A Concord Pastor Comments: Homily for February 8

Good times, bad times and everything in between –

God has never left my side…
(Imagesource)

Homily for the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Scriptures for today's Mass)

Audio for homily

As you might guess from the first reading,

Job’s problems were much deeper than three or four feet of snow

and when he says he’s filled with restlessness until the dawn

and that he’ll never see happiness again,

he’s bemoaning a doom far worse than the weather forecast for the next 48 hours.

Job is feeling abandoned by God:

tossed aside, forgotten by the God he had served so faithfully.

But what a different picture of the Lord emerges in the gospel story.

Jesus is as close as your mother-in-law’s sick bed.

He enters your home, reaches out his hand,

and heals and lifts up those who are ill.

To the crowds gathering at the door he extends his healing

and when told that even more people want to see and hear him,

he replies, “Bring it on! That’s what I’m here for!”

Although many, even most of us have moments like Job

when we wonder if God has forgotten us and our needs…

and though most of us have known some times, even many times,

when it seemed the Lord knew just what we needed

and came through just as we had prayed for…

in between those wonderful highs and those depressing lows

is where most of us live, most of the time.

Perhaps that’s why our relationship with God is most pronounced

when things are really bad and when things are really good.

When we hit bottom, we wonder, “How did this happen,

how, why did God let it happen

– and we pray for help from our heart of hearts.

And when God seems ready to give just what we prayed for,

just what we hoped for

– we rejoice in what we believe our faith has delivered for us…

…until the next time when things again look bleak

and we wonder, “Where is God in all of this?”

But God isn’t absent in my hard times.

God doesn’t need to be called back to the scene

as though he’s put me on hold or has been away on vacation.

Whether I sense his presence or not, the Lord is always with me

and, especially with me, in my most difficult times.

When God seems absent from my life and my problems,

perhaps it’s then that the Lord “has my back,”

hovering over me, protectively, while I focus on my troubles.

On the one hand, God never abandons any one of us,

not even for a moment

and on the other hand, God doesn’t always give us what we ask for

but never fails to give us all that we need.

I think of a prayer I wrote and posted on my blog this past week:

If you would, Lord:

calm the seas I sail,
still the waves that rock my boat,

and hush the winds that pull me off my course...

But let me not forget

that while you sometimes choose to calm the storm
you often let it rage and calm instead
the one who rides it out...

God might not calm every storm in my life

but he’ll always give me what I need to ride it out.

So, putting aside what the forecasters are predicting,

let’s look into our hearts and see what the weather is there…

Are there storms raging, or on the horizon?

The Lord is in your small boat and will not let you perish.

Is the weather in your heart warm and bright with God’s presence?

Thank God for the grace that fills you and be strengthened by it.

Is your heart’s weather report more like,

“partly cloudy, chance of some precipitation”?

Then pray for the Lord to pull you close to his side

that you be in his arms when a storm is threatening,

that you be there to praise him when the sun breaks through.

At this altar, the Lord’s Table,

Jesus gathers around him Job and Peter and Peter’s mother-in-law

and all of us in-betweeners seeking to know him better.

He gathers us here to speak his Word of consolation in the scriptures

and to nourish us with his life, his Body and Blood,

once given for us on the Cross

and now shared with us in the Eucharist.

If you would, Lord:

calm the seas I sail,
still the waves that rock my boat,

and hush the winds that pull me off my course...

But let me not forget

that while you sometimes choose to calm the storm
you often let it rage and calm instead
the one who rides it out...

I pray safe passage home today,
through all its squalls and gales,
to the harbor of that peace, O Lord,
that's only yours to give…