Fifth Sunday after Pentecost: Do you Care that we are Perishing?

Unedited Transcript Below

Name of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy. Oh man. This morning, I was reading uh, Psalm. Uh, we actually just read Psalm 107 yesterday and evening prayer, if you're on the 30-day Salter cycle which is uh, Was making sure to comment on. We just read this yesterday.

But uh there's there's two lectionaries. So we have our Eucharistic lectionary and then we have our daily office lectionary. And we had the fun experience of those overlapping really closely. This week, which is kind of fun. But, but we read, uh, Psalm 109, no, no 111. Psalm 1, uh, 13 today and we read We read it, two years ago with the cleavers, uh which was kind of.

And the last verse of that song is he gives he makes the bear, he gives the barren woman children. And uh, and gives them a house to dwell and praise the Lord. So this is like and two years ago when we read that at the cleaver's house because we were visiting them.

She was weeping. And uh, and probably since then every month like for the last eight months I've uh, wept for Joy reading that verse just uh at God's answer to the Cry of her heart, really? I mean she's been crying out to God for a child for a long time and um so you guys got an email with a picture of the little dude and we're so excited about that, but it was just really cool to read that uh this morning and it'd be just reflecting on God's faithfulness and his answer to her prayers and the Cry of her and Max's heart.

More. When the answer doesn't come, sometimes doesn't seem to come for a long time, sometimes doesn't come for our whole life. Where we don't get the answer. And you guys probably heard life's not fair. You guys probably heard your parents say that. Yeah, life's not fair. Uh, and you guys grew up hearing your parents say that to you now.

Of course, that's true. But your parents, if they were anything like mine and all the other parents in the world, Applied that truth in the most arbitrary ways. Uh, most always your parents like mine. If they were good parents, they were actually concerned with fairness. They wanted to be fair.

Um, when you were a dispute with their, with your siblings, your parents, like mine, try to determine what the problem was and resolve the dispute with Equity. Forward over their Christmas shopping list to make sure that all the kids had enough gifts are like the same amount of gifts under the tree.

If other kids have more gifts than you, they took time to explain to you that the bike you wanted was really expensive and so that other kids had more gifts, but you had a really nice gift Right. So what my parents usually meant when they said life's not fair like that is I believe you are wrong in your claim of Injustice here.

That's actually what they meant. Uh, that I, I was claiming Injustice and they were saying Tough luck. But what they really meant is we think this is just and you're gonna have to get thicker skin on this, right? They didn't mean you were. Right, I'm not behaving justly but I'm teaching you a lesson about unfairness in life.

That's not what they meant. Right? And that's why I don't try to use that phrase. I try not to use the phrase in my household often. Um, because of course it's true that life isn't fair, but that doesn't change that. It ought to be fair. Right life. Ought to be fair.

It ought to it, ought to be right. If I am behaving unjusted or my children and playing favorites that's wrong, whether the world is fair or not, And in a world without any Brokenness, people would have a fair shot in life. They will be rewarded for the work, they put in the emotional Investments that they make in relationships would always be reciprocated.

There'd be a clear connection between what one deserves and what one gets. If the world wasn't broken. And despite our Brokenness in the world does lead to Injustice and inequity many times maybe even most times We actually do see a relationship between what we deserve. And what we get, don't we That's what most of the wisdom literature in the Old Testament in the Hebrew.

Scriptures is all about. Right? When you read Psalms and Proverbs you see a world where faithfulness to God and obedience to God, leads to blessing from God, hard work is rewarded and laziness is costly. When you're reading the Psalms in the Proverbs, right? But the pessimistic wisdom literature. In the Hebrew scriptures gives the Counterpoint.

Right? It's part of why I love the Hebrew scripture so much. The writings of the scriptures gives us both the rules. And the exceptions to the rules. Right, every culture has Proverbs every culture has wise sayings wise sayings that they say. And apple a day keeps the doctor away.

Every culture has things like that, right? However, because the world is broken, we all have to deal with exceptions to those rules. My friend ain't well and he worked out every day and he ended up getting cancer in his 50s and he died young Exception to the rule, right?

