Words of Welcome

Job 42:1-6, 10-17 We’re only exploring a few passages from the book of Job, but even so you may be feeling a bit unsettled by what we’ve heard so far. The God we’ve met appears to control everything, and that means God is responsible not only for the good things but the bad things. Though it does appear that God uses a hired hand, The Adversary, to do the dirty work. At the same time, we’ve been hearing from Job, who has been suffering greatly despite his claims to be innocent and righteous before God. The question we’ve been hearing all along is: “why me?” And that question leads to another: Who is God?  The Bible is a sacred text, but it is also a very complex book. At times it seems to argue with itself. In many ways the message of Job offers a counter weight to the message of Proverbs. The message of Proverbs is quite simple. If you do the right thing, good things should happen. If you do bad things, then you will reap what you sow. When we read Job, we hear him cry...

Luke 18:9-14 "The bigger they are, the harder they fall!" That could be the mantra of this season’s college football teams. Every time a team reaches number 1 or number 2 it loses. LSU, USC, South Florida, Cal. It’s like no one wants to be in the BCS Championship game. After USC got beat by lowly Stanford, it looked like Cal was in the driver’s seat to win the Pac10, especially after they squeaked out a win over my Oregon Ducks. Then LSU lost to Kentucky of all teams and Cal looked up and began to celebrate – only they went on to lose that same day to Oregon State. Even though #2 Boston College held on and won this week, it still has been a topsy turvy fall. And you know what? We like it that way. Unless it’s our team on top, we like to see the big guy lose. For some reason we don’t like the person or the business or the country or the team that’s arrogant, self-important, or snobbish. As Jesus tells the story, two guys went up to the temple to pray. One guy was very righteou...