frozen (over)

 the mississippi river here is

at least a little bit

frozen over

subfreezing

and some subzero

temperatures will do that

even to a 

grand river

like the mississippi

as a result

the river is quite still

and even has some patches

where snow has accumulated 

on top of the ice

the thing about rivers

though 

is that 

in most cases

and especially in the case of

big rivers like this one

is that 

frozen over

does not equal

frozen

there is water under that 

sheet of ice that is

still liquid

still moving

still flowing

and in time that will 

thaw

break up

melt

that layer of ice

especially when

the sun 

comes out to help

it seems like

there's a metaphor in there

somewhere

(especially if you capitalize 

three particular letters)

 

 

 

january 2026

milltown coffee

(with a very nice view

of the river)

moline il

The Ballad of the Democracy Destroyer, or, Let It Slide

There came a man, wealth was his god;

And vain and boastful was his play,

But still the people did applaud

And send him on his merry way

To fame and fortune, wrongly earned.

But he the power of fame had learned.

But when his star began to fade,

Ill fortune raised him up anew.

So to TV he turned, and played

A corporate mogul, strong and true.

But when off-camera, lust ran wild - 

It mattered not woman or child.

But those who fawned him let it slide

And helped his heinous deeds to hide.

Though fame was fun, he wanted more,

So power he ventured next to seek.

He sought it as he had before:

Suck up to strong and crush the weak.

The simpering haters joined his cause,

Ignoring all the rules and laws. 

Though all the girls he'd groped before 

Bore witness and called out his ways,

And others named the Russian shore

As stoking his demented haze,

Still half a nation followed him;

Liberty's light grew faint and dim.

Somehow this nation let it slide; 

Democracy just up and died.

Four years his ego rampant ran

Before the voters turned him out.

But four years on it was his plan

That put plain decency to rout.

Now regained his tainted height,

He turned to put his foes to flight.

A goon squad serving him alone

And minions spouting garbled lies?

Ere long, pretense was up and gone.

See, this is how a nation dies.

But still the ones with legal power

Failed oh, so badly in that hour.

Again the cowardly let it slide

And left him on his throne of pride.

He waged his war yet undeclared

On all who dared to disagree,

And rained foul hate throughout the land

From sea to no-more-shining sea.

E'en as his mind grew weak and pained, 

His minions siezed his power and reigned.

And so we stand at Hell's own gate - 

Or is it Heaven's? But who can tell?

Are we defunct? Is it too late?

Or can this story yet end well?

Will evil be cast out for good,

This nation yet be what it should?

Or, since vain Congress let it slide,

Has this country, at long last, died?

(January 2026)

Sermon: The Refugee Jesus

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

December 28, 2025, Christmas 1A

Matthew 2:13-23

 

The Refugee Jesus

I wish I could simply preach a simple, carefree, Christmas-y sermon today. I wish I could just ignore this story and keep it cheerful. But this story resists easy cheeriness, and in the world and time in which we live, to ignore this scripture and the way it warns us would be an act of pastoral abdication on my part.

It is one of the most horrifying stories in all of scripture, and possibly the most horrifying in the New Testament, possibly aside from the Crucifixion. The “Slaughter of the Innocents,” it’s called. A frightened and angry tyrant, lashing out in his fear and embarrassment, ordering the death of an untold number of infants and toddlers – all those age two or under in the town of Bethlehem – out of a raging desire to protect his own title and power. Surely we could never imagine such a ruler, or the kind of figure who would commit such an atrocity.

This story slashes across Matthew’s nativity account like the sharp blade of a sword wielded by one of Herod’s men. It all seems fairly innocent at first, if a bit convoluted, as Joseph has to be persuaded in a dream to take his unexpectedly pregnant wife, bearing the Son of God by the Holy Spirit. The appearance of the Magi from the east, how much later we’re not really sure, adds both a curiosity and an element of danger to the event; the so-called “wise men” blunder into Judea asking the sitting king for the whereabouts of the new king, and have to be warned in another of those provident dreams to go home by a different route and not play into Herod’s hands by leading him to the child. (More about the Magi next Sunday when we observe Epiphany.)

At any rate, it would be so tempting to wrap up the story at verse 15, with the Magi following their alternate route and Joseph and Mary left wondering what to do with frankincense and myrrh on the way to Egypt. (the gold, on the other hand, you figure they might have an idea what to do with). Everyone’s safe, Matthew gets to make another of his “fulfillment” references by citing Hosea 11:1 as another prophetic box that Jesus checks off, and we all go home happy.

