Monday • 9/2/2024 •
Monday of Proper 17
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 25; Job 12:1-6,13-25 (per BCP) or Job 12:1-25; Acts 11:19-30; John 8:21-32
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2-6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)
Job on life in crisis. Crises emerge, evolve, turn lives upside, trade places with each other in the news cycle: pandemic, gun violence, racial reckoning, no-holds-barred politics, the specter of another world war. Crises unmoor us, and “force us to pause and question assumptions so deeply ingrained that we didn’t know we had them,” says author Eric Weiner. In doing so, they provide the opportunity to gain new perspectives.
Image: Adaptation, Pixabay
Those at ease have contempt for misfortune, but it is ready for those whose feet are unstable — Job 12:5. In the midst of his personal crisis, Job sees something we all should be aware of all the time: the wise and virtuous can suffer, while the foolish and wicked can prosper. Job is a “laughingstock” to friends who look upon his sufferings and wrongly blame him for them. Sarcastically, he mocks their pretense to wisdom: “when you die, wisdom will die with you” (Job 12:3b JB). His friends’ simplistic formula (good always triumphs) doesn’t match the complexities of the moment (up is down, and down is up).
The presence of the Book of Job in the canon of Scripture is a good thing. It reminds us not to be shocked when things don’t work the way they are supposed to. When we can’t share common air — or in church, a common cup. When we can’t attend a 4th of July parade or go to the mall without fearing for our lives. When we can’t be sure the resolve to preserve democracy won’t wither in the face of autocracy. When a democratic way of life itself seems unsure of itself.
As Job observes:
He makes nations great, then destroys them;
he enlarges nations, then leads them away.
He strips understanding from the leaders of the earth,
and makes them wander in a pathless waste (Job 12:23-24).
The presence of the Book of Job is good in another way: it makes us appreciate the distinctiveness of a redemption that comes at the hands of a Savior who steps into all of this “upside-downness,” taking it all into himself to turn it right side up.
Jesus steps into our crises. In John’s Gospel the spiritual leaders (the Pharisees) are so confused about Jesus’s aims that they wonder if he isn’t suicidal: “Is the going to kill himself?” Like Job, he’s become a “laughingstock” at best, an object of derisive pity at worst. The supposed leaders cannot understand that the great “I AM” is walking among them (John 8:23), nor that this revelation will take place when he is “lifted up” (John 8:28). Lifted up on his Cross, the Son of Man will bring both healing from sin’s destructive power (John 3:14) and healing from humankind’s divisiveness (John 12:32). Who will be the laughingstock then?
When Jesus says, “the truth will make you free,” the truth to which he refers is twofold: first, his identity as the great I AM who has “become flesh and tabernacled among us” (John 1:14); and second, his mission to give his life to heal sinners and to reconcile the estranged.
This truth makes us free when we, his disciples, “abide in my word” (John 8:31 NASB). That is to say, the freedom Jesus promises comes not by mere passing familiarity with a verse here or there: a prooftext to support a pre-commitment, or a slogan to promote a cause. The freedom comes from daily, and moment-by-moment, immersion in his words, his thoughts, and his actions as they are conveyed to us here in John and in the other books of the Bible. And from immersive prayer in community with fellow travelers who follow him. That freedom comes when, like Job, we hear the chaotic noise around us, but unlike Job, we also hear the clear strong voice of the One that says: “I AM—I AM the Light of the World … the Resurrection and the Life … the Good Shepherd … the Door for the Sheep … the Bread from Heaven … the True Vine … the Way, the Truth, and the Life … believe in me.”
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+