22nd Sunday After Pentecost, Year B: Authority in Creativity and Solidarity
Jordan Haynie Ware
Without ever mentioning the word, each text appointed for this day deals with authority. Who is it that has authority? From whence does that authority derive? Job longs to know why he is so afflicted, but God does not answer why these things happened. God answers by displaying his authority. This authority is not heavy-handed or tyrannical, nor is it derived from power and might. God’s authority is wrapped up in God’s as creator and labourer who is in continued relationship with all God’s creation.
Both the author of Job and the Psalmist derive God’s authority from God’s creativity, the fact that God is the source of all creation. They also speak to God’s persistent presence in and among that creation. God sees and knows the smallest, most remote corners of the world. No sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing.
In the New Testament, this theme is intensified via the Incarnation and Crucifixion of Jesus. In Jesus, God becomes fully present as a creature within creation as an act of radical solidarity. His priesthood is authoritative due to that solidarity and relationship. The Incarnation sets the seal on the kind of authority God practices – the kind that remains with creation, suffers with it, cares for it, knows its pain.
Commentary
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After thirty-seven chapters of adversity, pain, and loss, not to mention condescending lectures from friends about why you deserve it, God finally answers for God’s actions. God speaks from a whirlwind, in contrast to 1 Kings 19, when the LORD is not found in the wind. God wraps up Godself in the authority of creation to respond to Job’s complaint. God’s authority is not found in power, but in authorship. It is because God is Creator, because God has created, that God holds authority in the universe. The Eucharistic rite of the Anglican Church of Kenya speaks of God as the owner of all things, but that ownership did not come by purchase. It came by creation, origination. The universe is God’s intellectual property. God holds the copyright.
This kind of authorship is also costly and laborious. God doesn’t snap God’s fingers and create without effort. God laid the foundation of the world. Brick by brick, God built the universe by hand. Whether God speaks from the whirlwind or from the sheer silence of its absence, God’s dominion comes not from domination, God’s supremacy comes not from strength. It is God’s effort, God’s labour, God’s production that produces God’s primacy.
We might yet think that this remains an inadequate response to all that Job has been through. And yet God continues. Contra Deism, God was not content to merely sink worldly bases, lay earthly cornerstones, receive the praise of the stars and sit back to watch us live out our days in pain. God is not a watchmaker. God remains with creation – in the clouds, with the lions, among the ravens. God’s answer to Job’s pain does not address the idea of who deserves what. God responds by revealing God’s intimacy with all creation, God’s ongoing care. Like a rancher (or a pet owner), God daily feeds those animals that need to eat. Jesus will later teach his disciples that no sparrow falls to the ground unperceived by the Father (Matthew 10:29). But as author Mary Doria Russell will note in her novel The Sparrow, the sparrow still falls.
God’s response to pain is presence. The Creator draws near to her creatures. She gathers them under her wings. This does not remove the pain, but it does relieve it, the way that holding a loved one’s hand during a painful procedure reminds them that they are not alone, that they are cared for. We may fall, but we do not fall unperceived. We are not alone. The one who made us is with us.
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God again depicts Godself as a builder, a laborer, wrapped up in the apparel of creation. God wraps Godself with light and spreads out the heavens. God hand-lays the beams of the sky, and hand-shapes the clouds. God creates messengers out of wind and fire, calling to mind, for Christians, the imagery of the Holy Spirit. As in Job, we see God’s intimacy with creation. God is depicted as a master artisan, a handcrafter. God did not outsource the work of creation; God’s hands touched every corner of the earth. In this age of AI, our society seems keen to divorce creativity from humanity, from effort, from labour. It is important, then, to reclaim God’s labour as creator. God set the earth on its foundations, a meaningful image in the face of earthquake. God rebuked the waters from the mountains and set the limits they should not pass, a powerful image in the face of floods and landslides.
This Psalm calls to mind Indigenous creation stories. The teaching I have been given has been that of the muskrat, diving beneath the waves, slowly, painstakingly, with effort, putting together the earth that makes up Turtle Island. In the same way, the Psalmist depicts God as one who has taken time and effort and labour in creating all parts of creation – the sky, the waters, the hills and valleys. If God went to such effort to create the earth, do we dare to wreck it casually? Knowing the time and trouble God took, do we find ruin so easy? When we remember God’s effortful work, perhaps we are encouraged to take more care with the results of God’s labour.
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In Jesus, God’s intimacy and solidarity with creation reaches its peak. The birth in time of the timeless Son of God, the creator of all becoming a creature indicates, truly, that God has not abandoned God’s creation to our own devices. The author of the letter(? Sermon?) to the Hebrews, writes meaningfully of Jesus’s prayers and supplications on our behalf, interceding for us. The author writes that Christ’s intimacy leads him to “deal gently with the ignorant and wayward,” in a similar way to God’s intimacy with the solitary and ignored (by humans) parts of creation is part of God’s defense to Job. But in Hebrews, the author argues, God goes further.
Jesus now knows the fear of death himself. He himself has offered up prayers and supplications, seeking to let the cup pass from his lips. His close connection with creation, then, is not merely as provider but also supplicant. He is the one upon whom we can depend, because he knows what it is to be dependent. This experience, the author of Hebrews argues, is what perfects him in order that he might become the source of eternal salvation.
