Where You Go, I Will Go

Scripture Lessons: Hebrews 9: 11-14 and Ruth 1: 1-18 Sermon Title: Where You Go, I Will Go Preached on October 31, 2021 It’s our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities. If you’ve read the Harry Potter books, or read them to your kids or grandkids, then you may know that line. It’s a good one, and I believe it’s true. In this Second Scripture Lesson from the book of Ruth, Ruth chose love, and that choice reveals so much about her. It also brings light and hope to the book. So powerful is her choice that it brings light and hope to us today despite all the tragedy that’s in there. Ruth is a sad book, and the tragedy starts from the first line: In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. Desperate to survive, a man of Bethlehem went to live in the country of Moab. He took with him his wife Naomi and two sons. Then the man died. The sons married Moabite women named Orpah and Ruth. When they had lived there about 10 years, the sons died. Having buried her husband, now her sons, Naomi decided to go back home, out of Moab and to Judah. Assuming her daughters-in-law would want to stay in their homeland of Moab, she kissed them goodbye. Orpah returned her kiss and left, but Ruth clung to her. That’s the choice. Ruth chose love over self-preservation. Not everyone always does. One of the saddest books you can read is Night by Elie Wiesel. It’s an account of his personal experience in a concentration camp. The scene I’ll always remember is the one where his father dies. Together they were running to escape, but his father, weaker and slower, was holding Elie back. When his father finally fell, unable to go on, Elie found within himself not tears, but “In the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like – free at last.” This impulse towards self-preservation is inside of us. This desire to leave someone behind so that we can move on ahead is always lurking in our minds. Sometimes we give into it. Sometimes we even desire keeping someone down or pushing them down so that we can get ahead. Elie Wiesel said that the greatest cruelty that the Nazi’s inflicted on him was that they revealed to him this selfishness within himself. He looked in the mirror and found that he was relieved that his father died. Giving into this impulse gives evil it’s power, and this impulse is inside all of us, yet, in lesser and greater ways, the impulse towards selfless love is also inside of us. So, today we look to Ruth and stand in awe and wonder at a woman who could have left her mother-in-law behind but chose instead to cling to her. Inspired by her devotion, very often a couple will ask me to read what Ruth says to Naomi at their wedding: Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go. Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, And your God my god. Where you die, I will die – there I will be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, If even death parts me from you! Notice the punctuation. So rarely does the Bible use exclamation points, but there they are to make Ruth’s point. In this moment of tragedy, tragedy upon tragedy really, Ruth says to Naomi, “I choose you.” Have you ever made that kind of a choice? Almost 19 years ago I looked in Sara’s eyes and I said: In plenty and in want. In joy and in sorrow. In sickness and in health. Forsaking all others. As long as we both shall live. I choose you. And it’s our choices that show what we truly are. Should we choose to love we can change the world. We defy the power of evil. But that desire to love is always at odds with the desire to survive, and so Ruth Bell Graham, who was married to that great evangelist Billy Graham, was once asked if she’d ever considered divorce. “Divorce, never,” she said, “However, I often considered murder.” She didn’t do it, but she considered it, because the desire to leave is inside us all. And sometimes leaving is the right thing. I can think of plenty of good reasons to get divorced. I can even think of a few good reasons to murder, but the choice to love must be behind all our choices. If it isn’t we may live, but we’ll live to regret our decisions. It’s hard to do, however, because the desire to love is always at odds with these other impulses. Ruth surely felt a series of other emotions in addition to love when she chose to stay with Naomi. In addition to love I imagine she felt regret, wondering to herself, “can I really leave my homeland?” Or remorse, “what will my mother say?” Anxiety: “is there any food for us in this Bethlehem?” And on top of that, any of you who have spent a long road trip with your mother-in-law, know that these emotions coursed through her only to be followed by annoyance: why does she have to stop to use the bathroom so often? Like a lot of things, emotions move through