The Reverend Ronald J. Kolanowski
October 4, 2009
The Eigtheenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 22, Year B

“Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”  This is a tough line from the Book of Job.  The entire Book doesn’t create a very flattering picture of God.  It seems that God uses Job as a pawn in a celestial chess game with Satan.  I don’t know about you, but this is not the image of a loving, all-forgiving God whose desire is to reconcile humanity and all creation back to God that I’m comfortable with.  Since I cannot defend the writer’s image of God, I will instead speak to God’s servant Job.  We hear that Job is a man of integrity.  What does it mean to be a person of integrity?  The word integrity is about 500 years old and comes from the Latin integritas, which translates as “soundness.”  The original word used in the Greek text is ἄκακος, which is even more descriptive.   ἄκακος means without guile or fraud, harmless, free from guilt, one fearing no evil from others, distrusting no one.  This would describe Job.

The writer of Job refuses to see evil’s apparent triumph as the last word about our lives or God’s life.  In the face of evil, Job refuses to put himself or God under a curse.  He also refuses to “blame the victim” (himself!).  At the end of the book, God commends Job’s refusal to curse his situation.  Job has complete trust that the God who has been revealed to him in the end will turn out to be just.  Job also refuses to see himself, or anyone else, as defective goods.  I think in this underlying value of God, every person and every thing has a link to today’s gospel as well.

In our staff meeting, Fr. Don commented on the choir anthem choice for this week.  The anthem “Fight the Good Fight” preceded our gospel passage on Jesus’ position regarding divorce in Mark.  Is there a connection?  For those of us who are married, sometimes staying together is all about fighting the good fight.  Like Job, who did not curse God and himself in his present situation, much of the time being married is all about the long haul…getting through the tough stuff and fighting the good fight for the value of the relationship. 

The message Jesus gives about divorce has been used as a two-edged sword by many Christians.  It has been used against LBGT folks as Jesus’ definitive word about marriage being a relationship between a man and a woman.  But, more importantly, and I believe more accurately, this passage is fundamentally an issue of basic human rights.  The principle message of this gospel passage is that women are not disposable property, as was allowed according to the law of Moses.  Jesus is explicitly answering a question about how a husband should treat his wife.  He emphasizes that when two people become one flesh, God is in that union.  Because of that holy union, neither is free to treat the other as disposable property.  Children as well are not disposable property, because God’s reign belongs first to the most vulnerable among us.

As has been true in many of the readings we’ve been hearing this summer ….God has a special place for those the world deems as the least…the most vulnerable…those without power.  It is from the place of little power that God’s kingdom belongs.  Like Job, who was powerless to do anything about his situation...like many women who are treated poorly by men…like children, who historically have been considered property and been abused…God’s kingdom is for these…the ones on the margins…the ones without voice or power.

Jesus won’t let us use Scripture to continue to use and misuse God’s children.  Jesus says that the Scripture of his time is a response of God’s open heart to the hardened hearts of God’s people.

God’s Word comes to us in our flesh and on our limited terms.  God works among us through our limited ways.  No Scripture passage is the last word.  We sometimes forget that the Word of God is a living person…Jesus Christ. 

We have to search Scripture for signs of the open community to which God is drawing us.  Moses knew that.  Jesus knew that, and so did other rabbis.  But many of us have forgotten it.

As followers of Jesus, is it not our work to open our hearts, our minds and our ears to the cries of those on the margins….to listen intently about what they have to say and teach us?  Are we not to consider who in our society are being treated as disposable property?

We continue to treat one another as disposable property.  Human trafficking and slavery is on the rise even in our own country.  Each year, over 15,000 foreign nationals are trafficked into the United States.  The number of U.S. citizens trafficked within the country each year is even higher.  The Justice Department estimates that 200,000 American children are at risk for trafficking into the sex industry each year.

In our own community of Hartford, three years ago a large human trafficking ring was discovered and the perpetrators have been brought to justice.

In my small town of Storrs, a reporter uncovered that a local Asian restaurant had trafficked illegal Chinese workers in their restaurant and kept them in sub-human living conditions…in essence slave labor.

Human trafficking, violence against immigrants, distain for the homeless and poor, are just a few of the ways our culture violates Jesus’ message in today’s gospel.  We are called to receive the kingdom of God as a little child….

As has been the case for the past many weeks, our readings point us toward the margins… to recognize where our hardness of heart diminishes our ability to see one another as full members of Christ’s Body and to learn what God has to teach us from the margins.  May we have the courage to look honestly at those times in our lives when we have treated one another as disposable property and make amends and see each of us as we truly are….God’s beloved children.  Amen.

Copyright © 2009 by the Reverend Ronald J. Kolanowski