A Worthy Sacrifice: Memorial Day

"O Judge of the nations, we remember before you with grateful hearts the men and women of our country who in the day of decision ventured much for the liberties we now enjoy. Grant that we may not rest until all the people of this land share the benefits of true freedom and gladly accept its disciplines. This we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Today is Memorial Day, which is much more than the official beginning of summer and an excuse to grill. It is the day in which we remember those who, in Lincoln’s words, gave the “last full measure of devotion” in the defense of our country and the ideals for which our country stands.

Service of country seems to wax and wane as our wars go. Many young people volunteered for the military after September 11th, 2001. But just a few years later, I overheard two twenty-somethings disparage the idea of volunteering for the military, and being sent off to “dumb” wars just because it would help them pay for college.

Then again, the sight of those college students outside the White House the night that Osama Bin Laden was killed reminded me of my own son when he was 11. Like his parents, he was shocked at the violence that had been inflicted on our nation so close to where he lived. I think that what we saw after Bin Laden’s death was a collective sigh of relief by those who came of age in the “Global War on Terror.”

We honor those who have sacrificed their lives to defend our nation and its freedoms. With the improvements in our medical care, we should also remember those who might have died from their wounds in earlier wars, but who remain scarred. Nor should we forget those who bear scars that no one can see, in their minds, their hearts and their souls.

And then perhaps we should ask ourselves, what have I sacrificed for my fellow Americans and our cherished way of life? It seems to me that very little has been asked of us since that terrible day in 2001. No was drafted for military service. Nor were we were asked to pay for the wars undertaken for our defense. But it’s never too late to make the sacrifices necessary to make good on what has been sacrificed for us.

Earlier I quoted Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Let me finish with another Lincoln quote. At his second inauguration, with the Civil War almost won in 1865, Lincoln asked this of the country: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

That is worth the sacrifice of every American. Let us be worthy of those who have given the last full measure of devotion.

Come, Companion, Come: 6th Sunday of Easter

“I will ask the Father, and he will give another Defender, Counselor, Companion, to be with you all forever.” (John 14:16)

What’s an advocate? You see them all the time on TV news shows. They’re paid to appear on those shows and promote their point of view. Or they may just be promoting the point of view of the organization they’re paid to represent. That usually includes casting the opposing view in the worst negative light. There they sit in front of you on your TV screen. Both advocates determined to repeat their “talking points,” no matter what the question, and determined to discredit the other, or just talk over the other. Is this what Jesus means by “advocate?”

Of course there are other kinds of advocates that you see all the time in the commercials. Those are the lawyers who promise to get you what’s yours by right, to restore what has been damaged by those more powerful than you. And you won’t have to pay unless they win, assuming of course that they decide you have a chance to “win.” Is that what Jesus meant by “Advocate”

There is no one English word that can capture all the wonderful ways in which this 3rd person of the Trinity loves us, encourages us, advises us, and defends us. But all of those things, the Paraclete does for each of us, individually and together as a church. “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another paraclete to be with you all forever,” Jesus promises his disciples. The Greek word means, literally, “one called alongside.” And it was used to describe someone who acted as a legal advocate. But a Greek philosopher wrote of how God did not need a “paraclete” to help him make this word and govern it.

So there are almost as many translations of paraclete as there are English translations. In the King James version, it is the “comforter,” which back in 1611, meant someone who strengthens you, who encourages you. Perhaps today, we might say that the Paraclete is your coach, who picks you up, who reminds you of what is good about you, and encourages you to learn from your successes and your failures. The Paraclete is the ultimate motivational speaker.

In the New International Version, it is the “Counselor.” Sometimes we need someone who will sit down with us, patiently listen to us, and without judging us, gently keep asking questions until we face the truth of who we truly are, as God knows us and loves us.

Today you heard that it is the “Advocate” who will be with you forever. Not the kind of advocate who only cares about winning the argument by whatever means necessary; or the advocate who will only take your case if he thinks he can win. No, this Advocate will defend you, no matter the odds or the numbers aligned against you. When you’re not sure what to say, if you will listen to the Defender that is in your mind, your heart and your soul, the Defender will give you the words you need at that moment.

