A time to be born and a time to die

To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. 

Right now I am supporting a great team of church-based charity trustees as they manage the closure of their charity. After years of good work, time and circumstance have brought them - correctly in my view - to the decision to close.  They have made good plans to support their staff through redundancy and into finding new work. The winding-up has been managed well. Though not without sadness, closure is timely and marks the end of a good and productive episode in the lives of many people, leaving memories that can be cherished.

I find it interesting how often we judge the worth of faith projects by their permanence. Over the past 25 years as a consultant and also as a minister, I have had to advise the closure of a number of church-based charities and projects. The conditions they face now are some way distant from those facing their pioneers. Sometimes the evidence in favour of closure or merger or substantial change has been clear for some time but decisions get deferred. For some people of faith, when the decision to close is made, they even wonder whether the lack of permanence casts doubt on the validity of the original decision to start-up. 

I am indebted to a colleague for his suggestion that all church-based projects should have a so-called ‘sunset clause’ firmly embedded in their make up from the outset. In public policy, a sunset clause is a measure that provides that the law shall cease to have effect after a specific date, unless further definite action is taken to extend its life. Instead of an assumption that a project will continue indefinitely or simply be a line in the budget that is uprated for inflation year after year, it will be deemed to close unless there is a debate and a formal decision to renew it.

Some might say that this shows a lack of faith or commitment. I disagree. I think building in sunset clauses would require faith communities to be even more diligent about the currency of their projects.

Today is not about Elijah

Lectionary readings:  1 Kings 17: 8-24 and Luke 7: 11-17

The prophet Elijah and the Widow of Sarepta by Bernardo Strozzi

Today is not about Elijah.

And yet he is one of the towering figures of the Old Testament and his story starts in 1 Kings 17.

What I love about Elijah is that he is no cardboard cut-out figure.  He is as complex as the rest of us. The bible story does not just focus upon the most exciting events of his life but also allows us to see that, at times, he is anxious and depressed.  We see him here confidently speaking truth to power to King Ahab. Later we see him as God’s instrument for the public humiliation of the prophets of Baal and Asherah.  A short while later, he is to be found curled up, in the foetal position, under a bush; fearful, hopeless and utterly reliant on the grace of God to sustain his life. 

Give yourself a treat – when lunch today is over, settle down and read 1 Kings 17 to 2 Kings 2 and enjoy his story with all its ups and downs.

But today is not about Elijah.

It is about two women whose names are not recorded for us in scripture. We simply know where they live, their status in society and about the hopelessness that confronts them both.

In the Old Testament reading, the word of the Lord comes to Elijah. “Go to Zarephath in Sidon and stay there. I have commanded a widow in that place to supply you with food.”  At face value it is simply a statement but for Elijah it would have added greatly to his anxiety.  For Zarephath was in enemy territory. By telling Elijah to go there, God is asking for the highest degree of trust from his servant.  He is also showing that he is at work outside his chosen people of Israel.  The very idea would be a deeply unpalatable one and yet we see it in several places in scripture. For example, the Israelites are to have no dealings with the people of Moab.  Yet it is Ruth, the Moabitess, who becomes the ancestor of King David.

The widow’s situation is hopeless. She expects that she and her dependent son will run out of food within a day or two.  She is gathering firewood to cook a final meal before the pair of them will starve.  We see that she is a morally upright person by her implicit rejection of the alternatives: resorting to earning a living by begging or prostitution.

When God tells Elijah that he has commanded the widow to feed him, we have no sense that she was conscious of this.  She was a Phoenician and would have worshipped the gods of her homeland. She recognises that Elijah is a Jew and acknowledges (as his name suggests) that he worships the God whose name is specifically Jehovah.  But she is what seems to be: a Phoenician woman of low status.

God provides a source of food every day for the widow, her son and the prophet, who is hiding in the last place that his enemies would expect – their own land. We are not told the precise mechanics of the way God provides them with food but it is clear from the story that somehow this takes place – and God gets the credit for it.

