Friendship with God

So, several years ago, one of the very first audio books that I read, and you can tell how long ago this was because it was on CD. I listened to it in my car that had a CD player, and I was so excited about that. I listened to this book, and it was called The Life of Pi by Jan Martell.

Yes, some of you may be familiar with it, you may have read it, or you may know the movie version of it. It's about an Indian boy who begins this ocean voyage with his family from Pondicherry to Canada. And on one of the very first days out to sea, the ship sinks, and this boy, Pi Patel, is the only survivor on the ship.

He's the only survivor, except for a Bengali tiger named Richard Parker. For 227 days, Pi and Richard Parker are stuck together on this small boat. Pi is the son of a zoo owner, and he's always appreciated animals, at least animals that are caged.

Don't we all? Don't we all? And on the lifeboat, Pi's appreciation, it has to grow. He has to move to love and to confront what he can't fully understand, and what he certainly cannot completely control.

Thinking about one of the turning points on the lifeboat, Pi reflects, it was Richard Parker who calmed me down. It is the irony of this story that the one who had scared me witless to start with was the very same one who brought me peace, I dare say even wholeness. Eventually, eventually, both the boy and the tiger float onto the shores of Mexico.

A tiger disappears into the forest, and Pi starts to recover at a local hospital. A representative from the company who owns the ship comes to investigate, like, why the ship sank in the first place. Pi describes his whole journey to this representative, and he says, Mr. Patel, a tiger is an incredibly wild animal.

How could you survive in a lifeboat with one? Come on, Mr. Patel. It's just too hard to believe.

As I was listening to that years ago, I could really, really relate to the representative. He responds in probably the same way that I would if I heard a story like this. He's skeptical, and he wants to explain away this thing, this thing that defies categories of logic.

But then Pi says something to him that is quite profound that many of us respectable and rational people need to hear. If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?

Yes, yes. Love is hard to believe. Ask any lover.

Life is hard to believe. Ask any scientist. God is hard to believe.

Ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe? The representative then says that he's simply being reasonable, and then Pi shoots back.

So am I. I applied my reason at every moment on the lifeboat. Reason is excellent for getting food and clothing and shelter.

Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable, and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater. And then finally, finally, completely, completely and utterly exasperated, the representative insists that the company must know the facts, the facts of what really happened.

And Pi just doubles down. So you want another story. I know what you want.

You want a story that will not surprise you, that will confirm what you already know, that won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story, an immobile story. Now, if you've been around for the last couple of weeks since Easter, you know that we've been working through this series called Practicing Resurrection.

We're talking about what it means when we're talking about what it means when we're struggling in our relationship with God, as we embrace new to us, but in many times more historic ways of reading scripture. As we reconsider and reconceptualize things like sin and salvation and atonement. How can our God talk actually lead us to a better God walk?

Too often we find it really hard to translate better theology into a relationship with God that feels deeply alive. We are a people who have become accustomed to a flat story, a story that admits no surprise or messiness, that resists the complex and the miraculous. A story that at the end of the day is just a shinier and more relevant version of our old certainty.

A story that at the end of the day is just a differently packaged form of fundamentalism. Our temptation is to throw out the universe with the bath water. To put away, to refuse the things that defy logic, the wild things, the wild elements of the universe that are impossible to cage.

Yet, those are the very things that so often bring us to wholeness. The things that can be scarcely believed. Last week I talked about this idea of, in Luke 5, of putting out into the deep.

I talked about what it means to be invited into a life of prayer. And into the kind of spirituality that confronts God and engages God in every season of life. Ending in a Psalm 150 kind of faith, a faith that is about sheer wonder at God.

It's about friendship with God and union with God. So today what I want to do is to kind of continue those thoughts by speaking to the overall kind of relational base that we need for a life that we need for a life that we need for a life steeped in friendship with God. Particularly one that moves us out of transactional ways of being.

So, if you would, turn with me or you can follow along on the screen to Job 1, 1-12. Job 1, 1-12. It reads, There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job.

That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He had 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 donkeys, and very many servants.

So that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East. His sons used to go and hold feasts in one another's houses in turn. And they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.

And when the feast days had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them. He would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, it may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.

This is what Job always did. One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and the Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, where have you come from?

Satan answered the Lord from going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it. The Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth.

A blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. Then the Satan answered the Lord, does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all he has on every side?

You have blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now and touch all that he has and he will curse you to your face. The Lord said to the Satan, very well, all that he has is in your power.

Only do not stretch out your hand against him. So Satan went out in the presence of the Lord. So in the next few minutes, I'm going to say a few different things about the book of Job.

That's just the beginning of an incredible book. So I encourage you to go and read the whole thing, or at least to read the first two chapters and then the very end of it to get a sense of some of what we're talking about today. The story starts out by making clear that we are now entering, and I love this phrase, deep time.

