Pastor T.C. Arnold

3^rd Last Sunday in the Church Year

Job 14:1-6

November 8^th, 2009

            “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.  He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.”  These are the very words we begin each Funeral Service performed here within these walls.  We process down the isle, the toll of the bell in full sway, and we say these words…”Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble.”

            I have often wondered, perhaps you have as well, why these words begin our Funeral Service?  Not that I think they are particularly inappropriate…but we might ask the question, “Where is the comfort in words like that?”  Is not the Christian Funeral one of comfort and solace?  Is not the Christian Funeral packed full of assurance of life everlasting for the one who is translated to the Church Triumphant?  Yes, but there is much more.

            The Christian Funeral reminds us that our time on this side of eternity is short and that we wait with great anticipation for our Lord’s return on the Last Day to judge both the living and the dead.  We are reminded that we are not in charge – our days are few.  He decides when we live and when we die.  He is Lord over our suffering and our tribulations.  By the mere mention of trouble in our text, we recognize that trouble is something that every Christian has – especially when we see a man of God as faithful and righteous as Job experiencing it.

            So the question remains for us: where is the comfort in words like, “Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble…”?  Well, it’s right in the words you just heard.  With man, there are only a few days and those days are full of trouble.  But with God, the trouble that we have will end but the life that we have been given will not.  For a Funeral Service at Christ Lutheran Church (or at any church for that matter), a reading from the Prophet Job is most appropriate.  The reason: Comfort in the midst of trouble and tribulation is not an armchair.  In other words, comfort is God leading, feeding, reassuring, inspiring and heartening us.  With words of comfort comes the recognition that we are poor miserable sinners and we are honest about it.  Comfort is active which means that God might first tell you what you might not want to hear in order to share with you a meaningful Word of life.  He might say something like, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?  There is no one” (as Job answers the very question he asks).  If comfort comes by way of leading, then we might want to trust that God knows best – even if that means God leading us down into the depths of hell in order for us to realize the fullness of heaven all the more.

            We are in the midst of the last three Sundays in the Church Year.  The theme, as you will hear, is the end times – the final judgment – the last day.  We hear that theme most readily in the Gospel reading set forth for today – Luke chapter seventeen.  If anything, Job reminds us that our days are limited.  Christ would remind us of the same thing.  Job took comfort in knowing that what he was enduring was not all there was.  Remember, Job suffered.  He suffered great physical affliction.  He suffered the pain of death when messengers came and told him that his servants were dead and so were all his livestock.  Besides that, your sons and daughters were eating and drinking in your oldest son’s house, a great wind came and blew the house in on them – they are dead.  Not only was it the pain of suffering and death – but it was also the pain and suffering of “loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.”  Job suffered physical, mental, and emotional anguish.  His wife would say, “Do you still hold fast your integrity?  Curse God and die.”  Job would not.  It says that, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”

            This past weekend I was at a conference in Nebraska where I met Dr. Gregory Schultz.  He is a professor of Philosophy at Wisconsin Lutheran College in Milwaukee.  He wrote a book called The Problem of Suffering.  He doesn’t just base this book on an academic approach to what God says about suffering, or what other wise men have said.  Rather, he personally relates to the reader his personal struggles.  He and his wife had four children born to them.  One child, he recounts, died at around one year old.  She had a very rare genetic disease that caused her great pain and anguish when she was touched.  Imagine a mother and a father bringing terrible pain when they simply “hold” their child close to them.  A second child of theirs died as a young teenager of many different health complications.  Dr. Schultz and his wife know suffering.

            And so do we – in one form or another.  Maybe like Dr. Schultz – or – maybe not like him.  Maybe we know suffering like Job – maybe we don’t know that kind of suffering.  But we know suffering.  And suffering has a way of bringing honesty to our lips.  Honesty that asks tough questions like, “Why, God?”  Why has this happened to me?”  These are honest questions and very difficult questions to answer.  As a matter of fact, we rarely see such answers to these questions of, “why.”

            But what we do know about man is that “He is born of a woman and his days are few and are full of trouble.”  What comfort is that?  “He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not.”  What comfort is that?   What is the comfort in the words pastor speaks as the Old Testament text for today and the words we have heard many times spoken during processional down the center isle at a funeral?  Here’s the answer – there is no comfort in these words.

            I’m going to tell you why.  The reason is the very first word Job uses in chapter fourteen in the Old Testament text for today.  The first word he uses is, “man.”  Man is sinful – man is full of trouble – man is limited – man is of a few days.  But not God and in Him we have our hope and limitless life.

            It’s hard to call these “latter days” we live in joyous.  The economy is in the tank.  There aren’t enough jobs to go around.  The world is getting scarier and scarier each and every day.  We dread to turn on the television because all they report is more bad news.  We wonder what kind of world our children are going to inherit.  But in these last days our Lord has given us something to look forward to.  It’s easy to be pessimistic about the world today and think there is nothing to look forward to – but that’s simply not true.  These last days of the Church Year help us to look beyond the immediate future and into the great unknown – which happens to be known to those in Christ.

            We have the joy of knowing what is in store for us in the time beyond this time.  That’s what kept faithful Job going from one day to the next – with all his afflictions and sorrow.  It’s sad to see the world in the shape that it is today but it’s of great joy to know that there are days to come for those in Christ that will see all things come to completion the way God intended.  It’s sad to be sitting at a funeral of a friend or a loved-one.  It’s joyous to know that we will see that friend that has died in the faith again in heaven.  At times there is both “little” comfort and “much” comfort with such words that come from Job.

            Luther said once, “The sooner a person dies after his baptism, the sooner is his baptism completed.”  Are those words of comfort?  Yes and no.  No, in the sense, that we don’t want our loved ones to die.  We want them with us and live in their baptism today with all of us.  Yes, because that completeness of baptism for our life is the goal.  Heaven is our home and our goal.  To see the completion of baptism for our lives is what we all long for – it’s why we are baptized.

            Are Job’s words, “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.  He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not,” words of comfort?  Yes and no, right??  We are reminded how we are… of few days, full of trouble.  That’s not comforting.   But they are comforting because with man that is how things are – but with our God – the God we believe in and have close to us in the form of a cross on our foreheads and on our hearts – it is comfort.  With man these things occur.  With God we have it all.  That’s comfort.  Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Amen.