Job and Remembrance

“I know,” said Job, “that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.”

We are all very familiar with those words,

whether we know them from Handel’s Messiah

or from Martha’s reprise of them in John’s Gospel,

or even from this bit of the book of Job, which is where it came from originally.

It's a funny old story, isn't it, this story of Job.

Do you know, nobody knows anything about it –

what you see is totally what you get!

Nobody knows who it was written, or when, or why,

or whether it is true history or a fictional story –

most probably the latter!

Apparently, The Book of Job is incredibly ancient, or parts of it are.

And so it makes it very difficult for us to understand.

We do realise, of course, that it was one of the earliest attempts someone made to rationalise why bad things happen to good people, but it still seems odd to us.

Just to remind you, the story first of all establishes Job as really rich, and then as a really holy type –

whenever his children have parties, which they seem to have done pretty frequently, he offers sacrifices to God just in case the parties were orgies!

And so on.

Then God says to Satan, hey, look at old Job, isn't he a super servant of mine, and Satan says, rather crossly, yeah, well, it's all right for him –

just look how you've blessed him.

Anybody would be a super servant like that.

You take all those blessings away from him, and see if he still serves you!

And that, of course, is just exactly what happens.

The children are all killed,

the crops are all destroyed,

the flocks and herds perish.

And Job still remains faithful to God:

“Naked I came from my mother's womb,

and naked shall I return there;

the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;

blessed be the name of the Lord.”

So then Satan says, well, all right, Job is still worshipping you,

but he still has his health, doesn't he?

I bet he would sing a very different tune if you let me take his health away!

So God says, well, okay, only you mustn't kill him.

And Job gets a plague of boils, which must have been really nasty –

painful, uncomfortable, itchy and making him feel rotten in himself as well.

Poor sod.

No wonder he ends up sitting on a dung-heap, scratching himself with a piece of broken china!

And his wife, who must have suffered just as much as Job, only of course women weren't really people in those days, she says “Curse God, and die!”

In other words, what do you have left to live for?

But Job refuses, although he does, with some justification, curse the day on which he was born.

Then you know the rest of the story, of course.

How the three "friends" come and try to persuade him to admit that he deserves all that had come upon him –

we've all had friends like that who try to make our various sufferings be our fault, and who try to poultice them with pious platitudes.

And Job insists that he is not at fault, and demands some answers from God!

Which, in the end, he gets.

But not totally satisfactory to our ears, although they really are the most glorious poetry.

Here's just a tiny bit:

“Do you give the horse its might?

Do you clothe its neck with mane?

Do you make it leap like the locust?

Its majestic snorting is terrible.

It paws violently, exults mightily;

it goes out to meet the weapons.

It laughs at fear, and is not dismayed;

it does not turn back from the sword.

Upon it rattle the quiver, the flashing spear, and the javelin.

With fierceness and rage it swallows the ground;

it cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet.

When the trumpet sounds, it says "Aha!"

From a distance it smells the battle, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars,

and spreads its wings towards the south?

Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes its nest on high?

It lives on the rock and makes its home in the fastness of the rocky crag.

From there it spies the prey;

its eyes see it from far away.

Its young ones suck up blood;

and where the slain are, there it is.”

Wonderful stuff, and it goes on for about three chapters, talking of the natural world and its wonders, and how God is the author of them all.

If you ever want to rejoice in creation, read Job chapters 38, 39 and 40. Indeed, my father has asked for Job 39 to be read at his funeral!

And at the end, Job repents "in dust and ashes", we are told, and then his riches are restored to him.

But would even more children and riches really make up for those seven children who were killed?

I doubt it, which is one of the reasons it’s probably a story, rather than actual history.

But even still, Job makes one of the central declarations of our faith:

“I know, that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.”

Job may or may not have been only a story, but we do believe that much of the Old Testament, by and large, is historical.

Jesus certainly believed that.

