Listen to Me October 6, 2006

Behold, I am of little account; what can I answer you? Job 40:4

“Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” Luke 10:15-16

Piety

Let us pray today. God, you can do all things and no purpose of your can be hindered. In your majesty you give us the freedom of Job to question you and your actions. You also give us the ears of Job to listen to your Word. Yet, sometimes, when your message is hard, we close our ears or stuff them with music, television, movies and anything else that will soften our lives and our mission.

Give us the strength to block out the cacophony of the world while we still live in it. Give us the fortitude to imitate your Son who obediently and with great humility, accepted nothing less than the cross. From that cross, he asked you to forgive our sins and he even tried to console his mother and his friends.

May the souls of the faithfully departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.
Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7. Anna Mae Stolzfus, 12. Marian Fisher, 13. Mary Liz Miller, 8 and her sister Lena Miller, 7.

Deliver us from those who freely choose evil in this world. Grant us peace today. Amen.

Study
http://www.usccb.org/nab/100606.shtml

Can you even comprehend God talking directly to you? We see this occasionally in the Hebrew Bible and sometimes in the Gospels. Noah got instructions directly from God and built the ark. Moses got instructions directly from God and chiseled the Ten Commandments. And now Job seeks answers from the Lord.

There is an old expression that goes something like this, “Be careful what you ask for. You just might get it.” Something of that same challenging sentiment played out in the popular movie, “A Few Good Men,” with Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, playing Lt. Daniel Kaffee and Colonel Nathan Jessep.

Lt. Kaffee (Cruise) is questioning Col. Jessup (Nicholson) in a military courtroom and the dialog goes something like this:

Col. Jessep: You want answers? Kaffee: I think I'm entitled. Col. Jessep: You want answers? Kaffee: I want the truth. Col. Jessep: You can't handle the truth.

Today, Job’s quest for answers is realized. God responds. However, the truths Job learns are not what he had in mind when Job posed the questions. Instead of answers to his questions, God turns the tables and starts asking Job the questions in Chapter 38:

Then the LORD addressed Job out of the storm and said:
Who is this that obscures divine plans with words of ignorance?
Gird up your loins now, like a man; I will question you, and you tell me the answers!

Job then gets four chapters worth of highly poetic, elegant descriptions of the power and majesty of God. The Lord knows that Job CAN HANDLE THE TURTH! Job’s resulting obedience and humility shine forth.

I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be hindered.
I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know.
I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eye has seen you.
Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes.

The miracle of God’s education of Job, to use the words of Kierkegaard, “consists in leading [Job] to being able to do freely what at first [Job] had to be compelled to do.”[1] This humility and obedience make Job for us the prime example of the person who has heard God’s word and taken it to heart. For that is the standard that Jesus sets in Luke and throughout the Good News when he commissions the disciples to go out into the world.

Action

Today’s story about the funeral of the first four of the Amish martyrs is striking because of the obedience and humility that comes through. In the New York Times we read:

[W]hen asked about the killings, most people here seemed focused on forgiveness, faith and a determination to move forward.

“You think about them, you cry about them, you pray for them,” said Lizzy Fisher, an Amish grandmother who is close to several great-grandparents of the slain girls. “And then you have to let go of things you can’t explain.”

Asked whether anyone in the community felt angry about the killing, Ms. Fisher seemed aghast.

“Oh, no, no, definitely not,” she said shaking her head vigorously, standing behind a screen door at her house along Bachman Town Road in Ronk. “People don’t feel that around here. We just don’t.”

Barbara Beiler, a friend of a pregnant teacher who was in the classroom but was released by Mr. Roberts, said the woman, whose name has not been released, had told her, “Even when the gunman was in the room, she felt like there were angels present.”
“These are people,” Ms. Beiler said, “with unshakable faith.”[2]

In memory of these girls, who do you need to forgive today?

[1] Kierkegaard, Soren. Provocations: The Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard. Compiled and edited by Charles E. Moore. Farmington, PA: The Plough Publishing House of the Bruderhof Foundation. Page 291.

[2] “An Old World Close to a New World Horror,” The New York Times, October 6, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/us/06amish.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin