Sermons

Third Sunday of Easter
Sunday 22 April at 6.30pm

Simon Cowling
Readings: Isaiah 38. 9-20; John 11. 27-44

Last week brought grim news. The murder of over thirty students on an American university campus; the murder of some two hundred Iraqi civilians is a series of bombings in Baghdad; the breaking of a UN arms embargo by the Sudanese government still, seemingly, intent on prolonging the misery of their own people in Darfur. Grim news indeed.

For people of faith there are no easy words to offer, no simple solutions in the face of such horror. Over the past week I have been drawn to the Old Testament story of Job, the good man from the land of Uz who, we are told, worshipped God and was faithful to him. Then, in a reverse of fortune, he loses his business, his children and his health. His friends, Job's comforters as they have become ironically known, believe that bad things happen only as punishment for sin and that Job is suffering because he has done something wrong. But Job refuses to apologise to God because he knows he has acted justly. He sits alone on a pile of ashes and wishes he had never been born.

Resolution is only achieved at the end of the book. Job's redemption, if we care to look at it as such, is finally achieved when God speaks to him out of the storm, bombards him with questions. Through the questions Job is confronted with the mystery, the otherness and yet the intense presence of God in all creation. His experience of God is then overwhelming: 'in the past I knew only what others had told me, but now I have seen you with my own eyes.' He learns to live again.

Testing of our faith comes to all of us, whether it is a testing born out of personal tragedy and suffering, or by the seemingly random tragedy and suffering experienced by those in Virginia, Baghdad or Darfur. So, like Job, maybe we have two options: to sit angrily on a heap of ashes and rail at God; or to allow God to enter the dark and brooding places in our hearts and to acknowledge both his otherness and his presence. Perhaps thus we can fully face the truth that we are part of God's creation and thus called to work, with God, to serve and to heal that creation. This, surely, is where true resurrection begins - for us and for the whole world.
Amen.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay