A sermon given by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Menking, Director of the Lutheran Seminary Program in the Southwest, given on February 7, 2006 in Christ Chapel

Texts: Job 6:1-13
1 Corinthians 9:1-14
Mark 3:7-12

It was about as gruesome as it could get. The young child had been diagnosed with leukemia for several years, but the doctor thought that he had a chance with a bone marrow transplant. And so the transplant took place, and things went downhill from there. Throughout the long and arduous ordeal, the parents continued their vigil, fervently believing that their child would survive. None of the heroics worked, and the child died. What followed immediately after his death was a scene I don't think I will ever forget.

The father let out a loud agonizing cry, letting the ICU world around him know that the doctors and medical staff had failed him. One could see the energy building in his strong body. Then without warning, his fist slammed into the wall, leaving a huge hole. By this time, hospital security had been called, and they began to try and help harness this man's grief. Eventually he was wrestled to the floor and held for a while as he returned to his senses. Although the expression of his anger subsided, it was clear that these raw emotions were not going to go away soon. He managed to hold it together and after a while left the hospital to proceed with the funeral arrangements for his son.

Needless to say, being in the presence of such raw and wild emotion was scary. If you've ever been close to such an outbreak, you know the feeling. There is a fear for one's safety, to be sure. But even more fearful is the fact that I was aware of the enormity of the power that now had this man in its grasp. He was out of control, and it was taking a whole staff to harness his energy and bring him under control. Even with all of us around and trying to hold him down, this power seemed to be larger than all of us.

My guess is that all of us live with the potential for such an outbreak. Underneath our nice, pious and gentle faces, I suspect there are raw emotions that were they to be unleashed might have the same power over us that this man's grief and anger had over him. Those emotions are so powerful, they scare us. And unconsciously, we might well perceive these emotions to be demonic. We don't know what we will say or do if they are unleashed. And we work hard to keep them under control and in check.

Job's life circumstance is probably not unlike the man and the family that I described. Things are about as gruesome as they can get, and none of it makes sense. He has been a righteous and good man, and evil has befallen him for no good reason. This is no intellectual conversation on the nature of evil. What has befallen Job is as real as a family losing seven of their children in a car accident or as real as the Katrina victim who loses all hope, killing himself and his family. The suffering that comes to them makes no sense. When confronted with these kinds of reality, we are taken into the deep abyss where if we are honest, we must ask questions of God that come from our anger and sense of injustice, rather than our niceness. That's exactly what Job risks. There is nothing nice or rational about his lament. Nothing is censored here. What we get of Job is pure raw anger and outrage over the absence of God's sense of justice and righteousness. God has allowed evil to affect a righteous man. As a matter of fact, what perplexes Job so much in this text is the extent to which he sees God "playing" with him. "God's arrows have pierced me…and for what reason?"

If the truth be known, don't we all feel like this at one time or another. We are overwhelmed, and once we get past our rationale minds to the more primitive side of ourselves, we find ourselves screaming inside -- "Enough God! Why are you doing this to me? What have I done?" Yes, we might feel those things, but we generally find ways to censor our thoughts and speech, opting instead for nice prayers and liturgical decorum. Those sorts of words are scary to us; they seem irrational. They may seem theologically incorrect. We are afraid to give them speech.

Job is not afraid to go there. He gives speech to his anger and despair, his desire to be killed. It is a speech that his three friends try to censor with their rationale thought. Job's speech is more fearful to them than it is to him. And I wonder if that isn't the paradox that begs our attention. I don't want to read into this, nor do I want to romanticize Job's situation, but the text seems to imply that Job is willing to risk this speech with God! What has he got to lose? Maybe it's not a question of what he's got to lose as much as it is that Job is willing to engage God with his rawness. In a strange sort of way -- that's faith!

And do we not see that same sort of faith in the reading from Mark. People are not afraid to come to Jesus with their demons!

And the good news is that God is not afraid of this engagement.

We know the story of Job. It is as though God sits back and waits for the three friends to finish their meaningless interrogation. And then he intervenes and engages Job. Could it be that in giving voice to our own raw grief, anger and despair God might engage us as well? Could it be that in bringing our own demons into the presence of Jesus, we might find healing?

In this season of Epiphany, we are reminded that the light has been revealed in the midst of our darkness. Indeed the light has come and penetrated even into the depths of our inner most beings, into those deep dark places where fearful powers lurk to have control of our lives. Yes, and even in these places, we may believe with confidence that God stands ready to engage those powers so that we can have life and hope.