​The Message
 
Last week, I preached on a passage from the Book of Job. In that sermon, I talked about the fact that Job expresses deep and bitter anger toward God, but he maintains a deep faith in God despite that anger.
 
In fact, I argued that Job could not be angry with God if he did not have a deep faith in God. If he did not have faith in God, what use would there be in being angry toward a God he didn’t believe in?
 
I spoke to many of you who said that sermon really resonated for you, and I also had several unrelated conversations with people about anger this past week.
 
So, as I was preparing for today’s service, I thought that perhaps God was prodding me to go a little deeper on this topic of anger.
 
We are living in a world where anger is rampant – anger with governments, anger with the church, anger with family members, and yes, a lot of anger toward God.
 
I encounter tons of people in my daily life who express either deep apathy toward God, or deep anger toward God (or toward the church).
 
Many people question the notion of a loving God who would allow so many bad things to happen. And this questioning often causes deep-rooted anger toward God.
 
And, because bad things happen in our world (and throughout history), people wonder whether a loving God even exists.
 
And because of these conversations that I have often with people (especially once they discover I’m a pastor), I began to wonder about Biblical stories of people who express anger toward God.
 
So, I did some research and compiled some short scripture passages for us to look at today.
 
I think it’s worth beginning with a few of the most well-known Biblical figures who express anger toward God throughout the Bible.
 
Perhaps the most obvious expression of direct anger toward God is Job, who we of course talked at length about last week.
 
But another example from the Hebrew Bible is Moses. Moses is one of the most beloved prophets from the Hebrew Bible.
 
And, despite his prominence in the Hebrew Bible, he expresses anger and frustration toward God multiple times throughout his story.
 
In Numbers 11: 10-15, for example, Moses asks, “why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight?”
 
Moses had become frustrated with God, and he felt like he was trying to take care of his people, but it had become too much of a burden for him, and he no longer really wanted to deal with it.
 
In Exodus 5: 22-23, Moses blames God for doing nothing to help free his people from Pharaoh.
 
Some other examples include:
 
In Jonah 4:9, Jonah says he’s angry enough with God that he could die.
 
In Jeremiah 20:7, Jeremiah feels deceived by God and cries out in anger.
 
Throughout the Psalms, David cries out in anger. “My God, why have you forsaken me?” (22)
“How long will you hide your face from me?” (13)
 
In Habakkuk 1:2, he begins his story with anger: “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not listen?”
 
In Ruth 1: 20-21, Naomi bitterly resents God’s harsh treatment toward her.
 
And, in 1 Kings 19, Elijah complains that God left him alone and then asks to die.
 
All of these examples demonstrate that, at least throughout the Hebrew Bible, honest expressions of emotion and anger are not condemned.
 
In fact, throughout their stories, all of these figures maintain their relationships with God and maintain a deep faith in God through their anger, their lament, and their frustrations.
 
Furthermore, it is often the case that these moments of anger end up being a turning point on their spiritual journeys.
 
We saw that in the story of Job last week. Job finally gets his wish – to confront God – and in doing so, he’s taught a lesson in humility.
 
Job is reminded that the universe is complex and there are so many moving parts and facets that God is responsible for that Job cannot possibly understand.
 
Job can only understand his own circumstances, and he thinks his situation is unfair. But God reminds him that he is not the only living thing in the universe that God is responsible for.
 
Many of the other figures in the Hebrew Bible also move along their spiritual paths after expressing their anger or frustration with God.
 
But what about expressions of anger in the New Testament?
 
Jesus himself expresses anger often throughout the Gospels. His anger is not always at God – it is often anger with his disciples, with the Pharisees, or with injustice in general.
 
While he may not be blaming God for these things directly, he is still not condemned for expressing anger. In fact, often it’s a catalyst for a lesson or a parable that leads to a teaching moment.
 
Perhaps the most well-known of Jesus’ expressions of anger toward God is an echo Psalm 22 in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 when Jesus cries, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
 
It’s possible that this is not always read as anger explicitly, but it is an expression of deep anguish and protest, and he is directly addressing God as he cries out from the cross.
 
And then, of course, there are expressions of anger toward Jesus as well.
 