Yet for some people, misfortunes tend to come along in clusters. Although her economic needs have been met, this woman now faces another crisis – the deadly sickness of her son. Again, the significance of this is deeper even than the natural anxiety that all of us would have for a family member who is gravely ill.  For her son is her hope for the future, both in terms of having grandchildren and in being supported in later life.  As life slips away from the boy, she turns to Elijah in her anger and her pain and asks whether he came as God’s messenger to kill her son.

When we face such times, it is natural to cry out against God. Indeed, Elijah, the man of God himself – in his prayer – wonders whether God is the author of the unfolding tragedy. I worry about people whose Christian experience has never included shaking their fist at God and wondering why he allows such bad things to happen. 

Well, God is good. When he hears the prayer and the boy’s life is restored, the joyful response of the mother shows the beginnings of faith in the living God.  And I get the feeling that Elijah’s own faith in God has grown too as he says to the woman: “Look, your son is alive!” He sounds surprised and relieved.

We may turn the pages of our bibles and learn how Elijah’s story progresses but we hear nothing further about this unnamed mother and son. And yet I have the sense that they were just as much in the mind of God as the headline-hero of 1 Kings.

Nearly 900 years pass since Elijah stayed at the widow’s house in Zarephath before the lectionary links this OT story with that we heard from Luke 7.

At the heart of the short tale is another unnamed widow, whom we know only by her home village of Nain. It is a small place in Galilee, just south of Nazareth.  It is still lived in today. 

Here we see Jesus and a large crowd, just after he speaks the so-called sermon on the plain. As the crowd approaches the town, they see a funeral procession for the only son of a widow.  She is distraught. Jesus’s heart goes out to her and he comforts the grieving widow. He does what no orthodox Jew should and touches the corpse which is being carried to the burial ground and once again life flows into the boy’s body.  Jesus restores the son to his mother and the crowds give glory to God for the miracle they have seen with their own eyes.

So today we have two amazing stories. What are we to make of them and what difference might these ancient tales make to our lives as we begin a new week as followers of Jesus today?

What I take from this, firstly, is that it suggests that God is at work even when he appears to be absent.  God was as aware of the situation of the widow of Zarephath as he was of Elijah’s predicament, though Elijah was ignorant of her very existence until God told him to go stay with her. And God often seems to choose to work with the kind of people that we would not even think of, let alone choose for ourselves.

In neither case where the son dies does either widow ask God for help.  Yet God provides, in the OT story by placing his prophet there with her and in the NT story we read that Jesus was in the right place at the right time – and that his heart went out to her. The word that we often see in scripture for this is compassion.  It is the human response of identifying with another in their pain or distress in ways that lead to acts of kindness and mercy.

I have been much taken recently with the call of Pope Francis for Christians to be merciful.  One of his assistants has helpfully defined this for us. "Mercy," he says, "is the willingness to enter voluntarily into chaos of another."

In our stories today, God chooses to enter into the messiness of human lives in two specific situations, standing with people that no one else notices or names.  He does not wait to be asked and he is not reluctant but is moved by love to do what he alone can.

Perhaps you are like me, in that you are often tempted to think that the Good Lord has made heaven and earth, all creatures and human beings.  He has set the laws of physics in motion so that everything seems to run on auto-pilot. That Jesus came and gave us a steer about how to think and act and that God has now cleared-off to a distant place while we are left to get on with life.  If so, then I hope these stories story speak to you – as they do to me.  They strongly suggest that, while we may not see God or think he is doing much, he is intimately interested in us and in the everyday parts of our lives.  That he is capable of weaving together our tiny lives into his one big story.

That he is still capable of surprising people of great faith, such as Elijah.

That he knows the names and the lives of the people who don’t attract any headlines.

And that he cares and is moved by love to want to help.

