in the ash heap, because God isn’t like Santa Clause, and we can’t “receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad.” The bad has a lesson for us to learn as well. A life that’s all roses only prepares us to live in the rose garden and not the real world – and it’s important that we all know what to do when it rains on our parade, because at some point we might be driving a trailer full of cows down I 75 South that topples over just before rush hour. What we do in such a situation matters, because the measure of a man is not determined when he’s relaxing on the beach. A woman’s life won’t be defined by what she does at a picnic in the park on a Sunday afternoon but when her world falls apart. What will she do then? That’s when we come to really know what faith is really all about – we don’t know what prayer is until we’ve stood at the door knocking week after week to no answer. Then Lot’s wife comes to our side saying, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die” that’s when we learn something. Job hits rock bottom and he still won’t sin with his lips – that’s what the book is all about. Job facing the true unfairness of human life with faith – but plenty have faced such hardship only to learn that they’ll do anything to get by. That’s what George Will wrote about this week. I’ve been reading George Will a long time. My grandfather used to cut out his columns and send them to me. It started when I was 11 or 12, a thick manila envelope would come in the mail, addressed to me from my grandfather. I’d open it up so excited thinking he was sending me baseball cards or something else that I’d actually want, but instead it’d be packed full of George Will articles. Last Thursday he reminded us readers about Robert Penn Warren’s book, “All the King’s Men.” In this legendary book, the main character says: “Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the [diaper] to the stench of the shroud,” Then, when an aide tells Stark that a particular act of securing dirt on a fellow politician is beneath the dignity of a governor, Stark replies that “there ain’t anything worth doing a man can do and keep his dignity.” George Will followed with this: “We should hope, against much current evidence, that this is not true.” We look then to Job – because there is more than one way to deal with desperate times, though this narrow path may not be modeled for us readily. We look then to Job, asking: “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” or give up abandoning our morals? You don’t need to answer that question – by your actions over the past three years, you already have. I’m a witness to your Job like faithfulness in times of unjust tragedy. Today is the first Sunday of October. Three years ago this week, Dr. Dave Mayo preached his last sermon from this pulpit as the Senior Pastor of this church. Three years ago, this very week, he left his position here to lead about 300 members of our church in a schism, dividing our congregation in two. Three years ago, this very week – the choice you faced was like every other group of people who ever found themselves in the ash heap – would we curse God and die, giving up and closing our doors? That was a real possibility. But instead - you accepted the truth – that the road to the Promised Land is not a simple walk through the desert, but a journey that might lead you to an oasis one day and an ash heap the next – and the only way you won’t make it there is if you quit walking. You lived it out - that if we receive good from God, we must also dare to believe that God also works through the bad – and as I look around this church now – as I see your faces today - I give thanks to God for everything that He has done, for today while so much has fallen away, what remains is life. What’s still here, is joy. What we have is hope – so we move into the future not with malice, but with forgiveness. For today, despite the past - we have an eye to the future and faith in our hearts, believing that while God may sometimes give us more than we think we can handle, the Lord is with us in the ash heap just as the Lord is with us on the mountain top. With such faithful vision as that, we see as Christ saw. For had Christ been without faith, his last words would have been: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” But those aren’t his last words. You remember what he said to the one hanging on the cross right next to him? “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” Christ, the innocent one who suffered– Hebrews tells us that he is the “pioneer” of “salvation” made “perfect through sufferings” – even in our suffering, let us follow him to Paradise. Amen.