Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, October 23, 2016
Revised Common Lectionary, Cycle C, Job 42:1-6, Luke 18:9-14
2nd Anniversary Worship, Hope International Mission
By Young Kim
Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance from God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
About three years ago, I dreamed a dream that my friends and I moved to a house and I was kinda disappointed because of the exterior of the house. It looked very old and shabby. But when I went inside of the house, my disappointment went away. It was fully furnished, and had fancy fishing poles hanging on the wall near the entrance door. The land lord told me that we can use everything in the house if we use it accordingly and put it back in the right place after using it. Also, we went to the garage and found that it was filled with so many good equipment. There was a set of fishing boat and racing car package. (By the way, I love fishing and building plastic models.) But the package was not a complete version. It was like a plastic model and I had to assemble them to use. Knowing that it would be require much time and effort to study the manual and assemble the gears, I still thought in my dream that it will be worth the time and effort.
After I woke up from this vivid dream, I was so excited and shared this dream with my house mates in the morning. They were also excited to hear my dream. We had the same hope and at the same time, wondered what would happen next in the near future. About a year later, we started this mission in our basement. And soon about a month later, the synod graciously allowed us to worship here in this building. I am not sure whether or not God allowed me to dream this prophetic dream, but as soon as we entered this building, we instantly remembered the dream. I strongly felt that my previous dream came true. As you may have recognized as you came into this place, it is an old building, but it is fully furnished and well taken care of, and we were allowed to use all the appliances and the space for free. We were so thankful that we were given this opportunity and gift of worshiping at this place.
With the excitement and thankfulness, this mission has started and we have been striving to grow inwardly and outwardly for two years. But as time went by, we faced so many challenges and difficulties in many unexpected ways. We experienced several false accusations from anonymous people and we also heard somewhat skeptical concerns about this mission from people around us. We also faced several challenges inside of us. Several members moved to another States and some returned to their own country due to personal issues. And many of us are still unsure how long we could reside in this city or even in the U.S., and we are still struggling with the language barrier that seemingly stands tall and mighty in front of us. These are just to mention the few of big and small challenges that we are going through, but God has never failed to show us that God is with us in every moment. We have witnessed for the past 2 years that God is taking care of and leading this mission before us.
You might wonder why Job’s story has been chosen for today’s sermon on this special occasion. We hope to learn from Job how he lowered himself before God and repented his ignorant words and humbly acknowledged God’s purposeful designs and plans in the midst of his suffering. But I want to make it clear that our focus is not on God’s abundant blessings and prosperity that Job was granted by God at the end of this chapter. Also, we do not resemble with Job since we are not rich, we are not righteous enough as Job was, and moreover, we are not suffering as much as Job was suffering. But often times, we do ask the same question about God like Job did, “How could a good God allow suffering?” “Why does good God put human being in a test?” Just like Job, we sometimes long to see and understand God’s plan in the midst of our uncertain life.
We too, started this mission with a firm belief that God had led us to start the mission and confirmed us through several dreams and prayers. But as we faced a number of difficulties on the road, we started questioning if God really wanted us to continue what we are doing or whether we are heading to the wrong direction against God’s intention.
Now, back to Job, to well understand today’s text in chapter 42, we need to look at the whole story in the book of Job. But due to time limit, I will introduce only a quick summary of the whole story. Job was a wealthy man in a land called Uz, living with his large family, extensive flocks, and a large number of servants. He was “blameless” and “upright” before God and he was always careful to avoid doing evil. One day, God tested Job’s faithfulness through allowing Satan to attack him. He lost everything all of a sudden within that one day, including his 10 children, his flocks and his servants. Furthermore, Satan afflicted his health with severe pain and sore on his skin from head to toe. His wife even urged him to curse God and commit suicide in the miserable situation. He had nowhere else to receive comfort, but he remained strong and faithful by saying, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” (1:21)
His three friends heard about Job’s misery and came to him from afar to express their sympathy. But soon, they started to advise Job according to their own assumptions and mistakenly blamed Job’s sufferings on his personal sins. They believed that Job must have committed something evil to offend God’s justice, since their underlying belief was that God always rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. And this doctrine of retributive justice played on their long conversations. We can clearly see that their concerns and advises for Job cause more harm to Job’s feelings rather than giving him comfort or relief. As Christians, we easily fall into the same kind of mistakes when we try to help others by giving them our opinion and wisdom according to our own knowledge before even trying to listen to or understand them.
