9 September 2010
Psalm 50, 59, 60; Job 29:1, 31:1-23; Acts 15:1-11; John 11:17-29

Job continues to maintain his innocence to the end. Our understanding of the suffering in our life usually comes down to the issue of justice. I can understand and live with suffering if it is in payment for sin, if it is justice for something I did or didn’t do, sins of commission or omission. Job says not only did he not actively sin in ways like lusting after another woman but he also did for others what they could not do for themselves, if he saw a need, he met it. If our only theological argument for suffering is retributive justice, we can’t make sense of the world. Sin deserves death in the eyes of God, it is rebellion against Him with whom we have covenant. Job has only one explanation for suffering and will not accept it as justified. Is that your attitude towards suffering?

After four days everyone gave up hope. Jewish belief was that for three days the spirit of a person kept vigil over the body to see if it would re-vivify but that after that it departed to Sheol. Lazarus had been dead four days therefore his spirit had gone and there was no longer any hope of reuniting it with the body. Martha believes Jesus could have prevented her brother’s death and that there is a resurrection (in opposition to the Sadducees) and then makes a remarkable statement of what she believes about Jesus, “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world." Her reaction to all this is to go and get Mary and refers to Jesus as the Teacher. Mary seems to know exactly who this teacher is and rises immediately to go to him. None of this makes sense to them but their love for Jesus trumps whatever disappointment they might have felt.

The first real crisis of belief in the church is resolved at the first church council. How are we saved? That is the issue. Are we saved by faith in Jesus or by faith in Jesus, circumcision and obedience to the law? It is indeed a thorny issue for the new church and it seems that Jesus hadn’t left them with an answer. He had, however, given them the Holy Spirit to lead them into all truth and here is the first test and it is an important one. Peter recalls his own experience of preaching to the uncircumcised at the house of Cornelius and his experience proves decisive in his mind, they received the Holy Spirit through faith and all the rest adds nothing to the equation. Circumcision seems like a small-ish matter, an operation that is relatively routine today, but it wasn’t just the physical mark that matters, with it went a promise to keep the law and here Peter says that neither they nor anyone else had succeeded in keeping that promise, it has always been faith by which we are saved. It has never been about justice, always grace.

I will sing of your strength;
I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning.
For you have been to me a fortress
and a refuge in the day of my distress.
O my Strength, I will sing praises to you,
for you, O God, are my fortress,
the God who shows me steadfast love.