Readings, Psalm 126, Isaiah 43:16-21, and Philippians 3:4b-14
Image, 
 
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. There might not be a more profound prayer than the one held in this simple line from today’s Psalm. It is a timeless petition, for until the age to come when God wipes all tears from our eyes, the human experience shall not be short of tears, nor the longing for them to be replaced with joy. It is a prayer we might have prayed for ourselves, for a loved one, or for whole regions and peoples wracked by ruinous calamity or military violence.
 
This sentiment, this hope, that those who sow in tears shall reap in joy, runs throughout Scripture. Could it not describe the yearning and journey of Ruth and Naomi, the prophetic hope given to slaves in Egypt and exiles in Babylon, is it not descriptive of the travails of Joseph or of Hagar. The psalm could be sung over the people of God at so many points in their history and feel as though it was written directly for them. Just as countless faithful have opened their Bible to this page and heard it speak the longing of their heart.  
 
It is fitting then, that this verse, particularly when we let it run on to the next, proves a succinct plot summary of that first Easter morning: Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves. Or, in a perhaps more potent translation (from Robert Alter):
He walks along and weeps,
The bearer of the seed bag.
He will surely come in with glad song
Bearing his sheaves.
 
For does this not describe the journey of Mary Magdalene on Easter morn? She who walked, weeping, bearing spices to the tomb of her Lord, is she who comes home with shouts of joy, returning to the disciples with glad song to rouse them from their mourning.
 
Perhaps it should be no surprise that such a verse maps so poetically onto the Easter scene. For the rising of Christ, his triumph over Death, is the divine signature beneath the promise that those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. The resurrection of Christ, as Paul strives to describe, is that which strengthens us to forget what lies behind and to press on toward the goal. The resurrection is that truth of surpassing value which permits us to hope that the story does not end in tears, that the losses are not forever, that the seeds watered in tears will not grow trees of sorrow. The fields of our lives might be laid to waste by calamity and tragedy but they shall not remain barren. For the resurrection signals the coming of a day when all shall rise, and all things shall be restored to their former glory, as the great Sower arrives with glad song, heralding the in-breaking of new creation.
 
None of this is to suggest that because of this promise of glad song we need put down our laments. For as the teacher says, there is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. The psalm conveys that it is by honouring one time that the other comes to fruition. It is by sowing in tears that the changing of the seasons leads us to reaping in joy and glad song. Had Mary not gone to attend Christ in her grief, she would not have had her heard her name spoken by her Lord and friend. Our faith is one of death and resurrection; the latter does not ignore but transforms the former. So too the griefs in our life are real, the losses profound, and there are those who know sufferings and losses which defy the understanding of all but their compatriots in the valley of death. And far too many never live to feel taste the tears replaced by laughter returning to their mouths and glad song to their hearts. The tears of today are too real to be waved away by the promise of tomorrow, the time must be taken to sow and wait before there’s any talk of reaping.  
 
In a similar way, none of this is to suggest that suffering is inherently good. That the knowledge it brings, the experience it provides, the ground it serves for cultivating transformation is enviable. There’s a line in Saul Bellow’s novel, Mr Sammler’s Planet, where a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps remarks, “To some people, true enough, experience seemed wealth. Misery worth a lot. Horror a fortune. Yes. But I never wanted such riches.” We recall that Christ weeps for his friend Lazarus as he lies in his tomb, even though Christ is the resurrection and the life, who can call his friend by name and lead him into life. Griefs are too awful to be envied, even if what might be sowed in their season might lead to glad song in another. Just because Joseph’s sale into slavery leads to the salvation of many, or because Hagar’s casting out leads to her encounter with God in the wilderness, this does not mean we take as necessary, excusable, or enviable the actions of others that led them there. Nor should it prompt us to say, how fortunate they suffered such woe, otherwise they would never have felt such joy.
 
May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. This is a sublime prayer, an earnest hope, a foundational promise. It speaks God’s nature to make straight the paths through the wilderness and provide water in the dessert. It speaks the Easter promise of resurrection which transforms death and allows Paul to consider the worldly privileges he lost in his dying with Christ merely excrement compared to what he has gained by sharing in Christ’s resurrection. It speaks the Spirit’s power to prevent grief being the last word, or loss the final state. It reminds us that though there is a time to weep and mourn there will be another time, if not in this life, then in the age to come, when tears shall be wiped from our eyes and all things restored to dazzling glory.
 
And while speaking this comfort and promise, the psalm also speaks our commission as Christ’s disciples living in this time between Christ’s resurrection and return. For too much suffering need not be, and too many of our fellows are denied the time, care, and justice required to move from weeping to glad song. It belongs to us, as Christ’s, to live and work with our neighbours that we might share the burden of the seed bag when they weep and work to clear away that which stifles what could grow out from their season of grief if only the world would stop dumping calamity on their heads. Let us live with our neighbours in their times of mourning and their seasons of waiting, that we might join in the glad song and shouts of joy when the time of reaping has begun. For this is the very image of Christ, who though buried in tears, rises to gather his scattered and weeping friends so they may know once more the time of dancing and laughter.

Reading Job 42
 Image, A detail from The Other Room (late 1930s), Vanessa Bell.
 