Herod wasn’t happy, though. And Herod didn’t know when he was beaten.

If the story ever appears in most Christmas celebrations (particularly when the lectionary doesn’t include it as it does this year), it happens only if the “Coventry carol” is sung. That carol dates from no later than 1534, as part of a “mystery play” performed in that city in England, and probably much earlier. This is the one that begins “lullay, lulla, thou little tiny child” which you might have heard before, but the whole carol lays out the horrible story, particularly in the second, third, and fourth stanzas:

 

O sisters too, how may we do, 

For to preserve this day

This poor youngling for whom we sing,

Bye, bye, lully lullay?

 

Herod the king, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day

His men of might in his own sight

All the young children to slay.

 

That woe is me, poor child, for thee,

And ever mourn and may

For thy parting neither say nor sing

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

 

It is, if we’re paying attention, profoundly hard to read this passage without wanting to cry, or to cry out. Even as we can give thanks that the child Jesus was delivered it’s hard not to cry out with Rachel, whose lament from Jeremiah Matthew invokes here. Why, God? Why did these children have to die?

This story never fails to be horrifying, challenging, and difficult if not impossible to bear; however, in the age in which we live now, we can no longer say it is unimaginable. One of the more striking features of this Christmas season is the appearance of what might be called "ICE nativities" among a number of churches in US cities. In some cases the baby Jesus, or maybe Mary or Joseph, or perhaps all of the are missing from the scene, replaced only with a sign saying "ICE WAS HERE." In others, the nativity figures are present, but masked and weaponed ICE agents are seen approaching with masks on and weapons drawn. 

What didn't necessarily get recognized about those scenes in the press (which really needs more religion reporters out there) or those who complained about the scenes was that, as we see in today's reading, were it not for the intervention of an angel in another dream of Joseph's, our Lord and Savior and his earthly parents were going to be caught up in not a display, but an actual physical act of such violence, and even worse.  

Even in the face of this story, though, I find my voice choking, unable or unwilling to cry out at the injustice of this slaughter recorded by Matthew, if only because if I do cry out “Why do these children have to die?” I am entirely afraid that God’s answer might just be “I was just going to ask you the same question.”

On this day, when the carols and praises get stuck in our throats and wilt in our hearts, we are reminded that Jesus calls us, *all* of us to come; all of us, including Jesus’ fellow refugees, from Gaza or South Sudan or Myanmar or anywhere from which any of God’s children flee death or despair or death or tyranny or death or abuse or death *or death* **or death**, calling them, and us, to life, and life together. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: Three Presbyterian Hymnal iunless otherwise noted): #143, Angels from the Realms of Glory: Carol sing - #144, In the Bleak Midwinter, #110, Love Has Come, #132, Good Christian Friends, Rejoice; #---, What Child Is This, additional verses; #136, Go, Tell It on the Mountain

 

 

 

Sermon: The One Who Did Mercy

First Presbyterian Church

July 13, 2025, Pentecost 5C

Luke 10:25-37

 

The One Who Did Mercy

 

 

It is such a familiar story, what’s a pastor to do with it? 

It is maybe the most well-known parable Jesus told, rivaled only by the parable of the prodigal son or maybe the parable of the sheep and the goats. It’s a full-fledged story, with plot and development and conflict and all the good stuff that makes a story compelling enough to hear. 

Well, one thing we can do is back up and remind ourselves that the story didn’t just come out of thin air; Jesus is – cue the dramatic music – being interrogated. By a lawyer. 

The lawyer is, as Luke tells the story, testing Jesus. Throughout the different gospels different parties at different times do just that, trying to trap Jesus in some kind of bind that would either set him up to be found in error theologically or cause him to fall out of favor with the people. The lawyer (not the kind of lawyer we think of nowadays but an interpreter of the law) seems to be probing Jesus for some kind of theological misstep about the commandments. 

Instead, Jesus (as he so often does) turns the question on his interrogator, who could hardly get away with declining to answer – it was his job to answer questions about the law. So, he answered, and did so appropriately, turning to words from Deuteronomy 6 (with the "mind" added to the heart and soul and might - here given as "strength" - found in that passage). That's the part of the scripture reading covered in that first hymn we sang, and it also shows up in different contexts in the gospels of Matthew and John. 