you. Anger, desire, fear, shame, even a crisis will move through you. On the other hand, the choices that we make during a crisis will outlast even this pandemic, so choose wisely. Chose based on love. How many, overcome by setback have been chosen permanent solutions temporary problems? How many, out of momentary frustration, have done long lasting damage? How many felt anger and did irreparable harm. It’s not our emotions that define us or that even last all that long. No. It’s our choices. And there are beautiful choices, self-less choices, sacrificial choices, that echo through history. As Ruth chose to love Naomi, Martin Luther chose to stand for truth. On this day in 1517, nailing his 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, Martin Luther made a choice that echoes through history. These 95 revolutionary opinions, most of them complaints against the pope, started the Protestant Reformation, which resulted in the formation of the Presbyterian Church, eventually. This choice brought with it suffering. First, he had to debate dispatched theologians from Rome. Refusing to recant his views, he was excommunicated by the pope and was labeled a heretic. What’s more is that the punishment for heresy at that time was being burned at the stake, and so he had to run for his life. All said, the price he paid for choosing to make public his conviction that in Christ Jesus was freedom and grace, was to live in hiding in Warburg Castle under another name. Still, when ordered to recant, he responded: “I cannot and will not recant anything, for it is dangerous and a threat to salvation to act against one’s conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me. Amen,” for having made his choice he was willing to die for it. Having made her choice, Ruth was willing to die as well, saying: Where you die, I will die – there I will be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, If even death parts me from you! That’s some choice. It’s a choice like that which can make all the difference in a world of chaos and despair. I mentioned the Holocaust before. Yesterday I watched a movie with our daughter Lily, “Life is Beautiful.” Have you seen it? It’s the story of a well born Italian woman who falls in love with a Jewish man. As anti-Semitism grows and grows, her husband and young son are arrested and loaded onto a train car. Before the train leaves the station, this woman goes to the Nazi Officer in charge and declares, “There’s been a mistake.” Looking at his logbook and seeing the woman’s husband and son on his list he responds, “No mam. Your husband is a Jew. Your son is half-Jewish. They belong on this train. You are Italian and you should go home.” “No, there’s been a mistake,” she says. “If my husband and my son are on that train, I should be on it with them.” That’s a choice. And that choice reveals so much about her. It’s the choice to love, even if loving requires you to suffer. It’s the choice to act based on your faith and not your fear. It’s the choice to stand on your conviction rather than your emotions. That was Ruth’s choice and it’s a choice that changes the history of the world. That’s true. Just as Martin Luther’s choice to stand on his convictions started the Great Reformation, just as this wife chose to suffer with her family rather than save herself is the kind of thing that defies evil in all its forms, Ruth and Naomi go back to Bethlehem where Ruth marries again. She and Boaz have children. Ruth’s children have children. Eventually, Ruth becomes the great-grandmother of King David, the greatest of Israel’s kings. More than that, her choice leads us to the genealogy in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, there Ruth is listed as one in the line of the Redeemer King, Jesus Christ our Lord. This is how Ruth’s choice changed the world. What about his choice? In our First Scripture Lesson from the book of Hebrews we read, “not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood” we are sanctified, for when Christ had the choice between abandoning us and saving himself, When the had the choice between standing on his convictions or giving into fear, When he had the choice between leaving us and living or staying with us and dying, he chose death. With such a sacrifice, having made such a choice, he says to you and me, just as Ruth said to Naomi: Even death will not part me from you! How do you respond when someone makes a choice like that? How do you respond when someone chooses you? I tell you this, He has committed to us. How will you live for him? May we choose him just as he chose us, saying: Where you go, I will follow. Your people, no matter who they are, how they look or where they come from, shall be my people, For, as you have died for me, even death will not part me from you! Thanks be to God. Amen.