Hearing each of their accusations, Job was getting more and more irritated and he called his friends “worthless physicians.” And he tried to justify himself against their criticism but his justification quickly turned to self-righteousness. He became sarcastic, impatient, self-pitying, and afraid. He lamented the injustice where God lets wicked people prosper while he and countless other innocent people suffer. Job wanted to confront God, and he longed for the day when he would see God, his Redeemer and Mediator.
God finally interrupted, calling from a whirlwind and demanding Job to be brave and respond to God’s questions. God also described many detailed aspects of his creation, intending to show how little Job knows about the creation and how much power God alone has.
Overwhelmed by the encounter with God, Job finally responded to God as we read in today’s text. Let’s read all together what he confessed before God starting from verse 2. “I know that you are all-powerful: what you conceive, you can perform. I am the man who obscured your designs with my empty-headed words. I have been holding forth on matters I cannot understand, on marvels beyond me and my knowledge. (Listen, I have more to say, now it is my turn to ask questions and yours to inform me.) I knew you then only by hearsay; but now, having seen you with my own eyes, I retract all I have said, and in dust and ashes I repent.”
Job has come to an enlarged recognition of the wisdom and power of God. And he finally knew that God’s entire plan is thoughtful and purposeful. Therefore, he acknowledged and confessed that his previous comments that God governs the world unjustly in order to prove his own innocence were only out of his limited knowledge. He finally humbled himself before God admitting not merely his words, but his whole thoughts and ways that were without knowledge. Earlier, Job expressed his desire to see God. (19:25-27) Now, he professed, “I have heard of you with my ears, but now my eyes have seen you.” His deepest longing to see the Redeemer with his own eyes has been fulfilled. Job learned about God through listening to the tradition and the teachings of their elders. Also, Job heard about God from his friends throughout the argument. But they were nothing more than partial knowledge that could not lead him to the true knowledge of God. After having a direct encounter with the living God and hearing God speak clearly, Job’s miserable situation had no longer mattered to him, even though it didn’t change at all. Job was just overwhelmed and filled with a sense of wonder and awe. The more we open our eyes toward God, the more we close our eyes toward our own sadness and pain.
Then Job said “I retract all I have said, and in dust and ashes I repent.” His broadened knowledge about God and experiencing God’s presence made him renounce all of his false pride and self-righteousness inside him. Job truly lowered himself and identified himself like dust and ashes.
Then, what does this Job’s confession teach us?
We are living in a world of high technology and scientific intelligence. Now through the endless development of science and logical thoughts, we are able to know more about this God-created world way better than Job’s time. We may know better than Job, but we live in a world where it is way harder to be humble in front of God because of the high intelligence. The more we rely on science and human logic, the more we think in a human-centered way. As a result, we often deny the God that we cannot understand and force God into our own capacity of comprehension so that we can understand God.
But the confession of Job completely opposes our human-centered thought processes. Here, God’s freedom and grace as the Sovereign are highlighted; this tells us that our basic attitude in front of the Sovereign God should be humble and obedient.
Until the end of Job’s story, God does not reveal clearly why and for what purpose the good man Job had to go through all the sufferings. And God does not put effort to prove God’s righteousness either. But God does teach us to be humble and obedient.
After experiencing God’s presence, Job thoroughly repented how ignorantly and irresponsibly he had spilled words without understanding. He recognized himself as small like dust and ashes in front of God, and his hidden sins that he himself did not realize had come to the surface in front of the holiness of God. Therefore, repenting and completely lowering oneself should continue on even after we meet with God. In fact, we should repent more and more as we come closer and closer to God.
How often do we count our sins? Do we not judge and criticize others according to our self-righteousness? Have we not claimed ourselves righteous by helping others and doing good? Have we not considered our diligence and passion for the work of God’s church as our faithfulness? Have we not sinned against God by complaining and blaming God for the tragedy that has happened in our life? Are we not far away from God because we are too occupied by the people we love and all the worldly responsibilities we have? We heard about a Pharisee from our Gospel reading today. He proudly and confidently prays to God with a loud voice in the temple, “I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get.” But unlike this Pharisee, a tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
In Jesus’ time, people assumed that the Pharisees were righteous, Godly ones. In contrast, people would see a tax collector as a swindler, selfish, and greedy. However, the Pharisee was described in this parable as arrogant, self-centered, and full of pride, bragging about all he does; and on the other hand, the tax collector was described praying for mercy, standing away from the other, beating his breast as a sign of repentance. And Jesus confirmed that the tax collector, rather than the other, went home justified before God.
God wants us to repent and lower ourselves and realize that we cannot live without the mercy and grace of God. And this is the shared theme of today’s text from Job and Luke.