John the Baptist, when he is in prison, wonders if Jesus truly is the Messiah, and seems frustrated or angry that his expectations of what the Messiah came to accomplish have not been met. (Matthew 11: 2-3)
 
Martha and Mary express anger and disappointment at Jesus after Lazarus died, saying “if you had been here, he would not have died.” (John 11: 21, 32)
 
In Mark 4:38, the disciples say “teacher, don’t you care that we are perishing?”
 
While the examples from the New Testament tend to be shorter and are often posed as questions or expressions of grief or lament rather than outright anger, they still demonstrate for us that we can feel less than thrilled with how God or Jesus responds to something we ask of them, and we can still maintain our faith through that anger.
 
But the key takeaway from this exploration is that God responds to all of these different expressions of anger and frustration with gentleness rather than punishment.
 
God may not always respond immediately or in the way the person expects (in fact, that is often the root cause of the anger toward God in the first place), but God still loves these figures anyway.
 
And God loves us, too. God can handle our anger as well.
 
These stories are also examples of anger speaking to deeper needs and desires that aren’t being met.
 
In other words, anger is often telling these figures something.
 
And our anger tells us something, too.
 
I once had a beautiful conversation with someone who felt a tremendous amount of guilt about the anger that he felt.
 
This person had gone his whole life thinking that God was condemning his anger and that God desperately wanted him to change.
 
But through conversation, he began to wonder if perhaps it was God’s way of telling him something about himself that he was not acknowledging.
 
If these Biblical stories tell us anything, it’s that God never asks these figures to shove their anger deeper down. God never makes them feel guilty for feeling their feelings of anger. And God never asks them to change or stop being angry.
 
God continues loving them even as they begin to learn what it is their anger is telling them.
 
Anger is a normal human emotion. And God has always been big enough to handle our anger.
 
Other people may struggle with it sometimes because humans all have emotions, and some of us are better at facing them, expressing them, or dealing with them than others are.
 
But God can handle all of it.
 
So, if you ever feel angry with God, there’s nothing wrong with letting God know. You don’t have to feel guilty about it. In fact, let’s be honest – if you feel angry toward God, whether you explicitly tell God or not doesn’t matter – God already knows.
 
So name it. Name your anger. Lift it to God.
 
And then, let it speak to you. Wonder with God what that anger might be trying to tell you.
 
This same thing applies to anger you might be feeling toward someone else in your life, too, or toward general life circumstances.
 
Lift that to God, and let it speak to you. Let it give you some insight about yourself that you may not be noticing on your own.
 
And remember that there are tons of examples throughout scripture of expressions of anger toward God and toward Jesus.
 
It is normal, and it’s not something to feel guilty about. Though, if you struggle with anger regularly, it might be telling you that there’s something going on within you that you aren’t aware of.
 
And that is worth exploring, whether that’s with a friend, a counsellor, a support group, a pastor, or another trusted person.
 
And my hope in continuing this conversation from last week is that it gives you hope if you need it.
 
So, if you are struggling with anger in general or anger toward God specifically, know that God can handle that, and it doesn’t mean you’ve lost your faith.
 
It just may be that it would be worth exploring what your anger might be telling you.
 
And if you aren’t struggling with anger right now, when you do, I hope you remember this message.
 
If you are a lucky person who never struggles with anger, know that many other people do struggle with anger, so perhaps you could gently honour this fact by wondering with them what their anger might be trying to tell them.
 
And lastly, may we all remember that God can handle whatever we lift up in prayer, whether we do that intentionally or not.
 
May you leave here today filled with hope, knowing that God has demonstrated to us time and time again that questions, frustration, anger, and spiritual anguish are nothing for us to feel ashamed or guilty about.
 
God loves every part of us – even those parts that we don’t always love in ourselves.
 
Amen.
 
Let us pray:
 
God of joy and God of love, we humble ourselves before you and acknowledge our emotions, including our anger. We lift these things to you, knowing that you will gladly carry them for us, loving us through it all. We pray that you would help us learn to be self-reflective, wondering with you what our emotions might be telling us, or how you might be guiding us through our experiences. In your holy and loving name, we pray. Amen.

​The Message
 
It isn’t very often that I choose to preach on passages from the Hebrew Bible.
 
That isn’t because there is anything wrong with the scriptures from the Hebrew Bible. It’s just that I tend to focus my sermons more on the story and words of Jesus.
 
But today, we’re going to talk about Job because his story is fascinating, and also a bit weird.
 
Because you may or may not be familiar with the story of Job, I think it’s worth taking a few minutes to summarize it.
 
