Worship Guide - Year B, Ordinary 29 (Proper 24)

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind…
~Job 38:1
 
We are in something of a storm ourselves these days—whether we choose to acknowledge and address it meaningfully or not. Catastrophic weather events signal a climate crisis that is not going to go away by itself. Our future is in question.
 
It seems that God has waited patiently while Job and his friends have waxed eloquent about his own past, present, and future, considering, reasoning, arguing about the problem of pain. Finally, out of the torrent, God speaks: “Who is this [speaking] words without knowledge? … Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” What ever gave you the idea that this is all about you? Likewise, in Mark 10, James and John are ready to center themselves as they demand of Jesus that he make them his right and left-hand men.
 
Do we know what we are asking any more than they do?
 
The novelist Richard Powers (The Overstory, Bewilderment) wonders how we so lost our sense of living on earth: How did we become so alienated and estranged from everything else alive? How did we get convinced that we’re the only interesting game in town, and the only species worthy of extending a sense of the sacred to?”
 
Perhaps these ancient texts from another time and place have something to teach us not only about suffering, but about our own time and place, and about our relationship to all that is holy and good.
 
Enter into worship. 

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