Last week, I said that this 14th chapter of John’s Gospel is Jesus’ “Farewell” to his disciples. He has just told them that where he is going, they cannot come. And yet, later in this final lesson, he tells his disciples, “I assure you that it is better for you that I go away. If I don’t go away, the Companion won’t come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” That’s a new translation called the Common English Bible. We believe that God became a human being. He walked with people. He talked to them, he embraced them. He loved them. But what Jesus wants us to understand is that he still walks with us, talks with us, embraces us, loves us.

We have a Companion, who is the Holy Spirit who comes from the Father and the Son, and who encourages us, who coaches us, counsels us and defends us. Our Companion has come to us, and will come to us again on Pentecost Sunday. Get ready for your Companion to come to you.

Real Hope: 5th Sunday of Easter

“When I go to prepare a place for you, I will return and take you to be with me, so that where I am you will be too.” (John 14:3)

Well, it appears that we're all still here. Yes, I chuckled slightly at the ads for pet care, post-rapture, and the invitations to post-rapture lootings. But throughout the week, my sense of humor was tempered by the stories I heard of people desperate for a sign of God's presence in our broken world.

“Knowing the date of the end of the world changes all your future plans,” said a 27-year-old wife and mother. She thought she'd go to medical school, until she began tuning in to Family Radio and heard the Rev. Earl Camping. She and her husband lived and worked in New York City. But a year ago, they decided they decided to spend all their remaining time on Earth with their infant daughter. “My mentality was, why are we going to work for more money? It just seemed kind of greedy to me. And unnecessary,” she says.

Now they are in Orlando, Florida, in a rented house, passing out tracts and reading the Bible. Their daughter is 2 years old, and their second child is due in June. But acoording to the husband, they were spending all of their savings, so that, on May 21, they would have nothing left. Nothing, except for the fervent hope that all of them would be raptured. In the same news story, a single man said this: “I no longer think about 401(k)s and retirement. I'm not stressed about losing my job, which a lot of other people are in this economy. I'm just a lot less stressed, and in a way I'm more carefree.”

I appreciate the faith and the love that you could hear in the comments of these three Christian souls. But it was based on a false hope peddled by a false prophet. Jesus warned us about them. What we need is real hope that we can hold on to when we would be tempted to look for a rapture, a quick end to all our worrys and pains. And that is exactly what Jesus Christ offers us today when he says to us, as he said then, “When I go to prepare a place for you, I will return and take you to be with me, so that where I am you will be too.”

Jesus has to give them something. He has just told Peter, tonight, you will deny me three times. He has just told the disciples, where I am going you cannot come. He is about to be arrested, tried and executed. His disciples know this, and we can easily imagine their hopelessness. But then Jesus says: Don't be troubled. Trust God and trust me. There is room to spare in my Father's house, and I'm going to prepare a place for you. Then I'm going to return and take you to me so that wherever I am, you will be too.

It might seem that the rooms to which Jesus is referring are the individual places that he is going to prepare for each of us, which we go to after our physical death. But “room” and “place” are different words, both in the original Greek, and in our English translation. So, the rooms in the Father's house are not the places that Jesus is preparing for us. The “rooms” that Jesus mentions here were the inns of his day where foot-weary travellers would stop and eat and rest up for the rest of the journey. Where is the Father's house. It is right here, this world into which God sent his only begotten Son, not to condemn this world, but to save it! On the last day of the Resurrection, this world is not going to be blasted away into nothingness. It will be transformed.

In the meantime, the Resurrected Jesus has already returned and taken us to himself that wherever we are, he is there too. He is with us today. In whatever room in which you are staying today, Jesus Christ is with you. In whatever room to which we travel tomorrow, the day after and the day after that, he is with us. How? If I explained it fully this morning, I would end up preaching next Sunday's sermon as well as this Sunday's. Next Sunday, Jesus will tell us of the coming Holy Spirit, who will fulfill Jesus' promise today: I will return and take you to be with me, that wherever I am, you will be there too.

We still hope to reach that place which Jesus has prepared for us. And Jesus will take each of us to that place. But our ultimate hope is not a false hope of escape from this world. Our lasting hope is the Father's house to which Jesus Christ came, and comes, to save. That is the real hope to which I witness, with the witness that has been handed down to me by the first witnesses of the Resurrected Jesus. He has prepared a wonderful place for each of us. In the Holy Spirit, he has already returned. And come what may, we can live with him as Resurrected people, fearing nothing. For where he is today, there we already are!