When he talked to the Sadducees, he mentions the story of Moses and the Burning Bush as though it were historical fact.

And he comments that “even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’.

He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

For Jesus, it was history;

Moses said this, and it proved that.

And I think that, because it is Remembrance Day, we, too, need to look a bit at history this morning.

The thing about history is its continuity.

God is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob today, just as much as in Jesus’ time.

And just as much as in Moses’ time, come to that!

God doesn’t change.

And there are other continuities, too –

including the pyramids in Egypt,

which Abraham might well have seen,

which Moses probably knew well,

which Jesus might have been taken to visit,

and which one can still see today.

I find this gives me a sense of continuity.

And so, too, the particular bit of history we celebrate today,

when we honour those who gave their lives or who were wounded in the service of their country.

I know our troops are still deployed in Afghanistan,

but for the past sixty years and more,

it hasn’t impinged on our daily lives unless we happened to have a relation serving with the armed forces.

In the two wars we call world wars, last century, it was very different.

Everybody’s lives were affected in one way or another.

But here in the UK we were pretty lucky.

I've visited a lot of places which were destroyed in either the first world war, or the second, or both –

Warsaw, Berlin, Dresden and most recently Arras, among others.

All of those cities have been beautifully restored, although Dresden is a weird mix of restored, modern and Communist-era buildings, which somehow works.

But there hasn’t been a battle fought on British soil since Culloden in 1745 –

not a pitched battle, anyway.

Yes, we were blitzed in the Second World War,

and you can still see the scars today, that block of newer flats in Glenelg Road, for instance, showing where the original houses were destroyed.

I wasn’t around in those days, but if you were,

I'm sure you'll be able to tell me how terrible it was.

And yes, we have been subject to terrorist attacks of all kinds,

from the IRA bombs of the 1970s to the 7/7 attacks some years ago.

But, although there have been wars of all kinds,

they’ve all taken place in someone else’s back garden.

The tanks have rolled through other people’s streets.

At least, for us here in the UK.

We haven't had foreign soldiers walking in our streets,

swaggering around imposing their will on us,

perhaps even raping every woman.

And maybe that’s one of the reasons we continue to remember those who fought and died for their country so long ago.

My grandfather was badly wounded in the First War,

and my father in the Second.

Actually, the First World War must have been really terrible –

I’ve read my great-grandfather’s diaries.

His elder son was wounded so badly nobody thought he would live –

although he did, or I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale –

and my great-grandfather got permission from the War Office and went over to France to visit him.

And then it became clear that he would live, after all, so my great-grandfather came home again, only to hear that his other son had been killed on the Somme.

My other grandfather was a career soldier, involved in both wars.

He went through the first war unscathed, but broke his leg during the second war – not in action, I believe quite a trivial accident.

But my mother said it was really nice, as the rest of the family were living in South Africa, and he went on leave to bring them home.

But he hadn't seen them for four years, and that's a long time when you are twelve and sixteen, as they had been when he went off to fight.

One of his brothers was killed in action, too –

he was a flyer, and the life expectancy of fliers over the Western Front was measurable in minutes.

But this is all history.

Kids study it in school.

Even the oldest of us here weren’t much more than children when the Second War finished.

I wasn’t even born.

I don’t remember having a ration book, although I’m told I did.

I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t buy anything I wanted in the shops, whenever I wanted it –

although naturally Tesco’s has always run out of, or stopped stocking, the one thing you go in for, but that’s rather different.

There are those who say that Remembrance services glorify war.

I think not.

They are not easy, of course.

For those who have been involved in war,

whether actively or by default because their whole country was,

they bring back all sorts of memories.

For those who have not been involved, they can seem irrelevant.

Many Christians, too, think that all fighting and killing is wrong,

and refuse to join the armed forces, even in a time of conscription.

I’m inclined to agree, I have to admit, but for one thing –
do we really want our armed forces to be places where God is not honoured?
That’s the big problem with Christian pacifism –
it leaves the armed forces very vulnerable.

We must, of course, do all we can to bring peace.

But almost more important is to bring hope.

To bring the good news that

Job, and then Jesus proclaimed.

“I KNOW that my Redeemer lives.”

“God IS the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.”

We all find the concept of eternal life enormously comforting, of course.

You may well have known people who have died very suddenly; I know I have.

We may have known people who have been the victims of terrorist attacks, or just the random shootings and stabbings that seem to have happened far too often recently.

And we wonder, as Job must have done, where God is in all this.

Job, we are told, never lost faith –

but many people did when they saw the horrors of war.

But if God grants people eternal life,

if this life is not all there is,

if the best bit is still to come,

then death isn’t a total, unmitigated disaster.

Of course it is a disaster.

Of course we hurt, and ache, and grieve, and miss the person who has gone.

But we can know they haven’t gone forever, and it does help!

I certainly believe in eternal life!

Some preachers will say that God limits those who can get into heaven to those who have professed faith in Jesus,

but I think it is rather we who exclude ourselves than God who excludes us.

People who are seriously anti-God,

seriously anti-faith,

wouldn’t be comfortable in eternal life, would they?

God is a God of love, a God who delights in us,

who loves each and every one of us so much that Jesus came to die so that we can have eternal life.

“I KNOW that my Redeemer lives and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.”

Who needs God?

(Luke 18:9-14)

Sometimes, when you hear Jesus talk about the Pharisees, you would think they were really wicked, awful people.

Worst sinners in the universe.

But they weren’t, of course.

They were actually really religious, holy people.

People like Nicodemus, you remember, or St Paul –

they were Pharisees.

Not even wicked villains at all!

And that, of course, was the problem.

Because back then, if you wanted to be God’s person,

it was thought that you had to keep loads of rules and regulations.

It was all very well when it was just the Ten Commandments,

and some of the food and other rules laid down in the book of Deuteronomy, they were simple enough to follow.

But, of course, people got themselves rather worried by all of this.

What did you mean when you said “You mustn’t work on a Sunday”?

Was lighting a fire work?

Was getting dressed work?

That sort of thing.

So the Pharisees and their like laid down all sorts of rules and regulations to try to cover every possibility,

from how far you could walk on a Sunday,

to just exactly what you could and couldn’t eat.

Even today, observant Jews have two sets of crockery and cutlery,

one for when they eat meat, and one for when they eat dairy products.

Well, okay.

But there were then two problems:

first of all, you simply couldn’t keep all the rules and regulations –

nobody could.

No matter how hard you tried, it simply wasn’t possible.

So almost everybody went round feeling like a failure.

And, of course, as happened in Jesus’ story, people who could and did keep most of the rules felt very proud of themselves, very clever.

And, Jesus says elsewhere, some of the time they got so wrapped up in keeping the rules that they forgot all about loving other people!

Actually, there was a third problem, too.

And that is that human nature simply adores rules.

Especially when it comes to our relationship with God.

It’s a lot easier to keep the rules than to live in a relationship with God –

that’s just scary!

But we like rules anyway –

and, of course, we need rules to keep ourselves and our society safe.

But we do tend to impose our own personal rules on other people.

To take a very silly example, when I was a child, my mother had a rule that my brother and I were only allowed tomato ketchup if we were having chips –

I think we would have poured it on to everything if we could, and never developed any appreciation of any other flavour!

So even though I know better, I still think it’s awful when I see someone put tomato ketchup on anything else!

I have to remind myself that not everybody grew up with that rule, and it’s perfectly all right to put tomato ketchup on your egg and bacon, if that’s what you like.

And sometimes we make rules for ourselves because we know we are tempted in certain areas, so need to steer clear.

Some people, for instance, can’t drink any alcohol as they can’t stop once they start.

So they would like to have a universal rule saying that nobody can drink an alcoholic drink.