God’s salvific authority, begun in manual labour, is crowned by the vulnerability of being subject to the same trials and tribulations faced by all of God’s creation.
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James and John seek the glory without the solidarity, which is their first flaw. God builds and labours and creates in order to achieve divine authority. Jesus acts as high priest because he has been servant of all and gave his life as a ransom for many. But James and John want the glory without all that effort, the position without the servanthood, the authority without the solidarity. But the passages this week demonstrate that God’s authority comes from God’s intimate connection with God’s creation, God’s everlasting presence, God’s tenacious solidarity even when the sparrow falls.
This is greatness, in Jesus’s estimation. Not power over, but solidarity with. Authority is not handed down through hereditary means, like kingship, or elevated via democratic election of the most popular. It is earned through voluntary suffering alongside those who suffer involuntarily. Not many (including James and John, at least in this moment!) are willing to put in the effort to achieve Jesus’s definition of greatness.
It is common to hear of Jesus’s uniqueness as a barrier to imitation. Jesus was the Son of God; he alone gives his life as a ransom for many, he does not call us to do the same. This is true. And, Jesus explicitly tells his disciples to follow his example – to seek not to be served, but to serve. Furthermore, Jesus is clear that there are no shortcuts to glory here.
Teaching and Preaching Ideas
Anna Carter Florence and Paul Scott Wilson are the two homileticians who have most influenced my preaching. With Dr. Wilson, I try to find grace in the text that connects to a need, usually expressed in the form of a question, present in my congregation. With Dr. Florence, I remember that the Gospel must convert me first, and I try to share with my congregation what happened within me, spiritually and emotionally, as I encountered the text. With those practices in mind, I offer the following sermon starters:
God’s revelation of Godself in Job
God reveals Godself to a man who is in crisis, who has lost everything. What does that revelation provide for people in the midst of climate crisis today? Can we imagine God’s response to Asheville, North Carolina, or to Jasper, Alberta in a similar form to this response to Job?
When I read this text, I found God’s defense inadequate. Job does not. How can I sit with that difference? What makes someone in crisis find God’s answer here a meaningful response to their pain?
The earth is full of God’s creatures
The Psalmist tells us that the earth is full of God’s creatures. In Romans, Paul writes that the whole creation waits with eager longing for God’s redemption of the earth. What is our ethical obligation as Christians to all our relations among God’s creatures? How can we build cross-species solidarity with other beings that God has made?
When I read this text, I felt wrapped up in God’s love. How can I convey that sense of being physically held to those who need to be wrapped up in God’s arms right now? How can I act as God’s arms and hold them up?
Ransom for many
Jesus lived and died among us as one of us. He did not have to. He chose to suffer alongside creatures that were suffering. That is how Jesus became great. That is the source of our eternal salvation. What pattern does this set for human authority and power? How can we speak truth to power by following Jesus’s example, or revealing the type of power he displayed?
When I read these texts, I empathized with John and James wanting to take a shortcut and skip the suffering. How do I stay present in Good Friday anguish and Holy Saturday despondency with those who can’t see the resurrection on the horizon? What does meaningful solidarity with the suffering look like?
Authority
The vision of authority presented in these texts comes from the idea of God as author, creator, originator, labourer, artisan, and from the idea of God as co-suffering in tenacious solidarity with God’s creation. Is this kind of authority more or less trustworthy than other kinds of authority? Can this kind of authority break through the distrust of this age?
When I read these texts, I felt in right relationship with God’s authority because it was rooted in God’s labour. God’s authority is hard-won, which helps me trust it when times are hard. But not everyone responds in the same way. How do I convey God’s trustworthiness to those who feel that God can’t be trusted with their pain? How do I honour their lack of trust in this kind of authority? How do I listen for an unexpected definition of greatness?
Sources and Resources
Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision by Randy Woodley
“The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance” by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Emergence Magazine
This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us by Cole Arthur Riley
Laudato Si by Pope Francis
Tenacious Solidarity: Biblical Provocations on Race, Religion, Climate, and the Economy by Walter Brueggemann
Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations by Richard Wagamese
“Time for Solidarity: Liturgical Time in Disaster Capitalism” by Mark Roosien
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Children of God by Mary Doria Russell
Contributor Biography
Jordan Haynie Ware (she/her) serves as Archdeacon for Justice in the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton, Canada, and Rector of Good Shepherd Anglican Church. After attending Yale Divinity School, she was among the first women ordained in what was formerly known as the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. Jordan is the author of The Ultimate Quest: A Geek’s Guide to (the Episcopal) Church, co-creator of the Two Feminists series of podcasts, and has contributed writing to Churches Beyond Borders, Earth & Altar, SELF Magazine, & Jesus Wednesday. She is a co-founder of Faith Spaces | Safe Spaces, a multifaith project that seeks to make every faith space in Edmonton a safe space for BIPOC to worship their Creator and receive spiritual care, and Kiyânaw, a multifaith spiritual singing collective. Jordan serves on the Liturgical Advisory Committee for the Anglican Church of Canada, where she is hard at work compiling new resources for baptism in the 21st century. She lives in Edmonton with her husband and their retired racing greyhound.
Image
Lance Cardinal’s mural “amiskwaciy-wâskahikan" in the lobby of TELUS World of Science Edmonton. The Cree phrase translates to Beaver Hills House, which is the Treaty 6 name for the Edmonton area and the mural showcases Indigenous culture and science.