In this case, with the famous parable coming right after it, it's easy to overlook this summation of the "greatest commandment," but we shouldn't. While here it is quoted by Jesus's interrogator, in those other gospel context Jesus himself states it as "the greatest commandment" and "one like unto it," to use the King James style of speech. If you were seeking to summarize the faith in as few words as possible, this isn't your worst possibility. 

Jesus more or less congratulated him and invited him to go his way in peace and security. This of course left the lawyer stewing in the same kind of humiliation that Jesus’s would-be interlocutors typically endured; their questioning turned against them, their duplicity exposed. 

But in this case the interrogator can’t leave well enough alone, and – using a long-favored legal tactic – tries to recover himself by questioning the terminology in the answer: “And who is my neighbor?” 

The novelist and Presbyterian pastor Frederick Buechner offers this take on the lawyer and his question:

He presumably wanted something on the order of: "A neighbor (hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part) is to be construed as meaning a person of Jewish descent whose legal residence is within a radius of no more than three statute miles from one's own legal residence unless there is another person of Jewish descent (hereinafter to be referred to as the party of the second part) living closer to the party of the first part than one is oneself, in which case the party of the second part is to be construed as neighbor to the party of the first part and one is oneself relieved of all responsibility of any sort or kind whatsoever."

Instead Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, the point of which seems to be that your neighbor is to be construed as meaning anybody who needs you. The lawyer's response is left unrecorded.

 

Well, not that I want to be in the position of questioning a Pulitzer Prize nominee like Buechner, but one small part of the lawyer’s response actually is recorded for us. And it’s a pretty revealing answer. 

Upon finishing the parable, Jesus again turns on his would-be interrogator. Having told the story in which a Samaritan steps up, above and beyond the call of duty, to aid a badly wounded man who had been passed over by members of the religious elite, he again questions the lawyer, asking him to identify which of the three travelers in the story had been a neighbor to the wounded traveler. Do pay attention to the lawyer’s response:

“The one who showed him mercy.”

On one level, of course, the lawyer has answered rightly. Now the way the Greek is constructed in this particular sentence, a more literal translation would read something like “the one who did mercy to him.” That’s actually a theologically superior way to put it, if not so wonderful grammatically. “Mercy”, like so many of the loaded theological words we use, is active. It’s not a feeling or emotion or empathetic reaction. Mercy is, even if English doesn’t quite capture it, something you do. And this traveler had indeed “done mercy” to the wounded man, unmistakably so. And Jesus’s answer to the lawyer acknowledges this, as he leaves him with the command “Go and do likewise.”

But notice the lawyer’s answer again, even in the theologically superior but grammar-awkward version: “The one who did mercy to him.”

The three passing travelers in this story didn’t get names, but they did get pretty clear identifiers that Jesus’s listeners would have immediately recognized. One was a priest, a religious authority, and the second was a Levite, a member of that tribe set apart since Moses’s time for service in the Temple. Two figures to whom would be attributed qualities of righteousness as a part of their standing among the people.

The third man? A Samaritan. The lawyer couldn’t even say the word.

In the time of Elijah and Elisha Samaria was simply a region of Israel, the northern of the two kingdoms that had resulted from the machinations of those who succeeded Solomon as king after his death (the other kingdom was Judah, which was centered in Jerusalem). The city of Samaria sometimes served as the seat of government of that northern kingdom, and a lot of prophetic activity was concentrated there. By the time of today’s story, though, all of the region is simply lumped into a larger Roman province called Palestine. Yet over the centuries a virulent schism had erupted between those Jews (whose worship was centered on the Temple in Jerusalem) and the Samaritans, who were, technically, Jews, but whose practice had evolved to worship on Mount Gerizim in their own territory. That site was, they claimed, the original holy place in Israel, dating to the time of Joshua, as opposed to Jerusalem, which only became prominent during the era of King David. In short, a disagreement over what might seem to outsiders an arcane theological point had become a hard-and-fast schism, with Jerusalem Jews literally going out of their way to avoid even passing through the region of Samaria, much less actually having anything to do with Samaritans.

For Jesus to invoke the third, merciful traveler as a Samaritan no doubt provoked agitated bristling, and probably an oath or two, among his listeners, if they were a well-behaved group. And let's be clear; had the parable been told in Samaria, and the identity of the third passerby been Judean, reactions would have been extremely similar. Vitriol ran both ways.

