(Job 23:1-11; Heb 4:12-16; Mk 10:17-31) J G White

10:30 am, Sun, Oct 13, 2024, FBC Amherst

This month’s First Testament readings are from the ancient book of Job. Job being a man who is painfully ill, and the rest of his life was destroyed also: the possessions & the people near & dear to him.

What can save Job? Today we heard from the middle of the book, the middle of all the speeches between Job and those who visit him. Here, Job cries out, not finding God. If only he could find the Creator, who would defend him as if in a court of law, and prove Job innocent. Because his ‘friends’ all think him guilty.

In my own experience, this month, I have all these people under my care who are seriously ill. The ones who are undergoing amazing cancer treatments, which are very hard at times, but miraculous in their own way too. The people who have been through many treatments, and perhaps are healed, healed for a long time into the future. The folks who are just starting to find out what the problem in their body is, and what can be done about it. And the people who have been through it all, there is no more healing work to be done, and the number of future days here is unknown.

I wonder about my prayers for them (& guiding your attention to them) & how we find Jesus the Great Physician. Is our Holy Healer as hard to get to as a doctor at the ER of a Nova Scotia hospital? Can our friends be saved from pain and problems? Be saved from dying?

What words of Job did we read from today?

O that I knew where I might find him,

that I might come even to his dwelling. (23:3)

If I go forward, he is not there;

or backward, I cannot perceive him; (23:8)

If God’s saving help is sometimes for all the challenges of this life, making that connection is so important. And hard when others around us think we have what we deserve. But deep in the soul is that longing, that knowing of the One who made us, who is Love.

Here is another example I think of when I read Job - I wonder about people who are oppressed, mistreated by ‘friends.’ Who can be saved? Saved from injustice?

A week or two ago I got a book I’d been curious about since it came out in 2016. ‘Secret Path’ by Gord Dwonie and Jeff Lemire: the story of a boy who fled residential school, in October, 1966, and tried to walk home, find home; and did not. The harsh and poignant tale of Chanie Wenjack is told in this graphic novel and poetry. I think there is really nothing for me to say about it: it simply needs to be seen, viewed, read. Perhaps Next Sunday I will pay particular attention in our worship to indigenous peoples and our Gospel. October is Mi’Kmaw history month in Nova Scotia.

Who can be saved? What do we think is meant by the question?

Saved. Saved from what? Saved for what?

Saving people from afterlife problems, and evil now.

Saving people and communities from hurricanes.

Saving people and communities from war and violence.

Saving them from illness, pain, injury.

Saving more than us - all of creation, which might be crashing.

Another book I bought this year is Brian McLaren’s “Life After Doom: wisdom and courage for a world falling apart.” I just started reading it. It speaks of how we, as earth destroyers, are needing mercy and grace and hope, in the face of the impossible, perhaps. (I also rewatched, recently, that film, Don’t Look Up, which is funny and thought-provoking.) ‘It’s the end of the world, as we know it’ - and do we feel fine?

We have been so rich in things - probably become too rich, on the backs of the whole creation, and other people - and we have even stolen from the future generations, really. Taken and used up too much of what is here.

Can we be saved? Or will the only salvation be in the afterlife - this world will end? What’s left of things here will become, more and more, a place of suffering?

Going to heaven is not the goal of religion, wrote Richard Rohr. Salvation isn’t an evacuation plan or a reward for the next world. Whenever we live in conscious, loving union with God, which is eventually to love everything, we are saved. This can and should happen now in this world. Social justice advocate Dorothy Day (1897-1980) credited Catherine of Siena’s inspiration for her often-shared words: “All the way to Heaven is heaven, because He said, ‘I am the Way.’” (Richard Rohr, Dec 19, 2017)

All the way to heaven is heaven. Jesus is the Way. Day by day, we might get back to God. You may know the story of a newborn baby’s homecoming, which illustrates the implanted memory of union with God or heaven. A newborn’s precocious four-year old sibling tells her parents, “I want to talk to my new little brother alone.” The parents put their ears to the nursery door and hear the little girl saying to her baby brother, “Quick, tell me! Who made you. Tell me where you came from. I’m starting to forget!”

When we have forgotten, we need a path back.

Friday here, we had a wedding rehearsal, and yesterday afternoon the wedding. What a joyful time it is for me to spend some time with a bunch of twenty-somethings, and several couples have a baby or toddler. Their lives together are beginning, and new people are being born. There is such joy in these young, innocent lives.

I wonder what hopes and dreams the next generations have. Also what dreads and fears. Who can be saved? I believe the door of hope is open, but not easy. There is good news from God for these generations too. We get to be deployed here to share the path of Jesus, and in the values we spelled out in our Statement of Inclusion, for instance.

Who can be saved? Back in the days of Jesus, a person who got to be wealthy was thought of as blessed. But it is easier to thread a needle with a camel than get a rich person into God’s Kingdom! If the blessed could barely get into the Kingdom, what hope is there? Jesus told His disciples, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

When we are most needy, blessing is most possible. When we are most in need of healing, of hope, of justice, of belonging, of answers, or of purpose, it is then that we are ready for the impossible to happen.

We look for all things possible, in all the ways we think of ‘salvation.’ So we follow Christ, and we find out!