Can You?

What’ll they think of next?! Even though I say I don’t like change, I do appreciate the new gadgets in my life: solar power, electric cars, wind farms… When I think about all the technology in cell phones and computers, I feel as if we humans can do just about anything to make life better. Maybe artificial intelligence and modern medicine can save us for an everlasting future! Not. This weekend’s scriptures confront and convict those in the pew who’ve figured that they’ve arrived, mostly through their own shrewd investments and courageous bravado.

Finally JOB gets an answer from God (38:I-7, 34-41). “So you’re ready to be in charge? Where were YOU when the earth was created, and when its foundations were tested? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds….send forth lightning….hunt for the lions’ prey….and feed the ravens??” Well, CAN you? And Job came to and embraced a new perspective, that God is God and he’s not. This encounter doesn’t make Job any less human, but it puts him firmly within Creation as a loved person made in God’s image. Now Job can “go home again”, back to his human roots, humble as they are. Will those in the pews also accept all their devices as gifts, allowing God to be God? Can you?

HEBREWS 5:1-10 can be an enigma. The author reminds her readers that priesthood is a matter of being chosen, not self-appointed. Thus Jesus, a “high priest according to the order of Melchizedek” was given this role in order to intercede for the arrogance of the worldly and to help each one acknowledge their compulsion to usurp God’s plan. I begin to see that all my bright ideas about What the World Needs Now are but dust-bunnies in the corners of a Greater Movement; this “high priest” is one who suffers with us, even while rejoicing that GOD’S grace is being made perfect in US. A mystery for sure, one that I yet can’t get my mind around. (Can you?)

As Jesus and his crew moved toward Jerusalem, James & John (“sons of thunder”) desired special honor in God’s Kingdom, to be “seated on the right and on the left”. (MARK 10:35-45) “Really?” asked the Lord, “can you drink the cup of human death? Can you rise from the dead?” “Still heroic spirits answer, ‘To the death we’ll follow thee.'” Perhaps the sons of Zebedee’s request is more fear than arrogance: all of us look for the assurance that there’s really something beyond death… But for now, the only promise we get is that there WILL be suffering as well as glory; and that God is God–and we’re not…

These are hard passages for me. They threaten my comfort zone. They remind me that everything could change in the blink of an eye. Under them all, though, is a sense that a loving Creator is still in charge; and that this Creator cares for both the gimmick-endowed AND the homeless, both the multi-vehicle blessed AND those who beg for groceries on Main Street. As for me, I’m more ‘n’ more convinced that I can’t do a thing apart from God….. Can You?

In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King

Sit with me every Tuesday as we’re confronted (perhaps attacked!) by the lessons assigned for the upcoming weekend–at horacebrownking.com