Job 38:1-7, 34-41; Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45

Good morning Pomonal! It’s good to be with you again, because having made it this far I am almost home. On Friday I begin my annual leave, and you will not see me again until Christmas Day, although I will be back at Stawell before then. Today, after an extended diversion into The Letter of James we are back, or at least I am back, on the cycle of readings from the Revised Common Lectionary, the twenty-second Sunday of Pentecost in Year B, and our readings come from Job and Hebrews, and of course Mark. Two of those books are anonymously attributed, in that Bible scholars are undecided about who wrote them, and some traditions say that the other one was written by a secretary. Regardless of who wrote what, and whether the writers wrote on behalf of some specific patron or another, the points made by these writers intersect beautifully. You already know that I am a fan of the lectionary; not just because it encourages me to make use of the Bible each week, but because the women and men who chose which readings go with which week, and which readings go with each other, set us up with some interesting ideas. So it is today when we read about God speaking to Job and Job’s friends, about Jesus speaking with his disciples, and about who Jesus is with regard to the Jewish God in the mind of a Jewish person who has come to see Jesus as a unique revelation of God.

I don’t know how much of Job’s story you have been told in the past two weeks, and with me continuing my James series at Stawell they can’t tell you much either. I hope you know who Job is, and that we’re not talking about Tim Watson’s son but another man entirely. Suffice to say that by the time we find him in today’s readings from Job 38, the central character has had a hard life of late, and his God-fearing friends have not been entirely helpful in their well-intentioned support, wisdom and counsel. In today’s reading, from assorted bits of the chapter, we get to hear God’s response to all that has been said by Job and by Elihu, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar: and God is immediately on the offensive. “Who are you?” asks The LORD over and over again; “who are you to question the Creator, the Almighty One”, and “what do you know about anything”. Job 38:1 makes it clear that what God says is addressed to Job, but I wonder whether God speaks to Job while Job’s friends are still there, and God means for them to overhear what God says. God somewhat takes the role of barrister for the defence here, and cross examines the prosecution witnesses, looking for humility in their responses. Not only is Job brought to account for his constant whining, but God’s “who are you” questions are pointed at the friends.  “Who are you to presume to speak on my behalf,” asks God, “do you really know more about divine will and justice than Job?” God makes it clear who The LORD is, and who isn’t The LORD. God alone is God, God is the only god in the room, and not one of the five men in the room is correct in his own theology.

During my time at Hillsong Church London in the first decade of this century, so we’re going back between fifteen and twenty years now, a song that come through the church was “I am a friend of God”, a song that we used to sing with our arms out rather than up. With 2100 people in the congregation that was fun and dangerous, but the so is the Holy Spirit (fun and dangerous). This morning I am mindful that even though the song is written about you and me and our relationship with God through Jesus, and that the song uses the language God used of Abraham, that Job was also friend of God. All that God says to Job is true, correct and trustworthy as every word from God is, and so too are the words overheard by the friends. God is not who you religious types think God is; suffering is not a sign of divine displeasure and grief is not a deserved condition for sin elsewhere. The word of The LORD to Job is the same as the word to the four, and that word is “pull your head in, O mortal one”, but the application is different. Job was questioning God’s character, but the four friends were presuming to speak on God’s behalf to rebut Job’s complaint. Job says that God is unjust, the friends say God is just and Job is a sinner. God says that God is just and Job is not a sinner, but that God is God and sometimes what God does is incomprehensible to human rationale. If you don’t know how to make it rain, then how do you presume to comment upon the way that God does it, when only God knows how to do it?  You don’t know what you’re talking about, so stop talking about it, all of you…yes especially him, but youse mob too. That’s rather humbling to hear as a leader of faith: as it should be.

Psalm 104 as set for us today declares that God is all that God claims to be. The LORD who spoke to Job is indeed divine creator, and the one who sustains all that was made. The LORD is wise beyond human understanding. Furthermore, Creation is for its own sake, not primarily for the purposes of humankind, and is an act of wisdom and an activity of the Holy Spirit. God’s care for creation is ongoing; humanity has stewardship of the world, but God retains ownership and abiding love. God also retains control; and Creation continues to exist because God continues to uphold it. The message of the Psalmist is clear when we think of Job; that God is God and no one else is, and that God remains interested and involved. There is no divine watchmaker here who set the world going by clockwork and then walked off; God is just, God does care, and all that God does is done with wisdom and love. This is the bit that the four theobros in Job’s story seem to have forgotten.

