Talk based on
Job 23 1 to 17 Mark 10 17 to 31

Summer has gone, autumn has arrived. The colours are changing on the trees and the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting colder.

At St Johns on the 20th, we are celebrating Harvest. A time when we not only thank God for his provision for us but we also think of others and give away goods to those in need.

Harvest doesn’t have a set a readings that we always turn to each year, and so it is the job of the preacher to make use of what he or she is given and this year, we have an extract from the book of Job and an encounter between Jesus and the rich young man. Strangely in a way, both of these I think can relate to Harvest Thanksgiving, because alongside acknowledging that it is God who in his mercy gives us our harvests, we are also encouraged in scripture to be generous to others.

Now Job is a unique piece of writing in the Bible. It is an ancient piece of writing, part of the Wisdom literature in the Old Testament, probably written around 800 to 700 BC. Briefly the book describes an encounter between God and satan in heaven, where God says to satan, look at Job, he is an upright man, he is a righteous man who worships me wholeheartedly. There is no one else like him. And satan retorts, let us see how whether he will still worship you, if everything is taken away from him, his family, his health and all his possessions. And so God allows satan to test Job with one important caveat, that Job’s life is spared.

Part of the testing that Job endures is to have three ‘friends’ or ‘comforters’ draw alongside. I have put them in inverted comma’s in my text because they offer little by way of comfort. His ’friends’ cannot comprehend Job’s piety. Job holds onto both his innocence and to the God whose actions (or whose permissions) have led to all the disasters that he is facing in his life.

Job’s friends follow what was then, and still is now, preached in some churches, that material prosperity automatically follows from right living. And, if that is the case, when someone loses everything it is God’s judgement on them that can only be put right through repentance, in other words turning back to God in sorrow for our sins. You may have heard of the prosperity gospel in America?

Job, however sees things differently. He is convinced that he has done nothing wrong. Indeed God is in agreement with Job as I mentioned earlier, in his conversation with satan. But Job in all his trials is experiencing extreme isolation. His family and everything else has been taken from him, it seems that God has gone behind a big black cloud and Job can’t seem to reach him. So in verse 8 and 9 we read: “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him;

9on the left he hides, and I can’t behold him; I turn to the right, but I can’t see him.

When we think about the disasters that afflict people in this world, the innocent dying through wars and man’s inhumanity to man, their cry is so often, ‘where is God?’ What have I done to deserve this? And more than likely their faith in God’s love, mercy and grace is shattered.

But we need to remember that Jesus too underwent extreme suffering. Everything was stripped away from him as he went to the cross and in the midst of his agony, when he was carrying the sin of the world in our place, Jesus cried out ‘Eloi, Eloi Lama Sabachthani?!’ My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?! He experienced the feeling of complete abandonment and separation from his Father’s love. God himself in Jesus has experienced the worst of all the world could throw at him. And all we can do, is like his mother Mary, his best friend John and the witnesses including the Roman Centurion is stand, listen and watch and let our hearts be broken too.

When someone is bereaved, it is having someone to listen that they need, not to offer advice, not to share their story. Humbly listening, and maybe offering practical support. Who has ever refused a meal when offered? For those in our city, the 23,000+ adults and the 13,000+ children that our gifts are going to support, they don’t need lecturing to, they above all need a listening ear which then can lead onto real help to move them forward.

In our Gospel reading, which really is pretty self explanatory, we may find a challenge to ourselves for Jesus meets a young man who also claims to have lived his life according to the laws of God. But Jesus tells him (because he sees the secrets of his heart), that in order to be perfect, and to inherit eternal life, the young man needs to sell his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor. This the young man is unable to do. We read that he was shocked and went away grieving. Of course we don’t know whether he reflected on Jesus’ words later.

Wealth can be an obstacle to believing – but not for everyone. What matters is that all of us have a teachable heart, one that listens for God’s voice and obeys. When we read about Jesus’ encounters with people, the most frequent phrase used is ‘Jesus had compassion’. May we this harvest time pray for just that – that we might have compassion and may that motivate us to continue to be generous to those in need.

Every blessing. Peter