What if God was one of us?

Our musician, Alex, played that song on the piano during communion today. It was absolutely spot on, as I went from person to person with the wafer. The circle of hands: a banker, a retired professional, a dozen homeless people, others who live in neighborhood rooming houses. Two, a man and a woman who live at the shelter, came forward only for a blessing. Another couple of men stayed in the pew, but one of them was there because one of our parishioners met him while they were in jail together. He told him about the church, and the man came today because our parishioner had testified about what a good place it was.

What if God was one of us?

God is one of us, or because God came among us, who

we are is part of God.

Proper 23-B; Oct. 11, 2009; Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Psalm 22:1-15; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31

Job, you remember, is the guy who had it all – and then had it all taken away from him. It is a curious book to have in the Bible, showing how celestial beings conspire to bring about the downfall of a righteous man.

Who among us doesn’t, at one time or another, feel like Job? It seems like everything and everyone – even God – is against us. We lose everything. We hit the wall. We’re miserable. We don’t see any way out.

It’s curious to pair the Book of Job – the story of the man who had everything and lost it all – with the Gospel of Mark, which is the story of Jesus told from the perspective of people who never had anything in the first place.

The Gospel of Mark tells the Jesus story from the point of view of the people on the bottom of everything: the poor and the persecuted; the last, the lost, the littlest and the least. Jesus walks the dusty roads of Galilee, just like he would the mean streets of Brockton. He sleeps by the side of the road, or on the spare couch of somebody’s house. Jesus is the hope of the world for poor people, who know he brings healing and restoration to dignity and reconciliation – Jesus brings peace instead of violence to their lives, abundance instead of starvation. Following Jesus, the poor people in the Gospel of Mark realize, restores balance to the world.

So the Book of Job and the Gospel of Mark are on a collision course. Job, the rich man, loses everything. The people in the Gospel of Mark have nothing to begin with, and even then, Jesus says, give up more.

So what is in the middle? Job up here, moving down – the Gospel down here, moving up from the bottom, demanding that those with even modest possessions give them up.

What is in the middle? You might think that Jesus is some kind of a Robin Hood character – steal from the rich and give to the poor – thereby making them considerably less poor. There certainly are plenty of people who will tell you that the Gospel is all about prosperity – that the blessings of God mean more money for you – that all you need is positive thinking or a good attitude and maybe throw in a few good works, and you’re all set. You get the big house and the new car and your children can go to private school. You get the condo in Florida, the summer house in Maine, skiing in Colorado, the occasional cruise. Sounds good, huh?

I think the man who came to Jesus, seeking the way to eternal life, thought Jesus would tell him how to do it, and to be able to keep all his possessions. Given how the disciples reacted to what Jesus said, I think they wanted some of those possessions as well. No, Jesus said, if you seek eternal life, if you follow me on the way to the heart of God, God demands more.

If God demanded only the redistribution of wealth, well that would be easy. I do think God demands SOME redistribution of wealth – the rich just have too darn much.

But where Job and the Gospel meet – that is the heart of God. Demanding, uncompromising, hard, loving, overflowingly abundant, open to all. The way that leads to eternal life demands that we leave behind everything that does not matter, along with some things that do, trusting that with the grace of God, because of it all, despite it all, all will be well.