Sacred Worship and Sacred Service

“So don’t let anyone judge you about eating or drinking or about a festival, a new moon observance, or sabbaths. These religious practices are only a shadow of what was coming—the body that cast the shadow is Christ.” (Colossians 2:16-17, Common English Bible)

The C.S. Lewis Bible I bought recently has this from Lewis, which the editors thought related to the passage from Colossians. In Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, Lewis writes of the danger that “religion” becoming “one more department of life, an extra department added to the economic, the social, the intellectual, the recreational, and all the rest.” And yet, religion as a department seems to “thrive,” according to Lewis. “It thrives because there exists in many people a ‘love of religious observances,’” which Lewis calls a “merely natural taste.”

In other words, our ways of worshiping are just natural things of this world, which we call “sacred,” and can become ends in themselves, “an idol that hides both God and my neighbours.” Do Lewis’s words smack in your heart as an indictment, or a harsh and unfair criticism? Do Lewis’s words, as well those of Paul in Colossians, cut to close to home for us liturgical Christians with our love of ritual and ceremony?

For me personally, the answer is absolutely not. I witness to the transformation that God has worked in my life over the years through the liturgies of daily prayer and the Holy Eucharist. There was a time in my life when “truth” was something I zealously sought and considered my sole responsibility to defend. But in truth, my seeking of “truth” was a solitary quest. It was something I had to find, and then defend as though my life depended on it. But as I continued to take Holy Communion at Grace Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Sunday after Sunday, year after year, I became more and more a “living member” – a living hand and foot of the Body of Christ.

That Body is made up of many people, all with their own unique perspectives. And the more I became a part of that body, the more I realized that I needed other people to find the “truth.” In short, it was through the rituals and ceremonies of the Holy Eucharist that I was saved from my lonely search for truth, and born again into that wonderful and sacred mystery called the Church. To me, our worship is a beautiful “shadow” of what is coming—the Body of Christ.

And yet, while God used the “natural taste” of Episcopal worship to change my life, I agree with Lewis, and Colossians, that such natural tastes cannot box God in. God can use our natural tastes to reach us. And God can abandon them if the shadows become more important to us that the light that makes them. I also learned from Grace Church’s passion for Outreach that the shadows of Christ, which we see inside our churches, must be extended outside the walls of our church. We extend the shadow of Christ through our individual acts of service, and through our common actions as a parish church.

We need our sacred spaces to be nourished together with Christ himself. And so strengthened, we feed others with the same Christ.

Unity: 4th Sunday of Easter

On Easter Sunday, we gathered together, in unity with Bishop Kee Sloan and through him with all the people of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama which he helps to govern. In unity, we broke ground on the new sacred space where we worship God together. And in unity we renewed our Baptismal vows. “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers,” Bishop Kee asked each of us, to which we responded, “I will, with God’s help.”

I hope you remembered all that when you heard this passage from Acts: “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Our Book of Common Prayer is filled with such echoes of Holy Scripture. In this brief description of the early church are what biblical scholars have seen as the four marks of the Christian church; then, now and always.

This past week, I attended the National Workshop on Christian Unity as the Ecumenical representative from this Diocese. There, I met with my fellow Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, Moravians, Orthodox and Roman Catholics among others. And this passage from Acts supplied the theme for this year’s workshop: Together with Glad and Generous Hearts.

There has been much progress in our quest to be truly united in worship and community. We now have full communion agreements with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Moravian Church. While respecting each other’s right to govern themselves, we have agreed that in our communion of bread and wine, it is the same Jesus Christ whom we receive. With these agreements, it is even possible for an Episcopal priest to serve in a local Lutheran or Moravian church, and vice versa. We are now in the beginning of a dialogue with the Methodist Church that, it is hoped, will lead to a similar agreement.

Each denomination will continue to preserve those practices and teachings that are most particular to themselves. But we are united in the four marks of the Christian Church. We seek a fuller understanding of the apostles’ teaching, together in fellowship. Together, we break the bread as Jesus told us to always do in remembrance of him so that he may be as present with us as he was with his first disciples. And together, we pray, sometimes as the Spirit moves us, but usually as our books of prayer teach us to pray.