What does it mean to come out from the depths? To live beyond crisis? What is it to find oneself in a new chapter after life-defining loss or suffering? How does one live, always with, but now, somehow, somewhat, after rupture?
 
In the two weeks before our combined service we explored the book of Job as a poetic response to crisis, a fable on humans responses to suffering and evil beyond comprehension and control. Here, we reach the end of the book, which follows the dramatic appearance of God in the whirlwind, and moves us out of the immediacy of Job’s suffering and grievances, toward restoration and new beginning. With this, the question shift. No longer is it how we live before God and with one another when sitting in dust and ashes, but what does it mean to live when the dust is washed, clothes are mended, and table’s once more set for a feast?
 
The dramatic reversal at the end of Job often cops some flak. The kind of peaches and cream reversal of Job’s fortunes where all that was lost is replaced seems to run into an issue when it comes to his children. Because it is not that his children are resurrected, he simply has new ones to replace those lost. Once again, I stress the story of Job is a fable, and so, like the little disclaimer at the end of a movie’s credits, I can assure you that no real, living children were harmed in the making of this story. And yet, even if the broader (theological) point is taken, that God has remained faithful to Job, and that the one with the power to take, also gives, we might still feel the ending comes up short, particularly compared to the philosophical sophistication of the earlier chapters. Kind of like the unsatisfactory feeling we get when a good, suspenseful story is revealed to all be a dream. What’s the point of all of this, if, at the end, nothing has changed?
 
But perhaps, when we read closely, we discover that more has changed than first appears. Perhaps the question is less how is Job’s life is returned to him, but in what manner does Job return to his life?
 
The first thing he has to deal with is his friends. Those who showed up to sat with him silently in the dust, before they all started to speak… speech, we here learn from God “was not right.” Their varying efforts to account for Job’s suffering by insisting on his wickedness or God’s majesty now stand condemned. To atone for such folly they must bring an offering to Job and ask him to intercede on their behalf.
 
There is an interesting parallel here. We might remember that at the beginning of our story, Job would wake early on the days his children were to feast together to offer sacrifices in the off-chance that they might have unknowingly cursed God in their hearts. Now, instead, Job offers his prayers for those who insisted time and again that he had cursed God in his heart. 
 
How do we live with those who have walked with us in our grief, who have sought to offer words of comfort and consolation, those who showed us great patience and care, or perhaps failed to do so, those who never really understood what we were going through, what pain we were feeling, what we really wanted or needed in this season of grief. Sometimes these moments of high intensity forge unbreakable bonds, other times they open uncrossable gulfs. As we pick up the pieces of our lives we might find the very people closest to us become either the only ones who understand, or a difficult reminder of what we endured. Just last night I read this line in Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, “Sometimes you need people to be perfect and they can’t be and you hate them forever for not being even though even though it isn’t their fault and it’s not your either. You just needed something they didn’t have in them to give you.” (p. 369)
 
God hands the fates of these friends over to Job. But despite the fact his friends failed him in his hour of need, he will not fail them in theirs. There is something of a transformation here in the character of Job. Where Job has argued and defended himself against his friends, his encounter with the whirlwind of God and his admission that he too spoke of what he did not understand, allow him a power and grace to extend forgiveness and intercession for his friends. In a manner that might remind us of Jesus’ intercession on the cross, Job prays for forgiveness for his friends for they did not know what they were doing. They too crumbled under the pressure of suffering too bewildering to comprehend, they too had their worlds ruptured, and they too should not be abandoned or condemned. Job might have been found blameless, but that doesn’t mean those bearing blame should be forgotten.
 
A disclaimer: Job’s actions might be exemplary, but they are not prescriptive. This is not a sermon about how you must respond to those who walked with you in times of grief (especially if they did so poorly). Such complex relations cannot be approached with a one-size-fits-all blanket. Nonetheless, we might be stirred by Job. He captures a vital truth of our faith: Christ did not cut from the vine those who denied and dispersed, but established a movement in his name of those who pray both that we might be forgiven our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. 
 
With his friends sorted, Job’s fortunes are restored. Not only property and livestock but seven sons and three daughters (the same number as before). What is important to notice is that, unlike last time (and in an uncharacteristic fashion) his new daughters are named: Jemimah, Keziah, Keren-happuch. Details such as these should not be ignored. Biblical authors aren’t like Mark Twain, padding the pages because they are paid by the word. But what’s more than simply being named, Ellen Davis has noted that these are unusually sensuous names: “Dove,” “Spice-girl,” “Horn of Eyeshadow.” These names, with the detail that Job gave them inheritances and lived to see his children’s children, swirl together to present Job now as exuberant in affection, determined to enjoy the fullness of his days.
 
This feels like a marked change. Before, while his children would go to each other’s houses feasting, Job would rise early, alone, to pray for them. Now, he is with them, delighting in their lives and the pleasures of feasting together. The blessings he has received are not to be protectively worried over, but celebrated with others. Once more we are led to a deep truth of our faith, where the kingdom of God is likened so often to a banquet. The earth is the Lord’s and the earth is good, and it is a faithful celebration of our God to delight and take pleasure in what lies before us in the company of others. We are called to be a joyful people, which is in no way incompatible with being a people who mourn, rage, and struggle. The book of Job, again, doesn’t prescribe, but offers a way of living after the ravages of suffering and cataclysm, which is to celebrate new life, to give thanks for birdsong and spice, to delight in the beautiful, and linger in the company of the beloved.
 