Of course, there are many loose ends in such a view.  Plainly God does not appear on a white horse on the crest of every hill, ready to save the day.  And it is natural to wonder why.  The widow of Zarephath thought that her son’s death was a punishment for her sins – whatever they were. But she was wrong.  I daresay the widow of Nain might have thought herself under God’s curse.  Yet the God who we see most clearly in Jesus does not send illness or misfortune.  Instead, he chooses to enter into the chaos of our lives if we allow him in, to stand with us and strengthen us.

Nothing speaks more profoundly of this deliberate choice of God to enter into our chaos, our pain and our human experience than the Communion we now celebrate together.  As you take bread and wine, banish the idea that God is the distant and passive observer of your life. As you remember his death, make the choice to live as though he daily enters into your chaos.  And as you remember his resurrection, ask for grace to choose to go with Jesus into the chaos of those around you – bringing the good news that God knows, God loves and God wants to make a life-restoring difference.

Amen.

This sermon was given at Friars Baptist Church Shoeburyness on Sunday 5th June 2016

The Reverend Reginald Walter Inchpin (1919-2016)

It is with much sadness that I share the news of the passing of someone who was a pioneer in contextual Baptist mission, the Reverend Reginald Walter Inchpin, who has died aged 97 after a long life of service.

Reg (always ‘Reg’) was born on 15 January 1919, the elder son in a family of agricultural labourers on Mersea Island in Essex. The family were staunch members of the East Mersea Baptist chapel (as it then was). For Reg, church on Sunday meant attendance at morning service at 11am, Sunday School at 3pm and evening service at 6.30pm, often shepherding his younger siblings to and from church. We forget nowadays how primitive life was in rural Essex in the 1920s. There was no electricity at the church until 1934 and Reg liked to reminisce that among the duties he shared with other young men in the fellowship was being a ‘lamplighter’ of the paraffin lamps and the chapel's coke-fired boiler.

Leaving school at 14, his first job was with the Merchant Navy, where he learned seamanship and where began his love of the sea and those who live along its coasts. He continued to serve in the Merchant Navy throughout the 1939-45 war but soon after VE Day, having spent 12 or so years in the service, he felt a strong call to train for Baptist ministry. He completed his studies at Spurgeon’s College in 1949.  It was while at Spurgeon’s that he met Bunty and they married soon after his graduation.

He served his first and second pastorates in Ilford (then very much ‘Essex’ rather than east London) and in Portsmouth, where he was a chaplain to seamen.  It was while in Portsmouth that Reg and Bunty were blessed with 3 children.Though always dedicated in their work, they never really felt ‘at home’ in Hampshire. After four years, the Inchpins dared to hope that there might be a way for their future ministry to include their twin loves, both of the sea and also mission among the people of the Essex marshes.  In the 1950s, parts of Essex were still remote from railways and life continued in the marsh villages much as it had for generations. Growing up in the area Reg loved the people and the place.  A kindly benefactor, knowing of their prayerful exploration, offered to buy and refit a 40-foot motorised launch as a mobile base for mission to the inlets and creeks of that stretch of the Essex coast. An amazing missional door was opening!

Evangeline, in the foreground, off the Essex coast around 1960

Once fitted, the boat was renamed ‘Evangeline’ and Reg was formally inducted to a peripatetic ministry at a commissioning ceremony in 1959 jointly hosted by the (then) Essex Baptist Association and the Coastal Mission Fellowship.  During term-time the family was billeted among church members at Wivenhoe, where the children attended school. This released Reg and Bunty to sail the boat to visit the coastal villages and some isolated farmsteads, where they would invite people on board.  Everyone looked forward to the choruses (the Keswick Convention Songbook was a favourite), a gospel message delivered with much good humour and to the ‘spread’ – tea, sandwiches and cake served by Bunty afterwards. Reg had a seemingly endless store of amusing anecdotes and jokes and this was the basis for his memorable talks to adults and children alike.  They had no need for a baptismal pool for any who responded: the waters of the Crouch, Roach and Blackwater rivers served in place of the Jordan!