He Walked the Lonesome Valley

Scripture Lessons: Job 1: 1-5 and Job 42: 1-6 and 10-17 Sermon Title: He Walked the Lonesome Valley Preached on October 24, 2021 Something embarrassing happened to me last Tuesday morning. Something embarrassing happens to me most days, but last Tuesday is noteworthy because of why I was embarrassed. Last Tuesday morning I noticed two ladies I didn’t recognize outside the church. I guessed correctly that they were representatives from the organization helping us put together clean birthing kits for mothers who don’t have access to hospitals. These kits help mothers create a sanitary environment to deliver their newborn whether they’re in a thatch hut in Tanzania or an emergency tent in the wake of a hurricane. I proudly greeted these two ladies, led them to Holland Hall, where I remembered they would be setting up. I was impressed with myself for remembering. Then, with authoritative hospitality, I turned the lights on in Holland Hall, and noticed the panicked look on their faces. They had set up the day before in the Great Hall, and I had no idea what I was talking about. Have you ever done something like this? Have you ever tried to help someone who didn’t need your help? Have you ever done for someone what they had done or could have done for themselves? Obviously, I have, and so has Job, or so he thinks. We just read the beginning and the end of the book of Job. You’ve heard sermons based in the book of Job for three Sundays in a row, today is the fourth, and in reading from the beginning and the end, what’s possible to see is how Job has changed. He’s walked that lonesome valley and it’s changed him. From chapter 1 we just read that: His sons used to go and hold feasts in one another’s houses in turn; and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the feast days had run their course, 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.” This is what Job always did. What we see here is that Job was in the habit of doing for his children. Every day he tried to save them, only he couldn’t. You know what happens next: One day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother’s house, a messenger came to Job and said, “While your sons and daughters were eating and drinking, a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you.” Anyone with a heart would ask why something so horrible would happen to anyone, much less someone so good as Job. Unfortunately, “why bad things happen” or “why bad things happen to good people,” isn’t the question that the book of Job answers. What the book of Job does is well illustrates how Job changes. The book of Job shows us what the lonesome valley of suffering does to this man who, even amid tragedy searches out the face of God. Now that’s maybe not the answer that we all want. We all want to know why there are hurricanes, tragedies, viral pandemics, and genocide. Why are there car accidents and depression. Why do children suffer? Why does racism still exist? Why must the Braves take so long to clinch the pennant? We want an answer to these questions, yet we won’t get it on this side of heaven. However, just as important are these questions: “What do we learn from suffering? How is God at work in suffering?” We look to Job and how he changed because we all must walk the lonesome valley in one sense or another, even Jesus did. [Even] Jesus walked this lonesome valley. He had to walk it by himself. Oh, nobody else could walk it for him. He had to walk it by himself. The question I ask this morning is: how does it change Job? What did the lonesome valley do to him? If you compare how he was at the beginning of the book, so worried over his children sinning that he made offerings on their behalf, how did he change in the end? We just read: The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Karen-happuch. In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. Did you hear that? A problem any women ought to have with the Bible is how few women are named. In fact, so few women are named in the Bible that when the Bible names one it really sticks out. It makes you slow down to listen, and in this instance at the end of the book of Job the daughters are named but not the sons. Now that never happens. What’s the Bible trying to tell us here? That after all that suffering, Job stopped trying to do everything for his sons and daughters and gave them a means to do for themselves. While in the beginning Job did everything for them. When they were hungry, Job fed them. If they were bored, he encouraged them to have a big feast. Had they sinned, even unknowingly, Job made a sacrifice so that he could take care of them; even their mistakes he took responsibility for. What changed in Job after he walked the lonesome valley? How was he different if we look at how he was before and how he was after? By the end of the book, it’s as though Job’s accepting how: We must walk this lonesome valley. We have to walk it by ourselves. Oh, nobody else can walk it for us. We have to walk it by ourselves. Isn’t that the truth? Now, I don’t like to suffer. I never have. But having suffered a little bit here and there, I can tell you it changed me, and while the miniscule suffering I’ve experienced is nothing compared with that of Job, walking the lonesome valley changed me in a similar way. In 2008 I was an Associate Pastor at Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church. You might remember that in 2008, the Great Recession hit. The church was hit so hard by the recession that members stopped contributing, they stopped giving, and the Session met and projected a 40% budget deficit. What happened next? Well, the Senior Pastor just left, which was good for the budget but bad for the Associate Pastor. I was suddenly left holding the bag on a sinking ship. I went to the Presbytery office, unannounced, no appointment. I was ushered into the office of the Executive Presbyter. This is the person