The book of Job is about human responses when faced with suffering beyond our comprehension and control. And through these three sermons we have seen a range of responses: rage, confrontation, righteous anger, speechless grief, misguided philosophising. Now, on the other side of it all, we see another kind of response. Which is that, when possible, we do not let suffering and woe obliterate the fullness of our days. Job is transformed by the whirlwind in such a way as he is able to lay aside his grievance with God, his animosity with his friends, and take new delight in his life. He who once cursed the day he was born now celebrates all that has since been birthed. None of this happened quickly or easily. Job sat and stewed, raged with his friends and called God to account until, in a moment where eternity broke in before him, he allowed something new and surprising to occur both within and about him. And to this he brought the hard-won knowledge gained by suffering: grace to forgive and freedom to delight.
 
None of this can be simply applied one-to-one to our lives and suffering. For the losses we have known are not parables or poems; but all too literal. And the reversals of fortune we might know are unlikely to be as mathematically satisfactory as Job’s. Too many in the world have never had (let alone had twice) the kind of material and familial blessing Job enjoys, nor his world-transforming encounter with the Living God. And yet, as those who have heard the gospel message, who proclaim the new creation won through Christ’s death and resurrection, we are nonetheless a people who confess that somehow, in some way and at some point, new life breaks through, new tables are set, new delights emerge, new relations form, if not in this life, then at that kingdom banquet. In the meantime, we return to that opening question: what does it look like to come out from the depths and live beyond crisis? Job gives us something of a picture, and where possible we are encouraged to take heed of his example of grace, delight, and freedom, which allows the obliterating pain of one season not to be the sole author of our lives. It also encourages us to look to those suffering around us today. We might not be able to enact the kind of miraculous, poetic reversal that belongs to God, but we might yet be able to pull up a chair, weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice, rage with those who rage and answer the problem of suffering with lives of love.

Reading, Job 38:1-11, 34-41, 40:1-9 
Image, John Ross, The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. (1960)

 
Last week, Job, stricken by calamity, demands God answer his complaint. This week, God answers Job out of the whirlwind. In between the story of Job is broken into a series of speeches. Job’s friends make cases for why misery has befallen Job. Most work along a logic that since the wicked always receive just punishment at the hand of God, Job must actually be wicked. To which Job counters with two points: 1) defending his blamelessness, and 2) reminding them that by and large the wicked receive no punishment, no justice in this life: They spend their days in prosperity and in peace they go down to Sheol. They say to God, ‘Leave us alone! We do not desire to know your ways.’ So, Job contends not only am I not wicked, but even if I were that would not be enough to establish that this is why I suffer, since it doesn’t seem like God has much interest in bringing justice upon the wicked.
 
Time and again Job’s friends offer accounts for what has happened (accounts, we shall come to see, will be condemned by God as false speech) and time and again Job rebuffs their words and demands God answers him directly. Again, this is a testament to that fierce, determined faith Job exemplifies (which we discussed last week) one which is unwavering in its belief in God’s sovereign power and in his own right to demand God front up.
 
And so, eventually, God appears. This is the first time we have seen God in the narrative since the two early wagers with Satan, and the first time that Job has beheld God since all this began. It is important to remind ourselves that the story of Job is not history or journalism, but a poem, a fable, a parable. A story constructed in order to address the reality of human suffering, of the incomprehensibility of evil and woe. So how does God’s answer from the whirlwind do that?
 
One of my favourite contemporary novelists, Garth Greenwell, opens his new book, Small Rain, this way: They asked me to describe the pain but the pain defied description, on a scale from one to ten it demanded a different scale.
This is kind of like what God introduces into the story, a different scale. Instead of arriving to tell Job, look, here’s what happened… all the angels and I were hanging out, and then Satan came in, and well, one thing led to another... Or, coming and saying, look, Job, your friends are right, you sinned in your heart on April 16, 4062, and thus everything that has befallen you has been justified… Or, coming to say, look Job, I know you’re upset, but this is the reason bad things happen to good people… instead, God appears in a whirlwind and says,
Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
 
Talk about a different scale? Job has been asking God to give account and God shows up and says, I’m the one asking the questions here: Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Not the most pastoral approach, indeed, rather accusatory. It is almost like if your new fridge was faulty and you called to get it returned and when you said, listen, everything at the back is freezing, the person on the helpline said, I’m sorry, were you there when I invented ice?!?
 
This moment was brought vividly to life in Terrance Malick’s film, Tree of Life. Early in the film a mother learns of the death of her son, and she utters, in desperate grief, Lord, did you know… where were you… what are we to you… answer me… and at this request the film goes back to the beginning of all things. In a near fifteen minute sequence it works its way slowly through the creation of the cosmos, the first creatures to populate the seas, the emergence and collapse of dinosaurs, only then it returns to the family. What this says is the only way to approach the questions born of this personal loss is to tell the whole story of creation. We are but part of this story, the story of all things which unfolded at the hand of God. Where were you, the mother asks, to which God responds, everywhere.
 
