“All Around the Mulberry Bush, the monkey chased the weasel… Pop goes the weasel!” Remember having one of these when you were a kid? Or maybe giving one of these to a kid? Out comes the Jack in the box and it always seemed surprising even though we knew what would happen.
The big draw of this
toy was that surprise of the jack in the box jumping out and looking bigger than
the box it jumped out of. How did such a
tall clown come out of such a small box?
The scriptures today
talk about God and Jesus as being bigger than we could imagine. The reading from Job is a classic Jack in the
box story, and also reminds me of the cliched advice, “Be careful what you ask
for, you might get it!” Job has been
building up a case against God; Job felt like God was a business partner to be
bargained with, and his friends didn’t help much. They believed firmly in karma, that if you do
something wrong, you would reap the consequences and if a disaster falls on
you, it must be your own fault.
That’s still a common
belief in today’s world too. It’s a
nasty form of blaming the victim, and it’s meant to comfort ourselves. “That won’t happen to me because I do things
properly” which can mean anything from vitamins to crystals. Job was written to challenge that assumption. It is the original “Why bad things happen to
Good People” story, designed to wrestle with that hard question. Job put together a legal argument as if he
was a well-trained lawyer. God had
treated him with injustice by letting Job experience some heart-breaking
disasters, a business failure and lastly a devastating physical illness. And Job set out his case that he did not
deserve any of it. If this was karma,
karma got the wrong guy and he could prove it!
He turned the crank on
his complaints to God until pop!
Unexpectedly, God came to give Job an answer. Not a particularly comforting answer, mind
you. God says, “Are you as big as me? As
powerful as me? As creative as me? As
smart as me? Nope!” Not much of an
answer, and certainly not a comfort either.
Except that it is a
reminder to Job that however Job imagined God, God was bigger than that
imagination. God could not be stuffed
into a box until Job turned the crank.
James and John also
thought they had Jesus pegged. They
thought they had figured out what box he belonged in. The box of political leader and reformer who
would start a revolution to depose the Herods and the Pilates of their world. Except
that Jesus wouldn’t stay in that box either.
He wasn’t going to become a stereotypical rebel who takes down the local
tyrant, only to become the next tyrant.
That’s a real pattern
in history. It happened in France when
Louis 16 was deposed and four years later, Napoleon Bonapart was the head of
France, living like a King. The many Roman
emperors that killed their predecessor then were assassinated by the next. Russia was the same, and anyone who read
Animal Farm in school will remember that. Even Israel at the time of Jesus
would have remembered Herod the Great becoming king by attacking the current
king with the help of the Roman army.
Leaders rose and fell, and politics was a dangerous game. James and John figured that Jesus was going
to end up with power and influence, maybe even a throne. But Jesus wanted something bigger.
Not political
leadership but moral, ethical, spiritual and religious leadership. Leadership that inspires and encourages us to
think bigger. Leadership that thinks
outside the box about the big picture, not our big pictures, but God’s big
picture. Leadership that inspires,
empowers and includes us in God’s picture.
We humans like to feel
we are in control of our small little universes. Or if we aren’t in control, there’s something
wrong and we turn to blame. We blame
ourselves, we blame others, we blame God.
We label others and ourselves as a way of feeling like we control the
world, we know how things should be going.
And when, like Job, bad news comes, or someone refuses to stay in their
box, we don’t know how to respond. We ask Jesus to be seated in a power
position next to him. We ask God for
certainty and control. We get instead, a
command to serve one another and a vision of the universe as vast and
diverse. A command to think outside the
box. A command to think beyond our small universes into a vision of community.
Jesus wanted his
disciples to be community, not hierarchy.
To be servants to each other. One
of the Moderator’s books we read says, “We thank God for giving us community
who live by God’s call, by God’s forgiveness and God’s promise. We do not complain of what God does not give
us, but thank God for God has given us enough, a community of flawed Christians
journeying through struggles and need and disillusionement together.”[1] Like Job, James and John, we struggle in
life. Unlike Job and like James and
John, we have community. And unlike
James and John, we know the commitment Jesus made to this new way of thinking
about God and community that was so amazingly outside the box. Together as servants of one another, and
supported by God’s amazing power and grace, we can build a vision of community
that is heaven on earth, that is outside the box and that keeps surprising us
in amazing ways. God’s vision of our
community, our church, is far bigger than we can imagine, so let us be open to
the surprise of seeing that vision pop out in unexpected ways. May it be so. Amen.
