Lectionary October 11, 2015, Year B Proper 23 Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Job 22:1-9; 16-17, Amos 5:6-7;10-15, Psalm 90:12-17, Hebrews 4:12-16, Mark 10-17-31

Our daughter received the diagnosis: breast cancer. She is the first baby I bathed in the kitchen sink even before I knew how. She is 43 and has two children aged ten and nine. It is not right. It is not fair. It makes me angry. Like Job I look everywhere for God, but cannot find him. Alternatively, perhaps I know what he might say, so I do not want to find him.

Amos reminds me “Raw truth is never popular.” That is true whether it comes from the mouth of a doctor or the Word of God.

Paul’s letter to the Hebrews tells me “What God says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey.”

How often do I kneel and ask God to fix a situation, to heal a loved one, to give me what I want? Then I am surprised and taken aback when God does answer, but it requires more of me than I think I can give, much like the rich young ruler in Mark. Where is my humility? Where is my desire to be a living sacrifice? Where did I forget God is always God, and I am not?

So, I go from my knees to lying prone. My tears soak my pillow. I become still. I become quiet. I try to listen to God’s voice and silence my own. I remember Moses’s prayer recorded in the Psalms. “Teach us to live well,” I read the passages in the Gospel of Mark that record Jesus saying, “Go, let everything go. Come, follow me.”

I cannot change the diagnosis. I cannot change whatever the outcome will be. I can only let my child go into the arms of Jesus, into the care of others, from the bathtub to the surgical table, into God’s unfailing love.

Thought for the Day: Allow us, you and I, to listen and obey.

Prayer:
Eternal One, whose thoughts and ways are not ours, you alone are God, awesome, holy, and most high. School us in the ways of faith and wisdom that we may learn to truly see and hear, and in humility find blessing. Amen.

Pray for those who are grieving.

Lectionary Readings: Proper 23 – 20^th Sunday After Pentecost Year B – October 11, 2015 www.lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu [retrieved October 5, 2015].

Bible: verses adapted from The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

Prayer: adapted from The Revised Common Lectionary and Prayers ©2002 Augsburg Fortress Press.

Art: Israëls, Jozef, 1824-1911. The Day before Parting, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=50323 [retrieved October 5, 2015]. Original source: http://www.mfa.org/.