Many have deemed this is an unsatisfactory response. That God’s assertion of an eternal knowledge which trumps all temporal concerns is insufficient in the face of immediate, personal, unjust suffering. Job, it appears, does not find it wanting. He remarks at the end of God’s address, I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know… Therefore I recant and reconsider concerning dust and ashes. Job is sufficiently awed, his grievances transformed and any right to further speech given up.
 
But even if we don’t share Job’s position (nor his eventual reversal of fortune), we might still consider the whirlwind. Because maybe there is no satisfactory response to the problem of incomprehensible suffering to be found anywhere else? Perhaps the point is to change the scale, and thus change the perspective. Because whether or not we have or may grasp a reason, suffering occurs, catastrophes happen, loss and grief are inevitable. As we say in the funeral prayers:
Give us grace in the face of the mystery of life.
Give us the wisdom that says:
‘Even if our questions were answered,
even if we did know why,
the pain would be no less,
the loneliness would remain,
and our hearts would still be aching’.
 
And so perhaps, this swirling reminder of the majesty of God’s eternal presence, power, and provision give comfort. The gap between us and God, the finite and infinite, the created and Creator offers a new scale. The speech of God offers us a reality where there is something over, under, and around all of history’s inscrutable, scattered moments. But not just a random something, for when we take the testimony of the whole of Scripture, then we see that the something (or better someone) over, under, and around all the things that we can and cannot see and comprehend is the God who is love. The one who heard the morning stars sing is also the one who hears the cries of the oppressed and acts with a mighty hand. The one who knows when the mountain goat gives birth is the one who found the slave girl Hagar and her child in the wilderness and helped her survive. The one who numbers the clouds is the one who stood between the accused woman and those bearing stones and numbering sins. The one who can draw the Leviathan out of deepest ocean is the one who descended unto death in order to triumph over the grave and lead us to newness of life.
 
Not a flap of a wing nor a blink of an eye has occurred without God. And while this does not diminish the pain of loss, the grief of suffering, or our rage against evil, it does offer us something. A different scale, another way of thinking about the pain of the world. So much that might feel without reason, might appear without logic, might defy comprehension, might instead occur within the world and history God creates, sustains, and redeems. These moments are thus not, ultimately, without meaning, not ultimately random, not ultimately finished… each takes place within a bigger meaning, a bigger story, one which has always and will ever continue to unfold within the sphere of God’s interest and love.
 
This, as I have said from the start, does not solve everything (perhaps, for some, it solves nothing). But the story of Job is not set out, I believe, to do that. The whirlwind offers a picture of reality in which God is present. It offers a way of living where history’s many moments of violence and catastrophe are not the final, unaccountable word, but remain open to the redemptive and restorative activity of God. This doesn’t mean we must accept all things as they are – we, like Job, can bring our charges before God, and we must act upon the earth to seek justice, peace, and restoration. But the whirlwind offers us a foundation on which our faith and activity might rest: that while much lies beyond us, nothing lies beyond God, and in this there is hope, because God is love, and love never ends: it makes all things new.

Reading, Job 1 and 2.
Image, Job, Antonio de Pereda
 
“There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.” So begins one of the more immense, provocative, and mysterious stories in Scripture. Job provides the Bible’s most detailed study on the question of suffering and evil. A question we will not satisfactorily solve in one (or even a handful) of sermons. Nonetheless, where might this story take us?
 
Well, in the first instance, it takes us to the land of fables. There was once a man in the land... This is the Hebrew Bible equivalent of “Once Upon a Time.” Indeed, it is the very phrase that the prophet Nathaniel employs in his fable or parable of the man who steals a lamb told to condemn King David.
 
This helps our reading (and perhaps our sanity). We do not have to reckon with this picture of God making wagers with Satan as a literal representation of what God is like, nor as a picture of what’s going on in the heavenly realms. Similarly, we don’t have to worry about the literal lives of these children of Job crushed to death. The elements of the story are not a journalistic account of happenings, they exist to provoke and illustrate, leading the reader to consider the deeper questions and crises of human existence.
 
This last point is important. The book of Job (especially in its early chapters) is far less interested with the character of God than with how humans respond to suffering beyond our comprehension and control. To say it another way, the scene with God and Satan is not there to furnace our doctrine of God, rather it poetically intensifies one of the book’s main theses: woe to the one presuming to know the mystery of God, or link external suffering to state of another’s heart. With this established, what can we learn from Job?
 
First, despite his prosperity, Job seems to live under a cloud of potential calamity due to the unbeknownst sin of others. We read that on the days his children were to feast he would rise early to offer burnt offerings just in case his children had cursed God in their hearts. While this detail may be there to heighten the exaggerated virtuousness of Job it also suggests a life defined by the insecurity of blessing. Of course, ironically, none of this actually helps. For it is not any human cursing that brings ruin, it is Job’s very blamelessness and uprightness that provokes God’s boasting and the Adversary’s challenge. Job’s unimpeachable record, far from preserving him and his children, becomes the cause of all that goes wrong.
 