who oversees all the churches in a given area. I told him that things weren’t so good at Good Sharped Presbyterian Church. In fact, it might close, and I was the only pastor they had, but I didn’t know what I was doing. “How can I save this church,” I asked. Well, the Executive Presbyter said to me, “Joe, do you know anything about finances?” “No sir,” I said, “In fact, I can’t even balance my own check book.” This was back in the days when people still had checks, you see. And struck by my response, the Executive Presbyter said to me, “If you can’t balance a check book, what makes you think you’re the one to save this church?” This was one of the most important questions anyone has ever asked me: “What makes you think you’re the one to save this church?” Had it been Job, it’s as though suffering had forced him to ask, “What makes you think you’re the one to save your kids?” He couldn’t save them, could he? What could he do then? He could get out of the way, [For] you must go and stand your trial. You have to stand it by yourself. Oh, nobody else can stand it for you. You have to stand it by yourself. Why? Because that’s the way we grow in faith or anything else. The Executive Presbyter told me that since I can’t balance a check book I ought to get a group a church members who are business owners, accountants, and other financial experts and ask them for help. I did that. Guess what happened once I stopped trying to save the church myself and empowered the members of the church: We ended the year with a $40,000 surplus. Can you imagine what happened to Job’s daughters once he stopped trying to save them and gave them an inheritance? It’s like what happens when children are allowed to fail. They learn from their mistakes. It’s like what happens when teachers, mentors, or bosses, encourage people to grow. Coaches encourage their players to think. Generals allow their troops to make their own decisions. It’s like what happens a person takes a pledge card and fills it out on their own instead of hoping someone else will fund the ministries of the church for them. We’re here amid the Stewardship Season again, and this year the big push is for those who have never pledged before to pledge for the first time. Why? Because nobody else can do this for you, you’ve got to do it for yourself. The world is a place full of trial and hardship. Life is challenge after challenge. Suffering is not the exception but the rule. So, every night I stand over our daughter’s beds and pray for them. You know what’s better than that? Teaching them to pray for themselves. For the best gift is not the gift that edifies the one who gives but liberates the one who receives. With this lesson we conclude our sermon series on the book of Job, a book about suffering. And while I still find it very hard to believe that the God who knows the number of hairs on my head, who stitched me together in my mother’s womb, who died on the cross that I would be saved, would ever cause me to suffer, I believe that when we suffer our eyes are open to see his face on our own and we are changed forever. Something my grandfather told me some years ago, when I called to ask him for advice, “one of the joys of my old age will be watching you advance in your career.” It always meant so much how he believed in me. He didn’t do for me. No. He just always believed that I could. In two weeks, I’ll be preaching his funeral, and what will I say? I’ll be quoting Job 19: For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth, because having walked the valley, the faith of my mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, has become my own. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Where Were You?

Scripture Lessons: Hebrews 5: 1-10 and Job 38: 1-11 and 38: 34 – 41 Sermon Title: Where Were You Preached on October 17, 2021 Do you ever look up at the stars? Way out in the country, away from the city’s lights, have you ever laid on your back in a grassy field, and just stared up so that all you see is a sky full of stars? That can be a nice thing to do. It can be a romantic thing to do. It’s also one of those things that can make you feel very small, and so the Psalmist says: when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? These are important questions to ask: What are human beings in the great scheme of things? Why is God mindful of us? Why does God care for us mortals? The night sky can make you ask these questions, and if we stop asking questions like these we can get into all kinds of trouble. Plenty of people do. We talk a lot about how people suffer from low self-esteem, and that’s one thing. Low self-esteem is a way to describe ourselves when we feel so small that we can’t imagine that God or anyone else would care anything about us, and it’s one problem, which, it seems, our society knows to address. A problem we talk less about are those who suffer from high self-esteem. Do you know anyone who suffers from high self-esteem? Who walks out into traffic and is surprised that cars don’t stop? The Psalmist asks: What are human beings in the great scheme of things? In a sense, we’re just blips in this massive universe, and it is massive. The light that we see has traveled from stars so far away, that were we to look up and notice the twinkle of the star Alpha Centauri we’d be seeing light from four years ago. There’s a star called Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion which is about 640 light years away. If Betelgeuse exploded tomorrow, we wouldn’t know about it for hundreds of years because that’s how long it takes for the light which these stars produce to travel so that we can see it. The universe is massive. It’s huge. And I’m 5 foot 10, almost the size of the University of Georgia’s quarterback, Stetson Bennett, who is 5 foot 11. Stetson Bennett is a very big deal today now the Georgia is ranks first in the nation, but what about tomorrow? What are human beings in the