This Sunday we will be celebrating the Sacrament of Communion. If you are joining us via YouTube you are encouraged to have bread and juice available so that we can all eat and drink together (while physically separated).
Also this Sunday during the Time for the Young at Heart we will be offering a virtual Pet Blessing. If you want your pet included in this please send in a picture by Friday.
The Scripture Reading for this week is Job 1:1; 2:1-10
The Sermon title is When Life is Unfair....
Early Thoughts: We have all said it at one time or another. "It just isn't fair!" Or maybe "Why ME!?!" Or possibly "What did I do to deserve this?"
Job is justified in saying any of those things and Job knows it. Job know that he has done nothing to deserve the destruction that has visited his household. He knows it is not fair. And yet Job remains faithful. Job refuses to curse God despite the gross unfairness of the situation. Maybe this is why Job has become a name equated with patience.
As the book continues Job never swerves from his insistence that this is not fair and that his punishment is undeserved. Even as his 3 "comforters" try to convince him that there is a logic and a reason to everything Job knows that this is not so. Eventually Job will rage at God over this unfairness, and get a response as God speaks to Job from the midst of the whirlwind. And eventually Job will be rewarded for remaining faithful. But the fact remains. What happens to Job is unfair, is undeserved, is seemingly some form of entertainment for a capricious God and one of God's retainers. The story of Job disturbs me in a variety of ways.
But still it opens a window for some pretty basic questions. What do we do when life is so patently unfair? What does it mean to remain faithful when it appears that God is either randomly capricious or spiteful or just impotent to control things? A global pandemic seems to be one of those things that might bring up those questions.
We are never promised that life will be fair. Lived experience shows us that sometimes in fact life is really quite unfair. What do we do with that?
In part we name it. We lament it. We even rage about it. God is big enough to listen to our weeping and raging.
And then we look for a way to live with it, to live through it. Sometimes we also look for a way to end it, to ensure that this particular form of unfairness, of injustice, of mistreatment ends and is not allowed to resurface. Sometimes we accept that there are ways that life is a little bit more random than we would like.
What do you do when life is unfair? How does it impact your relationship with God?
--Gord
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