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Sermon Archives
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Job
19:23-27
O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock for ever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the
earth;
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see on my side,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
Luke 20:27-38
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no
resurrection, came to him and asked him a
question, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for
us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving
a wife but no children, the man shall marry
the widow and raise up children for his brother.
Now there were seven brothers; the first married,
and died childless; then the second and the
third married her, and so in the same way
all seven died childless. Finally the woman
also died. In the resurrection, therefore,
whose wife will the woman be? For the seven
had married her.’
Jesus said to them, ‘Those who belong
to this age marry and are given in marriage;
but those who are considered worthy of a place
in that age and in the resurrection from the
dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.
Indeed they cannot die any more, because they
are like angels and are children of God, being
children of the resurrection. And the fact
that the dead are raised Moses himself showed,
in the story about the bush, where he speaks
of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is
God not of the dead, but of the living; for
to him all of them are alive.’
May
the grace, mercy and peace of God be with
us in the name of our risen Lord and savior,
Jesus Christ; Amen.
I don’t believe that I have ever preached
a sermon based on a passage from the book
of Job before, so this is a bit of a first
for me. Most of us know the story –
Job is a good and upright person … God
brags about him to the Satan, who then says,
“Sure, he has it all … let me
take everything he loves away from him and
see how he handles it.” God allows this
to happen, and the rest of the book is a dialogue
between Job, God and Job’s friends about
why this good man is in such utter physical
and emotional pain … there MUST have
been something he did to deserve it, his friends
“assure him.” He searches his
memory and cannot even come up with one incident
where he was unfaithful. And yet here he was,
loving family dead, his crops ruined, animals
either killed or taken away by enemies, and
finally sores covering his whole body. Yet
the whole while, Job does not cease praising
God. His wife does not understand it, nor
do his friends … and if we are honest,
we do not either. We would be crying out,
“What have I done to deserve this?!?!”
And just as happened with Job, no answer comes
to us … because there is no answer.
The heart of this passage is verse 25, where
Job proclaims, “I know that my Redeemer
lives, and that at the last he will stand
upon the earth; and after my skin has been
thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see
God.” When we hear those words, a few
things go through our minds … if you
are musical the tune to this part of Handel’s
Messiah instantly gets stuck there …
“I know that my redeemer liveth …”
It is a memorable soprano aria that inspires
our faith. Regardless of your musical ability,
though, you probably associate Jesus Christ
with the redeemer of which Job speaks. Even
though this was written hundreds of years
before Jesus’ earthly life, we still
apply these words as prophecy to the coming
of the one that God has sent to redeem, or
to, “buy back” those who have
fallen into slavery to sin … redeem
means, “to buy back” after all.
But I want you to do something that I rarely
ask people to do in the case of a passage
like this one. I want you to hear Job’s
words literally – not figuratively or
prophetically, but as witness to his faith,
a statement that proclaims that the one who
will free him from all of his afflictions
is alive – that Job knows him –
heck, he is probably a close friend or family
member. To say that your deliverer is alive
and at work to free you is a much more faithful
and powerful statement than to say, “What
did I ever do to deserve this?”
In a recent article, Trinity Lutheran Seminary
president, Dr. Kathryn Kleinhans, tells about
a recent trip to Germany where she was able
to visit the concentration camp at Ravensbruck.
If there was ever an incident in recent history
that resulted in the suffering and death of
millions of innocent people, the Holocaust
was certainly that. Ravensbruck was a camp
specifically built to hold Jewish women and
children. As a result, the Nazi guards prostituted
out these women to other camps for the use
of the guards and as a reward to prisoners
who collaborated with them. These women were
officially assigned to work as, “brothel
women” while others were sent to factories,
offices and homes. Making things even more
obscene for Dr. Kleinhans was the fact that
this place of unspeakable horror for so many
women is located in such a beautiful setting,
on a small lake in the countryside.
The sobering nature of the camp is made even
worse by the fact that there are no modern-day
chapels built on the site, like there are
at Buchenwald and other former camps. It makes
it feel like there is no sense of hope, no
embodiment of anything good coming to those
in the camp or coming out of the camp. She
claims that even the sculptures that have
been installed there depict the stark burdens
of the women, not the hope that anything different
might happen for them.
Reflecting upon that visit, Dr. Kleinhans
writes these words: The phrase “redeeming
the time” has been on my mind since
my visit to Ravensbruck. In the King James
Version of the Bible, Ephesians 5:16 is translated,
“Redeeming the time, because the days
are evil.” In both the Revised Standard
and New Revised Standard versions of the Bible,
the translation is, “making the most
of the opportunity,” a phrase that –
for me – loses much of the power of
the older language. To redeem is to buy back,
to reclaim, to restore. In the familiar words
of the offertory prayer, we are to be “dedicated
to the care and redemption of all that God
has made.”
I started to wonder this week – did
any of those women forced into prostitution
even share the faith of Job and proclaim that
they knew that the people who would redeem
them from that evil time were alive and striving
and dying in order that they might see God
not only in the resurrection, but also once
more in this short life? Do those who are
facing any kind of hardships today –
innocently and seemingly without hope of them
ending - because of domestic violence or wartime,
religious persecution, addiction, poverty
or whatever … do they have the faith
in God to know that their redeemer is alive
and close – and may even be someone
in their own family who will be on their side
to help release them from their innocent suffering?
It is interesting to have this passage paired
with our Gospel reading – where Jesus
is in an argument with the Sadducees who do
not believe in a resurrection of the dead.
Resurrection and the afterlife have often
been used by those who hold the power over
others as a carrot on a stick – “you
may be miserable now, but you will be so happy
in heaven!!” But it is an important
part of our faith and how we define the free
gift of salvation – eternal peace and
joy filled life in the presence of God. It
is important enough that we still get into
those debates about marriage in the afterlife
– whose spouse will be married to whom
there if there were multiple marriages? Or
what will the relationships be like? Jesus
does not get into the details of that mystery
– he basically tells them that the belief
in an afterlife as part of salvation goes
all the way back to at least Moses, and we
should really leave all of the details to
God!
There is more than the afterlife to salvation,
though. There is joy and peace in this life
as well, as experienced through the presence
of Jesus among us – and as experienced
through Jesus in our neighbors. If the church
is to live into our calling to be the body
of Christ, then we are to hear the words that
Job professed – I know that my redeemer
lives – as a rallying cry for mission.
Imagine the relief of those women and children
at Ravensbruck when the liberating troops
came through the gates!! Imagine the joy when
an abused woman discovers a place like, “CHOICES”
where she can escape the violence of her spouse.
Imagine the happiness when someone has food
in their pantry, medication for their conditions,
and a warm place to stay; imagine the celebration
among children when the bombs tearing their
cities apart finally go quiet.
Job knew that God is a God of justice, and
he wanted justice. We all want justice, and
God promises it to us today as well. Salvation
is a promise for eternity – that place
and experience where God’s presence
is perfect. Salvation is also a promised reality
for all in this life as well. Thanks be to
God that whenever we cry out for justice or
peace or whatever, God has promised that there
is one who is alive that will deliver –
maybe it is the person sitting next to you!
Amen.
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