Sermon Preached on June 21, 2021 at Stockbridge Presbyterian Church
Thanking God in the Storm
In this Summer of Thankfulness we thought about being thankful in all things. Last week we explored thankfulness in exile. Today we are looking at thanking God in the storm of life. Scripture is filled with stories of men and women that live out the storms of life and come through with God’s help. One of the greatest stories of struggle through the storm of life is the story of Job. There is a whole book of the Bible dedicated to a story of a person that has trials that seem too much.
The story states that Job was an upstanding, wealthy man that loved God and was faithful. This story is ultimately about our call to withstand the storms of life and know that God does not will disease, destruction, or suffering but that it happens and we are called to be thankful to God for what we have and know that the storms of life are temporary.
The events of Job’s strife were compacted within the story. Scholars looked through the events of Job’s story and asserted that it was probably a period of 9 months. In that time it was devastating nonetheless. Job lost his livelihood from a fire that destroyed his sheep and crops, he lost his sons to a roof collapse, and then his body was filled with painful sores from head to toe. His friends saw this storm in his life and encouraged him to just give up his faith. Job didn’t hold back his feelings about his situation to God and in his prayer language he exclaimed and cursed his own life believing maybe if he wasn’t alive this would never happen.
Hear now from God the answer of Job’s cries as I read Job 38:1-11 from the Message Translation.
38 1-11 And now, finally, God answered Job from the eye of a violent storm. He said:
“Why do you confuse the issue?
Why do you talk without knowing what you’re talking about?
Pull yourself together, Job!
Up on your feet! Stand tall!
I have some questions for you,
and I want some straight answers.
Where were you when I created the earth?
Tell me, since you know so much!
Who decided on its size? Certainly you’ll know that!
Who came up with the blueprints and measurements?
How was its foundation poured,
and who set the cornerstone,
While the morning stars sang in chorus
and all the angels shouted praise?
And who took charge of the ocean
when it gushed forth like a baby from the womb?
That was me! I wrapped it in soft clouds,
and tucked it in safely at night.
Then I made a playpen for it,
a strong playpen so it couldn’t run loose,
And said, ‘Stay here, this is your place.
Your wild tantrums are confined to this place.’
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
PRAYER
Job was giving God all these questions about his existence and the storms of his life. He wanted to know the “Why” of it all. Isn’t that so relatable. When the storms of our lives blow around us and it feels like we keep getting knocked down again and again we question the purpose of it all. We try to explain our lot in life and the strange things that happen as something that we did wrong or a punishment of sorts. But this world is filled with people like Job who did nothing particularly evil or wrong but had tragedy knock him around. All this strife and it seemed like there was no answer from God as to what was going on.
But then Job’s story comes to this point where God answers through the storm. The answer isn’t necessarily clear about why or how but the answer is a creation story. God is answering about what has been set in motion in the world and how God is not going to always answer on our terms but God’s answer is a reminder of God’s holy presence in the midst of the storm.
Max Lucado put it this way: God flood the sky with queries, and Job cannot help but get the point: only God defines God. You’ve got to know the alphabet before you can read, and God tells Job, “You don’t even know the ABCs of heaven, much less the vocabulary.” For the first time, Job is quiet. Silenced by a torrent of questions. … Notice the change. Before he heard God, Job couldn’t speak enough. After he heard God, he couldn’t speak at all.” (Max Lucado. For The Tough Times. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2006, pp. 59, 61).
God speaking to Job is powerful in itself. Job didn’t have the things that were taken restored so there is the feeling of continued sorrow and powerlessness. But Job got to meet God in this answer. He was learning about new questions in life. Not the “why me” but the “how will I respond to this storm in life?”
In our prayers we are called not only to talk, but to listen. That is the reminder from the text that Max Lucado drew out, that Job said so much but forgot to listen.
We all have experienced some time of “storm” in our life.
Rev. Dr. Tony Evans a professor and African-American theologian speaks about the storms in life and states, “At any moment you are probably either in a storm, just heading out of a storm, or about to experience one.”
There are times in our lives, like Job, that we are in the muck of a heavy storm that pulls us under and makes us just want to give up in life. What is the point? This is where the beauty of God stepping in to speak in Job’s story comes. There were all these people watching Job’s lot in life and how he was trying to navigate all the tragedy and God spoke to him about who God is.
I know in some ways I wouldn’t want to hear that type of answer but it really is the best answer for navigating the storms of life. God put the world into motion, God created calm in chaos, God created beauty from ashes. God was there at the beginning, God is present always, and God will always BE.
So who are we to question? Well, we are ones who God loves and desires our questions. God didn’t condemn Job but threw a lot more questions back about humanity's role in creation and order.
There is a strange contradiction in these words from God. In one sense the world is orderly and in another tragedy doesn’t always have a reason. In this story we could see the adversary, Satan, who is introduced in the beginning of Job that challenges God’s faithful people who prosper and of course would thank God. But there are things that happen, literal storms that wipe out towns, illness that separates people from their loved ones who die with little contact, unexplained death of a loved one, and so much more. These things are not the will of God but the promise is that God will not leave us alone in the storm. In Romans 8 it says that, “God works together all things for good…” that means that it isn’t the will of God for suffering and storms but God will work things together and good will come out of the tragedy.
That is the call to thankfulness in the storm. Thankful that God is with us, thankful for the people who surround us. There are big storms and the tiny little ones that come and go. God is with us through it all and sometimes the answer to our prayers is to know that the Creator of all things loves you, is with you, and desires you to keep asking more than why but start asking “How…”
We see that in Jesus. He could have started and ended his prayers to God with “WHY?” as he suffered but instead thanked God, blessed others, and gave us another way to look at the world. As a world of creation and created beings redeemed back to God.
Today we celebrate Communion. In this strange way we are still storming through the pandemic. We are called to remember Christ’s love in the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the cup.
We are called to engage in the meal that Jesus shared with his disciples before a known and purposeful suffering was about to occur. Jesus was preparing his people, preparing us all to engage with Christ and remember. Just like God told Job to remember what God did, we are called to remember what God did, what Christ is continually doing, and then what is our response to God.
We are called to remember, to thank, and then to live out our thankfulness in the storm, out of the storm, or as we enter the storms of life.
Pray with me as I share a prayer from the Masai in Tanzania.
Father, thank you for your revelation about death
And Illness
And sorrow.
Thank you for speaking so plainto us, for call us all friends and hovering over us; for extending your arms out to us.
We cannot stand on our owl we fall into death without you. We fall from faith, left to our won. We are really friendliess without you.
Your extended arms fill us with joy, expressing love, love caring and caring, asking and receiving our trust.
You have our trust, Father, and our faith, with our bodies and all that we are and possess.
We fear nothing when with you, safe to scratch out and help others, those troubled in faith, those troubled in body.
Father, help us to do with our bodies what we proclaim, that our faith be known to you and to others, and be effective in all the world. AMEN.
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