Creative
Peace
Ordinary 27
Oct 4, 2015
Mountain Ministry Parish
Ordinary 27
Oct 4, 2015
Mountain Ministry Parish
Scripture-
Job 1:1; 2:1-10
In 1933, two Jewish men named
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created the first modern superhero – Superman.
Now, most of us have encountered Superman at some point in our lives – the
comics, the movies, the audio dramas, they’re all around us – but just in case
you haven’t, let me give you a bit of background. He is an undocumented
immigrant to this country, arriving as a baby to be raised by a couple from
Kansas with no ties to his birth family. He blends in with society as best he
can, and ends up reporting for a newspaper in the biggest city in America. He
struggles with his identity – who is he really, the immigrant or the Kansas
farm boy? – and falls in love with a fellow reporter, Lois Lane, who is
initially indifferent towards him. As part of his identity crises, “Clark Kent”
uses his gifts to help the people of Metropolis while wearing his ancestral
crest proudly, but hiding his identity as the reporter. When physically
reminded of his origin by a rock from his homeland, he becomes weak and
nauseated, and loses many of his special gifts. His gifts are many –
originally, speed, strength, and a terrifically tall jump, but later “improved”
with flight, heat and x-ray vision, cold breath, and nigh-invulnerability. Yet
none of these physical gifts, which are taken away by kryptonite, match his
moral gift – his ability to maintain morality in the face of difficult choices.
This gift is one instilled by his adopted parents, and at its core, is the true
super-power of Superman.
Job 1:1; 2:1-10
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A tree grows despite adversity |
Siegel and Shuster talk about
Superman being a wish-fulfillment character for them – someone who, despite his
differences, was able to live, work, and be praised in society for his actions.
Many critics call Superman an attempt to explain assimilation to the American
populace – for both the good and the bad of it. Clearly, cultural influences
abound with Superman. After all, Siegel and Shuster were Jewish-American
immigrants in 1930s America – and as World War II loomed, Superman did his part
for the “American Way.” He went off to fight Nazis along with the American GIs
– and the Navy actually recommended Superman comics as part of care packages to
sailors and marines! When World War II ended, there were suddenly fewer enemies
for Superman to face. The Nazis were no longer a threat, and Russia hadn’t
started aggressively maneuvering against the other Allies yet.
But… there was a domestic threat.
The Ku Klux Klan was starting to worry many in America, as they upped their
recruitment almost exponentially. And so, a man named William Stetson Kennedy
decided to go undercover to learn more about them. “Stetson Kennedy,” as he
liked to be called, was born in 1916 to a wealthy Florida family. He was
descended from Declaration of Independence signers, confederate officers, and
John Stetson, famous for his manufacturing of cowboy hats. In his late 20s,
Stetson worked for the Federal Writers Project of the WPA, roaming the
countryside with Zora Neale Hurston, collecting folklore and songs. The Guardian describes them: “Together, they’d travel the back roads, the
revolver-packing black preacher’s daughter and the word-besotted Confederate
general’s grandson, collecting the rapidly disappearing tales of Old Florida.”
When World War II ended, Stetson
Kennedy found another way to collect stories – by going undercover with the
KKK, learning their secret codes and doctrines. He tried to reveal the
information on multiple occasions to the police and to members of congress, but
was told at least once that “The KKK is an old American institution” – and was
thrown out for trying to expose them. Finally, Stetson came up with a brilliant
idea – he’d leak the information to the Superman radio drama writers and
producers.
Using his insider information, the
Superman radio drama ran a sixteen-episode expose of the KKK, though they did
change the name in-universe to “The Clan”. In this series, the secret
handshakes and details of the KKK organization were revealed to the public at
large. Superman’s heroics were a part of the story, but it was the newspaper
chief, Perry White, who wrote editorial after expose, intentionally showing how
ordinary people could stand up to hatred. In exposing hatred to the light, the
Superman radio series stopped the KKK from growing any larger, some reports
showing the KKK recruitment dropping off from its exponential rise to nearly
zero within the course of a year.
Now, Superman’s changing of
American culture didn’t change everyone immediately, but it did bring a
“creative peace.” That is, a peace resulting from creation, a building up of
people and morality that positively affected many. Indeed, the 1950s TV version
of Superman used the tagline “Defender of Truth, Justice, and the American Way”
– where American Way meant morally straight and good.
While we hear stories of Superman
today, in the ancient world, one of the “super-hero” stories was the story of
Job. The version of Job’s story told in the Bible is based on an older legend,
one that has parallels in Egypt, Edom, Syria, Arabia, and even as far as India.