But perhaps it is his acceptance of the provisionally of all good things, that allows Job to make his famous confessions when confronted with news of devastation. Messenger after messenger, hot on the heels of each other, lay increasingly exaggerated reports of ill-fortune at Job’s feet. Upon hearing this, Job says, Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken may the Lord’s name be blessed. Even with the rug pulled so swiftly out from under him, Job does not curse God, but recognises the freedom of his sovereign who brings sunshine and rain upon us all.
 
But again, ironically, his faithfulness is the cause of calamity. For when God draws attention to Job remaining unmoored, the Adversary heightens the wager, insisting Job will succumb if his body becomes the site of pain. Yet even covered with sores Job refuses to curse God. His wife, perhaps out of pity for his sufferings, grief for her own loss, or resignation that blessing or cursing, innocence or guilt, make no difference, appeals he let go, but Job retorts: Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?     
 
Job remains unwavering in his vision of the world as being under the sovereign power of God, while remaining in the dark as to why any of this is happening. God gives and so God must be allowed to take, such is the freedom of the Creator and the plight of the creation. And yet, we would do a disservice to Job if we took this as a sign that he is not determined to hold God to account. When Job’s friends insist on defending the validity of God’s justice and insist upon the secret sin Job must have committed to deserve this treatment, Job defends his faithfulness and cries aloud: Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me!
 
Job, while accepting the right of God to give and take, rejects his friends “account” of the situation, and insists that God front up and give testimony. There is a kind of ferocious determination in Job’s response. Through grief and gritted teeth, he will not allow calamity to prevail over his faith in God, while at the very same time, will not allow God to slip by without giving account. God is free to do this, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
 
The author Zvi Kolitz wrote a story about a fictional Jewish resistance fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto. The fighter, writes a testimony in 1943, speaking directly to God:
Here, then, are my last words to You, my angry God: None of this will avail You in the least! You have done everything to make me lose my faith in You, to make me cease to believe in You. But I die exactly as I have lived, an unshakable believer in You… Sh’ma Yisroel! Hear, Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. Into your hands I commend my soul.*
 
Such is the ground Job stands upon. Nothing will prevail over his belief in God, and nothing will stop him charging God with the ills that have befallen him. The world is God’s so God needs to account for what has happened in the world. Job will not abandon the foundation of his faith, nor his very righteousness, rather these are what drives his charge: Oh, that I knew where to find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments.
 
I think of those immortal words of comfort Jesus offers his disciples: In my father’s house there are many dwelling places… I go and prepare a place for you. Read in conversation with Job, we see that there is more than one mood with which to enter the household of God. And one of them, very legitimately, is to come before the Most High with a litany of griefs and injustices. Those who have known senseless suffering, who have seen cataclysm and misery ruin lives, who have tasted the bitterness of grief, these are not things we must quietly bear for the sake of our deep faith in God or God’s reputation on the earth. No, we see with Job (no less than with Christ upon the cross) that it is from the deep well of our faith that we may lay the most emphatic charges at the feet of God and demand an answer to a question as profound as Job’s: why did you bring me forth from the womb?
 
The question of suffering is posed to all of us. The reality of evil and senselessness of loss cannot be skirted even for the upright and blameless. These early chapters of Job rest on such a premise, insisting that though we will know calamity, its causes often lie beyond our vision. What shall we do in this moment? How do we respond when everything falls apart? Job gives us one way with this strange dichotomy of blessing and charge, of confession and accusation. Job models what it might look like to hold on believing almost to spite the reasons for unbelief; to remain among the faithful in order to enter the dwelling of God and have it out face to face. I think there is good news here, that faith can look like this (it doesn’t have to, but it can). There’s good news in realising that this too is a Christian response to calamity and woe. We do not curse God when we challenge God. We do not abandon our faith when we rage against what has befallen us or our world. Paradoxically, as those called daily to take up our cross, is it not a fitting posture to pin ourselves to the wood to join voice with the world’s saviour crying, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me! Because perhaps, for more than just Job, this is the only way through to Sunday.

*Zvi Kolitz, Yosl Rakover Talks to God, translated Carol Janeway, 1999. 24-25.

Readings, 2 Samuel 11:26–12:13a and Ephesians 4:1-16
Image, Nathan's parable of the ewe lamb (1965-1968), Oskar Kokoschka

We pick up, in Samuel, where we left off last week. There attended to David’s abuse of Bathsheba and assassination of Uriah; actions predicated on the assumption that David was able to act not only with impunity, but without discovery. And yet, as the Johnny Cash song tells, You can run on for a long time, But sooner or later God will cut you down
 
The thing David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David. Nathan, perhaps considering the most effective tactic of confrontation, weaves a fable and David walks into its moral trap. You are the man! Nathan declares when David’s outrage reaches its boiling point over a stolen lamb. It is satisfying to see David condemn himself for the evil he has performed, and yet, it is not enough that David’s conscious should be pricked, or that he buckle under the weight of guilt. For the harms done cannot be undone; and surely blood calls out for blood.
 
Thus sayeth the Lord: the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah to be your wife… I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbour, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun. For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.
 
Last week I drew the comparison between the unbridled villainy of the actions of King David and those of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Here, keeping with literary allusions, the punishment allotted by God rivals the poetic, ironic twists of a Greek Tragedy. For the very crimes David thought he hid, shall be reversed upon him in the light of day – and all shall see the displeasure of the Lord poured forth upon the king.
 
