One of the commentaries for this week’s readings notes
the following:
Job’s three friends believe the wicked receive just retribution.
Job must be wicked in God’s eyes to have such calamities befall him. The doubts
they raise about Job are within the orthodox Wisdom tradition of their faith.
In the section immediately prior to today’s reading Eliphaz questions whether
Job could possibly be innocent. He claims that Job “stripped the naked of their
clothing” and “withheld bread from the hungry” (22:6,7). Even though Job didn’t
commit these injustices, it is nevertheless an insidious criticism. To be
powerful in a community where people are hungry or favoured in a land where
people are stripped of their dignity is a way of benefiting from the injustice
of the world.
Job maintains his
innocence and, in today’s reading, calls upon God, who is silent and seemingly
absent, to reason with him. Given a choice, Job would rather argue his
integrity before an awesome God than claim a wickedness for himself that would
satisfy the religious conventions of his friends.
Job would
rather stand before an awesome God and argue for his integrity – ultimately,
his innocence from the suffering he is enduring – than claim for himself a
wickedness that would satisfy the religious conventions of his so-called
friends.
The lesson
for us in this exchange, is the steadfastness by which Job lives his life,
maintains his faith, and endures his struggles and suffering. He is being
counselled to curse God and die by his wife, to accept his fate by his friends,
and to simply go with the notion that he has done something to deserve all of
the bad stuff happening to him. But Job won’t do that.
Job can’t do that. Jon is
ultimately, to faithful to do that …
When we couple this ancient Old
Testament reading with our Gospel reading, we are left to reflect on our
choices in life and in faith, and how they play out in our day to day existence
… the heart of the question “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” echoes
through Job’s life experience and struggles, and the conversation Jesus finds
himself involved with and it continues to resonate outwards into our modern
lives and world … what must we do to inherit eternal life?
How must we live today, to
ensure that we benefit and partake in the promises of life eternal.
For some, the answer is a
simple straightford check list that must be adhered to … for some it’s about
doing the right thing and saying the right words at the right time … for others
it is an immensely complicated and at times confusing process … while for
others it is about Grace.
Grace – the gift of
transformation and forgiveness offered with unlimited and boundless love at the
hands of God without condition, restriction or anything else.
Grace – the very heart of
what we are as a Church. The gift of God that affirms our place in God’s love,
and affirms our worth and value as people AND that assures and ensures we are a
forgiven and transformed people.
Trusting in God, and trusting
in this gift of Grace is about more than just following the religious dictates
and conventions. Llike Job, we need to value the gift of Grace – real grace not
some vague imitation of grace.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer offers
the most succinct and straightforward definition of real grace in the opening
paragraphs of his classic volume “The Cost of Discipleship” when he observes:
Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our Church. Our struggle today
is for costly grace.
Cheap grace means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate
forgiveness, cut-rate comfort, cut-rate sacraments, grace as the church’s
inexhaustible pantry, from which is doled out by careless hands without
hesitation or limit. It is grace without a price, without costs. Is is said
that the essence of Grace is that the bill for it is paid in advance for all
time. Everything can be had for free, courtesy of that paid bill. The price
paid is infinitely great, and therefore, the possibilities of taking advantage
and wasting grace are also infitinetly great. What would grace be, if it were
not cheap grace?
Cheap grace means grace as doctrine, as principle, as system. It
means forgiveness of sins as a general truth; it means God’s love as merely a
Christian idea of God. … Cheap grace is thus, the denial of God’s living word,
denial of incarnation of the word of God. … Cheap grace is preaching
forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of
community; it is the Lord’s supper witout confession of sin; it is absolution
without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace
without the cross, grace without the living incarnate Christ.
Costly Grace is the hidden treasure in the field, for the sake of
which people go and sell with joy everything they have … it is the call of
Jesus which causes a disciple to leave his nets and follow him.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought agains and again …
costly grace is the incarnation of God. … it is grace as living word, word of
God, which God speaks as God pleases. It comes to us as a gracious call to
follow Jesus; it comes as a forgiving word to the fearful spirit and the broken
heart. Grace is costly because it forces people under the yoke of following
Jesus, it is GRACE when Jesus says “my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (cost
of discipleship – D. Bonhoeffer)
Costly grace is about living
our faith, even in those moments like that faced by Job that feel like God is
absent. Costly grace is about living our faith knowing that faith and grace and
the incarnation of God is about more than just doctrine and theology and empty
rhetoric – it is about trusting in God and our faith. It is about making
decisions that reflect our role and place as disciples, and reveal rather than
deny our values of faith.
This willingness to face life
with ALL of its ups AND downs, while daring to live our faith and celebrate the
gift of costly grace reminds us that:
Jesus did not walk by the Sea of Galilee and shout to the
fishermen, “Have faith!” Instead, he asked them to do something more: “Follow
me.” When they followed, he gave them ore things to do.At fist, he demonstrated
what he wanted them to do. Then he did it with them. Finally, he sent them out
to do it themselves, telling them to proclaim God’s reign and cure the sick.
When they returned from this first mission, they could not believe what had
happened. They discovered that proclaiming the kingdom was not a matter of
teaching doctrine, rather, the kingdom was a matter of imitating Jesus’ action.
Jesus did not tell them to have faith. He pushed them into the world to
PRACTICE faith. The disciples did not hope the world would change. They changed
it. And in doing so, they themselves changed.
(Diana Butler-Bass pg 207-8 – Christianity after Religion)
The commentary I began with,
ends its reflections for today with the observation:
… Jesus was
asking him to give up his ability to keep the Law! Jesus has asked him to give
up the one way to achieve salvation that he knows in favour of something
entirely new. In order to achieve eternal life, Jesus is saying, he must
relinquish his focus on achieving it. He must become a very different person.
When
the man walked away grieving Jesus had no harsh words for him. Rather he
understood that to give up what one knows for that which one has not yet
experienced is a great risk.
On
this World Food Sunday we are faced with choices far tougher than which product
to pick off a shelf. Like Job, many of us are the privileged in a hungry world.
Like the rich man, we are challenged by a call to discipleship more radical
than we can imagine. What choices can each of us risk to further God’s reign?
Costly Grace means going
into the world and making the active CHOICE to practice our faith – changing
the world – and changing ourselves in the process.
And it ALL begins with the
two simple words that echo across the millennia: Follow Me, and our choices
will determine where it leads …
May it be so – thanks be to
God – let us pray …
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