Getting What We Deserve

A sermon I delivered in class this month, based upon Job 2:1-8 (NRSV). I preached off of notes and pictures rather than written text, so this is just an adaptation of that presentation.

I invite you to read Job 2:1-8 first, noting that the Hebrew for "(the) Satan" also translates to mean "the accuser."

By the time we catch up with Job in the beginning of Chapter 2, he's already lost his numerous sons and daughters and all of his livestock and property. Job was a well-respected man in his community, and having all of these things had helped to shape his high social status. They're the kinds of things that made other people in the community look at him and say, "That Job must have done something right to be so blessed."

And then, just when it looks like it can't get any worse, he even loses his very health.

For the people of Job's time and place, all of this loss indicates one thing: Job must have done something wrong and now he's getting what he deserves. People believed that God would dish out rewards and punishments, an idea well established in Deuteronomy, which the storytellers and early audiences would be thinking with here.

But for the life of him, Job can't figure out what he could have done to be suffering this series of unfortunate events. His friends use common sense and religious tradition to make their point, but in the face of all of this logic and theology, Job only knows that this doesn't line up with his own experience. He has to rethink what he and his community have believed about God.

This is what Job's integrity is really about - being authentic. Not just doing good things or praising God (and by Chapter 3 Job won't seem as patient as we might think); but also standing by what he knows to be true.

Even if we don't experience the same losses that Job does, we 21st century Christians have plenty of voices competing to explain suffering to us.

Some voices ask, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Some say, "You're too bad to be forgiven."

Some voices pray, "Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," and then urge people to be stoic and to bear pain and hardship - even the kinds that humans cause one another - because somehow God derives glory from this.

Being apathetic or desensitized to pain is not the mark of strong faith. Seeking the power of God, even in the midst of human weakness and crisis, can be the mark of strong faith. Having the strength and compassion not to condemn someone for their own suffering can be the mark of strong faith.

Unfortunately, we - the church, the world - may have come up with even more ways to justify suffering than to alleviate it.

Over the course of history, religious peoples have:

...claimed that the pain of childbirth was inflicted on women because of Eve's part in the Fall,
...identified illness and disability with demon possession,
...blamed victims for bringing acts of violence upon themselves,
...speculated that AIDS arose to punish homosexuality,
...sanctioned genocide and slavery in the name of God,
...and - just like Job's friends - touted the adage that "you reap what you sow."

It's time to realize that suffering, like grace, is not so conditional. It's a realization we need to face for all of those people like Job whose hardships only become worse when accusations rain down on them.

Accusations.

And it's even more than that: it's important for everyone who has ever been told that they are "undeserving" in one way or another - too innocent to face pain, too guilty to find grace.

Because if we don't acknowledge that bad things can happen to people in spite of the good that they do, how can we ever accept the idea that grace can come to people in spite of their sins and mistakes? How can we accept forgiveness for what we ourselves have done?

Do you know that you are forgiven? For everything. No matter what.

We must believe that grace is just as real and unconditional as suffering is - and ultimately more triumphant.

The Gospel of Matthew says that God causes the sun "to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."

So what's the point?

Maybe the point isn't our righteousness or whether or not we deserve what comes our way, but that God aches with human suffering, and rejoices when we find grace and hope in spite of it.

Hell Is the Suffering of Being Unable to Love

God, forgive me. And forgive me, brothers and sisters, for I have sinned against you.

In the midst of it, I believe I have glimpsed hell.

I find it necessary to interject that in all of my encounters with dark nights of the soul or perceiving distance from God, I'm not sure I have ever had the sense that any one was a literally hellish experience.

They were pretty invariably disconcerting, painful, sad, confusing, and all-around not ideal. They hurt. When they did not just plain hurt, they left me feeling sort of hollow. ("Is nothingness light or heavy?") And yet there was always something suspiciously good lurking in the background.