Which those of us who are able to enjoy a drink without being addicted, or without having to get drunk, can’t see the point of at all.

And if you remember your history, you’ll know that they tried that rule in the USA in the 1920s and it didn’t work at all,

just created a whole new load of crimes and criminals.

But the problem in today’s reading is that the Pharisee in Jesus’ story was so pleased with himself for keeping the rules –

and indeed, keeping them even better than most people, look how he boasts about fasting twice a week, when he really only needed to do it once –

he was so proud of himself that he actually seems to have forgotten what it was all about.

He forgot he needed God!

The publican, or tax-gatherer, on the other hand, knew he was a pile of pooh all right.

He had a rather awful job, actually.

He was working for the colonial authorities and had to collect taxes from people.

Which was fine, only he wasn’t paid a salary, and was expected to charge people a little extra and provide a living for himself that way.

And many, if not most, tax-gatherers got a reputation for making a very good living for themselves that way –

you remember Zaccheus, who hid up a sycamore tree to watch Jesus, and Jesus decided to go and have supper with him.

You can quite see the temptation, of course.

And they were pretty well hated anyway, as quislings, collaborators, so they might just as well do what they were accused of!

So all the tax-gatherer could pray was “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”

We don’t know whether the Pharisee went on from the synagogue to take a basket of fruit to an elderly member of the synagogue who was housebound, or whether the tax-gatherer went back to his job,

but it’s quite probable that they did.

But the difference was that, that day at any rate, God had heard and answered the tax-gatherer’s prayer,

but the Pharisee had been far too pleased with himself to need God –

and God can’t get in where there isn’t room!

That was the Pharisee’s big mistake –

he forgot that even though he did keep the rules, and was good at it, he still needed God’s help.

We all need God’s help, of course.

No matter how good we are, no matter how clever, or talented,

we still need God.

We are still sinners.

That’s why Jesus came –

because every single human being is a sinner.

We’d rather go our own way than God’s way, it’s part of human nature.

And when we do decide we want to go God’s way, we would rather do it by means of rules and regulations than by a relationship with the living God.

Again, it’s part of human nature.

It’s why we have a prayer of confession at the start of every service.

The Pharisee forgot that.

He reckoned that because he was a good, God-fearing Pharisee that made him a better human being than the tax-gatherer who was also praying that day.

And, of course, in human terms he was!

But not in God’s terms.

God loved the tax-gatherer every bit as much as he loved the Pharisee, and was quick to answer his prayers and forgive him. In God's eyes, that day, the tax-gatherer was the better person.

We do find it difficult not to go by rules and regulations, don't we? Years ago, I read of a Sunday-school teacher who shared this story with her class, and then said “Now, children, let us thank God we are not like this Pharisee!”

Well, yes, that's all very well – until you find yourself, as I did, thanking God I was not like that Sunday-school teacher! Derrr!

But you see, that's human nature! We like to compare ourselves with those around us – are we doing it right? Are we doing better than he or she is? We like to have rules and regulations to tell us how we should behave, and what we can to do make God love us. We like to define our relationship with God by the rules.

And, of course, it's not like that. Christianity, it has often been said, is a relationship, not a religion! It is about having a mutual relationship with our Creator. It's about letting God love us.

It's the kind of relationship where, when you go astray, the Good Shepherd pulls on his boots and wellies and goes in search of you. No reproaches when he finds you, either, only joy: “Rejoice with me, for I have found that which was lost”.

It's the kind of relationship where, when you take one tiny step towards God, when you are still a long way away, God rushes to meet you and celebrates your return with a massive party.

It's the kind of relationship where you are encouraged to dare great things for God, where you're encouraged to let go of the rulebook and throw it in the bin.

It's the kind of relationship where you are encouraged to allow God to do great things in and through you. All the time, not just the hour or so a week you spend in Church on Sundays.

Most people do a fantastic job of being human without God, of course. But think, how much better could you do with God?