great scheme of things? If we say, “Not much,” that’s not entirely correct. However, do you know anyone who thinks they’re big enough that the universe ought to revolve around them? For example: Have you ever met someone who thinks she’s the Queen of the DMV, and is going to make sure you know it, by smugly asking you to go to the end of the line once you’ve found a notarized copy of your original birth certificate and seems to enjoy doing so a little too much? I once had a bad experience with a home inspector. Back in Tennessee I made the mistake of paying our contractor before the inspection, so when the home inspector showed up, pointed out how the bolts on the deck were too small and the pipes under the sink needed a studor vent, our contractor was no longer taking my calls. Therefore, I had to do all that stuff myself, which began with me finding out what a sudor vent was. It took me a few days to complete the punch list. Then, proudly, I invited the inspector to come back, only a different inspector came. Probably because she was just doing her job, not abusing her power, she just turned the knob on the sink, saw that water came out, and we passed our inspection. She didn’t even look at my studor vent. And this is my point: there are people in this world who abuse the smallest amount of power. Yet, when it comes to human power, considering the size of the universe and the majesty of God, what even is human power? Job has been seeking out God because he has a bone to pick with Him. That’s what’s going on in today’s Second Scripture Lesson. We’ve been reading about Job for three Sundays in a row now. We’ll hear from him once more next Sunday. Job seeks God out because he has some issues with how God has been running the world, only then God shows up and says to Job: “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 or where the hummingbird lays her eggs, but you’re ready to take issue with how I’m running this place?” It’s an incredible and beautiful speech which God gives here, and surely it shook Job to his core, which is what must happen to us all from time to time, for it is too easy to misunderstand our true place in this world. I’ve heard it said that humility is just remembering that God is God, and we are not. I’ve also heard it said that the key to understanding our place in the universe is remembering on the one hand that we are of immeasurable worth, yet, what’s also true, is that all flesh is as grass, and the grass withers, the flower fades. Thinking of both sides of our reality, both our worth and our finitude, two questions must be asked at once: To those who abuse even the smallest degrees of power, so that when given a clip board they proceed to walk around making people change their plumbing, God must ask, “Where were you when I shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? Yet you think you’re the king of the studor vents?” That’s a question to keep us from getting too big for our britches, but to those who can barely scrape themselves up off the ground, so beaten down and abused are they, the question must be asked, “Where were you when they crucified my Lord? Do you know that he died for you?” You see, there are two questions. One is direction towards those who read a couple articles on the internet about the CORONA Virus and think they’re epidemiologists. To them God must ask, “Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind? Yet you think you have it all figured out?” Another question must be asked to those who feel they have no right to even form an opinion. We must ask them, “Where were you when they nailed him to the tree? Can you not see that for you, for you, Christ suffered?” To those who get pretty good at reading the Bible and suddenly think they’ve mastered the Christian faith (Have you ever met someone who stopped practicing their religion because they thought they’d mastered it? Who, when you get into a discussion about something controversial but important, don’t listen so much as wait their turn to tell you why they’re right?), to them God must ask, “Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of her young? Do you know where the mountain goat raises her young? Can you lift your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you? Then who are you to be so sure that you comprehend the majesty of God?” And to those who are sure that God has cursed them, or that they have no place here, to them the Church must ask, “where were you when they laid him in the tomb? For He died for you, that you might know your worth. And he rose for you, so that you might know that his love for you can never die.” There are many people in this world who have confused faith and certainty. Because they are so sure they know, they’re no longer open to who the living God is. That’s a dangerous thing, because I have many convictions that I feel very strongly about, one main one being that I have more to learn. Still, I also know this, and I can be sure of it, while to me God will always be beyond my comprehension, God is never far from those who suffer. To illustrate this point, the Lord answers Job in our Second Scripture Lesson for today, and the answer to all Job’s questions is basically this: you may never understand how this world works or why life is the way that it is, yet you will never be alone in the darkness. You will never walk alone through the valley of the shadow of death. You need not fear the shadow, for while this universe is beyond our comprehension, we are precious in his sight. This morning at the 8:30 service, a bird interrupted me when I was giving the charge and benediction at the end of the service. She flew into the sanctuary, and everyone was looking up as she flew around that big room. Nancy Tatnall told me she was a sparrow, which reminded me that I while I am not the center of the universe and I don’t have it all figured out, if His eye is on the sparrow then I know he watches me. Amen.