At the same time, there have also been road bumps. Every year, there is a conference of the Episcopal, Lutheran and Roman Catholic bishops in Alabama. This year, our preliminary theme is “Winter of Ecumenism.” For decades, Anglicans and Roman Catholics have been in dialogue to find common ground. Through that dialogue, we have come to much more common understanding of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. But more recently, the boundaries between us seem to be hardening. The current Pope has encouraged dissatisfied Anglicans to being their prayer book, and even their married priests, into the Roman Catholic Church as converts. Our respect for the freedom of Episcopal dioceses to do things their own way, even if we disagree with them, has certainly made it harder to find common ground with the Roman Catholic Church.

In fact, how easy is it to find unity in our own national church, in our diocese, in our parish? When you hear of the four marks of the Church, do they sound like a wonderful place in which we already live? Are they a vision to which we can hopefully aspire? Or as we hear of how so many churches struggling with declining budgets, declining membership and conflicting priorities, do these four marks of the early Church sound like an indictment of our failures?

That was the question which Dr. Mark Allen Powell raised at the Workshop. He led a Bible study of today’s passage from Acts. And he pointed us back to the beginning of Acts. Remember that Acts is Luke’s sequel to his Gospel. He begins the sequel by recalling that in his first book, he wrote about “all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up.” If Jesus only “began” to teach and do his ministry in the Gospel, then the book of Acts is about how Jesus continued to teach his church and work through his church.

Through the Holy Spirit, who in the words of our creed, “proceeds from the Father and the Son,” Jesus Christ continues to teach and do the works of God through his Church, broken as it is. So thankfully, all we need to do to be a united Church sharing the four marks of the early Church is to look for what God is already doing and get behind it.

I saw a church united last Friday, as Pauline’s family stood around her at Shepherd’s Cove. I led the litany for the dying, and then anointed Pauline for the healing of her soul. With our beautifully written prayers and sacramental actions, I did what we Episcopalians do best. And then Pastor Don Cotton prayed from his heart. And that opened the door for the Spirit to move through the hearts of Pauline’s family, as they all prayed with whatever words the Spirit gave them. Baptists and Episcopalians, we were united in the marks of fellowship and prayer.

I saw a church united on the Saturday before Easter. In the morning, with glad and generous hearts, we shared bread, actually in this case, beans and rice. But with the early church we took what you all have given and we distributed to those in need. Later in the day, we gathered as one fellowship, one community, young and old. With glad and generous hearts, we shared the joys of childhood. And together, we prepared this fellowship hall to be a beautiful offering to our Lord on the holiest day of the Christian year. We were united in fellowship, worship, and service.

Dr. Powell concluded his Bible study by saying, “God’s mission is going to get done, with or without you. But if you act fast, you can get in on it.” Let us be united in seeking out that mission, and getting in on it, wherever it is. If we act fast, then the marks of Christ’s Church will shine from us for all to see.

Glimpses of Resurrection: 3rd Sunday of Easter

Yesterday, I walked along the lake in Guntersville for the first time since the storm. Everywhere I walked, I saw solid, tall trees that had once towered over me, blown down by nothing more than air. But as I walked, I also came upon a mother goose and her very young goslings, straddling the path on which I was walking. I know from experience that it doesn't take much to get a mother goose hissing at you. So I stopped, hoping they would move. But they just stood there looking at me. Eventually, I went around on the grass.

Just a few minutes later, I met a woman on the path who recognized me, even without the collar, as the Episcopal priest on Main Street. Her name is Jenny Kingbridge (?). We agreed that the weather was glorious. We also agreed how awful and awesome was the sight of all those massive trees blown away. I then mentioned the geese I had just seen. What a sign of resurrection, I said, that these small creatures had survived the storm that had killed such large members of the Plant kingdom. Jenny then told me about a nest near her house, where she believed, the mother had been killed just after her eggs had hatched. But according to Jenny, the father had fed the babies for days until they were able to fly from the nest. In our two stories meeting at the right place and the right time, Jenny and I recognized resurrection.

Recognizing Resurrection: That is the dilemma for all of us in Northern Alabama. It is also the dilemma for Cleopas and his companion, probably his wife. As far as I can recognize, resurrection is in the small things, which by God's grace will become great things.