We're going into this land long ago and far away. The story is not meant to be understood as a factual account, but it's designed, as Richard Rohr says, to orient us. To orient the psyche, to give ultimate perspective, to realign us, to ground us, and thus to heal us.

The story has a once-upon-a-time quality that draws us into neutral territory where we can explore some of the most profound questions of our lives. It starts out by explaining that once there was a man named Job, and this man was blameless and upright, a person of absolute integrity before God, a person who utterly revered God. He was a man also of extreme wealth.

In other words, he owned that $28 million Rolls Royce that some of y'all won't. I know you do. He had several private islands.

He had ten children, seven of them. You know, seven of these sons would go, and they would hold these parties, and I imagine that they're the kind of parties that, like, Lizzo and Cardi B and Beyonce, and if you're me, the Isley brothers are at.

And then after these blowouts, Job would go and offer sacrifices just in case his children had sinned. He always did that, just in case. And then one day, the story says, God gathers this council of heavenly beings.

Remember, remember, remember, remember, this is deep time. And one of them, the Satan, which is kind of like God's prosecuting attorney on the council, not what we think of as the devil. He has a different role.

He challenges God about how upright Job actually is. In other words, he says, he basically says this key question of, does Job fear God for nothing? In other words, doesn't Job serve you just because of what he gets out of it?

Satan accuses Job of having the exact opposite of a Psalm 150 faith, the kind of faith that asks for nothing and recounts no benefits. He basically says that Job has this faith that is about what he gets. And that if God takes away all of his possessions, that if all his houses go under foreclosure, and the bill collectors start calling, and the cars get repossessed, that Job is going to curse God.

And then just to go a little bit further into the story, there continue these series of episodes where the Satan and God talk, and where things happen on earth. Job loses everything, but he doesn't curse God. He continues to worship God.

So the Satan then says, you know what? How about this? If you touch Job's body, he will curse you.

If you bring illness and pain, he will curse you. Take away his health. Job's wife even says to him, curse God.

Which I find fascinating, because as a woman of that time, if she says curse God and die, then she becomes destitute. Her whole life is really based on him. And yet she says, in order to remain faithful, you have to testify to God's injustice.

And then the friends show up, the friends show up, and they see his excruciating pain, and for a while, at least, they're silent. And Job is silent. The profound question this story gets at is, do people get what they deserve?

For the Israelite people who are constantly caught inside the imperial dreams of larger nations that surrounded them, it's a really important question. Is our fate because of something that we have done? And out of that comes an even more important and more philosophical question.

Do faithful people only serve God because of what they get out of it? Because they know that their well-being depends on it. Is relationship with God basically a transaction?

A situation of utility for everybody involved? And I think that those questions are also critical for us to engage if we want to have a relationship of aliveness with God. One that's about friendship and union with God and not about being a good person only.

We're people who are steeped in a world of rampant consumer capitalism that is grounded in colonization. Everything around us, everything, teaches us to be extractive. It teaches us to get ours.

And the way that we relate to material things, in the way that we relate to time, in the way that we relate to people, in the way that we relate to the earth, in the way that we relate to God. We have to deserve what we get.

Transactional ways of being shape our entire lives. We have to dominate to get ahead. We're taught to claim our power.

But that power is very rarely power with and is too often power over. So when I ask you to accept God's invitation to a life of prayer, to a life of friendship with God beyond perfect theological categories, that I know can feel deeply uncomfortable because it does not at all conform to the logic of transaction.

When I talk about things like prayer as wasting time with God or as technology for excavating our souls, none of that fits into utilitarian transactional ways of being. Even more when I ask you to conspire with God in prayer by actually making requests to God, by making yourself vulnerable in front of God, even though all of your prayers won't be answered.

That doesn't fit either into this logic of exchange. Kate Bowler, who there might be some fans in this room, she's a professor at Duke and she was one of the first people to write a complete history of the prosperity gospel in the United States.

She learned firsthand about how her own relationship was steeped in transactional ways of relating to God. She learned when she was diagnosed with stage four cancer in her 30s. She started to realize the subtle ways that she had been living out the very prosperity gospel that she critiqued.

She had spent her academic career critiquing. She realized that at the end of the day, she believed that if she did all the right things, if she was a good person, if she studied hard, if she wrote well, if she critiqued the right things and practiced the right theology, that she was entitled to her own share of basically the American dream.

Again, a dream that's about exchange. That was what she realized her life was built on and what she realized needed to be deconstructed, that flat story, as Pai Patel put it. See, reading and internalizing the book of Job, the story of Job, is a protection against such a flat story, against these transactional ways of relating to God, because Job and his friends

fall silent in the face of his immense pain. They fall silent, at least for a few days, and then they start talking. For 40 chapters, they talk, and then Job accuses God and screams at God and yells at God and speaks and turns dejectedly and demandingly to God.