Even the name “Job” – Hebrew, iyyobh – is mysterious. If it’s a
Hebrew word originally, it’s likely related to the verb “ayabh”, meaning “to be
hostile” – as in, Job is the object of enmity and persecution. If it’s from an
Arabic word, it might be connected to the word for “return” or “penitence” –
that is, “One who is converted”.
The fact that Job begins with a
“once upon a time” beginning is no coincidence. Much like the stories that
Stetson Kennedy collected, the author of Job – anonymous though he is – is
retelling old stories for a different purpose. Virginia Woolf famously wrote:
“I just read the story of Job in the Bible – and God doesn’t come out looking
too good!” Carol Bechtel explains further: “If one takes the prologue
literally, there are questions [about God’s omniscience] that will not go away.
Yet, if one accepts… this book as being a work of theologically-informed
literature, the divine “image problem” becomes less of a stumbling block. It's
a’ if the author is saying to us, “Just imagine something like this happening.
I’m not saying that it did happen or that it does. But just imagine it for a
moment.””
Often, people think the purpose
of the story of Job is to explain suffering – what theologians call “teleology”,
the study of evil. But at the heart of the issue in Job isn’t the suffering he
experiences – it’s his faith in God. Just as morality is Superman’s true
superpower, so is Job’s faith his true superpower. His faith doesn’t waver, no
matter how much the Adversary takes away. He loses his family, his wealth, his
health – all the things that prosperity gospel teaching says that God will
grant you if you follow God. And he loses it because he is a dedicated follower
of God! Job isn’t stupid – his faith in God isn’t because he’s blind to what’s
happening.
In our prologue this morning, we
hear about the celestial bargain between God and the Adversary – Ha Satan in
Hebrew – where God grants the adversary the right to sicken Job. And Job falls
victim to a skin disease – boils, a rash, or something similar, and we find him
in a pit of ashes, just outside of town, when his wife finds him scraping at
his skin with broken pottery.
If your instinct on hearing this
is to sharply inhale, don’t worry, there’s a perfectly good explanation for Job
covering himself in ashes. Wood ash – as long as it’s both cold and never
exposed to water – is strongly alkali, and can relieve itching and pain from
various skin conditions. Since Job is “covered all over from the soles of his
feet to the crown of his head,” the only way he can find any relief is to be in
the ash pit entirely. The pot sherds help Job reach longer distances – kinda
like back-scratching sticks used even today!
So, Job is covered in ashes,
miserable, scratching at his itchy skin, and his wife comes out to him. They’ve
lost a lot – it makes sense that she’d be upset. So, she simply tells him,
“Curse God, and die.”
She’s trying to help – no really!
Clearly, to her, if the god you worship can’t or won’t protect you from these
indignities, then death is a preferable option. Job responds harshly to her,
telling her she’s “acting like a depraved woman” – emphasis on depraved – by
which he means a woman without faith. Then he says our key verse of the day –
“Are we to accept the good that comes from God, but not accept the bad?”
Job isn’t calmly accepting his
fate – he’s upset, and doing what he can to relieve the pain and trouble. But
he’s also not giving up his faith in the process. That steady faith is the
reason that Job is lifted up as a Superhero of the ancient world – no matter
what happens, how his friends torment him, or claim that he’s being punished
for something he did wrong, Job withstands it all. Job creates a peace in a
difficult situation. He creates peace through conversations with his three
friends, and his wife – helping them to understand faith, and to see why his
convictions are so strong, but also listening to them and hearing their
concerns.
In some ways, Job ends up being a
prototype Messiah. No, not in the sense of saving others, but in the sense that
the Messiah was to be not a wealthy, powerful man, but a heavenly child, raised
by mortal parents, whose morality was a beacon in the darkness, a light shed on
the evils of the world that reduced their power, and eventually overcame death
itself.
Whenever we celebrate communion,
we remember Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. We tell the story of God’s
own son, who ate with immigrants, outcasts, strangers, and tax collectors – and
who was killed for fear of his gaining power, and yet showed the world that
death could not hold back God. That God can overcome any adversary – and that
hope is possible. Shirley Guthrie puts it this way: “[Acting] on the memory of
God’s self-giving love… [shows] God’s presence in people who love enough to
risk their own comfort and security to sit at the side of the sick and dying,
befriend the friendless, accept the unacceptable, help those who cannot help
themselves, defend the cause of the victims of injustices.”
This is how we can participate in
the creative peace of Job – to be unlike Job’s friends, helping instead of
challenging, and sitting with instead of standing against those suffering. While we
celebrate our friends and family gathered here today – as we celebrate communion,
and extend the feast to the potluck following – we need not only to remember
the poor, outcast, and marginal people, but to act as God would have us act. In
the faith of Job. With the morality of Superman. And with the love of Jesus
Christ. That… is our creative peace. Amen.
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