And Proverbs aren't promises. Um Proverbs or Proverbs they speak of general principles, right? Um and they speak of the way things generally work.

And these exceptions are a result of broken World Systems. A world system that we all live in that's impacted by sin and death and evil and in a world system like that injustice is abound sometimes the injustices are easily explained Human greed can limit opportunity for some people more than others racism.

Can make systems, unfair fight, but sometimes, and maybe even more times, the injustices are not easily explained. We just don't know why our situations is so unfair. And the story of Job gives us a situation like that. Gives us a situation where it's not easily easily understood, why it's things are not fair and why they're working out like this.

And we just heard what what I call the beginning of the end of the Book of Job Book of Job is a long book, but we read the beginning of the end. And we might have hoped that God was going to answer for himself and explain. How have you allowed this?

How have you done this to job? How have you allowed this to go on in job's life? We we might have wanted to explain for himself for this Divine counsel where he seems to single out job for Calamity. Precisely because job was righteous and because job did what was right.

And guys, from our perspective, there are a lot of stories like this. There are a lot of stories like this. There are lots of times that it's difficult to square. A God who Reigns over his creation and is all good, and is all-powerful With the Injustice that we're seeing in the world, the unfairness.

And in this beginning of the end of the Book of Job, God God doesn't give us the answer to the conundrum, he doesn't put the puzzle together. He puts us in our place and makes clear that he doesn't answer to us. So the problem of evil is uh is one that I've struggled with profoundly in my life, like the problem of Injustice, it's like kept me up at night, right?

And, When we talk about it today, like if it's a, if it's like a philosophical problem that you're wrestling with right now, the answer from the scriptures isn't going. To be satisfying um uh but because the only answer is actually an encounter with God who is good in the midst of it even when we don't understand and in these times of Injustice, perhaps the most obvious question with that we wrestle with is, maybe the same, is the question the disciples asked in the boat.

Lord. Do you care? That we are perishing? That's what they said to him in the gospel reading, right? Does God care? Maybe that's the fundamental question. So we're going to look at Injustice. We're going to talk about our confidence that God does care. But what makes this difficult is that we're first going to look at How he doesn't display how he cares to us.

A way that we seem to look for that doesn't seem to work. And then we'll look at how he does display to us that he cares. So first we probably need to lay out the extent of the problem. It really is unfair guys, it's really not fair. What happened to job is not fair.

When you try to explain that issue away, You actually miss the point of the whole book and people like will read job and they'll Want to try to like get God off the hook like oh yeah, he has a right to do what he wants. He's got, and listen, all that's true, but when you try to explain away the unfairness of it, you're actually like, that's the whole point of the book is that, it wasn't fair, that job didn't deserve it.

That was the point when you try to say, well, all people are born in sin, so job deserves, whatever he gets. If he if he has Calamity, he has Calamity again. Uh, everybody is born in sin. Also not the point of the book. The point of the book is this isn't fair.

This isn't fair. And so When we're reading it, we have to recognize. It's really not fair. See job recognized that God is on the throne and he questions his fairness because he knows he has been righteous. Right. That's why, that's why. Job questions, God's fairness. He says, it's all.

Therefore I say he destroys both the blameless and the wicked. When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the Calamity of the innocent,

And and what what we have in the Book of Job, if you if it's been a while since you read through it is you have The vast majority of job is this long. Discussion between job and his three friends, right. And they're all just like kind of wrestling with like, hey, this was a guy, he seemed righteous And calamities happen to him.

Why, you know why is this happening and job's friends? Believe that God's on the throne just like job. Does they believe that God's just and fair? And so they are saying no job, you're not as righteous as you think you are. All people are born in sin. You deserve what's coming to you That's really their argument, right?

You're a sinner like everybody else you deserve. What's coming to you, right? And so job's friend's, questioned job's righteousness and they say in 22 4. Is it for fear, for fear of him that he reproves you and enter into judgment with you. Okay. Your students that are learning literature, this is irony.