It was a two-sided provocation that Jesus put before his listeners. By no means would any self-respecting Jew of what we might call the Jerusalem party even think of defiling himself by dealing with a Samaritan at all; being a neighbor to a Samaritan was out of the question, and no such self-respecting Jew would conceive of a Samaritan being a neighbor to a Jew. It would never happen, they might say, the way a plantation overseer of the 1850s might say that someone of the same skin color as the slaves he ruled over would never be President of the United States. 

Such was the vitriol that our lawyer couldn’t even vocalize that “the one who did mercy” could even possibly be a Samaritan. 

It’s easy enough for us to grasp the main point of the parable, and to apply to it Frederick Buechner’s point that a neighbor is basically anybody who needs you. But it’s not always easy or comfortable - or, frankly, desirable to us - to get Jesus’s point that “anybody” really does mean anybody. We live in a world that isn't prepared to give up our grudges, our ancient hostilities, our prejudices or superior attitudes or whatever ruses we use to divide ourselves and keep ourselves set apart from and above others. It would never happen. It can’t happen. 

I won’t let it happen.

Our society is pretty good at demeaning and dehumanizing “the other.” The world out there calls them job-stealers and threatens to build a great big wall to keep them out, never mind who’s going to pick all those tomatoes and strawberries in south Florida or California. Or people call them terrorists and yell "go back where you came from" even if they were born here, never mind that they are likely to be the ones that the actual terrorists kill first.

Or, when they get shot, people just call them thugs.

Jesus has this nasty habit of not caring one whit about our preferences or prejudices or whatnot. The world tries to respond with “but Jesus, they’re…” and Jesus cuts us off and finishes the sentence “your neighbor.” Society protests “but he’s a…” and Jesus won’t let us finish but says “the one you should imitate.” See, the kingdom of God doesn’t honor those divisions we create. The kingdom of God sees need and moves to meet it. End of discussion. If we want to claim to be part of that kingdom of God, if we call ourselves disciples, we’d better move that same way.

Which one … was a neighbor to the man who fell among the thieves?

The one who did mercy to him.

Go and do likewise. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #203, Jesu, Jesu, Fill Us with Your Love; #---, O love your God with all your heart; #707, Take Thou Our Minds, Dear Lord

Sermon: The More Excellent Way

First Presbyterian Church

February 2, 2025, Epiphany 4C

1 Corinthians 13:1-14:1

 

The More Excellent Way

 

 

One of the challenges of preaching a text like this one, which has gained tremendous familiarity over time due to its popularity as a text for weddings, is that we forget that it is not a free-standing, isolated poem unrelated to anything but itself. Even in the act of preaching outside of a marriage ceremony, seldom does all of this other stuff in Paul's letter to Corinth get looked over and considered. We might even forget, after a fashion, that Paul didn't write his letters in chapters - these divisions were created much later, mostly for reading convenience. There are probably quite a few churches where this text is being heard today, in isolation, after weeks of sermons from Luke's gospel, where folks switched over for today because this is such a popular text while the reading from Luke, where the people of Jesus's hometown get so mad at his sermon that they try to kill him, is less appealing. What gets missed in that case is all the connections between this chapter and what has come before in Paul's letter.

To take one example, consider the very first verse of chapter 8 of 1 Corinthians. It would seem to be a strange place to look, given that its first words are "Now about food sacrificed to idols...", which doesn't seem like the introduction to a statement on the importance of love. Nonetheless, before we can even get away from verse 1, Paul has reminded his readers and hearers that "knowledge puffs up while love builds up." He goes on to add that whatever anyone knows (or thinks they know), it's not sufficient, but one who loves God is fully and completely known to God. 

Additionally, a number of other passages earlier in the letter lay a foundation for this discourse on love by pointing to God and our utter reliance on God. It is because of God that "you are in Christ Jesus" (1:30); God is "the one who makes things grow" no matter who planted or watered the seed of the gospel (3:7); God is the one "through whom all things came and through whom we live" (8:6). The God who is this foundation and source and root and all is the one who is the source and direction of our living, and that is found in the love God loves for us, which we then are directed to love towards one another. 