Today we are reflecting on humbleness and repentance on the day of thanksgiving and 2nd anniversary worship, because all of this is not only about congratulating or encouraging how much effort we had put into this mission, but also about looking back to the 2 years for the times that we might have justified ourselves in front of God. We wanted to take time to humble ourselves before God and repent even the smallest part of us where we might have looked arrogant, self-centered, bragging about what we do and what we don’t do just like the Pharisee. A Jewish Rabbi teaches about repentance that one should do good with the same faculties with which one sinned. Then what should we do if we are sinful in nature in front of God? It would never be enough for us to do good in order to cancel out all our sins. This shows us how foolish it is for us to think that our good deeds will make us righteous and how worthless we would be without the blood of our Christ Jesus. People in Jesus’ time accused and considered Jesus as punished by God, but he was the only sinless man on the earth who came to bear our iniquities. Jesus, the Son of God, came to us as the true Emmanuel which means ‘God with us’.
Recently, I heard an interview of a Korean missionary via social media. He and his wife went to Amazon for their mission work almost twenty years ago. When they came back to Korea for a Sabbatical year, his wife was diagnosed with lung cancer. But to his surprise, she seemed happy and sincerely told her husband that she tried her best to love God in her life and God gave her this lung cancer as a gift so that she could deny herself more and more to unite with Christ. And before she died, she asked her husband to bury her in Amazon where her heart was. According to her last will, the husband buried her at the church in Amazon. And the people there were moved by her love toward them. So the people honored her and named the road where the church was located as her name, and countless people came to the church and believed in Jesus.
After realizing his sins and ignorance and lowering himself in front of God, Job no longer complained about his tragic life just like the missionary who died with lung cancer. A humble person is given the eyes to discover God’s grace in the midst of their pain and suffering. Just as Job confessed that now he has seen God with his own eyes, I pray and hope that we can also see God with our eyes with a humble attitude recognizing God’s grace and love in all circumstances. And we can do all this through him who gives us strength. Because we believe in Emmanuel God, we believe that Jesus is with us in the midst of all our circumstances whether that may be joyful or painful. So I encourage you to celebrate in the joy of God’s goodness and grace that comes through true repentance and recognition of the presence of God in our life.
Revised Common Lectionary, Cycle C, Job 42:1-6, Luke 18:9-14
2nd Anniversary Worship, Hope International Mission
By Young Kim
Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance from God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
About three years ago, I dreamed a dream that my friends and I moved to a house and I was kinda disappointed because of the exterior of the house. It looked very old and shabby. But when I went inside of the house, my disappointment went away. It was fully furnished, and had fancy fishing poles hanging on the wall near the entrance door. The land lord told me that we can use everything in the house if we use it accordingly and put it back in the right place after using it. Also, we went to the garage and found that it was filled with so many good equipment. There was a set of fishing boat and racing car package. (By the way, I love fishing and building plastic models.) But the package was not a complete version. It was like a plastic model and I had to assemble them to use. Knowing that it would be require much time and effort to study the manual and assemble the gears, I still thought in my dream that it will be worth the time and effort.
After I woke up from this vivid dream, I was so excited and shared this dream with my house mates in the morning. They were also excited to hear my dream. We had the same hope and at the same time, wondered what would happen next in the near future. About a year later, we started this mission in our basement. And soon about a month later, the synod graciously allowed us to worship here in this building. I am not sure whether or not God allowed me to dream this prophetic dream, but as soon as we entered this building, we instantly remembered the dream. I strongly felt that my previous dream came true. As you may have recognized as you came into this place, it is an old building, but it is fully furnished and well taken care of, and we were allowed to use all the appliances and the space for free. We were so thankful that we were given this opportunity and gift of worshiping at this place.
With the excitement and thankfulness, this mission has started and we have been striving to grow inwardly and outwardly for two years. But as time went by, we faced so many challenges and difficulties in many unexpected ways. We experienced several false accusations from anonymous people and we also heard somewhat skeptical concerns about this mission from people around us. We also faced several challenges inside of us. Several members moved to another States and some returned to their own country due to personal issues. And many of us are still unsure how long we could reside in this city or even in the U.S., and we are still struggling with the language barrier that seemingly stands tall and mighty in front of us. These are just to mention the few of big and small challenges that we are going through, but God has never failed to show us that God is with us in every moment. We have witnessed for the past 2 years that God is taking care of and leading this mission before us.