This is not the first time in Luke's Gospel that those who perhaps should have known better didn't recognize who Jesus really was. Cleopas and his companion were walking away from Jerusalem after Passover thinking that Jesus was dead and buried. His mother Mary and Joseph were going back home to Nazareth after celebrating Passover in Jerusalem. After a day's travel, they realized that 12-year-old Jesus was not with them. As Cleopas and his companion waited three days in Jerusalem through Jesus' arrest, crucifixion and burial before leaving, Mary and Joseph searched three days for the boy Jesus in Jerusalem.

And when they finally find Jesus, both couples do not recognize him, and both are called up short for their lack of recognition. “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” this complete stranger tells Cleopas and his companion. “Why were you looking for me?” the boy Jesus dares to challenge his parents. And then, Jesus tells both couples essentially the same thing. “Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” the 12-year-old Jesus tells His parents. “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Jesus says on the way to Emmaus.

In Greek, they’re the same basic word, “must” and “necessary.” Even at the age of 12, Jesus had begun to sense that he had a destiny; that there was a plan which was so much bigger than what his mother would imagine. And even when Cleopas and his companion thought that disaster had frustrated Jesus’ plan, they suddenly recognized that destiny had been fulfilled in the strangest way. “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.” They recognized him in something so small and ordinary as bread and wine.

There are so many in this state whose destinies have been permanently altered. So many plans have crashed like “sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground” as James Taylor sings. We at Christ Church know something of that. But if the truth be told what we have suffered is nothing compared to the hundreds of people in Marshall County alone who are living in tents, many of whom are in such shock that they’re walking around with a look in their eyes like zombies, as one member of the Long Term Recovery Committee put it. This parish, through its Outreach fund, has given $1,700 to the Diocese to help with the relief and recovery. But the recovery and relief that people need most can’t be bought. They need to know that whatever they have lost, they still have a destiny. They need to know that there is still a plan for them. They need to be able to recognize resurrection.

I think I caught a glimpse of resurrection yesterday. Like Cleopas and his companion, we catch a glimpse of resurrection this morning in the offering, the blessing, the breaking and the sharing of bread and wine. Let us all look for a glimpse of the resurrected Jesus, who walks with us in our joy and hope, our grief and anguish, on our road to Emmaus.

Things Passing Away, and Things Raised

Here we are in the season of Easter, when we celebrate Jesus’ Resurrection as just the first crop of the harvest (1st Corinthians 15:23, Common English Bible). That harvest will be the Resurrection of the whole world. But if God the Father loved this world enough that God the Son came to die for it (John 3:16), then why does 1st John advise Christians, “Don’t love the world or the things in the world?” (1st John 12:15). If the world was destined to be obliterated by the hand of God, it might make sense not to get too attached to it. But “God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17). Shouldn’t we love this world that God made and has saved from eternal death through Jesus Christ?

The clue to unraveling this seeming contradiction comes in the next two verses, though you might not know it from some translations. “For all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever” (New Revised Standard Version). The truth is that “desire” is not always a bad thing. But to “crave” something, as the Common English Bible puts it, is always a bad thing. To crave something means that a thing has more power than we do. To crave something is to be so fearful of its loss that we desperately cling to it because we can’t imagine life without it.

The things of this world are “passing away.” But they are not passing away into nothing. They are to be transformed in the Resurrection of all things, of which Jesus is the first crop. As the resurrected Jesus has become “trans-physical”—still physical yet transformed—so shall we and all the things of this world become trans-physical. But we must not crave, or cling to these things now. In their passing away, the things of this world will be like the air through our fingers. But the Holy Spirit, which blows through this world like the wind, will hold you in its arms, and give you safe landing. In that landing there will be new things, gifts from God, to love. And at the end of all things, those things will be raised. Hallelujah!

Justice has been Done: Now for Reconciliation

As President Obama said last night, Justice has been done. And for that, we may rightly give thanks. My son, John, was in one of the distant suburbs of Washington, D.C. last night when I called him. So, he wasn’t able to join all those college students from nearby George Washington University outside the White House . They were all about his age. He was 11 on September 11th, 2001. Laura and I picked him up from school that afternoon and went home. From the top of the slope where we entered our home, we could see the smoke rising from the Pentagon, about two miles away.