For that matter, other portions of chapter 13 are also echoes of earlier discussions in this letter. Take a look at the list of characteristics of love in verses 4-7:

o   "Love ... does not envy" (4), but the Corinthians are apparently full of "jealousy and quarreling" (3:3); 

o   "Love ... does not boast" (4), but the Corinthians do (4:7, 5:6, where Paul flat-out says that their boasting "not good"); 

o   "Love is not ... proud" (4), but the Corinthians are often described as arrogant or "puffed up" (4:6, 18-19; 5:2, and 8:1); 

o   "Love does not delight in evil" (6), but some of the Corinthians have engaged in taking advantage of unjust courts to exploit others (6:7-8).

Paul has been building the case against the Corinthians throughout the gospel, and far from being cut off from that case, this chapter is very directly addressing their condition. All of these faults that have been noted in this letter point to a decided lack of love in the community.

There is something else to note about this list in verses 4-7. While those in verses 5-6 are more regularly translated actively - " rejoices..." "bears ... believes ... hopes" - some get translated in such a way that we probably don't notice that Paul is using his verbs here. If we were to diagram the phrases "love is patient" or "love is kind," for example, we would place "love" as the subject, "is" as the verb, and "patient" or "kind" as the "object," an adjective modifying "love." That's not how the Greek in which Paul writes works, though. What we translate as "is patient" or "is kind" is the verb of Paul's statement; we might come closer to catching the force of his instruction if we rendered those clauses "love acts patiently" or "love does kindness," representing how these traits are not passive feelings but actions, or even more ways of behavior rather than only of thought or emotion.

This brings us to perhaps the biggest challenge to our knowledge of this chapter, the part that tends to get most buried in marriage-service renderings: love is action. Love is not a thing that is felt; love is a thing that is done, no matter whether the feelings or emotions are there. That is indeed the animating principle behind this whole chapter, and again what the Corinthians seem to be sorely lacking, for all their other spiritual gifts they so liked to boast in.

I've no doubt that we can all come up with times and occasions in which we have witnessed the very people who talked the good game about loving turn around and engage in the most hateful and destructive actions imaginable, maybe even claiming to do so in the name of love. Paul isn't having it; "knowledge puffs up while love builds up."

It is also this understanding that makes all those other spiritual gifts marked by Paul in chapter 12 so utterly dependent on love. While addressing multiple of those gifts, it becomes clear quickly that the business of speaking in tongues was a particular source of boasting among the Corinthians when Paul takes it on first and most elaborately in verse 1. To speak in "the tongues of mortals or of angels" without love is not merely "nothing," as later phrases will conclude; it is the equivalent of "a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." Here the reference seems to be to the practices of some of the temples devoted to Greek and/or Roman gods in Corinth, whose observances were sometimes marked by the regular and prominent sounding of exactly those loud percussion instruments. It's almost as if Paul is saying when you go off on your ecstatic utterances just for your own elevation, with no care or love or concern for your fellow followers of Christ, you're acting exactly like the lost souls you used to be - remembering that before being added to the church many of the Corinthians had been participants in those temple rituals to those Greek and Roman idols. 

The point of this section, which gets elaborated in chapter 14, is not to dismiss those spiritual gifts; the point is that none of those gifts - not prophecy or knowledge or faith to do great things or those tongues - are of any use when not practiced in love, the love that forms the body of Christ and in which that body both lives together and lives toward the world around it. It's even possible that such gifts practiced not in love are more harmful than good. If you can't do it in love, honestly, you're better off keeping it to yourself. Love is the reason any of those spiritual gifts have any value. Love, that divine love infused into human existence, is why any of those works matter.

All of this is part of why Paul could refer to love as "the most excellent way" back at the end of chapter 12, but we shouldn't leave out the end of this chapter in that respect, either. Of all the gifts or behaviors or traits of the life of the body of Christ, love is the one that is eternal. Prophecies will end; when at last we live in eternal union with God, what is the need for prophecy? The gift of tongues, or ecstatic utterances believed to be given by God, seems rather superfluous when in God's eternal presence, yes? Our partial and unfinished knowledge will, at minimum, be finished in the presence of God. 

Even faith and hope, as Paul describes in this famous chapter’s final and most famous verse, are secondary to love in this way. Faith and hope are beautiful. They are amazing gifts of the Spirit. But like the others Paul describes, they are finite gifts to help sustain us through this in-between time. If faith is, as the author of Hebrews describes, “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see,” then what is the point of faith when we are in the very presence of God, seeing God face to face? What is the point of hope, or what is the need for hope, when God is unmistakably and unshakably in the midst of us, for all to see? The partial things, as Paul says in verse 10, come to an end.

