Bible Text: Job 38. 1-7, 34-41; Psalm 104. 1-10; Hebrews 5. 1-10; Mark 10. 32-45 | Preacher: Peter Haddad | A sermon for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost
Today’s readings are a salutary reminder of the difference between God and the human race, between the divine and the human.  It is good for us to have these reminders from time to time lest we are tempted to think of God as being very much like ourselves in the way that God thinks and acts.

A Jewish Rabbi once said to his students “God is not nice.  God is not an uncle.  God is an earthquake.”  Doubtless the students were a little shocked, but the Rabbi’s intention was to jolt them into seeing past God as a tamed and domesticated Deity.

Our God, as encountered in the Scriptures is surprising, wild, imaginative, endlessly welcoming and lavishly generous.  God is very different.  God is unlike us.  As Isaiah 55. 8 puts it, The Lord says: my thoughts and my ways are not like yours.

There are two aspects of God which are emphasized in the readings for this Sunday.  They are, firstly, God’s power, and majesty and might; God’s creativity and energy.  Secondly, God’s profound humility, and God’s path of suffering and servanthood.

Hang on, I hear you say, those qualities do not go together.   That is a paradox, a combining of seemingly contradictory qualities.  But that is the point.  Everything we say about God inclines to paradox.  We cannot neatly define or label the Almighty.

People generally have little trouble with God’s power and dominion.  We see it in nature and in God’s acts in our world.  Divine humility is harder for us to imagine.  Humility is not a quality much admired or valued in today’s world.  In fact it has rather negative connotations for many people.

Everything in our culture runs against the idea of humility, suffering and being a servant.  We, or most of us, expect to lead and control.  Pity the poor politician or statesman who exhibits any softness, kindness, gentleness, consideration or deference.  Their critics would quickly pounce on what they would see as weakness.

So perhaps we need to explain what humility is not.  Charles Dickens, that masterly creator of characters, created an infamous character in his novel David Copperfield.  This fictional character, called Uriah Heep, was a fawning, insincere, thoroughly creepy individual, who was always protesting his ‘umbleness.  Humility is not like that.  Nor is it being a doormat.  Nor does it mean considering oneself as lowly, vile or sinful.  Christ Himself was humble, and He did not act in this way.  God, according to the spiritual tradition of the Church, displays perfect humility, and God is certainly not like this.

Humility, in fact, has something about it which implies a good deal of self-knowledge, wisdom and honesty.  It is to see reality as it actually is in God.  The Church teaches that humility is the “mother of all virtues” just as pride may be considered “the cause of all sin.”  Saint Isaac goes as far as to say that to have genuine humility is to have a power greater than that of raising the dead!

The first two readings show us the power of God.  We see a God who is completely different.  We begin with Job.  Poor Job who has been living in pain and perplexity as he tries to make sense of the unmerited disasters which have befallen him.  Why me?  Why do such bad things happen to good people?  Where is the justice in it all?  Why is there suffering and pain in the world?  Why am I suffering?  God answers Job out of the whirlwind or storm.  Except that it is not really an answer, if it is explanations we are looking for.  God says to Job, why do you talk so much, when you know so little?  God contrasts the divine power manifested in nature with the helplessness of humanity.  The “why” of it all remains a mystery, reminding us that we must all live with unanswered questions and mystery in our lives.

God’s creativity is proclaimed by Psalm 104.  God is revealed in the beauty and majesty of nature, in its wildness and in its abundance.  While people can mar and disfigure this creation, and they are certainly doing their best at the moment, humanity is completely unable to create, maintain and sustain creation on any scale matching God’s.

But God is not different solely in terms of God’s power and might.  God goes about things in a way which contrasts starkly with our natural inclinations.  This is powerfully illustrated in the gospel reading.  For the third time in Mark’s gospel, Jesus talks about his forthcoming death.  For the third time the disciples remain confused and uncomprehending.  I do not think we should judge them too harshly for thinking solely in human terms.  God’s way is so radical, so surprising, so unexpected; it is so fundamentally different from humanity’s usual responses.

Jesus tells the disciples: “We are now on our way to Jerusalem where the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the teachers of the Law of Moses.  They will sentence him to death and hand him over to foreigners, who will make fun of him and spit on him.  They will beat him and kill him.  But three days later he will rise to life.”

What was the response of two of the disciples, James and John?  Well, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, will you do us a favour?”  Jesus asked them what they wanted, and they answered, “When you come into your glory, please let one of us sit at your right side and the other at your left.”

Jesus deals very gently with their request, despite their crassness and insensitivity.  Not so the ten other disciples who are understandably angry with James and John for stealing a march on them.  The disciples see life in very human terms of winners and losers, glory, rewards and triumphs.  Jesus presents life in terms of humility and service.

Jesus called the disciples together and said: You know that those foreigners who call themselves kings like to order their people around.  And their great leaders have full power over the people they rule.  But don’t act like them.  If you want to be great, you must be the servant of all the others.  And if you want to be first, you must be everyone’s slave.  The Son of Man did not come to be a slave master, but a slave who will give his life to rescue many people.

The letter to the Hebrews also talks about the obedience and humility of Jesus.  The writer tells us that no one can have the honour of being a high priest simply by wanting to be one.  Only God can choose a priest, and God is the one who chose Aaron.  That is how it was with Christ.  He became a high priest, but not just because he wanted the honour of being one.  It was God who told him,

“You are my Son, because today

I have become your Father!”

We serve a God of paradox.  Our God is a God who is Almighty and powerful and yet humble.  God is humble because God cares about the least: the birds in the air, the grass in the fields, the worst of sinners.  Christ is exalted on high, yet He is humble because He associates with the lowly, becoming the slave of all in taking on Himself the sins of the world.

For us too, true greatness, divine greatness, is the ability to be the least.  We do this with the absolute certainty that is clearly and divinely important.  It is nothing less than an imitation of God.

In his letter to the Ephesians, chapter 5 verses 1-2 Saint Paul neatly sums up our vocation as Christians.  He says: Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

May we resolve to consciously imitate God in his humility, this week and always.  Amen.