I think that much of what we saw outside the White House last night was relief, an exhaling of breath after nearly ten years of holding it in, bracing ourselves for the next strike. For months afterward, I instinctively looked up to the sky whenever I heard the engine of a jet plane headed for Reagan National Airport. Many of us stoically joked about living near Bin Laden’s favorite targets. At a costume party a few months later, one member of our church came as a “safe house.” She taped cellophane to the top of a cardboard box which she wore on her head, while taped to her body were the recommended items for a safe house. We all laughed. It helped us live with the fear.

All of which is to say that I understand the reaction of so many Americans to the news that justice has been served on the man who murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people that day. But after the relief must come reflection. Then must come the turning of our hearts toward reconciliation. Any justice that consists solely of execution and punishment is incomplete. I didn’t say it was wrong, just incomplete. Jesus satisfied the justice of God on the cross; not to punish sinners, but to reconcile them to God. As we exhale after nearly 10 years of living in fear, let us pray and work for reconciliation, which is the ultimate justice.

“O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” (Collect For The Human Family, Book of Common Prayer).

Does God Want Flattery?

Did God send the tornadoes? Or did God just permit them to operate according to the normal rules of nature? But if God only permitted the tornadoes to land on whomever they landed on, doesn’t that still make God responsible? But if God really loves human beings, then surely he can’t be responsible for storms that destroy human lives, can he? But if that’s the case, then what are e doing here worshiping this supposedly almighty God?

Are these questions you have asked yourself since Wednesday afternoon? Do any of these questions make you uncomfortable, as though they might offend God, or make you sound less than faithful? I hope not. If there is one message we need to hear from the Word of God this Sunday after the devastating tornadoes that struck Alabama last Wednesday, it comes from the book of Job. God prefers our honest questions and complaints to what C.S. Lewis called a flattery that is resentment based on fearful submission. Submission to God out of fear is not as faithful to God as submitting to him our questions, even the angry ones.

The book of Job consists of a long dialogue between Job and his friends about why he has suddenly been afflicted with every possible disaster, short of death. It becomes a fierce debate as Job questions and complains against the silent God he holds responsible for his suffering, and his friends defend God just as fiercely. But as Lewis noted, their defense of God is all false flattery. Job’s friends aren’t really trying comfort Job so much as they’re trying to comfort themselves. “You see my flattery,” Job tells them, “and you are afraid” (6:21). They see all the terrible things that have happened to Job: the killing of all his children, the complete destruction of his wealth, the profusion of painful, oozing itchy sores all over his body. They assume that God has done all that to Job. And they are afraid God might do it to them. So they flatter God by blaming Job, in the hope that God’s wrath won’t be directed at them.

And so it goes, chapter after chapter, until finally the LORD God does answer Job. One of Job’s friends, Elihu, hears the rumbling thunder of God’s voice when he says to Job, “Do you know how God lays his command on the lightning…Do you know the balancing of the clouds?” (37:15-16). And then God himself speaks to Job out of the whirlwind (38:1), thundering, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” Afterward, a humbled Job can only say, “know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted…I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (42:2-3).

And so Job kneels before God and says, “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:6). Or perhaps the Hebrew might be translated, “I am comforted in dust and ashes.” In the end, God doesn’t answer any of Job’s questions about human suffering. Instead, God asks Job to trust in God’s purpose for him, a purpose that will be fulfilled whether Job lives or dies. And in that trust, Job is comforted, and repents. God then turns his anger toward Job’s friends, those flatterers of his, and says, “I am angry with you, for you have not spoken accurately about me, as my servant Job has” (42:7-8). It seems that God prefers Job’s hard questions, however wrong they might be, to the fearful flattery of his friends.

What is God’s loving purpose for us in this state after last Wednesday? None of us can answer that question for anyone but themselves. For in truth, there are as many answers to that question as there are human souls in Alabama. I believe that God will give those answers to those who do not settle for fearful flattery. In God’s good time, God will give his answers to those who, like Job, stand up to him with their questions, and wait for the thunder. In the meantime, as we begin our efforts to help with relief and recovery, let us all wait with each other. Let us all wait with each others’ questions. And let us all wait with each other for the thunder.