But love never ends. Love is as eternal as God is eternal. 

Love. Never. Ends.

Though it is technically not part of today’s lectionary reading, the first verse of chapter 14 is useful, or even needful, to place chapter 13 into proper relationship with chapter 12: “Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the spirit.” 

Not either/or, both/and. 

Paul’s instruction does not mean that the Corinthians, or we, should somehow deny the gifts we have been given by the Spirit – and remember from back in 12:3 (a couple of weeks ago) that anyone who truly confesses that “Jesus is Lord” is gifted by the Holy Spirit. Rather, Paul needs the Corinthians, and us, to understand that the care and feeding and usage of our spiritual gifts within the body of Christ and out in the larger world only works in the context of love – the love that God has shown us so that we might show love for one another and for all of God’s creation. 

Our stories of love will not necessarily be showy or dramatic. They will be heartbreaking at times. They will try our patience or our virtue. We may stumble in grief and leap for joy at the same time because of that love. But if we dare to call ourselves followers of Christ, we will love, without reservation and without qualification.

We will love because God is love, eternal and unending. We will love because God loves. We will love because Christ loves. And we will love because that’s what the body of Christ does.

For love, eternal and unending, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #14, For the Beauty of the Earth; #525, Let Us Break Bread Together; #693, Though I May Speak (The Gift of Love)

 

Sermon: Know Your Place (in Creation)

First Presbyterian Church

September 29, 2024, Pentecost 22B

Job 38:1-11, 34-41; Romans 8:18-25

(note: above link contains all of Job 38-39)

Know Your Place (in Creation)

 

During the month of September, and sometimes into part of October, some Protestant churches observe what is called a "creation season," a period of Sundays in which scripture readings, liturgy, and sermons are chosen to guide Christians towards greater reflection on and understanding of creation as a work and gift of God, and the place we humans occupy as a part of God's creation. This year, your pastor was not quite on top of things to plan for a "creation season", but it seemed worthwhile to put forth at least one Sunday for worship and reflection on this theological reality. 

The thing about making plans for such a Sunday is that one can't know what'a going to happen between the time you make such a plan and that Sunday. In this case, nature offered forth one of its most brutal disasters in recent years in the form of Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm at landfall which brought destruction not only to expected places like the Gulf coast of Florida, but also into Georgia and the Carolinas. One doesn't expect a hurricane to trigger incredibly destructive flooding in the Appalachian Mountains region of North Carolina, but that precise thing is ongoing right now. Places suffering serious damage include the Montreat Conference Center, near Black Mountain, a site near and dear to the hearts of many, many Presbyterians.

To speak of creation and its theological implications in our time means not only acknowledging its sometimes-destructive power, but also acknowledging how human misuse and abuse have contributed to that destructive power. This isn't fun. There are those who refuse to acknowledge such a thing, no matter how clearly climate science speaks on the subject. We dare not come before the God of Creation, or the Christ we worship, with anything less than honesty; to do anything less is a profanation of the Lord's name.

Interestingly, one place in scripture in which creation is described and exalted, not only in its sweetness and light but also in its extremes and potential for harm, is in a book of the Old Testament which few people would think of: the book that tells the story of a righteous man who suffers mightily, betrayed by friends who accuse him of unrighteousness, but eventually demanding an audience of God to plead his innocence. We turn to the book of Job.

Specifically we turn to the thirty-eighth chapter of that book, in which Job finally gets his wish: God appears, “out of the whirlwind” and challenges Job to speak. Except, no, God doesn’t really challenge Job to speak. To be blunt about it, God challenges Job to shut up and listen.

Job had imagined something like what we would call a courtroom situation, in which Job would argue his case and convince God that his suffering was not right and not deserved.  Instead, God tells Job to get suited up and takes him on what amounts to a field trip through creation, for most of chapters 38-41. Even when Job tries to back down in the early verses of chapter 40, God is having none of it. Somehow, God’s answer to Job’s demands for justification is a cosmic nature hike.

God first interjects Godself into the ongoing debate with harsh words: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” In truth that could be directed at any of those involved in the conversation thus far, but Job is the one out front, and Job is the one who is going to take the heat here.

