On Mary Clyde and He who gives meaning to our suffering . . .

      Before I get started trying to summarize Mary Clyde in a homily, I do want to take a moment and thank each of you for attending.  If you find the service is hitting you “just right” or reminding you of things about God that you needed, you should know that Mary Clyde meticulously planned this service once she made the decision to stop fighting the infection.  There are likely one or two things in here for each and every one of us in attendance, and that was intentional on Mary Clyde’s part.  For me, of course, she gave a wonderful slow arcing softball pitch right over home plate by choosing Job as one of her readings.  Many of you present do not know it, by I did a MA in religion on the book of Job.  Mary Clyde knew it, and she knew that reading and Psalm 46, in particular, would speak to those who are struggling with the seeming injustice of her death, those who are railing against God that it was a secondary infection that took her rather than the cancer.

     Of course, even as she was choosing Job to make things easy for me, she had to goon me from the grave.  Mary Clyde served on Liturgy & Worship at Advent for almost forever.  She knew how mad I get at lectionary editors for cutting and carving out of pericopes in the Scriptures.  So, what did she do?  She chose a recommended reading from Romans that has two or three sections cut out of it!  Like the Gospel lesson she chose, the passage reminds us of God’s glorious covenant He swears with those who call upon His Name, that not even death can keep God from fulfilling all the promises He has made to us.  There were a million other NT readings that teach the same, but she wanted to cut up a passage for us!

     Her musical choice was likewise intentional.  The songs are all songs she liked to sing and to hear sung, but they also carry deep meaning for those who stand at the grave of a loved one, making alleluias.  And because many of you are not Episcopalians and do not know the right tunes for some of the songs she chose, her brothers and sisters in the choir agreed to sing during the summer recess, to help make sure another version of the hymn did not accidentally get sung!

     Good.  You are mostly laughing.  I cannot say I am at all surprised.  This morning, as I was talking with a couple people over in the parish hall during the visitation, I called Mary Clyde a character.  One of those in conversation with me loved that description of her.  Everybody had a fun story or three to tell about Mary Clyde, and her range of friends covered amateur geologists to stampers, those who worked in government to those who try to encourage us to read.  And let’s be real.  Despite the various ways in which we came to know Mary Clyde and regardless of whether we are even Christian, was anybody really surprised to see knights with copes and swords standing guard over her body this morning?  And we have not even started talking about chickens and Cursillo.  More than one of you have mentioned how you will never be able to look at chickens the same way ever again.

     We are laughing, and that is a good thing.  I do not want to diminish the grief that we will all feel at her absence.  As events and life goes on, all of us gathered will think on her, miss her, maybe wonder how she would have livened things up.  It is appropriate that we mourn her death and miss her presence.

     But, as one self-described lapsed Christian confessed a few days before she finally succumbed to the infection, May Clyde had an infectious joy.  Mary Clyde was the kind of Christian you liked to hang out with.  She was silly.  She was fun loving.  She had what I call a healthy charism of sarcasm, though there are those who disagree with my personal esteem of sarcasm.  I would like to say one wonders, but I don’t really wonder.  If more Christians lived as if they were free, as their Father in heaven claims, how many more Christians would there be in the world?  Part of Mary Clyde’s testimony was to remind people of the joy, the laughter, the silliness of being saved by Christ Jesus.  So many of our brothers and sisters are so serious, and live as if they cannot accept the joy, and in so doing become those who off-put others from following God.  In some ways, her life was a testimony of the joy we should all have, even in the face of death.

     I took the low-hanging fruit that Mary Clyde offered today and decided to have us all hang out in the story of Job.  Many of us know the story of Job well enough to know that Job is a righteous man who suffers at the hand of Satan.  Satan takes Job’s family, Job’s wealth, and even Job’s health, but none of Satan’s works cause Job to sin, to turn from God.  It was a book that was composed, in part, to instruct all humanity that life does not work the way we think they should.  In the Church, or in any of God’s people, we like to believe that God blesses His chosen people and accurses the wicked, right?  The big question becomes “who are His people?”  We Christians are too quick to forget that God calls His people and equips them to be a blessing to the world.  Worse, too many of us forget that the way to glory and blessing is through suffering and the Cross.  We want desperately to get to the end, the glory and blessing, but we forget the sufferings that help shape our understandings of God, sufferings that teach us both of God’s faithfulness and God’s ability and willingness to redeem all things.  Job’s story exists to challenge some of our assumptions.

     Close readers of the story know that the beginning of the narrative begins in the heavenly council.  God asks Satan in front of other heavenly beings where he has been.  Satan answers that he has been walk to and fro’ all over the earth.  God points out His faithful servant Job.  Satan dismisses Job’s faithfulness as a consequence of blessing or divine favor in front of the council.  God says Job is truly faithful.  Satan asks for and receives permission to test God’s assertion.

