Our Sunday morning service at  Clevedon is at 10 am. Join us in person or watch the live stream on our YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxBzxjBb3xU8ra2NHwvD_9A(The service can also be viewed at any time afterwards.)              The Reading and Reflection can be found below: Job 3:1-10; 4:1-9; 7:11-21 3:1 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2 Job said: 3 "Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night that said, "A man-child is conceived.' 4 Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, or light shine on it. 5 Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds settle upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. 6 That night — let thick darkness seize it! let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months. 7 Yes, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry be heard in it. 8 Let those curse it who curse the Sea, those who are skilled to rouse up Leviathan. 9 Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none; may it not see the eyelids of the morning — 10 because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb, and hide trouble from my eyes. 4:1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered: 2 "If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended? But who can keep from speaking? 3 See, you have instructed many; you have strengthened the weak hands. 4 Your words have supported those who were stumbling, and you have made firm the feeble knees. 5 But now it has come to you, and you are impatient; it touches you, and you are dismayed. 6 Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope? 7 "Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? 8 As I have seen, those who plough iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. 9 By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed. 7:11 "Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. 12 Am I the Sea, or the Dragon, that you set a guard over me? 13 When I say, "My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,' 14 then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, 15 so that I would choose strangling and death rather than this body. 16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are a breath. 17 What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, 18 visit them every morning, test them every moment? 19 Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle? 20 If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity? Why have you made me your target? Why have I become a burden to you? 21 Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be." Reflection One of the people I trained with in ministry was from Gore, or maybe it was Clinton. A town towards the bottom of the South Island. He was from a farming family and loved the South. He had several ministries all around the bottom of the South Island. Over time, he and his wife raised four children. And over time, as New Zealand children are inclined to do, each of them travelled. And though more unlikely, they each met and married someone from one of the countries they visited. From memory, it was Australia, Canada, the US, and Great Britain. So this couple, who I am guessing imagined a future with their family nearby, possibly imagined a future seeing their grandchildren - found themselves, as they got older, in quite a different situation. Just the two of them, and occasional visits overseas when they could save sufficient to travel. Of course, we all know people surrounded by their children and grandchildren. But some variation of the story about my colleague isn’t so unusual, especially for New Zealanders. Things happen, and for many of us, those changes bring with them a whole load of other complications. Spending time with elderly relatives who might live far away. Wondering if you might be able to help a child buy a home. In our family ministry work, there are a good number of grandparents who find themselves needing to devote much of their retirement time to caring for grandchildren as a way of helping the family. We might have a plan or a hope, but once those plans and hopes involve others, then everything is more unpredictable. Think how many of us have had to wrestle with difficult decisions about what to do when a family member who is far away, becomes unwell. The Book of Job doesn’t have all the answers, but what it does do is engage with the questions of faith in the midst of difficult times, in the midst of suffering and loss. Questions when the formulas and the plans and the received wisdom don’t work out.  In the first of our series on Job, we heard that this figure called Satan has been allowed by God to test Job. God has said that Job is "a good and blameless man." But Satan has said, that the only reason he is good is because he is being looked after by you, God. Satan is saying: Job thinks that if he behaves himself, he will get rich, prosper, be surrounded by a happy family. Be that perfect family on Facebook. But take all that away from him, God, and as Satan says, Job will curse you to your face. For Job, and like us, bad things happen. Not in threes, but sometimes, one after another.  Job loses almost everything, -  his wealth, his family. But we are told, that even after receiving all this terrible news, Job found the time to worship and to affirm his trust in God. The last verses we hear after these things have happened: 20 Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshipped. 21 He said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." 22 In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing. So at this point we find that God’s view of Job as being a good and faithful man is well placed, and Satan has yet to undermine his faith. But by the time we get to chapter 3, Job is in a bad way: 3:1 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.  Job said: "Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night that said, 'A man-child is conceived.'  Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, or light shine on it.  Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds settle upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it." When Job speaks these words – and I am sure we are meant to imagine, yells them up to God, we are being drawn into something deep in our humanity. I am not sure if we have any ranters in our congregation. I have people quite close to me who find it valuable to let off steam – ‘to vent’ as they say. And I have discovered that it’s important not to try to interrupt people when they are doing this. “Don’t interrupt, I am just venting,” they say. But the very fact that these words of despair and ranting to God, have been recorded and held in our scriptures, suggests that Job is doing something else really important. He gathers up for all of us that great human question about what life is worth at the times when things don’t go to plan. And in Job’s case, when he endures such pain, such anguish. Job is asking on behalf of us all, how do we still find value and significance and faith when life itself hardly seems to be worth living? And then in the next verses, we move to these friends turning up. They are people we might call “frenemies.” Eliphaz and the Temanite. And I’ve got to say these aren’t the kind of friends you need at this time. They are not the people you want turning up when you have just been anguishing over something tough. When family are far away, or you’ve heard bad news from the doctor. You must have been a very bad parent for your son to want and go and live in London.  You must have done something really wrong for you to be as sick as you are. These two friends are basically saying, ''just suck it up. You really must have done bad things and now you are getting what you deserve." 7 "Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? 8 As I have seen, those who plough iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. 9 By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed." So they are saying, on one hand it seemed like you were a good bloke, but these terrible things that have happened to you prove that you were not so innocent, you were not so upright. You thought you were that good son, that loving mother that good and faithful man - but that can't be right.  So we started last week with the formula that God blesses those who are good. And we find that while that might be true sometimes, bad things still happen to good people for no particular reason. Now, by chapter 4, we have these friends giving Job advice – you weren’t as good as we thought you were, and you are being rightfully punished. So it is no surprise what happens next: Job says, 7:11 "Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. 16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are a breath. 17 What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, 18 visit them every morning, test them every moment?" So we move into this time of lament. Lament plays a big part in our scriptures. I am so sad and lost and grieving. I wonder if lament has become quite a foreign thing for us. Sandy and I  enjoyed this wonderful little series on Netflix about an orthodox Jewish family, Shtisel. In one scene an elderly member of the family dies, and for the next 7 days, the family practise shiva. A 7-day period of lament where people come and simply sit with the family, often bringing chicken soup and as they leave, they say to the family, “May God comfort you among all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.” This time of lament in our scriptures recognises that loss has an effect on us all and diminishes us. Whatever form that loss comes in.  So, as we move through the book of Job there are lessons here. Bad things happen to good people, and these bad things can really test our faith. We find that Job in the midst of all this still finds a place where he can give thanks for life, where he can still find a place to worship. There is room in our faith for times of anger and self-doubt. We can be with people when they are going through tough times, but we need to be cautious about explaining why things are tough. Cautious about the formulas we apply. Presence, we find, can be more important than words. Job, at the end of the lament, still has questions: 21 "Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be." We look at these stories from the point of our faith in the risen Christ, that suffering and loss do not have the final say, that death has lost its sting. We go through some tough and confusing times, but we do so knowing a God that in Jesus knows what it’s like. Knows what it is like to grieve and face pain and loss.   The unique thing about our Christian faith is that we discover in Jesus a God who knows what it is like to suffer. But we are people still drawn to a greater vision. A vision we find at the very end of scripture: "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." AMEN

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