June 21, 2020
Father’s Day
Job 14: 7-15; 19: 23-27
Earlier this week, one of our church families stopped by to do a little landscaping.
For the better part of a morning, the father and his daughter trimmed the hemlock bushes around the sanctuary portion of the building.
He scaled a ladder with a hedge trimmer and she raked up the trimmings after he was done with a particular bush.
During a break, the father lamented that three of the bushes had been sculpted in the shape of Christmas trees, while the others were had been pruned over the years into large ball-shaped trees.
He said he would like to see some consistency with the shape of the bushes – so the plan is to begin rounding the Christmas-tree shaped bushes so that all the bushes have the same appearance.
It will be a long process of trimming … letting new growth come forward … and then trimming the bushes once again … to move them toward their new shape.
He told me it will take three years before they start to look right.
The man has the patience of … well you know.
So far, in the book of Job, he has lost his children … his possessions … he has experienced health concerns … and Job’s friends decided to break their silent vigil and help him process his grief by offering their thoughts on the reasons for the losses Job has endured. They tell him that he must have done something wrong to bring such suffering upon his family and himself.
Leading into today’s reading, Job has been in full lament.
He has been speaking directly to God through prayer.
Job laments that his faith in God … in the face of such pain and suffering … have made him a laughingstock to those around him.
Job asks that God ensure that he stops being afflicted and that he never come to fear God and he wants to God to let him know where he had come up short … where he had sinned.
But in the midst of the lament, Job is distracted by something near him … a tree.
Job considers life and understanding as gifts from God that have been forever lost to him and the world.
Job … in the middle of crushing losses and suffering … begins to see hope within creation.
In her discussion of today’s passage, Lutheran scholar Kathryn Schifferdecker wrote:
“Because God is in relationship with us, we can speak to God, trusting that God hears us. Such faith leads to the capacity for hope, even when our outward circumstances may remain unchanged.”
Trees in Job’s time were seen as symbols of life, longevity and rejuvenation. Trees were also seen as symbols of wisdom and power.
Job reflects on how trees and shrubs are cutback to optimize the possibility of new, productive growth.
In the area where Job traveled, farmers and those who tended vineyards regularly cut back pomegranate and fig trees and vines to clear away unproductive and useless branches and hindering growth and set the stage for new life to appear.
Trees … then… were a sign of hope for a man who had precious little of it.
Perhaps, if one part of creation offers new life … or renewed life … the same might be true of other areas.
Job asks the question:
“If mortals die, will they live again?”
“If mortals die, will they live again?”
For us, as a faith community, the answer is yes … that in the promise offered through the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus … we have new life. But Jesus’ death on the cross … the story of the resurrection … comes much later than the life being experienced by Job.
For Job … in the context in which he lived … the answer was “no.”
To Israelites at the time, there was no concept of life after death.
Death meant a person descended to Sheol … the place of the dead … where they would remain forever. It was a place, people believed, where God’s presence would never be known. It is a place where hope is absent.
But by asking this question of God and by continually asking “why,” Job begins rethinking the nature of Sheol … that perhaps it is a place where he could remain until the anger he believed God felt toward him had passed and God would summon him back to the land of the living … and renew their relationship … and there would be a new beginning.
Near the end of today’s reading, Job affirms “I know my redeemer lives.”
So, hope begins to creep into the picture.
Job’s experiences underscore life’s arbitrary nature and the brokenness that is present in the world … Job speaks to the truth of suffering and the reality that some of pain can’t be rationalized or some pain can’t be fully healed.
But the story … the presence of the new life offered in the tree … also means that life is not a hopeless endeavour.
Perhaps that is the message of this portion of Job’s story … that the suffering can be so overwhelming … so all-consuming … that we can easily miss the presence of new life or the potential for new life … or that we can fail to model that promise.
This is true of the current pandemic … the suffering and uncertainty … the sense of disconnectiveness … that faith communities have endured for the past few months. These feelings can make us long for the past … to get lost in or from the powerful emotions we are experiencing … and miss or give short shrift to the potential for positive change or ministry that is also present.
We can lose sight of our call to make sure those suffering know that they are not alone in their pain.
Like reshaping the shrubs around the church property, faith communities need to consider their shape from time to time … and consider how to reshape things when the need arises.
Church leaders and their congregations need to evaluate the life-affirming aspects of church life and of their ministries.
Perhaps, as we move through the stages of the pandemic, we are in such a period of reflection … when we can consider how our ministry meets the world’s needs and if we are sharing the promise of the gospel as effectively as possible.
It might be a time when we can consider if we are fully and completely sharing God’s unconditional love … God’s grace … and giving hope to those who are alone and suffering.
And by doing so, reshape the world.
AMEN