     Those of us who read the story for the first time might be shocked that there is a heavenly council.  Who gets to attend?  Why is Satan allowed in a heavenly council?  Is it just the Trinity being described as a council?  Are the angels and archangels in attendance?  What’s going on?  It makes us uncomfortable in the twentieth century to take a claim seriously, right?  A heavenly council!  Those outside the Church like to claim that gods and goddesses are myths, made up stories for people who cannot understand events in the world.  Christians are quick to remind us that there is only one God, that idols are false and powerless.  Yet here is Scripture treating these other figures, powers and principalities perhaps, as real figures.

     Those of us who pay attention to the world know lots of people who worship false gods, though.  America, in most corners, worships mammon, right?  Oh, we call mammon by a new name, capitalism.  We dress him up a bit.  But the effect is the same.  And we even go so far as to convince one another that capitalism is a merit-based god.  He rewards us based on are hard work or ingenuity or other esteemed qualities, right?  We do not like to acknowledge in America that luck and privilege play a big role in blessing.  We do not like to admit in our country that we practice corporate welfare, rather than real capitalism, because we bail out those companies failing in our midst even as we let those unfavored “others” suffer.

     Whether capitalism is a “real” god or not, many Americans treat capitalism as real.  Americans and other nationalities treat any number of gods as if they are real.  Our “worship” of these false gods and goddesses affects the lives are those around us in our cities, states, country, and the world.  So, we should not be shocked that God treats these gods and goddesses as if they seek to draw people from Him.

     Our passage picks up after Job has lost his family, his wealth, and his health.  He has lost even more, though, as has become apparent in these last few passages of the book named after him.  His “friends,” have become adversaries; Job is no longer an honored friend in their eyes.  Because Job has lost everything, they are certain God is mad at Job now; they are certain that Job is accursed by God.  They encourage Job to repent.  And when Job insists that he has done nothing wrong, they get serious in their attempts to get him see his error.  Because Job is accursed and suffering, Job is clearly unrighteous.  His insistence that he has done nothing wrong simply confirms their opinion.  A few weeks before our story, those friends would have taken Job’s claims seriously because his circumstance was so different.  Now?  We would say that Job has lost even his honored place among his friends. 

     Job recognizes that his friends are not really supporting him.  Like God, he complains, they are not satisfied with his flesh.  Then comes the beginning of the beauty in the book of Job.  Job longs for an advocate, a vindicator.  Job knows he has done nothing to merit these curses in life.  He has continued to be faithful to God, in spite of his wife’s advice.  He longs for someone, anyone to take up his case before the heavenly throne.  Crazily, despite circumstances to the contrary, Job knows his vindicator lives and will stand upon the earth.  Even more strange to our ears, Job announces that even after his skin has been destroyed, he will see God in his flesh.  How can Job see God in his flesh, if his flesh is destroyed?

     One of the great subtle beauties of the book of Job is that it addresses the seeming discontinuity of the world.  Often, the righteous really do suffer; often, the wicked seem to be blessed.  When we begin to notice such things, we struggle to reconcile what we know about God with what we observe.  For example, a number of you came in or called to speak about Mary Clyde and what was happening.  A number of you railed at the injustice that she was likely dying because of bad care, of a secondary infection, rather than the cancer.  If God is good and all powerful, why did He not cure the infection, too?  If God loves us, or notices us at all, why would He allow her to die in this way?  Where is the justice in her death?  Where is God’s love in her death?

     I see some squirming, so let’s address that right now.  God teaches us in Scripture that imprecations are not sins.  We can hurl accusations at Him.  We can complain that He seems asleep at the wheel or unmoved or distant.  We can acknowledge that our circumstances do not reflect the promises that He has made to us, and such complaints are not sins.  In fact, such complaining is entering into a more mature relationship with our Father in heaven.  We want to understand why things are the way they are; we want to know His perspective on perceived evils in our life; we want to know He truly loves us.  We want to know that God is unlike the powers and principalities and idols worshipped by others.  We want to know He is real and that His promises are sure!  And so He teaches us to notice such things and how to seek Him in the midst of such sufferings.

      One of the buried treasures in Job is the polemic against these false gods worshipped in the world.  It is a subtle, but powerful polemic.  In some ways, the polemic is best captured by the Name of God in the mouths of the speakers in this book.  For Job’s part, God is really only called by two names.  The first Name of God used by Job in his discussions with his friends is the covenantal Name Yahweh.  Most often, we in English translate that name as LORD.  The Name captures the understanding that God will be honored when we are honored and dishonored when we are dishonored.  It also captures that reminder that you and I who claim to be among God’s people are called to honor God in our lives.  What we do honors or dishonors Him.  As our LORD, we are called always to honor Him, and repent when we sin.

