This week’s Lectionary texts can be found here.
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This week, our texts are about what happens when what we have goes away, whether through suffering or by choice. It is about the loss of control, independence, and the desire to make things mean something.
In our Old Testament text (Job 23:1-9, 16-17), Job is frantically searching for God, convinced that the answer to his unjust suffering is to get God in a courtroom. Surely God will listen to him. Job wants to nail God down, to find God.
We can all relate to Job. We have all felt the absence of God. Job’s challenge is to release that control, to embrace the fact that he is known by God. This is our challenge as well. The reason why we feel God’s absence is truly because we are known by God. Chris Green says, “God is with and within us even though we are without him. We are the ones who come and go from the presence.”1 In experiencing the absence of God, God shows us himself in places we often deem unlikely: specifically in the the stranger, the outcast, and the poor.
Our Hebrews text (Hebrews 4:12-16) reminds us of the seriousness of the word of God. It is living and active. It divides and it reveals. There is nothing hidden from God. Inside this is a call to trust in our one true high priest (Jesus). Where we have failed, Jesus has proven faithful. In this, we are called to give up control and the belief that we can heal ourselves.
Jesus is, simultaneously, the one who has fully experienced everything that we have experienced (including the experience of God’s absence) and yet is without sin. It is because of Jesus, not because of our abilities, that we can approach God with confidence. We are in Christ and that is all we need.
In our gospel texts (Mark 10:17-31), we are confronted with idolatry. Over the past few weeks, we have heard Jesus’ words about marriage (Mark 10:2-16), his response to the disciples asking him for positions of power in the kingdom (10:35-45), and this command to the rich young ruler (10:17-31) to sell all that he has and give to the poor. Sex, power, and money are all idols when they are out of God’s intended context. They are misappropriated in the present age. In the kingdom of God, marriage and sex are a sacrament of God’s love; power is an opportunity to serve and to empower others; money is an opportunity release control and uplift the poor. When we follow Jesus, we will be confronted with our idols because the kingdom of God is counter-intuitive. As Jesus says, the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
*Our Deep Dive this week features a more in-depth look at where this text is situated in the book of Job, descriptions of the role of a priest in the ancient world, and quotes from Lewis, Bonhoeffer, N.T. Wright and Chris Green. You can sign up for this in-depth (9+ page weekly brief) here.
Chris Green, Surprised by God: How and Why What We Think about the Divine Matters, (Eugene: Cascade, 2018), Kindle Loc: 449-510.