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Job 38:1-11 Mark 4:35-41 In just a little more than two weeks, there will be 18 people from this church going on a Journey with Jesus. We’ll be heading to Cruzando, the ELCA National Youth Gathering and the theme of this gathering is simply – Journey with Jesus. Before we have even left, we have had some exciting things happen along this journey. God has brought us two guests from Lebanon who are spending time with some of our families and our youth – Yara Zakhour & Barakat Rahme. It has already been an enriching experience for all of us and we have only God to thank for it. All of you are also invited along to experience a small part of the youth’s journey with Jesus when Yara & Barakat share some of their world with us during a special presentation on July 9th, which you can read more about in the weekly. Cruzando is not the only Journey with Jesus that all of us are on however. Through the waters of baptism, everyday each one of us invited on a journey with Jesus. Today’s OT & Gospel lessons also tell stories of people going on journeys with Jesus and I thought it would be interesting to explore what their journeys with Jesus actually looked like, so we can learn a little more about what to expect from our journeys. Beginning with Job, its important to realize what faith and belief in God was like when he was around. It was very common in his day and age to believe a simple statement – Do good and God will bless you with abundance. Its easy to pick this up if you read many of the stories from Genesis. Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph all experienced riches, children, and power because they were faithful and followed God. On the contrary, if you did what was bad, you were punished. Think of Adam & Eve who were kicked out of the Garden of Eden or Lot’s wife who was turned into a pillar of salt because she disobeyed God. Back when the story of Job was first told, most people believed that if you did good, God would bless you and if you did bad, than you would be cursed. That is why when bad things kept happening to Job his friends kept telling him that he just needed to get right with God and everything would be okay. The problem was was that Job was a righteous man and he followed the Lord, yet those bad things kept happening to him. The story of Job is a testament to the fact that bad things sometimes happen to good people. Sometimes bad things just happen and it has nothing to do with how we are living our lives. Despite what you might hear from some televangelists today or what you might hear out of some fellow Christians, journeying with Jesus and leading a faithful life does not ensure that your life is going to be peachy and perfect. One of my favorite characters in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was Gandalf, the mighty wizard, who could do just about anything that he wanted to. He could harness magic and use it to his advantage. When the small group known as the fellowship of the ring set out on a dangerous journey to destroy the evil ring, they were thrilled to know that Gandalf was going with them. He was kind of a Christ-figure to them – able to save them from anything that might come in their way. This small group soon realized however that just because they had Gandalf with them, it didn’t mean that the journey was going to be easy or that they had it made. Their journey with Gandalf still had its struggles, and at one point Gandalf even sacrificed his own life saving the group. Our journeys with Jesus are like that small fellowship that traveled with Gandalf. As with those disciples in our gospel lesson, despite the fact that Jesus is there in the boat with us, there are still going to be storms that surround us – both literally and figuratively. In fact, when we journey with Jesus and allow him to take us with him, we are pretty much assured that there will be storms ahead. As Jesus leads us from our comfortable middle-class lives into the unknown, we are sure to face some storms. God tells Job, “Gird up your loins like a man, for I’m about to question you.” In other words, brace yourself for I’m going to say and do something powerful here. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for Yara & Barakat to leave their homes for 6 weeks to come live with total strangers halfway across the world. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for Pastor John & Ruth to put off retirement for a few more years to come help Hope Lutheran Church find some direction. I’m sure it’s not easy right now for our Church Council members to experience all the change that they going through as our congregation undergoes a major transition. And I’m sure that it’s not easy for many of you who are being led into stormy circumstances where you have to serve others – whether its caring for an elderly parent, dealing with the loss of a loved one, or making difficult life-changing decisions. Anytime that Jesus calls us to a new place, the transition is going to be stormy and the future will look awful scary. And like the disciples today, sometimes our difficult journeys even force us to cry out in fear to God, “Do you even care?” Do you even care that we are perishing? God, are you even paying attention? This was the same question that Job asked, and I’m sure that at some point, even though we know we’re got Jesus in the boat with us, we’ve all asked this same question. God, are you even paying attention? How could you let this happen? I’d like to share with you a song by a group called Lost & Found. They’ll be one the bands performing at the National Youth Gathering and they have a very powerful song that deals with this same question about the storms of life and whether or not God is actually paying attention. It’s called Baby.
Her shaved head and her pierced
nose Her Dr. Marten’s with her biker
tights Nobody calls her baby Nobody calls her baby His working boots and flannel
shirts Long lonely walks with nowhere
to go Nobody calls him baby Nobody calls him baby Eighty pounds she’s hardly whole Hours alone in some tanning
salon Nobody calls her baby Nobody calls her baby His pinstripe suit and his
wingtip shoes He makes his plane, he wins his
case Nobody calls him baby Nobody calls him baby Somebody loves those babies And if somebody told them Somebody loves those babies And if somebody told them Somebody does love you babies. Somebody does love what we can’t see. Somebody does have the power over the storms in your lives. His name is Jesus. He may not always have us avoid the storms, but he is certainly the only one who can help us get through those storms and to calm the storms in our lives – both the storms that surround us and the storms that are inside of us. The story of Job is a story about hope because despite the bad things that kept happening to Job, God didn’t abandon him. God stayed right there with him the entire time. The story of Jesus calming the storm is also a story about hope because when the disciples asked that question, “Jesus do you even care?”, the emphatic answer was, “Absolutely I care about you. Storms, be calm.” These stories give us hope because they show us that Jesus is with us as we battle the storms in our lives. Maybe Jesus will show up in the form of a good friend, or a caring community. Maybe Jesus will come to you as your spouse or a total stranger or through an answered prayer. Maybe, as a person of faith, you are being called to be Jesus to someone else and to show them how much God cares about them. Jesus makes it clear in this story that the enemy of faith is fear. Fear that Jesus wasn’t with them, fear of Jesus’ mighty powers, fear that God wasn’t paying attention to them. So our enemy as people of faith is also fear – fear of the unknown, fear that God may be calling us out of our comfort zones, fear that God has abandon us. So I say to you who have decided to journey with Jesus, “Gird up your loins.” Brace yourself. God is going to take you on an incredible faith adventure – it will be stormy, it will be scary, it will also be incredibly exciting and rewarding. Never lose hope, never give up, and remember that God is always paying attention, so you have absolutely nothing to fear. Amen.
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