You might wonder why Job’s story has been chosen for today’s sermon on this special occasion. We hope to learn from Job how he lowered himself before God and repented his ignorant words and humbly acknowledged God’s purposeful designs and plans in the midst of his suffering. But I want to make it clear that our focus is not on God’s abundant blessings and prosperity that Job was granted by God at the end of this chapter. Also, we do not resemble with Job since we are not rich, we are not righteous enough as Job was, and moreover, we are not suffering as much as Job was suffering. But often times, we do ask the same question about God like Job did, “How could a good God allow suffering?” “Why does good God put human being in a test?” Just like Job, we sometimes long to see and understand God’s plan in the midst of our uncertain life.
We too, started this mission with a firm belief that God had led us to start the mission and confirmed us through several dreams and prayers. But as we faced a number of difficulties on the road, we started questioning if God really wanted us to continue what we are doing or whether we are heading to the wrong direction against God’s intention.
Now, back to Job, to well understand today’s text in chapter 42, we need to look at the whole story in the book of Job. But due to time limit, I will introduce only a quick summary of the whole story. Job was a wealthy man in a land called Uz, living with his large family, extensive flocks, and a large number of servants. He was “blameless” and “upright” before God and he was always careful to avoid doing evil. One day, God tested Job’s faithfulness through allowing Satan to attack him. He lost everything all of a sudden within that one day, including his 10 children, his flocks and his servants. Furthermore, Satan afflicted his health with severe pain and sore on his skin from head to toe. His wife even urged him to curse God and commit suicide in the miserable situation. He had nowhere else to receive comfort, but he remained strong and faithful by saying, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” (1:21)
His three friends heard about Job’s misery and came to him from afar to express their sympathy. But soon, they started to advise Job according to their own assumptions and mistakenly blamed Job’s sufferings on his personal sins. They believed that Job must have committed something evil to offend God’s justice, since their underlying belief was that God always rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. And this doctrine of retributive justice played on their long conversations. We can clearly see that their concerns and advises for Job cause more harm to Job’s feelings rather than giving him comfort or relief. As Christians, we easily fall into the same kind of mistakes when we try to help others by giving them our opinion and wisdom according to our own knowledge before even trying to listen to or understand them.
Hearing each of their accusations, Job was getting more and more irritated and he called his friends “worthless physicians.” And he tried to justify himself against their criticism but his justification quickly turned to self-righteousness. He became sarcastic, impatient, self-pitying, and afraid. He lamented the injustice where God lets wicked people prosper while he and countless other innocent people suffer. Job wanted to confront God, and he longed for the day when he would see God, his Redeemer and Mediator.
God finally interrupted, calling from a whirlwind and demanding Job to be brave and respond to God’s questions. God also described many detailed aspects of his creation, intending to show how little Job knows about the creation and how much power God alone has.
Overwhelmed by the encounter with God, Job finally responded to God as we read in today’s text. Let’s read all together what he confessed before God starting from verse 2. “I know that you are all-powerful: what you conceive, you can perform. I am the man who obscured your designs with my empty-headed words. I have been holding forth on matters I cannot understand, on marvels beyond me and my knowledge. (Listen, I have more to say, now it is my turn to ask questions and yours to inform me.) I knew you then only by hearsay; but now, having seen you with my own eyes, I retract all I have said, and in dust and ashes I repent.”
Job has come to an enlarged recognition of the wisdom and power of God. And he finally knew that God’s entire plan is thoughtful and purposeful. Therefore, he acknowledged and confessed that his previous comments that God governs the world unjustly in order to prove his own innocence were only out of his limited knowledge. He finally humbled himself before God admitting not merely his words, but his whole thoughts and ways that were without knowledge. Earlier, Job expressed his desire to see God. (19:25-27) Now, he professed, “I have heard of you with my ears, but now my eyes have seen you.” His deepest longing to see the Redeemer with his own eyes has been fulfilled. Job learned about God through listening to the tradition and the teachings of their elders. Also, Job heard about God from his friends throughout the argument. But they were nothing more than partial knowledge that could not lead him to the true knowledge of God. After having a direct encounter with the living God and hearing God speak clearly, Job’s miserable situation had no longer mattered to him, even though it didn’t change at all. Job was just overwhelmed and filled with a sense of wonder and awe. The more we open our eyes toward God, the more we close our eyes toward our own sadness and pain.
Then Job said “I retract all I have said, and in dust and ashes I repent.” His broadened knowledge about God and experiencing God’s presence made him renounce all of his false pride and self-righteousness inside him. Job truly lowered himself and identified himself like dust and ashes.