David, struck by fear and guilt, exclaims in confession: I have sinned against the Lord! This is where the lectionary ends the reading. Punctuating the story with David’s admission of guilt, and desperate plea that the judgment of the Lord might be lifted off his house. If we end the reading here, accompanied as it is with the psalm of confession attributed to David, a certain selection of avenues for proclamation and the lessons open before us. Consolation in the nature of God who does not excuse the sins of kings, commendation of the prophet speaking truth to power, remembering the importance of confession and hope of restoration.
 
But while this is where the lectionary cuts off, this is hardly where the story ends. For if we read on beyond David’s cry of confession, Nathan responds: Now the Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child that is born to you shall die.” David’s own life is spared, his humiliation and downfall averted, and yet, the Lord was scorned, and so the child born of David’s transgression will perish. The child becomes ill by the hand of the Lord. David fasts and weeps, pleads and prays, but the Lord hath spoken, and the child dies.
 
Then David rose from the ground, washed, anointed himself, and changed his clothes. He went into the house of the Lord, and worshiped; he then went to his own house; and when he asked, they set food before him and he ate. Then his servants said to him, “What is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while it was alive; but when the child died, you rose and ate food.” He said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me, and the child may live.’ But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” Then David consoled his wife Bathsheba, and went to her, and lay with her; and she bore a son, and he named him Solomon. The Lord loved him.
 
Here, is where the story ends. And how, we might wonder, does this change the way the word is proclaimed, and the lessons we learn?
 
In this telling, the story centres something of a council, where, God’s prophet meets with God’s king to deliver God’s judgment. The punishment is adjusted upon David’s contrition, and is accepted by David as lamentable, but justified. And yet, who is not in this council? For the child might be born of David’s sin but he came from Bathsheba’s womb. The reading pays no attention to her feeling. Is she even aware the sudden illness which strikes life from her child has come from God to punish the crime committed against her and her husband? Nor is there any consideration of the child himself, as one knitted together by God in his mother’s innermost parts. Indeed, the narrator seems to present the death of the child and the subsequent birth of Solomon as a resolution; a fresh, clean, new beginning. The child born of sin is dispensed (and with it any residue of David’s transgression), which paves the way for a child who the Lord might love. In this story all things orbit David and God; their actions and feelings the only ones considered both in the crime and its punishment. As David himself makes clear, he has sinned against God alone.
 
We are left, again, with a pretty dire image of King David (but that’s not too troubling, since we reached the same last week). More troubling is this image of God who took the child because God had been scorned by David’s deed. If last week, the story of David provided a chance to lament and learn from the ways the church has longed for kings and excused and legitimatised the abuses of its all-too-worldly leaders, then this week we might also learn from and lament the times our church and society has modelled its image of crime and punishment in such retributive binaries. When we have believed blood cries out for blood, prioritising punishment of the individual over the health of the community. The story as we read it, affords us a chance to learn from and lament the times in which violence against women has been “addressed” by men coming together to punish the defilement of their honour, rather than considering what justice would mean for the victim-survivor.
 
These are not insignificant lessons, for they reflect the stress of the Ephesians reading where unity of the body of Christ is known through a democratic appreciation of the whole. For the church is not marked and defined by the privileged few, but there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. Each have been given a gift, which, while differing in detail does not differ in value. All gifts belong to Christ and each is given to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. We cannot function and flourish as the body of Christ while those whose voice (so often written out of our scriptures and traditions) remains silenced in the church.
 
This is part of why the Uniting Church holds that all people, regardless of gender, sexuality, culture, or language are fit to be ordained, preside over the table, proclaim the word, and sit on its councils. For baptism is the all-inclusive sacrament by which we are initiated into the church in the name of Christ. The church is the whole people of God, who are brought through the waters of new life in Christ, sustained on the way by Christ’s body and blood. The body is formed by no less than this whole people, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped. And when each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. It is for this reason we practice consensus decision making as the church, and for this reason we seek to be governed by non-hierarchical councils. These steps represent the yearning to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
 
And, finally, as the people of God considering the full story from Samuel and the reading we heard from Ephesians, we are reminded again that the Uniting Church lays upon all its members (not just those who preach) the serious duty of reading Scripture. Readings like ours today ask for such seriousness. Part of what it means to read scripture seriously is the requirement to consider images of God set one against another. To reflect on the differing (sometimes divergent) imagery, language, and teaching in the Bible. To locate them amidst their cultural worldview and, considering our own, search out and prize those images which herald good news. Now this is not simply an Old Testament vs New Testament dichotomy. All parts of scripture can proclaim the truth in love, and all are capable of reflecting cultural captivity and human limitation. Here, today, the serious duty of reading scripture asks us to consider which image of God best reflects what we love when we love our God. Is it the one who takes the innocent child of a father’s sin, or the one who takes captive captivity itself? It is not that there aren’t truths of God and the world found in both, as we have seen already. But we might confess that one proves a firmer foundation for the church’s doctrine, one more richly teaches the truth in love, one better helps us grow up in every way into Christ. It is through this serious reading that we are drawn, not only nearer our God to thee, but to those in our communities whose place in the story, whose value in the body, has been diminished, denigrated, forgotten, or forsaken. For it is here that our efforts to maintain the unity of the Spirit and bond of peace most reflect the one who descended even into the low parts of the earth so that all shall know the freedom and gifts of God.

