Proper 22, Yr B (2024) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield
Proper 22, Yr B (2024) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield
Job 1:1, 2:1-10 St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Mark 10:2-16
In the name of the one, holy, and living God:
in whom we live, and move, and have our being. Amen.
Sometimes clergy receive phone calls from out-of-town clergy asking if we will go visit their parishioner in the local hospital.
A few years ago,
I received such a call asking if I could go visit a 13 year-old boy and his mother.
When I arrived, the boy (who was the patient) was asleep,
and we all know sleep is rare in the hospital,
so his mom and I stepped outside into the hallway to talk.
She told me that she and her son were both very spiritual people.
For the prior three months,
her son had had excruciating headaches and double vision…
his brain was swelling,
and after three months of seeing doctors and having tests run and trying steroids,
they still didn’t know what was wrong.
The steroids had not helped reduce the swelling.
They had been in the hospital this time for 10 days,
had just received negative biopsy results for lymphoma (so that was good news),
and he was supposed to start some new treatment in a few days,
but they had no idea if it would help.
And if it didn’t help… then what?
She told me that her son had some questions that no one had been able to answer.
So far two chaplains, a social worker, and a psychologist had dropped by.
Now it was my turn.
His questions were:
If God exists, and God is a good and powerful God, then why hasn’t God cured me? Why am I suffering like this?
The Book of Job popped into my mind.
I looked his mother in the eyes and said,
“I don’t have an answer to his questions.
I do not believe that God has caused his suffering…
and your son has done nothing to cause such suffering either.
“I do not know why God has not healed him,
but I do believe that God is with us in our suffering.
Even if it doesn’t feel like God is there,
I believe that God is with us.”
I don’t think my answer brought her any comfort.
She wanted a better explanation.
And what she really wanted
was healing for her son.
These are hard questions,
and questions I’d wager each one of us has asked many times in our lives,
whether for ourselves or for someone we love,
and are asking right now about all the suffering produced by Hurricane Helene.
Why is there so much suffering?
Where is God in all of this?
Some years ago, when a friend I loved was experiencing intense emotional pain
and I was beside myself with sadness and confusion,
a friend of mine handed me a crucifix that she had had for many years…
five years longer than I had even been alive!
This crucifix, she said,
had carried her through many sorrows and struggles in her own life journey,
including the death of her own beloved husband.
As she handed this treasure to me,
she told me to keep it as long as I needed it.
Through teary eyes I looked down at Jesus hanging on that cross,
and I saw with fresh eyes,
and knew in a very real and personal way,
that God had experienced the pain that I was experiencing.
The mothering nature of God
grieved a Son’s pain
just as I was grieving,
and just as this mother in the hospital was grieving her own son’s pain.
I believe that God stands with us through inexplicable and senseless pain…
grieving with us.
Which brings us back to Job.
“There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.
That man was blameless and upright,
one who feared God and turned away from evil.”
Job lost all his children, his camels, oxen, donkeys, and his servants,
and he is now covered in loathsome sores from head to toe,
scraping his own body in order to try to find some relief.
When his wife urges him to curse God and die, he replies,
“Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”
It is hard to fathom such a faithful response to God in light of such tragedy.
If the suffering is just too much,
cursing God just might seem reasonable.
There are many who have felt abandoned by God and leave the church…
it is understandable.
And yet, like Job, I do believe that if we curse God –
or the person (or persons) doing us harm if that is the case-
then we are indeed in danger of dying…
of cutting ourselves off from a loving – and healing - God.
Many years ago I used to take a mother to visit her son in prison once a month.
She experienced many tragedies in her life:
as a child, she watched her brother accidentally kill himself while cleaning his gun,
as a mother, one son became a paraplegic following a car accident,
and her other son was serving two life sentences for armed robbery….
Despite all this,
she used to say over and over, “God is good… God is so good.”
It still seems difficult when we are in the midst of tragedy
to say that “God is good.”
Yet, oftentimes, despite the tragedy,
there is good that can be gained despite the harm.
Neighbors and churches and communities gather around and offer what support they can.
People take ATVs up into the mountains or hike there on foot.
Folks repair bridges and cut up fallen trees.
It sometimes seems quite miraculous what resources we have!
I still do not understand why the tragedies in life happen,
or why some people are healed and others aren’t,
but I do know that God is with us through it all.
God walks with us,
holds us in loving arms,
weeping as we weep.
We are not in control of this life.
Our lives are filled with joy and with pain,
with brokenness and with healing,
with confusion and wonder
and doubt and faith.
How do we live in relationship with all of life’s complexities?
In the Hindu tradition, darsana is to behold the Divine
and to allow ourselves to be fully seen.
Ricard Rohr says “Many Hindus visit temples not to see God,
but to let God gaze upon them—
and then to join God's seeing,
which is always unconditional acceptance and compassion.”
Sometimes in our pain we cannot see God,
but I believe that God continues to gaze upon us with compassion.
As I told the mother and her son in that hospital…
if you can’t feel God’s presence right now,
lean into the arms of those who love you…
those are the arms of God’s loving embrace.
I pray that each of us, in the midst of life’s many complexities,
may find the boldness to allow ourselves to be fully seen –
by God and by others --
so that we may both receive
and offer
God’s compassionate Grace.
Amen.