“All Around the
Mulberry Bush, the monkey chased the weasel… Pop goes the weasel!” Remember
having one of these when you were a kid?
Or maybe giving one of these to a kid?
Out comes the Jack in the box and it always seemed surprising even
though we knew what would happen.
The big draw of this
toy was that surprise of the jack in the box jumping out and looking bigger than
the box it jumped out of. How did such a
tall clown come out of such a small box?
The scriptures today
talk about God and Jesus as being bigger than we could imagine. The reading from Job is a classic Jack in the
box story, and also reminds me of the cliched advice, “Be careful what you ask
for, you might get it!” Job has been
building up a case against God; Job felt like God was a business partner to be
bargained with, and his friends didn’t help much. They believed firmly in karma, that if you do
something wrong, you would reap the consequences and if a disaster falls on
you, it must be your own fault.
That’s still a common
belief in today’s world too. It’s a
nasty form of blaming the victim, and it’s meant to comfort ourselves. “That won’t happen to me because I do things
properly” which can mean anything from vitamins to crystals. Job was written to challenge that assumption. It is the original “Why bad things happen to
Good People” story, designed to wrestle with that hard question. Job put together a legal argument as if he
was a well-trained lawyer. God had
treated him with injustice by letting Job experience some heart-breaking
disasters, a business failure and lastly a devastating physical illness. And Job set out his case that he did not
deserve any of it. If this was karma,
karma got the wrong guy and he could prove it!
He turned the crank on
his complaints to God until pop!
Unexpectedly, God came to give Job an answer. Not a particularly comforting answer, mind
you. God says, “Are you as big as me? As
powerful as me? As creative as me? As
smart as me? Nope!” Not much of an
answer, and certainly not a comfort either.
Except that it is a
reminder to Job that however Job imagined God, God was bigger than that
imagination. God could not be stuffed
into a box until Job turned the crank.
James and John also
thought they had Jesus pegged. They
thought they had figured out what box he belonged in. The box of political leader and reformer who
would start a revolution to depose the Herods and the Pilates of their world. Except
that Jesus wouldn’t stay in that box either.
He wasn’t going to become a stereotypical rebel who takes down the local
tyrant, only to become the next tyrant.
That’s a real pattern
in history. It happened in France when
Louis 16 was deposed and four years later, Napoleon Bonapart was the head of
France, living like a King. The many Roman
emperors that killed their predecessor then were assassinated by the next. Russia was the same, and anyone who read
Animal Farm in school will remember that. Even Israel at the time of Jesus
would have remembered Herod the Great becoming king by attacking the current
king with the help of the Roman army.
Leaders rose and fell, and politics was a dangerous game. James and John figured that Jesus was going
to end up with power and influence, maybe even a throne. But Jesus wanted something bigger.
Not political
leadership but moral, ethical, spiritual and religious leadership. Leadership that inspires and encourages us to
think bigger. Leadership that thinks
outside the box about the big picture, not our big pictures, but God’s big
picture. Leadership that inspires,
empowers and includes us in God’s picture.
We humans like to feel
we are in control of our small little universes. Or if we aren’t in control, there’s something
wrong and we turn to blame. We blame
ourselves, we blame others, we blame God.
We label others and ourselves as a way of feeling like we control the
world, we know how things should be going.
And when, like Job, bad news comes, or someone refuses to stay in their
box, we don’t know how to respond. We ask Jesus to be seated in a power
position next to him. We ask God for
certainty and control. We get instead, a
command to serve one another and a vision of the universe as vast and
diverse. A command to think outside the
box. A command to think beyond our small universes into a vision of community.
Jesus wanted his disciples to be community, not hierarchy. To be servants to each other. One of the Moderator’s books we read says, “We thank God for giving us community who live by God’s call, by God’s forgiveness and God’s promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us, but thank God for God has given us enough, a community of flawed Christians journeying through struggles and need and disillusionment together.”[1] Like Job, James and John, we struggle in life. Unlike Job and like James and John, we have community. And unlike James and John, we know the commitment Jesus made to this new way of thinking about God and community that was so amazingly outside the box. Together as servants of one another, and supported by God’s amazing power and grace, we can build a vision of community that is heaven on earth, that is outside the box and that keeps surprising us in amazing ways. God’s vision of our community, our church, is far bigger than we can imagine, so let us be open to the surprise of seeing that vision pop out in unexpected ways. May it be so. Amen.
[1] Paraphrase from p 28, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer Life Together: the Classic Exploration of Christian Community Harper
& Row, 1954