The mission boat continued as their home base for the next 25 years’ of active ministry and it was only reluctantly that Reg accepted retirement in 1984.  By then the cost of necessary repairs to Evangeline was very high and the Essex Association could not continue to support the work (the Coastal Mission Fellowship having sadly closed in 1977).  To everything there is a season and it was time now for the Baptist mission boat to conclude its pioneering work.

In retirement, however, Reg found a role as mentor and encourager of a new generation of pioneer Baptist ministers – some young enough to be his grandchildren!  Though by then in his mid-80s, Reg took a keen interest in new Baptist church plants. He was mentor to several pioneering Baptists, though to the end he called it being their ‘senior friend!’  They found in him someone who was indeed a friend and whose commitment to mission served as a pattern to follow.  He will be much missed, not least in the Eastern Baptist Association (the successor to his beloved Essex Association, in which he was a long-serving council member in the '70s and '80s).

A memorial service is planned some time in May or June. If you would like to be kept informed, please contact me by email: parsonking@hotmail.co.uk 

 Ivan King, April 2016

Some thoughts for All Souls Day

Read John 11:1-44   

  

In two weeks’ time, my late father would have celebrated his 100th birthday. The youngest of six, he was born while his eldest brother was away fighting in WW1. Although he died when I was in my twenties, I think of him often.

When I was a child I used to think that he and I were completely different. Of course, our life experiences were radically different. Yet I see aspects of my father now in my reactions and my character and I also have the surprise of catching glimpses of him in my son, the grandson whom he never met, who has inherited his build, his character and his humour. I miss him.

“In the midst of life, we are in death” says Thomas Cranmer who took that ancient saying and included it in the burial service in the Book of Common Prayer. When comforting a friend who had lost her husband, the late Queen Mother was asked if grieving got any better with the passage of time. She replied "It doesn't get any better but you get better at it."  That is my experience. Perhaps it is the experience of some of you, for almost all of us have had to cope with loss and grief. For some people, as we will remember in a few days’ time at Remembrance Sunday, grief can carry on for a long time.

What helps does our faith offer us as we confront the reality of death in life?  The Old Testament supplies us many examples of how God’s people in ancient times coped with grief, loss and death. The psalms provide us with many laments, including those echoed by Jesus Himself: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Well, this event from the life of Jesus is about death and grief in the midst of life; and the place of faith and hope in such times. 

Lazarus, Martha and Mary lived close to Jerusalem. They were followers and close friends of Jesus. When Jesus came to Jerusalem he stayed with them. Apart from that we know little about them: they seem to have been independent, without parents in the picture; they must have been financially comfortable, since they had a house large enough to cater for a fairly big group of people.

In this story, while Jesus was absent Lazarus became gravely ill. Then he got worse, and the two women sent for Jesus. Come and cure our brother, they begged. Jesus received the message but he put off coming for two days. Why? Jesus clearly loved this man as a friend. Their home was just 2 miles from Jerusalem. Yet Jesus stays on in the city when an hour’s slow walk could have brought His miraculous healing. The disciples – bless them! – are typically slow to grasp the seriousness of Lazarus’ condition.

In the meantime, Lazarus dies of his illness. For all the miracles worked by Jesus, people still died in Judea in the years of His ministry. People still suffered disabilities; there was still poverty and injustice and the land remained under enemy occupation. The presence of the Son of God does not remove us from the ills of the human condition. For that reason I cannot sing the line from that worship song that says: “And in His presence our problems disappear.”  It is high-sounding nonsense, which disrespects the pain of grieving people.

When Jesus eventually arrived, Martha rushed out to meet him. She reproached him bitterly - if you'd only come sooner, he wouldn't have died, she said. She berates her friend for delaying and we cannot miss her tone of disappointment.

As a pastor, I have comforted grieving people. At such times, the questions all seem to begin with 

• ‘Why?’ 
• Why me?
• Why did this happen? 
• Why do such bad things happen, even to good people? 
• Why did God allow that to happen?

