RoboPreacher

there's no one left to ask if i'm alright A sermon on Job's prayers :  Last week we made the somewhat  provocative statement that Job was losing his religion. Well, this week, Job doesn’t walk that back an inch. In fact, if anything, he doubles down.   Just to be clear, though , the religion Job is losing isn’t much of a religion at all. It’s a religion that assumes a mostly absent God. A God who is just there to occasionally check in and see if you’re behaving. And then , and only then, to try and help make life turn our accordingly . Now I know when I say it like that , it sounds ridiculously crude . The truth is, though , for the most part, this is the religious assumption we all carry around with us. We all have this working formula that presumes the degree to which life is going our way is fundamentally contingent upon our behavior. Like Job and his friends, we are all susceptible to falling into this faux religion.   Job, however, has been shake...

between water and wind A sermon on Job's tête-à-tête with his friends, & even God Last week Job stood tall in the face of everything ! This week, though , all he has to show for it is how much worse it all has become. Last week Job lost everything he had , including his children. This week, though, he’s even lost his health . Job was afflicted with oozing, awful sores that covered his body. And then, as so often happens in times like these, Job got into a bitter argument with his spouse, too. Unable to bear it any longer, Job goes off by himself to lick his wounds. But then, in the middle of that misery , three of his friends show up. And what friends they are, too! They just plop down right next to Job. For seven days and seven nights, no one says a word. They just sit there with Job. Letting him know, by their presence, he isn’t alone. The silence is broken , though, when Job pipes up and curses the day of his birth. All that chaos and calamity just built up too muc...

but the reeling's make mistakes A sermon on the beginning of the book of Job : The book of Job is often said to address the problem of suffering . A fancy word for this is theodicy . But the way it turns up in regular conversation is, “why do bad things happen to good people.” Or, “ If God is good , WHY does God ALLOW bad things to happen at all.” The truth , though, is all those questions are more manageable than the one the book of Job itself addresses. And it’s the question none other than Satan himself poses. “ Does Job fear God for nothing ,” the old satanic foe asks. …Well, what do you think? Does a person worship God just because ? Or do we only worship God for what we get out of it? I suspect we would all rather think on theoretical questions about hypothetical bad things and good people out there somewhere . Rather than this question about the mettle of our faith that hits close to home. Wouldn’t we? A finer point of Bible study is in order here. Job was written i...

to start something new A sermon on the closing of Galatians I was about 26 when I served as a chaplain for my training to be a pastor. …Can you imagine that? Asking for a chaplain and having some fresh -faced twenty-something walk into your hospital room? It’s not hard for me to imagine, though. The folks I visited let me know exactly what they thought. “ You CAN’T be the chaplain,” they’d blurt , “you’re just a kid .”   During that time, I thought, once I’m ordained , then I won’t have to prove I’m really a card-carrying member of the clergy anymore. Only, that’s not what happened. After all, I was ordained just a couple of measly years after that. Plenty of you can remember those days. And while I don’t think anyone was so frank as to say I couldn’t be a pastor, it was made clear , in so many ways, that my youth was a scandal. In fact, I remember complaining about this to an older, wiser pastor. I asked him what he thought I should do. Grinning , he rubbed his bald...