Readings, 2 Sam 11:1-15, Ephesians 3:14-21
Image, Girl Sitting Alone in the ‘Sea Grill,’ a Bar and Restaurant (1943/1989) Esther Bubley

In this story, King David rivals Shakespeare’s Richard III for unbridled villainy. And like so many stories of depraved abuses of power, it strikes an ominous note from the beginning. In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle… David remained at Jerusalem. This is not unintended irony, something is amiss. Remember, when a youth, David volunteered to face Goliath alone. Now when kings go out to battle, David stays home. Not only is he avoiding responsibility, it hints, narratively, at the potential for trouble. For if all of Israel have been sent out to war, who remains in the city to oppose the whims of the King? The picture the narrator paints is one of King David, a man alone, in a city of women.
 
And David spies one such woman, Bathsheba, benignly attending to the banality of bathing. It is notable that the reason David is able to play the voyeur is because he lingers in the king’s house – raised above the rest – and from this perch he is able to look down. Spying something he likes, and sensing no possible opposition, refusal, or discovery, David sends for Bathsheba and (as the text euphemistically states) lies with her. I stress euphemistically here, because like the heading assigned to this reading in many Bibles (“David commits adultery with Bathsheba”), this language elides the abuse, obfuscates the unequal power dynamic, and seeks to make neat the ugliness of this scene familiar to far too many who have been called into the office or home of a superior and realised that there is no way to say no without risking their safety, security, or livelihood.
 
Tragically for Bathsheba, the violence does not end on this day. For Bathsheba falls pregnant, and suddenly David discovers that his act is perhaps somewhat more discoverable than he believed. Should Uriah return after a season of war, he will discover Bathsheba pregnant and all eyes will fall upon the one man in town with power and opportunity.
 
David devises a plan. He calls Uriah home from the front, urging him, go down to your house and wash your feet. Which, speaking of euphemisms, is a common one for sexual intimacy. However, to David’s shame, Uriah refuses. While David has no problem sleeping in a palace, Uriah will not rest under his roof while his comrades spend their nights in tents. David tries again, this time plying Uriah with wine in the hope that alcohol might shake his commitment to abstinence. Yet even drunk, Uriah has more integrity than the king. With no other cards to play, David betrays Uriah to his death, ordering him to be abandoned on the frontlines, to die far from the bed he refused, the wife he loved, and the city he served. Condemned by his king to die in a moment of confusion wondering why everyone drew back while he walked on. When news of his death reaches Bathsheba she makes lamentations, after which, David brings her once more to his house – making her his wife, and the unborn child his own.
 
Our domestic violence work has exposed us to too many heart wrenching stories not to find here parallels of male entitlement, coercion, and abuse. The Me Too movement has exposed too many stories to not find parallels in a man weaponizing power to gain gratification without paying heed of the consent or discomfort of the object of his desire. It is far too late in the day to try and soften the edges of this story, to euphemistically distract from its monstrosity, to rush to excuse, forgive, or forget. For to follow such a path does little to honour the past, and less to protect the future.
 
It is no accident that David’s actions recollect the warning issued to Israel when they demanded a king. A king, God forewarned, will take your sons to be his soldiers, your daughters to be his perfumers and cooks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king. The people were not put off, demanding a king so that we may be like other nations, and because (ironically enough) a king shall go out before us and fight our battles.  
 
I bring up this warning not to imply anyone in the story deserved their treatment, or that David should receive a pass since this is just what kings do. Israel’s desire to be like other nations represents a failure in their calling to be a people set apart to be a witness to the other nations. Far from longing to be a simulacrum of worldly nations, Israel’s call was to witness to what is possible when a people order their lives as subjects to the God of freedom. In just the same way, when the church longs for kings, we too fail to live up to our calling to be a community created and sustained by grace. When we seek to secure our identity and survival in individuals and systems of human power, we invariably lose our way as a people who follow a crucified messiah. When we long for a power that conforms to the way power is distributed and demonstrated in the world, then the vulnerable and marginalised in our community will invariable bear the harm that such power tends to yield. For the impulse to bestow sovereign authority and protect the reputation of leaders, clergy, or past pillars of the community lies beneath so much of the reprehensible abuse scandals that have caused irreparable harm to individuals, communities, and the church itself.
 
And so we ask, how do we avoid such an impulse? Avoid creating environments where all-too-worldly power might be given divine blessing to act without fear of opposition, refusal, or discovery? It is not as simple as willing. Israel asked for a king because they suffered under corruption from within and threats from without, they asked that they might secure their survival and flourishing in the land God promised. So too the church has longed for, empowered, and excused abuses of power because it has looked and quivered at its precarious place in the world as a pilgrim people, whose very life depends on the arrival of Christ and his sustaining grace. All this to say, if we’re going to resist the appeal of worldly power, it will not happen by accident, we must act to be rooted and grounded in love.
 
