Losing and Finding

“Losing and Finding”

October 27, 2024 Cobleskill United Methodist Church

Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Job, selected passages

All Saints Sunday

Job 23:1-9, 16-17; 38:1-7, 34-41; 42:1-6

Job Replies: My Complaint Is Bitter

Then Job answered:‘Today also my complaint is bitter;   his hand is heavy despite my groaning.O that I knew where I might find him,   that I might come even to his dwelling!I would lay my case before him,   and fill my mouth with arguments.I would learn what he would answer me,   and understand what he would say to me.Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power?   No; but he would give heed to me.There an upright person could reason with him,   and I should be acquitted for ever by my judge.

‘If I go forward, he is not there;   or backward, I cannot perceive him;on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;   I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.God has made my heart faint;   the Almighty has terrified me;If only I could vanish in darkness,   and thick darkness would cover my face!

The Lord Answers Job

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?Gird up your loins like a man,   I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?   Tell me, if you have understanding.Who determined its measurements—surely you know!   Or who stretched the line upon it?On what were its bases sunk,   or who laid its cornerstonewhen the morning stars sang together   and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

‘Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,   so that a flood of waters may cover you?Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go   and say to you, “Here we are”?Who has put wisdom in the inward parts,   or given understanding to the mind?Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?   Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens,when the dust runs into a mass   and the clods cling together?

‘Can you hunt the prey for the lion,   or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,when they crouch in their dens,   or lie in wait in their covert?Who provides for the raven its prey,   when its young ones cry to God,   and wander about for lack of food?

Job Is Humbled and Satisfied

Then Job answered the Lord:‘I know that you can do all things,   and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.“Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?”Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,   things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.“Hear, and I will speak;   I will question you, and you declare to me.”I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,   but now my eye sees you;therefore I despise myself,   and repent in dust and ashes.’

_________

About two weeks ago I drove up the big hill that lies on the northern edge of our village where brilliantly colored fall leaves were floating through the air and quiet stones keep watch on the hillside.  Our cemetery here has a quiet beauty to it that’s hard to describe with words.  It’s the resting place of so much love and the vantage point for seeing so far out across the landscape.  

It was here under a tree planted more than 20 years prior by a man named Henry Lee for his wife, Anne, that I gathered with the family of Henry for his own burial.  You may not know Henry Lee, but he called this place home.  He was a kind and good-hearted pharmacist who pioneered a life in rural America during an era when Chinese immigrants, people like himself, were not always welcomed with open arms.  Yet Henry, with the help of families like George and Alice Ryder, found a home here and he became a great philanthropist in the community.  

As is always the case, whenever I am asked, I felt honored to be asked to preside over his burial.  

Standing on that hillside, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, there is a beautiful tenderness at the moment of final farewells.  A delicate in-betweenness, a feeling of liminality, between the life here and the life after.  You have maybe felt this, too, in visits to the cemetery and in committal services.

The weight of loss is somehow made lighter by the gathering of people who honor the life that has been and celebrate the memory yet to come.  The view of one person’s life is cast into a perspective with those who have already gone before in that place where the sky meets the earth and the seasons move with gentle purpose. 

It's hard not to drive down that hill after being on that hallowed burial ground without tears.  Mourning what has been lost and giving thanks for what has been all in the same breath.  

…This is the nature of being alive.  Living, loving, losing, and then finding again a sense of purpose.  And I don’t say this to be pessimistic; I saw it in simple awe.  What a wondrous thing it is to be alive.  To love.  To have loved so much that losing becomes as hard as it is.  And then one day, near or far, to discover that you’ve found something entirely new in the whole process.  

When wrestling with this mystery, we again find that Job our guy.   This small book in the Hebrew Bible shines an honest and real light on the way we suffer losses, and, in turn, the way we find again. 

We left off last week with Job being fed up with his friends who kept trying to explain to Job the common religious beliefs of the day which implied that he must have done something to deserve his suffering from God.   Job knew that wasn’t right.  Job had done nothing wrong.  Sometimes our “friends” and their advice and even our religious traditions can’t tell us everything we need to know about God.  Sometimes we need to see and hear for ourselves directly from God.

But this is where Job struggles.  Even though he could recognize bad advice and shallow religious platitudes for what they were, Job also could still not understand why he had experienced so much loss.  No reasoning could help him heal his heart.  And in his deepest grief after demanding God show up and then hearing nothing, he even begins to question if God is even there at all.  

“O that I knew where I might find him,   that I might come even to his dwelling!I would lay my case before him,   and fill my mouth with arguments.”

…‘If I go forward, he is not there;   or backward, I cannot perceive him;on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;   I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.

It’s really powerful imagery.  Imagery that I’m sure many of us have also felt at times in our life.  When our loss and suffering is so great, why does it sometimes feel like God is not there?

Finally, after 38 chapters of the Book of Job; after 38 chapters of Job wrestling with his grief and begging for God to at least answer him; finally, God speaks.  And it’s …. not what we would expect.  

When Job asks, why do we suffer? God replies with a non-answer to that question.  Doesn’t even seem to hear the question.  Starts talking to Job by saying, who do you think you are?  You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.  You couldn’t comprehend what I might even say.  

Instead of giving easy answers to why suffering exists, God goes on to ask Job all the questions.  Questions about where was Job when the big, beautiful mysterious world with all of its mind-boggling details was made.  The clouds and the rain and the lions with their young ones.  God wonders out loud, Job, do you understand who I am?  

It’s hard to hear this at first pass.  It sounds condescending.  But the point is not just to show Job how small he and his suffering is in the grand scope of things, it’s to genuinely show Job how incredible Creation is.  It’s true that Job has lost immeasurable things, but God also shows Job that he is just one of many fragile creatures in an expansive world where life happens in the ways that life will happen, and suffering is part of that.  Suffering isn’t God’s intention.  It’s a consequence of being a creature alive in God’s world; a creature who cares enough about other creatures that when we lose them we understand the nature of love itself. 

There is no “why” to our suffering.  There is living.  There is loving.  There is losing.  And there is the haunting discovery in the midst of each loss, that it is in losing that we find how much we loved.  

God speaks out of a whirlwind not with the answers we want but with the awe we need.

Because it doesn’t give us easy answers, Job is not an easy part of the Bible to read.  But what I find so amazing about our tradition is that each story about God that has been passed down to us gives some new understanding.  As if God were a precious gem, and each way we turned it, each facet on the stone showed us something new and beautiful and mysterious about the God we are trying to understand.  

Job’s experience shows us a God who confronts our suffering by painting a wide picture of the beauty of the universe.  It’s like standing on the hill of our cemetery among the stones of our loved ones and looking out across the valley.  

And yet if we turn the precious gem around in our hands we see the same God in other ways.  In our Christian tradition, we believe that this God who spoke from a distance out of the whirlwind is also the same God who came into this world in the form a fragile child, Emmanuel.  That the same God who spoke to Job about the mysteries of this world is the same God who entered into this world to live alongside us, incarnated.  That same God that taught Job about losing and finding is the same God who lived our life, loved our love, and died our death.  That same God taught us that it is in losing what is most treasured to us, that we might ultimately find the depth of our own love.  It is that same God who rose from the dead and promised us that the worst thing is never the last thing.  

God opens the horizons of our love and also stands beside us in our grief.  What a holy mystery it is to be part of this God’s world.  

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Anna