So when we get to Mark 10, where we read of James and John asking for places of honour beside the throne of Jesus, we have been brilliantly set up by the compositors of the lectionary. I mean, who chooses this story as a match for the interruption of God into Job’s lament? I am a preaching nerd, proudly so, and this kind of thing makes me excited about God’s message to the Church. God is awesome and above any responsibility to answer to human complaint, and God is creator and sustainer of the Universe for God’s own pleasure and the Universe’s own purpose, and here are two random Galileans asking to be Deputy Messiah in the caucus of the Kingdom of God. The temerity of it! The utter arrogance! Or did they really not know what they were asking? I hope they were confused about God rather than thinking that they were actually worthy of such an honour.

It can be a comfort that this story tells us that the other ten were enraged and indignant at the request of James and John. At least they know who Jesus is and what an insult to his majesty the brothers’ request was; unless of course they were actually angered by Jesus’ response. I wonder, did they assume thrones in the Kingdom by virtue of their being the first disciples, first as earliest and first as superior, and now Jesus has dashed that assumption. If you understand that the time when Jesus came into his glory was when he was lifted upon the cross, it is interesting that in Mark’s account that at the right and left of Jesus were two criminals who mocked his glory from their own crosses. In today’s reading from Mark 10:42-44 Jesus speaks of what lay ahead of him and of those who followed him: discipleship of the Messiah is not a life of thrones and lording it over heathens but of service and suffering. As the Western Australian Christian leader Jarrod McKenna says, “if you’re going to follow Jesus, first make sure you look good on wood”.

So what does this mean for us? What should it mean? I like the way that the writer in Hebrews 5:1-10 has reminded us that everybody who serves God serves at God’s invitation. As someone whom God has chosen and whom the Church has confirmed, and someone for whom there is an ongoing reminder in this second year of my tenancy here as your pastor in my work with helping the church councils to consolidate their gifts and witness, it is good to remember that. No matter how hard I work, and call others to work, and matter how much I stay the course and run the race of bringing necessary change and fresh updates to the way the ageless Church conducts itself in this decade, I am here because it is God’s pleasure that I am here. I am here because in 2015 I offered myself to God as a leader in the Church, and because in 2023 God called me to Stawell and Pomonal to support you in your developing and ongoing ministries. The anonymous author of Hebrews reminds us that God chooses the fallible to mediate between humankind and God lest the priestly overestimate their worth and abilities. I was called to be your pastor because I possess gifts appropriate for the exercise of ministry within the Uniting Church; so, yes I have worth and abilities, and yes I have worked hard to increase those. However, I know that I am here because God chose me and not because I have earned this place. I would not be here had I not worked hard in my studies and in my placement at Kaniva and Serviceton, but that is not why I am here. I am here because God is gracious and generous, and God chose me for you and you for me for the next two to four years, allowing I have already been here for one and a bit years.

So while I am here, even as I am about to go on Annual Leave, I want to act and think like Jesus, and encourage you to do the same. Jesus did not presume the commissioning of God, as if his selection for ministry was a foregone conclusion and God would be stupid not to choose him, so why should any of us?  In the same way that God questioned the arrogance in the philosophising of Job’s friends, and their distance from understanding his suffering, the writer of Hebrews says that Jesus does understand human suffering. Our high priest would never spout platitudes or half-baked theologies of prosperity only for the righteous; no, Jesus whose greatest glory was seen in his greatest suffering; his great identification with all who have been rejected, abused, insulted, and murdered by systems and corrupted powers, this Jesus is the great model for Christian life and Christian leadership in his humility. I sincerely hope that after my time away I will return, and then in a few years’ time I will move to my next placement within the Church, wherever that may be. My prayer is that my time here will not end with me crucified somewhere public and painful as Jesus’ life ended in Jerusalem. However, if I’m not willing to die for Christ here then I’m not worthy of the call God with which you have entrusted me. But then, as the Church in Pomonal, neither are you.

So as the Church in this place let us each and all listen for God, obey God, and speak for God only when the Spirit is speaking through us, and not as did Job’s friends from our memories of Christian clichés. Let us ask Jesus how we can bring him honour rather how he can honour us, and let us live in and enjoy the world created by God for God, but a world in which we have a place as the apple of God’s eye.

Amen.