You Will Never Vanish From His Sight

Scripture Lessons: Hebrews 4: 12-16 and Job 23: 1-9 and 16-17 Sermon Title: We Will Never Vanish from His Sight Preached on October 10, 2021 There’s a wonderful children’s book called, “It Could Be Worse,” by James Stevenson. The main character is an unflappable grandpa, who no matter what, whether his grandson got a splinter, or the dog ate a sofa cushion, only ever responded with, “it could be worse.” This response frustrated his grandchildren. They thought their grandfather never got excited about anything, and so they assumed nothing exciting ever happened to him. Only then, one day at breakfast, grandpa said, “Last night, when I was asleep, a huge bird picked me up out of bed and took me for a long ride and dropped me in the mountains. There, I heard a loud noise. It was an abominable snowman with a huge snowball which he threw at me. I got stuck inside the snowball which rolled down the mountain and finally landed on the desert. There, it began to melt. I walked across the desert, and suddenly I heard footsteps coming nearer and nearer. A moment later I got squished by a giant something or other. Before I could get up, I heard a strange noise. A great BLOB of marmalade was coming toward me. It took me across the desert until I crashed into something tall. It was sort of like an ostrich and was very cross. It gave me a big kick. Then, I went into some storm clouds, almost got hit by lightning, fell out of the clouds, landed in an ocean down about a mile to the bottom the sea, where a goldfish came swimming at me, so I swam away as fast as I could. I hid under a cup that had air in it. When it was safe, I crawled out. I started to walk but my foot got stuck in the grip of a gigantic lobster. I didn't know what to do but just then a big squid came along and squirted black ink all over the lobster. I escaped him and hitched a ride on a sea turtle that was going to the top for a bit of sunshine. I was fortunate to find a piece of toast floating by and rode to shore where I discovered a newspaper, that I quickly folded into an airplane and flew across the sea and back home to bed.” “Now, what do you think of that,” he asked his grandchildren. “Could be worse,” they both said. It could be worse. However, for Job, it could not be worse. This is the second Sunday in a row with a sermon focused on a passage from the book of Job. Rev. Cassie Waits and I plan these things out. Just as we focused on the “I AM” statements of Jesus over the summer and the book of James last month, we’re preaching sermons on the book of Job this month, which seems like a good thing to do, except for the fact that Job is just so sad. The book is abundantly depressing. It’s true. Everything bad that could happen happens to Job. He loses everything. His children die. His wealth disappears. His crops dry up. His friends come to see him, and had they said to Job, “It could be worse,” Job would have asked them, “how?” How could things possibly be worse? For Job, they couldn’t be worse, and the question the book calls us to think about is this: how is God at work in the ash heap; the place where things couldn’t get any worse? In our Second Scripture Lesson, Job seeks God out to ask this question, and it’s one that seems like a good question for us to ask in these strange days. When did this pandemic begin? March of 2020. It’s becoming harder for me to remember what life was like before it started. Can you remember? Can you remember what it was like to just come to church without having to think so much or worry so much? Can you remember what it was like to just walk into a restaurant? Can you remember what it was like to send your kids to school with some level of confidence that they would stay there for the whole week? Week before last our daughter Cece tested positive for COVID-19. I’m so thankful that her symptoms were never too severe and that the rest of us never got sick, and since Cece is too young for the vaccine, once she got over the virus and had those anti-bodies, we felt a degree of freedom we hadn’t felt in a long time To celebrate, last week we went on vacation. The girls were out of school for Fall Break. We decided to go to the Isle of Palms right outside of Charleston, and I had the bright idea to go on an overnight canoe trip on our way there. I’d read that you can canoe down the Edisto River, 23 miles, and midway spend the night in a tree house. That sounded like a great