For it is only with deep roots in love, firmly grounded in the Spirit’s power, that we become secure enough in our calling as the church to resist the lure of worldly power. Too much harm has been hushed away because we feared the church was not strong enough to survive the scandal. But if we devote ourselves to the collective work of tending to roots and grounding ourselves in love, we might be able to trust that telling the truth about David, let alone the truth about those who have come after, will not bring us down but set us free.
 
The truth sets us free to place our trust and identity not in the corrupting power of mortals, but the generous life-giving power of God. This is why we gather and go. To tend to the roots and clear the ground we pray, we approach to the table of grace, we build up each other in love and good deeds, we visit each other and place our calls, we serve food and talk over morning tea, we set flowers and sing praises, we listen to scripture and hear the word proclaimed, and we go forth in grace to love and serve the world, to learn from others and form coalitions for the common good. And we do this (and much more) again and again and again because this is how roots grow deep. To ground ourselves in Christ’s love as the sole power which secures our identity and shapes our life cannot simply be decided (for the lure of worldly power is just too strong). It must instead be determinatively pursued together through spiritual practices, fellowship, and the work of justice, listening, and truth-telling. It is by this that our inner being will be strengthened with power through the Spirit, by this that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, by this we are filled with the fullness of God, and by this that we are rooted and grounded in love. 

Readings, Genesis 9:8-17 and 1 Peter 3:18-22
Image, The Rainbow: Study for 'Bathers at Asnières,' Georges Seurat (1883)
 
Today’s readings lead us into Lent, the church’s season of repentance and preparation, with two reminders:

• The covenantal promise of God that nothing shall ever come to pass by which all flesh shall be destroyed.
• And that Christ has already suffered once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that we all shall be brought closer to God.

The promise of God’s preservation and the proclamation of Christ’s one for all salvation usher in the season of Lent. And it is for good reason.
 
Earlier this week, I was speaking with a young guy who was very passionate about justice actively organising campaigns on climate, refugees, Gaza. He asked what had inspired me in the past to get involved with justice campaigns and action. I was able to share about how both my faith motivates a love of justice and relationships within the Christian community played a key part in guiding our activity. But what I also noted, was that a key way faith and relationships play in drawing one into the work of justice is that they allow a path for repentance without shame.
 
I think one of the principal barriers prohibiting people committing to a justice issue, is that we must accept that the world is worse than we want to believe or have experienced. We have to accept, for example, that the astronomical and devastating statistics about domestic violence are in fact true (and who would want to accept such a thing). And if true, then also they are closer to home than we would like (present in our neighbourhoods, community organisations, schools, sport clubs, and churches). We then have to accept that these are not isolated, individual occurrences, but there are insidious and harmful views and values baked into our culture, which we have imbibed and need to do the work of unlearning and relearning.
 
It is difficult to stay open through this process. It is difficult to remain open to the truth. All the more so today with the onslaught of news, exposing us to a preponderance of tragedies happening around our world in real time, and the rigorous work of history exposing us to injustices and atrocities long swept out of view.
 
To be confronted with the prevalence of sin and harm in our communities, world, and history is not easy. We can quickly become ashamed that we didn’t know, that we hadn’t spoken, that we might have profited, that we could be unconsciously complicit. And shame is a negative spiral. Shame grabs right at the core of our being and activities that flight/fight/freeze response. When confronted with the truth of the scope of injustice and harm, it is so easy to run, to push away, to shut our ears and hearts. Insisting that the rose is on the bloom is one of the more understandable human responses to ugliness. And all the more understandable when we are alone.
 
The call for us to acknowledge the truth, repent of our sin, and take up the work of justice that lies before us, is impossible alone. Alone it feels awful, immense, impossible. Alone guilt and shame dominate the conversation. Alone we falter and flail without hope.
 
Lent is not meant to be about shame; it is about readiness. Repentance is not self-flagellation; it is a return to Christ. Truth is not scary; it sets us free. Justice is not punitive; it is restorative. To confront sin, we first must comprehend grace. To confess we must know we have been forgiven. To take up our cross we must first behold the empty tomb. For it is only when we know, deep in our bones, how loved we are, how safe we are, how accompanied we are, how saved we are, that we are ready to receive the truth of the world and ourselves, to repent and return, and to go forth in love for the sake of the world. 
 
And so we begin Lent with these reminders. 1) The bow in the sky signifies the promise of God’s covenant with all of creation which shall not be forsaken. And 2) Christ has died once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that all shall be brought closer to God. Christ even went to those spirits in prison, thought condemned from the days of Noah, to proclaim deliverance and salvation. We cannot be cut off or estranged from God’s love. We shall not perish, for the one granted all authority over heaven and earth has shared all things with us.
 
It is only after all this is accomplished, only on the heels of this promise, only within the covenant, only when we know ourselves as under the umbrella of grace that we can begin the work of confession, repentance, and renewal. It is from here that we can tell the truth about ourselves and face the truth about our world and not be struck down by shame, stuck in apathy, or led away by falsehood. It is only from here that we can look rightly at the sin in our hearts, homes, and world and trust that we can make a change, trust that we can work for justice, trust that what has been doesn’t need to determine what will be. It is from the sphere of nurture that is the saving grace and restorative love of Christ Jesus our Lord that we begin our Lenten journey. Let us not fear, nor let us delay, the Spirit is calling, repent, be reconciled, and become the righteousness of God.