 We are at our most human when we ask why. ‘Why’ looks for meaning at times when there seems to be little meaning. Yet, after a while, if the grieving process works as it should, we find that little by little the ‘why’ questions are replaced by ‘How?’   How should I now live as a follower of Christ, in spite of all that has happened?  Sadly, some people stay trapped in ‘why?’

Having touched on the disciples, Martha and Mary, now we look at Jesus, who is weeping. Why? (There’s that word again). Why is Jesus weeping?

Some commentators suggest that surely, as the Son of God, He knew that for Lazarus things would turn out right in the end – so why weep? Yet this man, Jesus, was fully human. He did not know all things.

Others suggest that it only began to dawn on Jesus at that point – when confronted with the death of his friend – about the awful process of death and dying that awaited Him.  Don’t forget that John’s gospel is the gospel of significance – of meaning. Every act and story in this gospel is drenched in meaning. Yet I reject this idea also.

Jesus wept because He loved His friend, who is now dead.

Jesus wept because of His own grief and because his friends, Martha and Mary, were now experiencing the desperate loss and pain that comes when death robs us of those we love.

Jesus wept because grief is the price that we pay for having loved.

And what of poor Lazarus?  Let’s take a moment to place ourselves in his position. What might he have thought, as he became ill, then worsened?  His friend the healer is just an hour’s slow walk away, so why hasn’t he come?  His family have sent word, but no one arrives. Then the loss of hope as, for him, time runs out.

Then – what?  Nothingness?  Or a glimpse of paradise?!  Until, days after he died, the shock of resurrection and a Voice recalling him to earthly life. He is restored to family and friends and becomes the first to taste that even death cannot separate us from the love of God found in Christ.

Yet, for Lazarus, this was not the ultimate resurrection.  Lazarus died again. How long did he have? We are not told. I think his restored life might have been quite problematic. Supernatural seekers would have shown an unhealthy interest in him. Some would have thought him part of a conspiracy to deceive. He would have been a political and religious embarrassment. And how do you relate to your friend who has so publicly transformed your existence?

At the heart of this passage is this.  “Jesus says to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

The words that Jesus proclaims to Martha invite us not to be glib or to wear a shallow smile in the face of grief and pain. Maybe like me, in times of loss you have suffered from the bright cheerfulness of Christians who would do better to stand weeping, like our Master, rather than offering trite words pretending to be faith.

Jesus doesn’t offer us an easy way out.  Like Lazarus, one day we will all face death first-hand. Jesus does not tell us that we can avoid death or grief. But he offers us the solid hope that lies on the far side of that most human experience. And the One who stands and weeps at the grave of His friend is the One who stands beside us as we face all that life can throw at us. He came into the world, born as one of us, entering our condition – our frailty, our hopelessness and the apparent finality of the death that awaits us. He goes on standing beside us, sharing our tears and offering us hope.

What form might this hope take?  Sometimes we experience the presence of Christ in the touch of a hand or a hug or a meal cooked or someone looking at our treasured photographs with us, because grief has knocked us down. Christ can use the community of faith to show his care.

And when we meet together on a Sunday or in our home groups, with Christ at the centre of His disciples, do we make allowance for grief and loss in our worship?  For lament?  We sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that we must leave our feelings and the reality of life at the church door when we come to worship. Or that we must be unremittingly cheerful. What unbiblical nonsense! The psalmists knew, better than us, that worship is bringing the whole of life before God.

Today is All Souls Day. Along with yesterday's All Saints Day, this is a feast that we Baptists have disregarded – perhaps with some suspicion. Yet I feel they are useful points in our church calendar to remember, to reflect and in quiet gratitude to give thanks for the lives now past that have touched ours and for our continuing lives.  To hand over, once again, those we have loved and who have died into God’s tender care. We do so knowing that there is no safer place than in the hands of the God who imagined them and called them into existence; the always-with-us God, who stands and shares our tears. He declares that he is the resurrection and the life and demonstrates that in the gift of new life to Lazarus. As his people, let us share life together with its joys and its sorrows, bringing them both in our worship of God. Let that worship include thanksgiving and lament as we gather round the God of tears and solid hope, to whom we now pray:

Everlasting God, our maker and redeemer, give us, together with all those we remember with love and gratitude, the joy of Jesus' glorious resurrection, so that, in the last day when you gather up all things in Christ, we may enjoy with them your presence for ever. Through Jesus Christ your Son. Amen

So where is God when you need Him?