Okay. This is irony. So we're having dramatic irony. The now the the uh the speaker is speaking, they're saying the uh, they're speaking sarcastically, but they're they're they're saying the opposite of what is true. Is it because you're so righteous that God afflicts you? What's the answer? Yes, that we know that in the beginning we were at the Divine Council.

Have you considered my servant job who is blameless in all his ways? It actually is because he's righteous that he's being afflicted. That's actually what's happening? And so they're speaking. Ironically saying, oh, yeah, it's because you're so righteous that you're going through this right job. Right. It's because he's that righteous and that's why that's why he's going through Affliction, right?

So again, They're all doing their best. They're all wrestling with the Affliction that they're seeing in Joe. But we readers know, hey, this isn't fair. Like, Joe's, been righteous job's, been faithful to God. And yet, Lost everything. He's lost his family. Only one that's left. Is his wife, who's being a pain in the butt?

And, uh, like, like that's all that's left for him. Is someone to say, why don't you curse God and die, you know? Like that's like, that's it. That's all he has. And then, and then he's boils all over his body, like it's not good. And it's not fair. And the gospel reading May if we especially before we get to the end where Jesus calms, the storm may leave us in a similar place.

The disciples are in this tiny boat. Like, I don't know if you guys have ever seen like the pictures of the boat. They're small. Like these small little boats smaller than like the boats that you would like go water skiing in like they're and with no motor and like they're paddling and like it's a little boat and there were big waves.

Like you can have hurricane style winds Like, and like they're they had every reason to be afraid like the boat wasn't made for the waves that they were dealing with, okay? And so they had every reason to be afraid And and Jesus displays this absolute Authority or not only over the created order in this passage but actually right in the next passage the demoniac, he explains all the victory over the powers of Darkness.

Think about that repeated word begged. I don't know if you guys noticed it. So like this demoniac has a If your skin crawls, when you hear my name is Legion because we are many. Like, you know, it's like like he like there were not like a ton of demons.

He's speaking in the first person singular. My name is Legion because we are many, uh, you know, like it just like makes me want. It makes my skin crawl when he does that but like and they're in such control over his body that like, he can't like chains can't hold him down and like he like Power over this man.

And yet, right? When Jesus shows up, this Legion of demons is begging him. They begged him. Not to send them in away from the country. They begged him, right? The people begged, him, everyone's begging Jesus. And he just speaks. And these demons have to obey. So Jesus, who is mighty enough to calm the storm of the word, Mighty enough to set a legion of demons into begging, Let these disciples go right into a storm in a boat that wasn't designed for it and then took a nap under the deck.

So they wonder, do you care that we are perishing like we're going to die. Do you care? And we might ask the same question. Do you care? That we are perishing.

I've seen terrible people get extremely wealthy while. Wonderful people deal with unemployment again and again, and again, right? I've seen the wrong people promoted at jobs and at companies, I've seen couples struggling with infertility While other couples are procuring. Abortions for babies. They don't want And guys, you've seen all this too.

And with a God who is mighty enough to calm the storms and cast out the demons and win the victory. We may join in asking the question, God, do you care that? We embarrassing Are you going to help us? And God does, Displayed it. His concern for us. But I'll tell you.

The way he doesn't show us his concern for us. See, when we look at Job 38. We might be underwhelmed at the answer. Right. When there's good reason to ask God to explain himself, God refuses to do so. He says, where were you? When I laid the foundation of the earth?

Tell me if you have understanding. Who determine its measurement, surely you know, or who stretched the line upon it. If there were ever a time to ask God, explain yourself to me, answer to me, this was it. And what we get is a rebuke Early in my marriage. I struggled with the question of whether God is good to the point that I wasn't able to sleep.

And at one point, God was speaking to me through the scriptures through job through Romans 9, if you're interested. But What ultimately what he said Was my goodness is completely independent of your assessment of me.

The scriptures communicate that that's what the Book of Job is communicating at the end. At the beginning of the end that we read. God's goodness. Isn't on trial with us. And he doesn't answer to us. God does care that we're perishing. It's true in a moment. We'll talk about how he shows us that But it's important to note that he does not display his Care by answering to us.