Do you dare try for a relationship with God on his terms? Without rules and regulations? Maybe you have been doing so this past fifty years, and wonder what I am on about – if so, that's fabulous, and I congratulate you!

But all too many of us cling frantically to the rules. The trouble is, when we let go of them, we don't have anything else to cling to – only the Cross of Christ. And that is scary.

The tax-gatherer was able to let go, though. “God, have mercy on me, a sinner!” That was all he needed – and it is all we need, too.

God, have mercy on us sinners. Amen.

God or Money?

I imagine I'm going to be far from the only preacher this morning who starts her sermon with “What on earth is Jesus talking about here?” or words to that effect! This is probably the most difficult parable in the entire New Testament, as it really looks as though Jesus is commending dishonesty!

Let's look at it more closely. You have the landowner, who has employed a steward to look after his interests, much as large landowners do today, only they are usually called agents now. The agent would have been responsible for collecting the rents owed by the various tenants, and back then, would have been expected to pay himself out of those rents, rather like the tax collectors were. And this agent appears to have been defrauding his employer big-time, and the employer gets to hear about it, and demands to see the accounts – and if he finds he's been being defrauded, well, the agent will shortly be an ex-agent!

So the agent panics slightly – whatever will he do? He's getting a bit too old for a labouring job, which is all he could expect after being turned off like that, and there's no way he's going to beg. Ah, but what if.... and he has a great idea. If he adjusts the amount of the various tithes and rents in favour of the tenants, they'll have his back when he needs them. And that's exactly what he does. Now, you would have thought that the employer, when he heard about it, would have been even angrier, and would have sent for the police, but no. He laughed and commended the agent for his shrewdness!

And Jesus added: “You see, that’s how it is. The people who belong to this present world are far better equipped to dodge and weave their way through their dealings with one another than you lot are, and you belong to the light. So take it from me, if you’ve got a fistful of filthy lucre, use it to help other people out. That way, when it runs out, you’ll have friends for eternity.”

That seems very strange, doesn't it? I've seen explanations that say the agent was just not charging the usual tax and his own cut, or that he was doing a Robin Hood and robbing the rich to help the poor, or any other explanation to help sanitise it.

But if you think of it, there are plenty of other parables where you raise your eyebrows and go, “Really?” when you hear them. The unjust judge, for instance – are we really supposed to think that God will “give in” to us if we nag at him, if only to get a little peace? Or that it's right and proper to knock up your friend at midnight to borrow a loaf of bread?

Even the parable of the Lost Son, that immediately precedes this one in Luke's gospel, you are supposed to expect that the Father will drop everything and welcome his Son with open arms?

Well, we believe that God the Father rejoices over us in that way, don't we? And this parable comes immediately after that one.

Jesus doesn't stop at saying that being shrewd with money is a good idea. He goes on to point out that those who can be trusted with a little
can be trusted with a lot.
Those who are dishonest over little things
are also dishonest over big things.
If you can’t even be trusted with a fistful of filthy lucre,
who is going to trust you with things of real value?
If you can’t be trusted to look after other people’s things,
who is going give you anything to keep as your own?”

“No one can play on two teams;
you’ll either give your best to one
and under-perform for the other,
or short-change one
and give your heart and soul for the other.
You can’t dedicate yourself to both God and financial success.”

Mind you, I rather think the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who was a rich banker before he followed God's call on his life, might disagree with that last sentence!

Jesus appears to be making three points in this passage. Very convenient for us preachers! Firstly, he is saying that being shrewd with money is a good idea. Secondly he is saying that being trustworthy is incredibly important. And thirdly, he says you can't dedicate yourself to both God and to financial success – you can't serve God and Mammon, as the old translations had it.