Then, what does this Job’s confession teach us?
We are living in a world of high technology and scientific intelligence. Now through the endless development of science and logical thoughts, we are able to know more about this God-created world way better than Job’s time. We may know better than Job, but we live in a world where it is way harder to be humble in front of God because of the high intelligence. The more we rely on science and human logic, the more we think in a human-centered way. As a result, we often deny the God that we cannot understand and force God into our own capacity of comprehension so that we can understand God.
But the confession of Job completely opposes our human-centered thought processes. Here, God’s freedom and grace as the Sovereign are highlighted; this tells us that our basic attitude in front of the Sovereign God should be humble and obedient.
Until the end of Job’s story, God does not reveal clearly why and for what purpose the good man Job had to go through all the sufferings. And God does not put effort to prove God’s righteousness either. But God does teach us to be humble and obedient.
After experiencing God’s presence, Job thoroughly repented how ignorantly and irresponsibly he had spilled words without understanding. He recognized himself as small like dust and ashes in front of God, and his hidden sins that he himself did not realize had come to the surface in front of the holiness of God. Therefore, repenting and completely lowering oneself should continue on even after we meet with God. In fact, we should repent more and more as we come closer and closer to God.
How often do we count our sins? Do we not judge and criticize others according to our self-righteousness? Have we not claimed ourselves righteous by helping others and doing good? Have we not considered our diligence and passion for the work of God’s church as our faithfulness? Have we not sinned against God by complaining and blaming God for the tragedy that has happened in our life? Are we not far away from God because we are too occupied by the people we love and all the worldly responsibilities we have? We heard about a Pharisee from our Gospel reading today. He proudly and confidently prays to God with a loud voice in the temple, “I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get.” But unlike this Pharisee, a tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
In Jesus’ time, people assumed that the Pharisees were righteous, Godly ones. In contrast, people would see a tax collector as a swindler, selfish, and greedy. However, the Pharisee was described in this parable as arrogant, self-centered, and full of pride, bragging about all he does; and on the other hand, the tax collector was described praying for mercy, standing away from the other, beating his breast as a sign of repentance. And Jesus confirmed that the tax collector, rather than the other, went home justified before God.
God wants us to repent and lower ourselves and realize that we cannot live without the mercy and grace of God. And this is the shared theme of today’s text from Job and Luke.
Today we are reflecting on humbleness and repentance on the day of thanksgiving and 2nd anniversary worship, because all of this is not only about congratulating or encouraging how much effort we had put into this mission, but also about looking back to the 2 years for the times that we might have justified ourselves in front of God. We wanted to take time to humble ourselves before God and repent even the smallest part of us where we might have looked arrogant, self-centered, bragging about what we do and what we don’t do just like the Pharisee. A Jewish Rabbi teaches about repentance that one should do good with the same faculties with which one sinned. Then what should we do if we are sinful in nature in front of God? It would never be enough for us to do good in order to cancel out all our sins. This shows us how foolish it is for us to think that our good deeds will make us righteous and how worthless we would be without the blood of our Christ Jesus. People in Jesus’ time accused and considered Jesus as punished by God, but he was the only sinless man on the earth who came to bear our iniquities. Jesus, the Son of God, came to us as the true Emmanuel which means ‘God with us’.
Recently, I heard an interview of a Korean missionary via social media. He and his wife went to Amazon for their mission work almost twenty years ago. When they came back to Korea for a Sabbatical year, his wife was diagnosed with lung cancer. But to his surprise, she seemed happy and sincerely told her husband that she tried her best to love God in her life and God gave her this lung cancer as a gift so that she could deny herself more and more to unite with Christ. And before she died, she asked her husband to bury her in Amazon where her heart was. According to her last will, the husband buried her at the church in Amazon. And the people there were moved by her love toward them. So the people honored her and named the road where the church was located as her name, and countless people came to the church and believed in Jesus.
After realizing his sins and ignorance and lowering himself in front of God, Job no longer complained about his tragic life just like the missionary who died with lung cancer. A humble person is given the eyes to discover God’s grace in the midst of their pain and suffering. Just as Job confessed that now he has seen God with his own eyes, I pray and hope that we can also see God with our eyes with a humble attitude recognizing God’s grace and love in all circumstances. And we can do all this through him who gives us strength. Because we believe in Emmanuel God, we believe that Jesus is with us in the midst of all our circumstances whether that may be joyful or painful. So I encourage you to celebrate in the joy of God’s goodness and grace that comes through true repentance and recognition of the presence of God in our life.