Humans have a personal sense of time and consequences: “What if…?”, we ask. We hesitate to go over the speed limit unless we know where the police cars are. We don’t speak the truth to our spouses because the repercussions would be disastrous. We stay in a no-end job because we’re afraid of not finding another. AFRAID: that’s the word. A common greeting in the Bible is from heavenly to earthly: “Don’t be afraid!” Yet we are, and lessons to be read this weekend address our personal angst as well as our corporate despair.
I commend to you the Book of Job. Early wisdom, perhaps of Sumerian origin, this saga tells of “righteous” Job, a successful lord of many flocks and herds. He’s laid low when Satan challenges God to test his faith…and calamity ensues. “Why me, Lord? I’ve been good!” Our own question, isn’t it? Finally, “the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind”, (38:1) “So where were YOU when I made all this stuff and called it Good?” Job has a finite world-view, limited by human constraints of time and place; but God sees the big picture, the cosmic stability. We who weep with Job are invited to see that God’s Creation is enough to handle our daily afflictions…thanks be to God!
Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians seems to be a weave of several letters, or parts thereof. 6:1-13 appears to be a bit of self-justification. Yet in all this list of Paul’s troubles–afflictions, beating, imprisonment, riots and more–he announces that he’s overcome his fear of such discord by the love of God. “As dying, and see-we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.” We need to read this as more than the bragging of Paul, seeing Christ’s triumphs over even those afflictions we ourselves own.
Mark’s Gospel tells a story in 4:35-41 about a tremendous storm on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was zonked out in the back of the boat, while his disciples were wide-eyed with fear of being capsized and drowning! Finally they woke Jesus, and at his word, the storm abated. “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” Easy for YOU to say, but our external life is filled with terror! Our boats are pretty fragile, after all, and the storms of life are indeed raging: we’re vulnerable to being sunk with every passing breeze. Unlike the success-story we’ve been fed since childhood, the disciples haven’t summoned courage out of their heredity or buried resources; they and we need to confess our fears AND our inability to sail with the storm, and lean completely on Jesus.
The writers of Job and Mark have presented us with a metaphor: things can get pretty bad, yet God is still in charge. These are words we crave to hear when we’re feeling overwhelmed with affliction and reversal of fortune. Experienced sailors though we be, we may very well be cowed by the storms. Where is God when you need him?? Right in the back of the boat, available to still the wicked waves.
In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King
My intersection with scripture lessons to be read during the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at horacebrownking.com
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