Twelfth Sunday in Course 2024
Psalm 107, which we prayed as our response to Scripture today, is what we call a todah song. When an Israelite had a big problem, like being thrown into prison because of a minor offense, or being about to drown as the boat is foundering in a storm, he would make a vow to give thanks in the Temple. He promised to God by oath that he would offer a sacrifice of bread and wine as soon as he was delivered from his disease or homelessness or whatever is causing distress. In the Temple, the Levites would lead all the worshipers in singing Todah hymns.
Now recently in our prayer group we were reading ahead to today’s Scriptures. I shared what I just told you and one of the group members had a question: isn’t that an inferior action, kind of like bargaining with God. “You do this for me and I’ll offer sacrifice. Even the pagans did that with their own so-called gods.” Yes, but the comment ignores two realities. First, even this kind of prayer is communication with God, and that’s always worthwhile. Second, nobody is pretending that this is a real transaction. After all, it ended with a common meal for the worshipers and families. Moreover, in the first century it is known that the rabbis taught that in the Messianic age, the todah sacrifice, the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, would be the only one offered!
So let’s let that shine some light on our first reading, about the conversation between poor Job and the Lord. Now we can’t pretend that Job was having a very bad month. He was a man rich in agricultural wealth, employees, and offspring. But, afflicted by Satan with God’s concurrence, he learned in a single day that his sheep and camels and cattle had all been stolen, and the herders killed–all but one who told the tales–and then the next day he learned that his children had been celebrating a party and were all killed in a terrible windstorm. He had responded with faith in God, but then Satan, allowed by God to harm his body, afflicted him with ulcers all over his body. He still offered blessing to God. “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
But that wasn’t the end of the story. He had four friends, who came to him and attempted to demonstrate that some evil action of Job, some evil thought or intent, had brought about his misfortunes. “No,” Job protested to all. But he did raise the question, the obvious one. “If I have done no evil, nothing but good, Lord, why am I being punished?” I think most of us have been in Job’s position at least once in our lives, right?
Our first reading begins an answer. God has heard Job’s question, his prayer, and He answers with a question of His own, in fact a whole bushel basket of questions. They all boil down to this: “I created you and everything that exists. Who are you to question me, even over sad things that are important to you but only for a time?” Everything we can say about God falls short because He is transcendent. We don’t understand because we cannot understand.
We, like Job, find it difficult to understand a lot, particularly anything that butts up against transcendent reality. That is a function of our human pride, which in some of us, like me, is the overarching temptation. We keep thinking that we are in control, that everybody and everything should bow to our desires. We want to supplant God, but in our best moments, we smile and admit “I’m not up to that.”
No. As Paul writes, we are not in charge: “the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. . .that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” We ought to begin each day in that understanding, praying that God will give us the wisdom to know His will for us, and give us the other virtues we need to accomplish that divine directive.
We get a familiar story from St. Mark’s pen today. After a day of preaching, Jesus gets into Peter’s boat with His disciples, to row or sail across the huge lake we call the “Sea of Galilee.” There are other boats in His little flotilla. Wearied from the day, Jesus falls asleep in the stern. But one of those high wind storms Galilee is famous for springs up, and the waves and wind and lightning cause water to come cascading into the boat. All the disciples seamanship deserts them as they try to stay afloat by their own efforts. So they look behind them and see the Master peacefully snoozing. They shake Jesus and their question is worthy of old Job, dead for centuries: "Teacher, do you not care if we perish?" Jesus is fully awake now. I love the text. He rebukes the storm and addresses the raging sea in the same words He will use with the disciples after His triumphant resurrection: “Peace! Be still.” They are all for years after marveling: "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?" And they get the answer to their question about whether Jesus cares. It’s the answer for Job a millennium earlier, and the answer for us today: “"Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?"
