Thankful Memorial Episcopal Church, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Year B, 19 Pentecost, Proper 22
October 3, 2021

Job 1:1; 2:1-10
Psalm 26
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I want to start my reflections with a text that we didn’t read this morning.  These verses come from the 29^th chapter of Jeremiah:

“For thus says the Lord: […] I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back [from exile] to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” (Jeremiah 29:10-11)

The prophet originally spoke these words to the ancient people of Israel, forced into exile in Babylon, but they speak to us powerfully today, too, as we – hopefully – begin to emerge from the isolation and exile of the covid-19 pandemic.  So it is fitting that we should turn to this portion of Jeremiah this morning as we embark on our annual stewardship discernment season, thinking and praying about who God calls us to be at Thankful in the “new” normal we have the opportunity to build together. 

Because over and over, in Jeremiah and in many other places, our scriptures and tradition tell us the same thing: exile and isolation are not part of God’s dream for us.  Despite what the past 18 months – or even longer – may have felt like, whatever griefs or illnesses or losses we have experienced as individuals and as community, this is not how our world was created to be; this is not how God created us to be.  We are not made to be a people of exile, isolation and loneliness; God’s dream for us is always one of returning, belonging, community and hope, even and especially when our reality looks very different from that. 

And I think no one in the Old Testament – not even Jeremiah – expresses that truth better than Job.  Don’t get bogged down in the introduction of Job’s story.  The “debate” between God and the Satan, God’s prosecutor, just signals that this is myth – a kind of holy parable that tells us something true about humanity and God.  And one of the primary things we glean from the story is the example of faith that is embodied in Job himself.

Job experiences a kind of exile, too.  His children die; his wealth and status are lost; even his physical health deteriorates in painful disease.  But despite all of it, Job never gives up his faith.  Indeed, as we will continue to hear over the next few Sundays, Job clings to the hope that this awful situation is not what God desires for him – or for anyone else.  He refuses to blame God for his predicament and maintains his integrity as one who trusts in God’s sovereignty in and over his life.  “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” he asks. 

What makes Job’s faithfulness particularly admirable is the fact that, while he cannot and does not blame God for his misfortunes, he knows that he himself is not to blame either.  Just as for us during the pandemic, Job has not caused his own suffering through any sin or lack of righteousness.  But, that’s not always the case. 

In the lesson from Mark’s gospel this morning, Jesus has some hard words for the Pharisees – and us, too – about marriage and divorce.  Through their question about divorce, the Pharisees are trying to pin Jesus down amid the religious debates that were part of life in first century Palestine.  If Jesus says it’s only lawful for a man to divorce his wife in very limited circumstances, he’ll fit in one camp; if he says it may take place for much broader reasons, he’ll belong in another.  But Jesus refuses to be drawn into this debate.  Instead, he insists that God’s law must be understood in light of God’s will, God’s hope, God’s dream for humanity.  So he directs his listeners’ attention to God’s will for human companionship.  He reads Deuteronomic scriptures about divorce in light of the Genesis text about marriage: “ ‘… two shall become one flesh,’ […]  Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 

It is God’s will, says Jesus, that we should not be alone; we are created to be in relationship with one another, and in specific, inseparable, covenantal relationships with one other human being.  God’s dream for us is lifelong companionship.  But, our realities often differ from God’s desires for us.  Some – like monastics – may fulfill that divine dream for us in ways other than marriage.  Other folk may never find someone whom we can trust fully and who can trust us fully enough to allow for that particular covenantal relationship.  And still others may enter into marriage with the best of intentions, but find it unsustainable, through our own and/or another’s brokenness and fallibility.  In such cases, the suffering that ensues from the tearing apart of human relationship is often a direct result of what Jesus calls our “hardness of heart.”

But what Jesus says about marriage is also true about all our relationships.  Whatever our romantic relationship status might be, God’s dream for us is human companionship and community throughout our lives.  And how often does our hardness of heart get in the way of that!  How often do we go about, intentionally or not, breaking that which God has joined together?  How often do we create our own exiles by failing to show up in honest, trusting, vulnerable ways in committed relationships with one another? 

But here’s the good news – even then, even when our suffering is a result of our own sinfulness and hardness of heart, God still persists in dreaming of healing and wholeness for us; God never gives up in the creative work of leading us out of our exiles and into the abundant love that God longs to give us. 

And we can choose to be active participants in that journey back home to one another and to God.  When we come to Thankful, week in and week out, when we continue to connect with one another and to commit to one another, despite all the hardships we have faced, we buy in to the dream God has for us.  At and through Thankful, we practice homecoming with one another.  Like Job, in this community, we persist in faithfulness, through suffering and isolation, illness and loss.  Among our Thankful family, we learn how to show up, with all our flaws and failings, in committed, covenantal relationships that soften our hearts and nourish our souls.  Here at Thankful, we learn from each other how to receive God’s love and to cling to the hope that God’s love is strong enough to overcome our hearts’ hardness, abundant enough to sustain us through times of exile and wilderness, gracious enough to see us through grief and loss, and powerful enough to conquer even death itself. 

So I invite you to join with me this season as we discern our way forward in faith, as individuals and as a community, into the dream God has for us Thankful Ones, into our future with hope.  Amen.