      The other name used by Job as the word Eloah.  In a simple understanding, it is the singular of the plural name for gods, Elohim.  Eloah is used less than sixty times in the Hebrew, and almost ¾’s of the times the name is used in the OT occur in this book!  What is going on in the use of the names by Job is this interesting back and forth between LORD and THE God.  If we think about it for a second, it makes sense.  Job is the one who accepts God’s blessings and God’s seeming curses and does not sin.  His friends have this understanding of God as one in control or creating, but not with them as they go about their daily life and work.  They use other, what you and I call less relational names, to describe God.  Job wants an Advocate to argue before God, because he knows he is faithful.  His friends think he is crazy to think that God would allow unjust suffering in His Creation, let alone care were it shown to exist.  All of this, of course, is taking place long before the work and person of Jesus of Nazareth.  Somehow, long before the shadow of the Cross will be cast upon earth, Job knows that he needs God to stand before God to make his case, that somehow he will see God even after his skin is destroyed.  Job does not one of the minor members of the heavenly council to represent him.  In fact, Job is certain that, even after death, God will represent and vindicate him!

     For his part, Job is vindicated by the end of the book.  God appears in the whirlwind and tells the friends that Job has spoken of Him correctly.  He tells them that only if Job intercedes for them will He spare their lives.  Can you imagine the collective gulp of the friends?  Here you have been trying to defend God, and God tells you you’re a dead man unless your friend, whom you have been accusing, makes intercession on your behalf!  Luckily for them, Job is a righteous man and friend; he makes the intercession on their behalf.

      Part of the reason, I think, we Christians avoid this book so much is that we like things neat and tidy.  We want to believe that God blesses the righteous and curses the wicked.  We want to believe that the world works in a predictable order.  The problem, of course, is that the world does work in a predictable order, just not an order we want or like.  The world almost always chooses darkness rather than the light.  The world prefers chaos over order.  And we all want to believe that we can sneak things past our Father in heaven, that we can get away with any number of sins as He is monitoring the planets in their orbits or calamities affecting people.

     The great news, the Gospel news and reminder, of course, is that God always notices.  God knows what is happening to each and every single person on earth at any given instant.  He knows that much of the suffering on earth is a direct result of our sinful behavior and attitudes, our unwillingness to live as if we believe He notices or cares.  But even though we often deserve our sufferings, He was not willing to leave us without hope.  He sent His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, not just to be an atonement for sin but a pattern of holy living, as our Collect this week reminds us all.  And because Jesus was faithful, we have hope.  Because Jesus trusted the will of the Father in spite of His life’s circumstances, we get to realize the fulfilment of Job’s desire.  We know that God Himself is that Advocate who places Himself between the judgement we deserve and the hope all humanity should desire.  And because we know God has acted in Christ Jesus, we, like Mary Clyde and all those saints who came before us, are free!  We and they are able to celebrate with joy, the certainty of our redemption.  That God who bound Himself in honor to His people continues so to bind Himself today.  Because Mary Clyde was His daughter in baptism, we know that she will see Him in the her flesh as a friend.  Better still, as she reminded each one of us in her life and even in her death, that same opportunity is promised to each of us who call upon His Name.  Best of all, we fully understand how God used this seemingly cruel or senseless death for his redemptive promises, and how Mary Clyde willing bore that cross given her, trusting in His redemptive power.

     Today, though, may not be that day.  I get how the ending is, for now, unsatisfactory.  I understand why we hate the way her story looks today.  I am certain she chose Job for that reason, too.  After God has told Job to gird up his loins and contend with God, and after Job has made intercession on behalf of his friends, and after Job has been doubly blessed by God with riches and family, we are left with an uncomfortable situation.  Job never learns why he suffered.  God never tells Job that he suffered because Satan was convinced it was the blessings that Job loved, and not God.  We, the readers and the hearers, know the story.  But Job lives the rest of his life unaware of the cosmic battle that has played out in his life.  Because we are in Mary Clyde’s story, we may not know all the why’s?  We certainly will not know all the ways in which God used her suffering to reach others.  But because He was with her in her suffering, and because He bound Himself to her in her baptism, we know that God Himself will vindicate her!  Were this the end of her story, He would be dishonored.

     One glorious Day, however, God will cause all who ridicule her faithfulness, who scoff at her joy, who pity her circumstance as foolishness, to acknowledge her before her Lord, a faithful daughter who sought only to glorify Him in her life and who, when she screwed up, repented and tried again.  That was His promise to her and His promise to all who choose to enter into relationship with Him through the waters of baptism.  Mary Clyde understood that God was serious when He proclaimed that we are buried in Christ’s death.  She understood that God uses the suffering of His servants to reach others just as He used the suffering of His only Son to redeem the world.  She faced her death as one confident and hopeful that she would share in His Resurrection, and that all of this would be given meaning by the One who called her to new life.

     In the weeks and months to come, my friends, we will all have opportunity to reflect on her life and death.  We will all likely be given some insight as to how God used her suffering to reach others.  My prayer for us, though, is that perhaps we pay a bit more attention to her joy and her character, that we embrace the joy and freedom to which our Lord calls each of us.  Maybe the best way we can honor Him, and in so doing honor her, live as if we know our Redeemer lives and that we, too, one day, will see Him face to face, as our friend and our Eloah!

 

In His Peace,

Brian†