Each time, I discovered - whether I came to the conclusion during the experience or only long afterward - that there was something extraordinarily good not only in the God who got me through the dark nights, but even in those seemingly grotesque dark nights themselves. Those "nights" reminded me of my humanity and the Divine's divinity. They helped me to relate genuinely to other hurting humans. They made me realize that my clearest experiences of grace and love were no less real to me just because my mood had changed. Apparently one need not "feel" God constantly in order to honor one's past (and future) encounters. That was news to me.

Yes, in God's mercy, even my most harrowing spiritual droughts ultimately bore fruit.

But there is one moment - at least one that stands out from any other - when I experienced what I can only describe as hell on earth.

I've long thought that the phrase "hell on earth" best described the dangerous, poor living conditions inflicted on the oppressed persons of the world, and perhaps that is still the case. I have been fortunate enough in this life not to believe that I can gauge the hellishness of true social and systemic injustices. That may be an analytical exploration for another time.

But that isn't the sort of hellishness I'm talking about now. I'm referring, rather, to Fyodor Dostoevsky's hell:

"Fathers and teachers, I ponder, 'What is hell?'
I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."

-Father Zosima, The Brothers Karamazov

On a few occasions, I worshipped in a certain church in which I felt generally uncomfortable - theologically (different interpretations, teachings, and priorities than my home-churches'), liturgically (different style, content, and vocabulary), and spatially (different physical and social atmosphere). Considering how ecumenical I am in my approach to many church matters, this extraordinary discomfiture alone made a significant impact on me. It scared me and fascinated me.

During one particular service, the sermon wrenched my heart. To the gathered community, it may not have been remarkable; it may have been legitimately inspiring and galvanizing. To me, it was nearly unrecognizable as a Christian teaching, and I felt spiritually distanced from some of my fellow Christ-followers.

After the message came perhaps my favorite practice: Communion. But there was one problem. I was still so angry.

"But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be
liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable
to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire.
So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother
or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go;
first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift."

-Matthew 5:22-24 NRSV

My first anger-induced inclination might have been to refuse Communion - something I had never done before - because of those who blessed it that day.

This quickly dissolved into a more realistic, less self-righteous realization: I could not accept Communion in that moment because of the anger within me. As though to deny me the indulgence of letting my non-participation slip by unnoticed, by the time it reached my seat, the plate bearing Christ's Body was empty.

As the usher disappeared in pursuit of a filled plate, I wondered what I should do when he returned. Surely he would remember that the fed had ended with the one before me, and instead of the plate being passed along my row for me to decline quietly, he would extend it directly to me. Would I still refuse?

For a moment, I feared that he would take it personally. I got over that quickly enough and passed the refreshed plate.

But the weeping and gnashing of teeth, deep in my being, refused to cease.

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell,* behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall fall on me,"
Even the night shall be light about me;
Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.

-Psalm 139:7-8 NKJV

* Here other translations read: "the depths" or "Sheol." A discussion for another day.


In my rebellion and inadequacy, I may have been tempted to believe that I had - if only inadvertently - escaped God's love. But I had not.

The love of God sought me out in my hell. It was the love of God which far surpassed my own frail attempts to love, and nevertheless met me where I had entrenched myself. For even when I could summon no love in myself for this Otherness, the Holy Spirit - in that unrelenting, no-nonsense sort of love - convicted my heart.

If God had not come with me to my hell, I fear I would not have known how to climb out of it nor remember that there was even an alternative to it. The weeping and gnashing of teeth in my core meant that I craved the love I still knew could be. Only that unconditional love, willing to reveal itself to me in the unlikely place, my undeserving state, could show me what pained me and what I must do.

And I realized then, as I passed the Communion elements along without partaking, that God was calling me to do what I honestly dreaded: love those - yes, even those - whom I find so difficult to love.

Familiar words? Of course they were. I was a Christian, after all... wasn't I? But oh, what that call meant to me in that moment! Never had I been so angry - so hopelessly, helplessly, irreparably angry; so willing to refuse to take part in a community; so determined to disagree, to declare that they said they followed Christ yet surely they were doing it wrong!

Never before had I found myself so incapable of granting grace, and in such desperate need of receiving it.