# Twenty-Second Sunday after Penetcost October 24, 2024 - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) *By the Rev. Emmanuel Akyeampong Minister for Worship and Formation in the Memorial Church Ellen Gurney Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies Oppenheimer Faculty Director of the Harvard University Center for African Studies* *(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Oct. 20, 2024)* We thank you, Lord God, for this opportunity to share Your Word. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to You, oh Lord, our God, and our Redeemer. Amen. Professors and pastors like to give titles to their lectures and sermons. If I were to title my reflections for today, I would entitle it "The Discomfort of Not Knowing." Our education and training are meant to equip us with knowledge to remove the uncertainty of not knowing. The more we know, the more we feel we are in control of our lives. As humans, we are a meaning-making species. We need to know. From our children and they are repeated, "Why?" when we tell them to do something, to our tendency as adults to research everything that touches our life. We research holiday destinations, where we will stay, places to eat, the churches we will attend, the schools for our children, a medical diagnosis, etc. And the internet has facilitated this need to know. Google is our best friend. This is not a bad thing. The Lord encourages us in Proverbs 8 to seek wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. Yet the Lord, in our relationship with Him, also requires us to be comfortable with not knowing and to trust his goodness. In our scripture readings from today, we are presented with two contexts of uncertainty where the actors involved believe, knowing whether in terms of explaining the past or making less intimidating what lies in the future, will help them make sense of what they face. In the Book of Job, Job, who is described in the beginning of the book as a righteous man, suffers numerous tragedies and he seeks an explanation from God. "What have I done to deserve this?" The reading from Mark is the third in three predictions by Jesus of his coming passion as he and his disciples are on the road to Jerusalem. His anxious and fearful disciples ponder in their hearts, "Why are we going to Jerusalem when we know it won't end well?" I have often wondered whether it would've made a difference to Job to know that his numerous tragedies were a result of God bragging about him to Satan. The Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?" This led to the wager between God and Satan when Satan argued that if God gave him the permission to strip Job of his material possessions and health, Job would curse God. God gave Satan permission with a limitation that he could not touch Job's life. Could God have said to Job in Chapter 38 when he finally appears, in response to Job's demand for his day in the Divine Court, "My bad, I was bragging about you"? In our Mark reading, the sons of Zebedee, James, and John, members of Jesus's closest circle and among his earliest disciples, are also seeking assurance about an uncertain future. We are headed to Jerusalem where Jesus has informed them that he'll be handed over to the Roman authorities and crucified, but that would not be the end of the story. He would resurrect on the third day. Then what happens? One could read in James's and John's presumptuous request their desire to reduce the discomfort of not knowing. "What would eschatology look like? When would that be? Could we sit on Your left and right in the coming kingdom?" Their request appears selfish, but they're also fishing for information. The Book of Job raises two important questions. The first, is there such a thing as disinterested piety? Or as Satan puts it in Job 1, does Job fear God for nothing? Second, "What have I done to deserve this, when misfortune or tragedy enters our life?" For the first 37 chapters of Job, Job, his wife, his three friends, and a pretentious young man called Elihu, wrestle with the second question. Job's faith believes in divine sovereignty. God is omnipotent. The religious tradition of the day taught strict moral retribution. The good are rewarded and the evil are punished. What else could explain Job's confounding tragedies but the presence of sin in him? To the contrary, Job insists on his innocence. In his opinion, the moral universe has gone crazy. Good people are suffering. God needs to right this. Job had challenged the divine creative intent. –– Embed [Harvard Memorial Church](https://soundcloud.com/memorial-church "Harvard Memorial Church") · [The Rev. Emmanuel Akyeampong - Oct. 20, 2024 | Sunday Sermon](https://soundcloud.com/memorial-church/the-rev-emmanuel-akyeampong-oct-20-2024-sunday-sermon "The Rev. Emmanuel Akyeampong - Oct. 20, 2024 | Sunday Sermon") –– In our reading from Job, God shows up in Chapter 38, but he does not answer Job's question. Rather, God seems to question Job's impertinence. "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" It is not God. The doting father, the beginning of job that appears here, but an imperious creator God. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding." Here, I'm reminded of Isaiah 40, when Isaiah writes, who has directed the spirit of the Lord? Or as his counselor has instructed him." God speaks first as Creator of the universe, but at the ending of our Job reading, as one who nurtures or sustains life, He provides for both the lion and the raven in the wild. God assesses His omnipotence and omniscience and defends His design of the universe. What happened to Job is above Job's understanding, and what God offers is not an explanation, but an invitation for Job to trust in His wisdom, goodness and love. That Job existed in a special relationship with God's affirmed by God's appearance in chapter 38, making Job one of the great heroes in the Hebrew Bible who received a personal visitation from God, including others like Abraham and Moses. In our Mark reading, we have Jesus and his reluctant co-travelers on the road to Jerusalem. Jesus has informed his disciples in Mark 8 and in Mark 9 of his impending death in Jerusalem. Yet he sets his face resolutely towards Jerusalem. In the first announcement of his passion in Mark 8, after Peter had confessed Jesus as the Messiah at Caesarea Philippi in response to Jesus's question, "Who do you say that I am?", Jesus foretells his betrayal in Jerusalem by the religious leaders, and that he'll be killed and after three days rise again. Mark informs us that Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him. By turning and looking at his disciples, Jesus' intent rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me Satan, for you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things." In Mark 9, Jesus, for the second time as he and his disciples pass through Galilee, taught his disciples about his coming death and resurrection. Yet even after this, while on the way, the disciples were arguing amongst themselves about who was the greatest. In today's reading from Mark 10, we have Jesus's third teaching about his passion and the nature of his kingdom. This teaching moment arose after James and John approached Jesus, and like the teacher's favorite students, asked for places of honor in the coming kingdom. The issue of status remains a present matter for the disciples. The disciples do get it that Jesus's kingdom will not be an earthly kingdom. In early Christianity, a saying has circulated that Jesus had promised the disciples that in the coming eschatological kingdom they will sit on 12 thrones to judge the 12 tribes of Israel. This saying is recorded in Matthew 19 and Luke 22. Mark does not record this, and seems to have rejected the same as polemical. So what we have is a partial understanding of Jesus's mission by his disciples who seemed not to get it, that the promised eschatological glory is inseparable from the cross, that this resolute determination of Jesus to go to Jerusalem, this appointment with the cross was the doorway to eternal life for all humanity. The book of Job ends with restoration. Job 42 tells us that the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. The restoration acquits Job, even though the Lord does not explain to Job why he had lost everything in the beginning. God rebukes Job's friends for their ignorance and their presumptuousness in assuming that they could stand in judgment of Job. But what lessons do we take from Job for today and from Jesus's third teaching about his coming passion on the road to Jerusalem? What I take from both scriptures is the emphasis on trust. To trust in God's goodness in the context of not knowing. This is what the Lord indicted Job for, not trusting in his goodness. After all, the Lord believed Job had a good record of him and should know better. Jesus' determined push towards Jerusalem and crucifixion was driven by his trust in his Father's purpose and goodness, not that what lay ahead was not daunting. He would pray in the garden of Gethsemane, if his Father would remove this cup but ended up saying, "Your will and not mine be done." Mark's Jesus is comfortable not knowing all things. To appoint places of honor at his enthronement is the prerogative of his Father, just as the date of his return in glory is known only to the Father. The historical Jesus trusted his Father to the end, as he committed his spirit to his Father at the point of death on the cross. There was a year in which I had to endure the discomfort of not knowing, and to trust in the goodness of the Lord. This was the year 1988 when I enrolled as a Master's student in Wake Forest University in North Carolina. I had come to the U.S. to be best man at my brother's wedding. My native Ghana was then under the military rule, and the University of Ghana was often closed down because of student protests. My siblings encouraged me to explore graduate school in the U.S. I was admitted to Wake Forest in January 1988, and the school applied to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services to change my visa from a visitor to a student. The entire year we did not hear back, and there were times as I sat studying in the library, I would remind myself that a letter of denial could arrive the next day, and I'd have to pack my bags and return to Ghana. To function well, I had to become comfortable with not knowing and to trust in the goodness of the Lord. That uncertain beginning has led to me being here with you today. My visa was approved. I'd do a Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, and accept an appointment at Harvard in 1993. In the last twenty-plus years, I've kept a prayer journal in which I record my prayers and answered prayers. It is my record of God's faithfulness in my life. In context of not knowing or when I'm anxious about something, I go and reread my prayer journals. We will all experience adversity in life. What we do in adversity is equally important. I encourage you to keep a record of God's goodness in your life, and as Guy Penrod reminds us in his song, "When you are discouraged thinking all is lost, count your many blessings. Name them one by one, and it'll surprise you what the Lord has done." And last, I encourage you to make bold decisions in your life. What is the Lord calling you to do that calls for you to suspend knowledge? And I stress knowledge, not faith, and to trust in Him, for the things our knowledge can do never equals or nears the great things God wants to do in our lives. Proverbs 3 tells us to "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your insight. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths." The Lord told Paul, "My strength is made perfect in weakness." His strength is made perfect in our not knowing. Amen. #### **Full Service Video** See also:- [ Sunday Service ](/archive/sunday-service) - [ Sermon ](/archive/sermons) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)