Job is a relatively wealthy man in his era. He has a family, some property, he has money, and he has flocks of animals.
 
He also has a deep faith in God.
 
In the story, Satan and God are talking, and God basically says “look at this incredibly faithful person! No matter what happens, his faith will remain strong.”
 
Satan essentially says “yeah, sure, God. But it’s easy for his faith to remain strong when everything is going well for him! I bet his faith would waver if he didn’t have everything he has.”
 
God and Satan go back and forth like this for a while. God allows Satan to take away all the good things in Job’s life in order to show that Job will remain faithful through it all.
 
It’s a bit of an odd conversation, and it’s not really how most of us envision God these days.
 
It’s quite difficult to imagine a God who would play with people’s lives so flippantly.
 
But, the truth of the story isn’t as important as the overall moral of the story.
 
Satan ends up taking everything from Job – his home, his flocks, his children, and eventually, his health.
He ended up as a shell of his former self.
 
His wife essentially tells him to give up on God. If God is going to allow all of this to happen to you, why don’t you just give up on God?
 
His friends wonder what Job is doing to bring this chaos and wrath of God upon himself. His friends admittedly aren’t the most supportive people in this story.
 
And in the end, Job ends up crying out to God – asking to confront God face to face. He wants God to answer for the treatment he has received.
 
Now, the interesting thing about this is of course that Job doesn’t know about God’s conversations with Satan.
 
The general understanding of theology at the time was that when bad things happened in life, either God was punishing you, or Satan had snuck in and was wreaking havoc.
 
The story assumes that God allows Satan to destroy Job’s life.
 
With this understanding of God, Job does wonder for a while what he did to deserve this treatment. But he quickly begins to feel like he could not have possibly done enough bad stuff to deserve the losses he experiences.
 
So he becomes angry with God for allowing his life to essentially be taken from him.
 
But the key part of the story is that despite all of the hardships, and the assumption that God is allowing these things to happen, Job does remain faithful to God.
 
Yes, he’s angry with God!
 
But how can one be angry with God if that person has lost faith in God?
 
Anger at God necessitates a deep faith in God.
 
Job is angry at God, and he starts to demand that God answer to Job directly. He wants to talk to God face-to-face.
 
He wants to accuse God.
 
In fact, it’s almost like he wants to throw a temper tantrum at God.
 
Imagine he’s a toddler in a tantrum, kicking and screaming, punching and howling, wailing and crying.
 
He wants to stand before God, kicking and screaming and punching and howling and wailing, and he wants God to give him answers.
 
He believes he deserves this much.
 
And finally, Job encounters God. God finally shows face.
 
And Job starts kicking and screaming and punching (metaphorically), but God calmly stops him and basically says “look around. Do you see all that has been created? Who did that? Oh, I did? Mmmm hmmmm. That’s what I thought.”
 
God maybe isn’t as snarky as I made God sound, but God is pretty real with Job.
 
God wonders if Job would like to be in charge of everything.
 
In Job 38:2, God says, Why do you talk so much when you know so little?
 
God then asks Job a series of questions like: Job, have you ever made the sun rise? Or walked on the ocean floor? Can you arrange the stars? Can you help a lion hunt when it is hungry?
 
God goes on like this for a while. It humbles Job.
 
God essentially says “hey, do you want my job, or do you want to let me keep doing it?”
 
Job realizes through this conversation with God that whatever he is going through in life, there is an entire universe that also exists and must be cared for.
 
Part of the lesson in the story of Job is that he got comfortable in his cushy life. If he had been born into a different social class, his life might have looked much worse from the start.
 
He realizes that even people who are born into very different situations can remain faithful to God.
 
And that is the beauty of today’s scripture passage.
 
Job 19 is toward the middle of the book. Job is still mentally in a place where he feels like he can maintain his faith in God despite the setbacks he has experienced.
As the book goes on, we know that this becomes harder for him.
 
And yet, despite the hardships he has faced, Job holds onto hope throughout the book.
 
Yes, what his hope looks like changes over the course of the book. 
 
But it speaks volumes about his faith in God that he allows his anger toward God to bubble up to the surface, and yet he continues to desire a personal encounter with God.
 
And in the end, isn’t that all any of us really wants?
 
Those of us who believe in God desire a personal relationship with God.
 
Job wants to be able to look God in the face and say “what the heck, God?!”
 