A talk given at Clementswood Baptist Church on Sunday 11 October 2015

If you’re one of those Christians who never has a doubt; has never wondered why their prayers just seem to hit the ceiling and bounce back; if your faith never feels challenged or you have a swift and spiritual solution to all of life’s brickbats, then today’s sermon is not for you.  Please just sit quietly – maybe read a few more chapters in your Bible.  Or you might pray quietly for the poor doubters, the strugglers with their faith or (as I usually call them) the ordinary Christians just like me.  I promise I won’t keep you for very long before we go for our tea and cake.

Why are we dipping in to Job this morning?

Well unless I am invited to speak on other topics or passages I usually preach from the lectionary:  the collection of Bible readings offered Sunday by Sunday. It means that many, many churches around the world will today be thinking about Job (if, that is, their preachers have not chosen the alternate passages in Mark 10 or Hebrews 4.) I fancy that most preachers will have ducked this passage – I cannot remember preaching on it before nor hearing another sermon.

The story of Job is one of the oldest we find in our Bibles. Job is a good guy who God allows to be tested to see how long he will go on trusting in in God, in spite of financial loss, the sudden death of loved ones, physical and emotional pain and finally depression. And, as if that wasn’t enough, Job has some so-called friends who turn up with the kind of cheery, uplifting spiritual comfort that makes you grit your teeth and reach for good, heavy, cast-iron skillet to whack them with.  Chapter 23 begins as a response by Job to advice from one of these friends.

This morning, I would like to draw our attention to 3 things.

1.      Oh if only

The hymn that we sung just now has an interesting verse 2: “From the fears that long have bound us, free our hearts to faith and praise.”

Job complains that while he suffers God is nowhere to be found, seen or heard. One of the complementary readings in the lectionary for today is in Psalm 22, which begins:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me,
    so far from my cries of anguish?
  My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
    by night, but I find no rest."

These words, of course, have a particular resonance for us when we remember the crucifixion. 

If only things were different!   If only I didn’t have to struggle with the challenges I face.  With the pain or the loneliness or the lack of money or the bleakness. If only God was here. 

Note that Job has not lost faith in God (v6-7).

Have you had the experience of wondering where God has got to?  I have, many times.  It does not mean a loss of faith but a missing of the sense of God present with you. We pray and we try to do all the right things (as Job says he does here).  But if only God might show up now and again…

2.  Then, secondly, Job’s gloom continues in v8-12 as he says:

“But if I go to the east, he is not there;
    if I go to the west, I do not find him.
9 When he is at work in the north, I do not see him;
    when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.

The poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, wrote this line in one of his poems:  “I greet Him the days I meet Him and bless when I understand.”  It suggests that we only might only encounter God from time to time.  From time to time we may catch a distant glimpse of God in passing as we go about our daily lives.  Hopkins was a priest so he understood the journey of faith.  And he wrote those words in a poem about a terrible tragedy:  the death by drowning of some Christians when their boat sank in a snowstorm in the North Sea. In other words, the kind of situation where we might hope that God would show up.

Yet, once again, Job tempers the felt reality of his troubles with a bold declaration of faith in the God who he cannot see or hear [v10]

But he knows the way that I take;
    when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.

This man takes some comfort in knowing that, even though he cannot discern the presence of God, he is convinced that God is watching over him:  all-seeing and all-knowing.

Sometimes, when God feel at arm’s length or even further away – we too can carry on, trusting that we are known and loved by the ever-watchful God.