And yet, at the end of it all, God says that of everybody in the book, it is Job that has spoken rightly. And that's because Job, no matter his emotions, stays in relationship with God. He learns what it is to be with God beyond transaction.

And I believe that being with God and God being with us isn't a consolation prize. It's pretty much a foundation of our lives of faith. Author Sarah Miles, she talked about this in an article she wrote in this web magazine called The Episcopal Cafe.

I want to share a portion of this because it's one of those things that has stayed with me. I refer to it often when I'm talking. And it's about how important with is to our relationship with God.

She talks about one of the other professors at Duke or one of the professors at Duke who's essentially asked this question, what is the most important word in the Bible? And she says, it's sort of like a theological party game. What's the most important word in the Bible?

Jesus? Or is it love? Or maybe it's mission?

Or God? Or sin? Or mercy?

What? What is the most important word? And this theologian she loves says that the most important word of the Bible is with.

And then she goes on and reminds us of all that we do in our church life, in our personal faith life, that is based on this idea of with. Remember that at the beginning of John's gospel, she says, the word was with God. In Proverbs, when God fixed the foundations of the earth, I was there ever at play in God's presence delighting to be with the children of humanity.

In other words, before time began, before anything else, there was a with. And until the end of time, there is a with. As Jesus promises, behold, I am with you always.

With is the most fundamental thing about God. With. And so we open our worship saying, the Lord be with you.

And we proclaim that the word made flesh tame to dwell with us. And so we call his name Emmanuel, meaning God with us. And so we bless our gathering saying, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all.

And Job learns this too, that to move past this faith rooted in transaction, he has to be cultivating this relationship of God that's grounded in being with God and with others beyond exchange. Rather, for the sake of wonder and delight and joy.

And then, what is more, God makes clear in the book that God's very power is a power that is a power with, not a power over. God makes clear that in this book that God loves what is wild. Creatures that are wild and even human beings that are wild in their freedom.

I encourage you definitely to read the last few chapters of this book if you don't believe me on that. God loves mythical monsters and all kinds of animals that don't seem to fit well into an ordered creation. See, the reason that we can let go of transactional ways of relating to God and being with God is because God has let go of those transactional ways.

God is not a God who demands control but instead is a God who loves freedom and this makes for a scarier story and a more open story, a more surprising story than we could have ever imagined. It makes for a story that will make us see higher and further and differently and certainly beyond fundamentalism.

If you have a relationship with God that includes good theology but also manifests as friendship with God then there is a simple question that I want you to consider. If you want that kind of relationship there is a simple question that I want you to consider and it's really a main question of the book of Job. Can you love a God that you cannot control?

Can you love a God that you cannot control? Can you be faithful to a God that doesn't respect your categories of exchange? Can you survive in this life of faith with your own tigers?

The ones that scare you to death but also can bring you to wholeness? At the beginning of the book of Job Job is this man who scrupulously you know entirely offers sacrifices for his children just in case they have sinned. He has to satisfy his part in this transactional relationship with God.

But at the end of the book Job is completely transformed. He has the courage to have children again. Except in the reality that he can't control what happens to them but he can just be with them.

He decides to name his three daughters at the end of the book these kind of like outlandish names that are about the sensuous beauty of the world. And he even gives his daughters an inheritance which at the time would have been seen as completely impractical. Job becomes gratuitous in his freedom and in his love of the world because Job is following a God that is free and gratuitous in God's love.

I want to end by showing two slides or pieces of artwork I should say. I'm not an art expert so please be gentle. So in 1826 an English poet William Blake published a series of engravings on the book of Job.

And the images that begin and end the series I think communicate really well something that's important. Before accepting this relationship with God that is beyond transaction Blake shows Job as this person who is surrounded by family and they're all holding religious books and they seem to be praying.

Job is piously kneeling and there are these musical instruments that are hung up unplayed. The sun is setting and the scene seems to be pretty static. But in the last image of the engraving Blake depicts Job and his transformation at the end of the book and he and his family are standing up as if

they have found dignity and agency. The sun is rising into a new day and maybe most importantly they are now playing the instruments that they had previously hung up. They're freely making music effectively accepting their role as co-creators with God in the beauty of the world.

See the good news is that we can love a God that we cannot control. And why? Because God first refuses to control us and instead invites us out into a vast world of freedom and joy.

The good news is that we can love God outside of transaction because this is the God that no matter what we choose in our freedom promises to be with us. To never ever ever ever abandon us.

today may your heart accept this better story that resists believability yet leads us to see higher and further and differently and ultimately to become whole. Amen.