idea, but like most of my ideas it turned out not to be. Let me tell you what happened. The canoe outfitter drove a shuttle upriver, dropped us off, gave us a brief orientation, and then pushed us downriver. Within the first mile Sara and Cece steered their canoe under a branch that had a snake in it. Seeing it fall from the branch, Sara screamed and dropped her paddle. Unable to steer, the river’s current pushed them into a fallen tree, where they got stuck, and about 8 feet away on the river’s edge an alligator lay sunning herself. It doesn’t seem like this could get much worse. It didn’t. That was the worst of it, but here’s what I want to focus on. We had no time to think about how bad it was because the water kept moving us downstream. We couldn’t go back. We had to keep going. It seemed like the light was going out, like we were vanishing into darkness, and that thick darkness would cover our faces, only something also kept pushing us onward. Do you know this feeling? Again, and again, Job calls out: Answer me Lord, why? Why has this happened? Why am I hurting? What have I done? He’s not overreacting here. He’s not exaggerating. Truly, everything has gone wrong, it couldn’t get worse, but notice that this passage which we’ve read doesn’t end the book. Job’s story keeps going, for like a canoe floating down stream, the current carries him onward, and darkness is not the end, because darkness is never the end. We must remember that. For, from time to time the darkness can get to you. Do you know what I mean? Friends will ask me how the church is doing, and sometimes their voices are more downcast than I’d like. “Really Joe, how is the church doing?” They say it that way, maybe having heard that 1 out of every 4 churches will close during the pandemic. That they’ll never recover. Their doors are closed for good. So, thinking of such a reality, when asked how our church is doing, there’s a part of me that sinks down into the darkness of discouragemetn. Our pews are not full. Our choir hasn’t been singing. Wednesday Night Supper is on hiatus. Everything is a little bit weird. And yet, we’ve distributed nearly 300,000 meals out of the parking lot. We’ve provided housewarming gifts to resettled Afghan refugees. We welcome more visitors every week. The preschool continues to be a place of welcome. We have a new youth director, named Michael Sanchez. Annual staff reviews are coming up, and I’m looking forward to doing them, because I just have a whole lot of good things to say. How many masks has Bev Barlow sowed? Neighborhood group leaders, pastors, Stephens ministers, are reaching out and making phone calls. We hope to be nominated as the best place to worship in Cobb County again and hope to win for the fourth year in a row. Is there darkness? Yes. Is there hardship? Yes. Are things different? Yes. Have snakes have been falling from the trees? Have we lost a paddle? Is there an alligator on the shore? Maybe. Still, the current pushes us onward. While the darkness may at times be thick and getting thicker, we know this: the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. John 1:5 has been my favorite verse of Scripture for as long as I can remember. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” The light in this verse is a person, a person named Jesus, and the book of Hebrews in our First Scripture Lesson calls him a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, who is able to sympathize with our weakness, for he suffered, and was tested in every respect. Though he was innocent, he was tried as a criminal. Though he was pure, he was whipped. Though he is the High King of Heaven, he was given a crown of thorns. Though he is due the throne, he was nailed to a cross. Though he is the Savior, he was deserted. Though he is the Son of God, he breathed his last breath and gave forth his sprit. What are we to say about these things? It could be worse? No, it couldn’t have been worse. Still, three days later he rose again from the grave for the current pushed him onward, the darkness could not overwhelm him, his light would not be extinguished, even by death. So, if you feel it as we all feel it. If you feel that deep darkness that was Job’s; that shadow which grows and makes you feel like you’re soon to vanish, hold on. Hold on a while longer and see where the current takes you. Hold on a while longer, and watch, for the light will not go out, and you will never vanish from his sight. Amen.