After challenging Job to put on his big-boy pants and get ready to be cross-examined, God takes off. In the course of chapters 38 and 39 we are reminded in short order that Job has been neither present for nor involved in: 

§  Measuring and laying the foundations of the earth, sinking the base of the foundation and laying its cornerstone, to the accompaniment of rejoicing from the stars and heavenly beings; 

§  Sealing up the raging rush of the seas “when it burst out from the womb” (that's some serious feminine imagery applied to a part of creation!), enrobing it in could and mist and fog, and setting its boundaries;

§  Ordering the dawn and the morning;

§  Plunging down into the depths of the sea and knowing its mysteries;

§  Knowing where light itself lives, where the snow and hail gather to descend upon the earth, carving out the channel for the rain and a path for the thunderbolt; 

§  Ordering the stars in their courses and constellations;

§  Calling forth the rain and lightning; 

§  Hunting down the prey by which the lion might feed its cubs;

§  In chapter 39, knowing the ways of the beasts of the wild, hooved animals and birds and the whole lot.

Like the Prodigal Son from the gospel of John, Job finds he cannot possibly contend with God and attempts to back down at the beginning of chapter 40. God’s not done, though. picking up again in chapters 40 and 41 with a downright rhapsodic celebration of two particular beasts, Behemoth and Leviathan. While some commentators try to equate them to native animals of the nearby Nile delta – the hippopotamus and the crocodile – they frankly sound more like creatures that should be featured in the Fantastic Beasts movies than anything we see walking around on earth. (It is after this that Job’s final reckoning with God takes place, but that’s the end of the book.)

It is wild and wonderful poetry, brash and exuberant and, yeah, a little proud in a way that a deity has a right to be. Truly, I do recommend that at some point you read these four chapters for yourself – not trying to discern the mystery or unlock some secret that will tell you when the Rapture is coming or anything like that; just read them as you might read from a book of poetry for once, and let the sheer beauty of God’s good creation wash over you and overwhelm your senses in its wildness and over-the-top breathlessness.

Still, though, we are left hanging, or so it seems. Yes, that’s lovely and all that, one might ask, but what about Job’s suffering? It’s still not fair. What does all of this have to do with that?

Theologians have grappled with this one for centuries, sometimes ending up in the theological equivalent of throwing one’s hands up in the air in resigned despair of ever coming up with an answer. I have no intention of claiming to be smarter or more gifted or more Spirit-guided than they; I can do no more than offer up one possibility, informed by other commentary. It’s deeply unsatisfying in a way and might even throw into question Job’s declared “innocence” in this whole matter, not to mention the our own. 

It is possible, that in all of this dialogue and diatribe and accusing, Job hasn’t even come close to asking the right question. (To be sure his “friends” have been even worse.)

There are many, many possible interpretations of this monologue from God here in chapters 38-41, more than can possibly be attempted in one sermon. However, the following takeaways from this monologue might be suggested, as a means of ordering what all of this means for Job, and for us, in understanding a human place in creation:

1) God orders creation for God’s own purposes and for the good of ALL creation – not just us humans.

This challenges us. This challenges how we read the Bible, and frankly how a lot of the biblical writers wrote. We tend to think that everything about creation is done for our own personal pleasure and comfort. We tend to sing songs and pull out Bible stories that make us the center of the universe. 

We’re not, not by a long shot. 

Look again at the creation as described here. It is broad and vast and unbounded and all the good words we say and sing about it without truly understanding what they mean. If we take this passage seriously, we have to understand that we are part of creation, and not masters of it. 

2) God orders and controls creation. God does not, however, tame creation.

Wild things are meant to be wild. God made them that way. Based on how Behemoth and Leviathan are described, God seems to like wild things that way. Not just the animals; wild winds, wild seas, wildness is a feature in the fullness of God’s creation, not a bug.

Also: remember The Lion King? The big hit Disney animated movie with all the creatures of the African savanna and the young lion with Matthew Broderick’s voice who had to learn to grow up and take his place as the head of the lion pride? Do you also remember the big song as this whole assemblage, this network of creatures, played out on the screen before us? What was it called?

[singing] Circle of Life?

Thing is, though, when you invoke that phrase – “the circle of life” – there’s something included in it that isn’t so much fun to think about. Part of the “circle of life” is no less than death. Death itself is programmed into God’s ordering and controlling of creation. As such, we should know suffering will happen, and not expect creation to get out of our way and avoid harming us at all costs. 