And most of us want that opportunity, too. Perhaps not literally, but spiritually, we desire a deeply personal relationship with God.
 
That’s why we pray. That’s why we come to church. That’s why we surround ourselves with our community of faith.
 
We desire a personal relationship with God.
 
And what that looks like for each of us might be very different.
 
But like Job, when things get hard, we look to God. We might find we are angry with God at times, but that anger reminds us that we still have a deep faith in God.
 
God proved to Job that God could handle his anger. And Job received the gift of this knowing.
 
And God can handle whatever we might throw God’s way, too.
 
Sometimes, it’s easy for us to blame God for our hardships. It’s easy for us to throw our anger in God’s face.
 
And God loves us anyway.
 
Ultimately, what Job desires above all else is a personal relationship with God.
 
And I suspect that’s true for most of us, too.
I know that I get frustrated sometimes with God. I pray to God and often, I am not sure that I get anything in return.
 
I desire a personal relationship with God, too. Sometimes I just want God to give me an answer.
 
But, in my life anyway, God doesn’t usually work that way.
 
God speaks, but I have to be paying attention. God doesn’t come in storm clouds or burning bushes.
 
God comes to me through other people. Through my community. Through nature. Through prayer.
 
And most often, God comes through silence. God sometimes has to hit me over the head when I’m least expecting it.
 
I wonder if God is like that for you, too?
 
As we leave here today, let us wonder together.
 
Let us enjoy the amazing way that God works in our lives as a faith community. Let us continue to desire a personal relationship with God, and may we come to that relationship through this community of faith.
 
May you deeply know God’s love, and may you allow God to work in your life in ways you least expect.
 
As we come to the communion table today, allow God’s grace and love to wash over you, and know that through communion, we receive the deeply personal connection with God that we desire.
 
And may we remember: in all things, love – always. Amen.
 
God of grace, we lift our eyes to you today in humble prayer. We know we are not always perfect, and we are grateful for stories like Job’s to remind us that even the prophets and the people in scripture struggle with their relationship with you, too. We desire a deeply personal relationship with you, and we ask that you help us to see You all around us. Be near to us, always, O God. In your loving name, we pray. Amen.

The Message
 
Today, I want to share with you one of the hardest lessons I’ve learned so far in my life.
 
And that lesson is this:
 
Life is like a ladder. We can move up or down – sometimes very slowly, and sometimes quite quickly.
 
When I was running my dog daycare and training facility, I learned not to allow myself to get too self-confident.
 
Inevitably, every time I would feel like life moved me up a rung or two on the ladder, something would happen that would knock me down three or four rungs.
 
For example, I might come in to work one morning and see that we had three days in a row of excellent sales. Hooray! Maybe we can post a profit this month!
 
And then, next thing you know, the grooming tub is leaking and I need to call the plumber.
 
Or, I might start to feel like my staff are working well together and I’m so lucky to have them, and then two of them quit, leaving me short-handed.
 
Or maybe, it’s been two months straight of no significant issues and I accidentally think to myself “wow, it’s been two months and things are running smoothly” and all the sudden a dog fight happens with injuries, an owner leaves us a bad review, and my groomer cuts her hand and needs stitches.
 
One rung up, two or three rungs back down.
 
The point is, I learned that no matter how well things were going, it was always possible that things could turn downhill just as easily.
 
And, actually, it was often the case that if I even allowed myself to think for a minute that nothing bad had happened recently, before I knew it, something bad would happen.
 
It was a strange dynamic. And I don’t say this to sound negative. I say it because it is the reality of life.
 
It’s the reality of everyday life, but in that industry, particularly bad things could happen that would make my life as an owner extremely difficult.
 
And it’s an important lesson to learn in life because it keeps us humble. Everyday life isn’t always puppies and rainbows and sunshine.
 
Sometimes, it rains, or thunder snows, or worse. Sometimes it can feel like life is just beating you down.
 
So, when I read the Luke passage for today, I thought of this lesson because Jesus is reminding us that life has ups and downs.
 
Luke’s Gospel contains three beatitudes, compared to Matthew’s eight. These three beatitudes are accompanied by three woes.
 
The woes are here to remind us that God’s justice is not all loveliness and light. The lowly are raised up, and the mighty are brought down.
 
Up a rung, down a rung.
 
And most of us can spend time both as “lowly” and “mighty.”
 