He does not put himself under our assessment, he does not allow himself to be measured by our sense of right and wrong. He is the creator. We are the creation. He's the judge. We are not and so he doesn't put himself under us to be assessed and he doesn't even put the puzzle together.

Sometimes when we're going through Calamity or our friends or neighbors are going through calamity, our family, we try to comfort one another with things. Like one day, you'll understand why you had to go through this. And you'll get to help others. And sometimes this happens. Sometimes we we get to look back and say, oh, I can see how God used this for good.

Often most times, it does not happen. It does not happen. The puzzle doesn't get put together. There is no biblical promise, that you will understand why God allowed a Calamity in your life. Please know that there's no biblical promise for that. If like it's not there. I'm not even confident that we'll understand after death.

I'm not even confident that in the next life. We'll be able to say, oh, this is why that had to happen to me we might not I don't, there's certainly not a promise that we will.

And when Joe Bends, he never tells them about the Divine counsel. He never tells the he never tells job, he never tells his friend and maybe that's instructive to us. Maybe we haven't, maybe we can have an understanding that God's priority. Is not for us to know why. That that's not the main priority of God in Calamity.

It's not for us to know why. But the, but God does display that he does care that we are perishing. And here's how. He gets in the boat. Jesus is in the boat when they ask, do you care that? We're perishing. If the bow went down, Jesus was going down with it, right?

Jesus was in the boat. He was in the boat. The problem of evil when treated as a philosophical problem, laid out as bear a motionless statements of fact, is actually pretty unhelpful and there's a reason why that's unhelpful. It's because first of all, that's not how we experience Injustice.

We don't experience Injustice as like, a bear proposition, like a math equation, that we work out. We experience it, deeply emotionally, and viscerally. But that's how we experience Calamity in our life and Injustice in our life, right? But maybe more than that, the reason that's not helpful, is there actually isn't an answer.

There actually isn't an answer that will add up. Because the answer to the problem of evil is not a proposition. It's a person. It's the person of Jesus. It's the person of Jesus. How do we know that? God cares, that we are perishing? He's in the boat. The disciples had no idea the extent to which they were perishing.

When they said, do you care that we are perishing? They had no idea. The extent that Not only was physical death looming, but spiritual death separation from God was looming. And we know that God cares. We are perishing because he came down from heaven, And he took everything all the evil could bring upon his own body in the cross.

He took all that was broken. All the weight of evil, as the power of Darkness, got to do their worst, Jesus, hung on the cross. We know he's perishing because Jesus came, he got into the boat, he got onto Earth with us, he walked the Earth. He experienced the worst evil imaginable, and then he won victory over it.

God doesn't flip back to the back of the math book. To give us the answer to the equation. How can a good God? Allow evil How it works, instead? He comes and he experiences evil in his own flesh. And he wins victory over it. We know that God cares because he is in the boat doing, battle and winning.

So there are tons of things in this world that lead us to look up to the heavens and ask the question God, do you even care if it hasn't happened to you yet? It will, it has, it's happened to all of us. It's a real question people have been wrestling with for a long time, but today we see that.

Jesus answers that question. If we're looking for an answer, that's like the answer in the back of the math, book that solves the equation for us. We're disappointed because God doesn't answer to us, he doesn't fix the problem of evil by giving us a proposition. He won't be subjected to our judgment.

Doesn't mean there is no answer. The answer is not a proposition, it's person. We know, God cares that we're perishing because Jesus is in the boat. The word became flesh. Because God cares that we are perishing. And God cares about us today, too. He displays his care for us even in the midst of the Brokenness of creation and giving us the body and blood of his son.

Jesus come to the table. Receive the body, and blood of Jesus receive the body of the blood of the one. Who got into the boat, who did the battle with demons? Who won the victory over sin death and evil in receiving him receive the answer to the question. Do you even care that we're perishing?

Maybe not by getting every intellectual question. We have answered. But by giving himself to us, Receive Jesus today. Amen.