This thought leads to two related ideas:

3) If our lives seem disordered, we may need to examine whether we are truly living as part of God’s creation. 

Have we as humans lived our lives so determined on our own comfort and control that we have broken our relationship with God’s creation? Have we so separated ourselves from living with that creation, as part of that creation, that we do ourselves actual harm, set off illnesses and injury to ourselves and broken our very bodies and minds by our pursuit of dominance over and exploitation of nature?

And closely related…

4) If creation seems disordered to us, perhaps we need to look at someone other than God for a reason. Perhaps we should look in a mirror.

This is where it gets touchy for us, living as we do in a time where our relationship with creation, the struggle over living with creation or as part of creation against taming or dominating creation, is etched deeply within our very existence. This can be said of anyone living anywhere, but it stands out possibly most in the state where Julia and I used to live, the one known as the Sunshine State: Florida.

In the John Sayles movie Sunshine State, a developer who acts as something of a Greek chorus commenting on the movie’s action makes a few trenchant observations about living in Florida. People come to Florida, or at least some do, because of (what they perceive to be) nature, the “natural beauty” of the land.

Tricky thing is, though, if many of those people saw actual natural Florida, with swamps and wild grasses and prairies and alligators and mosquitoes the size of birds, they’d run screaming in the opposite direction. What they want is tightly controlled “nature,” highly groomed and manicured “nature” instead of the sheer wildness of God’s creation. That developer in the movie freely acknowledges that this is what he sells, describing it as “nature … on a leash.”

Trouble is, as we see too often and too easily these days, our attempts to “tame” nature and put it “on a leash” only make things worse.  We tame things with thoroughly unnatural chemicals and end up with red tide and toxic algae. We take out native plants and animals and bring in plants and animals that don’t belong here, and we end up overrun with the less desirable plants and invasive species (ask one of your south Florida friends about Burmese pythons). And yes, we overheat the earth so badly that, just for one most recent example, the Gulf of Mexico becomes a tropical pressure cooker, turning a fledgling tropical depression into a Category 4 monster (speak of a behemoth!) just in time for it to slam into the Florida Big Bend, which is only one example of such monster storms over the past couple of decades. Not to mention our nasty habit of thinking we tamed nature enough that we think it’s o.k. to build to the hilt right up on the coastline, right where those behemoth storms come crashing ashore.

If we think creation is disordered, yeah, we’d better look in the mirror. Norman Wirzba, now of Duke Divinity School, puts it this way in his commentary on Job:

An adequate understanding of creation and an honest estimation of our place within it require that we see creation in terms of God’s intention and scale. Attempts to reduce creation to the scale of human significance invariably result in pain to ourselves and in death to creatures around us.[i]

 

Let us be clear here; Job’s moral universe is being challenged for being entirely too small. And yes, Job’s presumed innocence is being questioned as well. 

For example: Lyle, what about those massive herds Job had kept before? Chapter 1:3 tells us Job had “Seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys” with his ten children feasting regularly and Job praying that they didn’t do anything stupid. For just one thing, how would that smell? 

I invite you to imagine the size of that stockyard. Imagine, if you dare, the smell of being anywhere near it, not to mention the amount of animal waste involved; that's an environmental nightmare. Could Job really manage those herds in a way that honored God’s creation around him? What was the effect of that massive operation on Job’s neighbors? Was Job actually that innocent, in the full scale of creation?

And what about us? What does our footprint do to others, even if we don't have that much livestock around?

We may need, in the end, to quit peering through the microscope focused ever so tightly on our own desires and comforts, and to spend time looking through the telescope that opens up God’s full bounty of creation to us. We may need to think less about how the world is crashing in on us, and more about how we’re crashing in on the world. It may be time for us to change glasses, go outside, and look at … everything, and ask not if it is ours, but where we belong in it.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless noted otherwise): #32, I Sing the Mighty Power of God; (Hymn sing) All creatures of our God on high, Every creature on your planet, #38 To Bless the Earth; #---, When earth is standing dusty dry; #37, Let All Things Now Living

 

 

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[i] Norman Wirzba, “God’s Measure of Creation,” Christian Reflection (2001), 24-29.

From a video of the famous-to-Presbyterians Montreat gate, with floodwaters pouring through after Hurricane Helene, 9/27/2024.