Firstly, then, being shrewd with your money is a good idea. Do you remember the other stories Jesus told about this – the stories where the master went off on a long journey, leaving his servants in charge of masses of money? Two of the servants invest the money wisely, and perhaps start their own businesses, and manage to double, and more than double, their initial investments, whereas the third buries his share in the ground and pretends it isn't there. And when the master comes back, who are the ones who are praised? The ones who were shrewd with the money, the ones who knew what they were doing and who invested it wisely and made a massive profit, they are the ones who are praised and given more responsibility. And the one who just hid his share away safely, not doing anything with it – he is the one who is condemned. The master even says he should have put it in an investment account so it could have earned interest – this would have horrified Jesus' hearers, as interest was as anathema to the Jews of those days as it is to the Muslims of ours.

So we are expected to use our money wisely. We're not necessarily called to be financial experts, of course – many of us will want to pay for the services of such a person, though, to help us get the most out of our savings. But even if we don't have any savings, even if we're just managing on a pension, we're still supposed to use it wisely. We shouldn't fritter it away on things we don't really need – especially if we don't really want them, either. Supermarket chains make a great deal of their profits from what they call “impulse purchases”, things you didn't go in there to buy. Look how difficult it is to come out with nothing more than what you went in for. Actually, given that supermarkets never seem to have the one thing you did go in there for, that's even more difficult than it sounds! But seriously, we should think before we buy. God isn't mean and stingy – we are perfectly allowed to buy what we need, and nice things that we want, but we don't want to fritter our money away with nothing to show for it.

And there are times when God asks us to use some of our money to help other people. In the Bible world, you were required to give 10% of your income for others, and it was only once you had done that that your giving really started. God promises that if we do that, we will be repaid abundantly, not necessarily in money, but repaid, nevertheless. We aren't required to give to every good cause that pushes junk mail through our letter-box, or accosts us in the street, but there are times when that still small voice prompts us to buy an extra packet of pasta for the food bank, or something like that. And, of course, we can't do that if we have frittered that money away on a lottery ticket or those biscuits that looked nice but we left to go stale.

Being shrewd with money is a good idea, Jesus said. And he went on to say that we must be trustworthy with it, too.

It almost goes without saying, doesn't it? We know that people who embezzle money, or who cheat on their social security get put in prison. Did you see that silly story the other day about the woman who was cheating on her social security? It turned out, apparently, that if she had been honest, she would have actually been entitled to 64 pounds a week more than she was actually getting, what with tax credits and family allowances and things.... Ah well. The system is probably wrong, but it's the only system we have. And we need to be scrupulously honest in our dealings with it. We need to be so trustworthy that a complete stranger could give us a hundred pounds and say “Hold that for me”, and we would be there holding it when he came back.

We know this, of course. It's been dinned into us over and over again that God's people are people of total and utter integrity. We ask before using someone else's broadband! Twenty years ago I would have said that we don't use office stationery or make phone calls on the office phone unless that was a specific perk of our employment. These days, I suppose, it's about not faffing about on Facebook when there is work to be done, or not downloading books or music from sites which you know are ripping off the authors or musicians. We need, Jesus said, to be trustworthy in little things so that we can be entrusted with big things.

It's not just about money, of course – can your friends trust you to keep a secret? Would you repeat something a friend told you in confidence? Do you tell other people's stories? We need to be trustworthy in absolutely everything we say or do.

So, Jesus says that being shrewd with money is a great idea, that we need to be utterly trustworthy, and, finally, that you can't serve both God and money – it's like trying to play for Crystal Palace and West Ham at the same time – what happens when they are playing one another? You have to decide who you will serve, and serve whole-heartedly. Preferably, of course, God. Now that doesn't mean you have to be silly about things – if they want you to go to a church meeting and you already have an engagement, say so. But you do need to put God first. It is very far from easy, of course – giving in to ourselves is always far easier. But that is part of what God the Holy Spirit does for those of us who want to follow him, and who want to put him first in our lives. By being in us and with us, God makes it easier, and helps us become the people we were designed to be – people who are shrewd with money,who are utterly trustworthy, and who don't live for money, but live for God instead. Amen.