When I was running my business, I wouldn’t have ever considered myself “mighty,” but those times when I started to feel a little arrogant that I was really getting the hang of “this whole running a business thing” are the times when I would suddenly be humbled.
 
That’s when I realized how lowly I actually was. I might have thought I was becoming mighty, but God just chuckled and reminded me I had more to learn.
 
The woes that Jesus mentions are not curses or punishments from God.
 
They are not retribution for the “sins of the mighty.”
 
These woes are merely observations about the way that life works.
 
Woe to the rich, not because they are evil but because they have spent their lives seeking riches and attempting to move up the ladder.
 
When life gets tough for those who have sought only riches, they will have the money that they built up, but they won’t necessarily be aware of God’s love.
 
Not because they aren’t deserving of God’s love, but because they have chosen to seek money rather than seeking God’s love.
 
Jesus isn’t saying that the rich can’t access God’s love, but in order to do so, they must humble themselves and begin to seek something beyond riches – something beyond themselves.
 
It’s also a woe because the nature of life is that it can turn around in an instant, as I learned when I was running my business. Woe to you who are rich, because tomorrow you may find yourself poor.
 
Woe to you who laugh or are full, not because it’s bad to be happy but because, again, life will turn.
 
It always does at some point, and we’d be lying to ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge that fact.
 
Up a rung, down a rung.
 
The important thing to remember in Jesus’s words is that when life does inevitably knock us down a rung or two or three, we will all need to know and trust that those who weep, or who are hungry, or who are poor are blessed.
 
So when Jesus offers these woes, it’s not a judgment. It’s an observation.
 
It’s great that life is great right now – we can be rich, or full, or laughing. But we also need to remember who we belong to when things change.
 
God knows us and loves us on our best days and our worst days.
 
These beatitudes could easily say “blessed are you who are grumpy,” “blessed are you who are anxious and depressed,” “blessed are you who struggle with addiction,” or “blessed are you who feel unworthy and unloved.”
 
And, likewise, woe to you who are happy, or mentally well, or free of addiction, or fully aware of how loved you are.
 
Woe, not because you aren’t deserving of feeling happy, mentally well, or fully loved, but because we all have good days and tough days.
 
And God loves us through all of them.
 
God doesn’t withhold love, even when we have allowed ourselves to get overly confident. And, God continues to love us when we are discouraged or feeling like we’ve been knocked down a few rungs on the ladder.
 
Jesus spends time on the blessings and the woes, and then he drops an even bigger truth: love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you.

This often gets preached as the golden rule, but I think on a much deeper level, this is a reminder that we all go through periods in our lives when we are among the “mighty,” and periods when we are among the “lowly.”
 
And, so does everyone else. Including our enemies.
 
We have good days and bad, and God loves us on our best and worst days.
 
But if that is true for us, it’s also true for our enemies.
 
And this is the difficult truth that Jesus is trying to convey. As difficult as it may be to take the higher road, we are called to do so to the best of our ability.
 
At the end of the day, we have good and bad days. We have rich days and poor days. Full days and hungry days. Days filled with laughter and with tears.
 
And our enemies experience similar ups and downs. They move up and down their ladder just like we do on our ladder.
 
We are all just living out our human existence, doing the best we can with a life that is uncertain.
 
So, in the uncertainty of life, remember that life can change in an instant.
 
And when it does, God is right there with you, and you are loved and blessed in the hard moments just as much as you are loved in the easy moments.
 
God gives love freely, whether we feel deserving of that love or not. God is not a fair-weather lover – only extending love on our best days when everything is going well for us. God is a “die-hard fan,” loving us each and every day.
 
And we are called to share that love that is given to us so freely.
 
Jesus is calling us to extend that love to everyone – even our enemies.
 
He knows it isn’t easy, but he also knows we can do it.
 
So, let us leave here receiving God’s love, and readying ourselves to give the love that we receive freely to our friends, family, neighbours, and yes, even our enemies. Amen.

Let us pray:

Eternal God, hope of all who trust in you, in Christ you weep with those who mourn even as you cry out in triumph over the grave. Unbind us from sin, release us from captivity, and raise us from death to life, so that we may join that great crowd of saints who forever sing praise to your holy name; through Christ, the resurrection and the life. Amen.

~ Prayer modified from the PCUSA website. https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/theologyandworship/pdfs/prayers_for_all_saints_day.pdf