Verses 11 and 12 tend to suggest that Job is rather keen on protesting his uprightness of living, as something therefore deserving of God’s love in return.  We see this quite often in the OT – a righteous life undertaken as a contract with God.  I live your way; you bless me with material possessions and keep the bad guys off my back.  Some Christians believe this today, though I find that this view is somewhat adjusted by the teaching and example of Jesus in the NT.

Yet we may still draw comfort from some of the great promises of the Bible. When dark times strike us and God seems distant, we lean on what God has said to people in the past as a sign that He is faithful despite the circumstances.

3.  Finally, we come to the heart of the matter – a theme that we find repeated again and again in the story of Job [v13]:

“But he stands alone, and who can oppose him?
    He does whatever he pleases.

Which does not mean that God is capricious or arbitrary.  It is simply that when we try to condense God, His motives and actions in to something that we can readily grasp or understand or even manage, our arms are too short, our eyes are too weak to see and our mind and understanding are too small to comprehend. That’s why Job says:

“That is why I am terrified before him”

This speaks not of cringing fearfully before a dictator or monster but that, suddenly, we glimpse that God is immeasurably bigger, higher and deeper than the simple, cardboard figure that we so often try and reduce him to be. We can say with the singer songwriter, Paul Simon:

“And God only knows and God makes His plans; the information is unavailable to the mortal man.”

At the end of this chapter, we are reminded again that the life that we love is so often clouded with darkness.  We are in the dark.  We are in the dark about why bad things happen to good people. We are in the dark why God just seems to clear-off and leave us on our own to face life’s challenges.  Life has its share of shadows and there are times when the shadows lengthen into thick darkness.

By the very end of Job’s story he is left simply having to let God be God. He says:

           “I know that you can do all things;

    no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
    Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
    things too wonderful for me to know.

4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
    I will question you,
    and you shall answer me.’
5 My ears had heard of you
    but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I humble myself
    and repent in dust and ashes.”

Here at Clementswood you live among neighbours who use the phrase “Insha’Allah” many times a day – the Muslim Arabic for ‘if God’s wills it.’  A meek acceptance that whatever happens is God’s will. Fate, if you like.

Well that isn’t the message of the story of Job. God doesn’t send misfortunes. God doesn’t cause cancer or arthritis, although (and I say this reverently) I do think that He might let on why He doesn’t step in more often to prevent bad things happening.

In this broken world, there is much pain as well as some joy. Not everyone gets to live happily ever after. It is not helped when Christians fixate on permanent ‘bliss.’  Sometimes it is right to ask why or, with a sigh, exclaim “If only.”

We may blunder around seeking answers or trying to impress God with the quality of our upright living.

Perhaps we are sometimes left silent with nothing to answer to the enormity of God.

Are you struggling with the absence of God this morning?  You know He is there but it would be super if He gave you just a hint that that He was around.

Have you tried so hard to live a ‘good’ life? You are not one of life’s major rule-breakers. Yet, instead of being rewarded, you seem to have been deserted?

Well the message for you today is one that countless saints of God have experienced these things.  It is often part of the journey of faith. To you I say this. There is a God of love. Job believed it; I believe it and you can believe it. I do not know why sometimes He is not more apparent.  But the story of Job – thousands of years old – resonates with us and comforts us today. For us, the journey of faith is one of acting even though we do not see; continuing faithfully when all human emotion tells us to pack it in. We trust in the God of Job. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  The God of Moses.  Every one of these giants of faith faced, like us, the apparent absence of God. And yet they carried on trusting that one day, like Job, their distant hearing about God would be replaced once again by clarity and presence. 

Unlike all of these, of course, we have benefit of knowing of Jesus Christ.  As His followers, we have the edge on poor Job.  His relationship with God was based on rightful living alone – keeping the rules and then expecting God to keep His side of the bargain.  That way never works.  It cannot work.  And that is why Christ died.

In Christ, we are invited simply to follow, with trust, though we may not see the path ahead at all clearly. Because He has been through the darkness for us and is with us there all through it.