Strength Through Weakness

Strength Through Weakness

The book of Job is about a good man who had everything in life and then lost everything. If Job were alive today he’d be like a celebrity who had riches and land and would probably be featured in People Magazine. When I shop at the grocery store, I like to browse through People and other celebrity magazines. I fantasize about what it would be like to minister to the rich and famous as I look at photos of beautiful people living what seems to be an amazing life. Everyone seems to be in incredible shape living in homes that are spacious with super happy families.  I’m thinking, “Wow. Their life seems amazing, I wonder what it would be like to have their life.”  But then I’ll pick up and read TMZ or the National Enquirer. Those are “gossip rag” magazines and they focus on the sufferings of the rich and famous.  TMZ plasters unflattering photos of an aging actress’ plastic surgery gone bad, a picture of a newly emerging actor getting arrested after a bar fight, or the latest mug shot of Justin Bieber.  I certainly wouldn’t want that life! If TMZ were written into the Book of Job, our man Job would be a front page feature: a good man who had all the good things of life, but now has lost everything. I can imagine him featured next to Harry Stiles, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and Bruce Jenner! So…snapping out of my bizarre theological fantasy about celebrity suffering, the grocery clerk says to me, “Are you going to buy that?” as I’m holding onto the magazine. I say, “No.” Then before I know it, the magazine is ripped from my hands and placed back on the rack for another person to escape her life and imagine having dinner with the Kardashians.

After the market I return back to my home on Sanders Ave. There in my vencendario I see parishioners and neighbors coming home from their second and third jobs.  I see children running along the sidewalk  and riding their bikes down the street. I hear the incessant ding ding ding of the ice-cream truck and I smell the goat cooking in my neighbor’s back yard. I am home in 95116, not West Hollywood. Life isn’t about being rich and famous, nor is it about reading articles of celebrities’ addictions and bad behavior. Life is about the struggle and the victories of people that we actually know.

When I stop to think about my life and where I live, I’m in awe of two things: how hard life is in my community and how resilient people are: life’s circumstances do not stop people from living their lives.  No matter how hard life is for my neighbors, at the end of the day there’s always banda music playing at the highest possible volume, some lady is laughing with her comadres, and some dude is sharing a beer with his neighbor.  These folks struggle and there is much suffering - but they’re also not giving any power over the injustices that they suffer every day. They could probably teach a few things to our man, Job.

Let’s take a look at the question of suffering in the context of the Book of Job. Today we get a good man, Job, who finds himself trying to understand why a good man has to suffer. He says, “ My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle; they come to an end without hope. Remember that my life is like the wind; I shall not see happiness again.” His life had been completely turned upside down.  Why? Because at the beginning of the book of Job, God and Satan had a disagreement. God felt that a truly good man is good unconditionally. People are good not because circumstances make them good, they are good because God loves them.  Evil disagrees. 

Evil says people are good only conditionally, meaning that people are good only because good things happen to them. Satan believes that the love of God does not make someone good, only material possessions and circumstances make a person good or bad. Evil proposes to God that God take away a man or woman’s riches and watch how a good man quickly turns bad. 

Job was an experiment between God and Satan: Job had to wrestle with the issue of suffering and maintain his inherent goodness - even after losing everything.  Life is hard and suffering happens but these circumstances do not make us love. Love is ultimately a choice.  Job had to decide whether he loved God or not.  At this point in the story, Job hasn’t made up his mind if he wants to love - that is, whether he wanted to remain a victim of circumstance or become a a free person. In the end of the story, Job will eventually profess his love of God, thus proving Satan wrong. The story of Job teaches me that I too must choose to love. I have the power to decide whether I want to be a victim or if I want to be a free person.

The Book of Job teaches me that life is both loving and not-loving. It is of being surrounded by people that love as much as it is about being abandoned by your friends. Life is about eating well and being housed in comfort and it is also about being hungry and homeless. Life is about knowing who you are in good times and in bad. Life for a person of faith is knowing that God is present in the night as well as God is present in the day.

Paul testifies that the way to know about God’s love isn’t by becoming a celebrity, but being a slave. Paul took on weakness, powerlessness, impoverishment and suffering so that he could win over the weak. He said, “I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible.”  God’s love is not only for those who have a six-pack abs, a beautiful home, a huge bank account and all the fame that one could hope for. God’s love is for all and that love is unconditional. When we realize that God’s love is unconditional, we come to accept that God’s love for us carries no conditions.  This unconditional love is GRACE.  Grace is Jesus’ act of forgiveness from the cross!  His death freed us so that we no longer have to consider ourselves as “losers.”  Grace helps us believe in ourselves as we are.  Grace allows us to accept ourselves without the burden of shame and guilt and it gives us an inner-confidence to keep on moving forward - no matter what the circumstances are. 

Grace gets Roberto up every day to work 4 jobs - to help put his kids through prep school and college.  Grace gives Magdalena inner-confidence so that when she takes her nurses exam, she knows that she’s just as talented and as smart as kids from the West Side. Grace gets Fernando up every morning at 3:30 am so that he can drive from Hollister to San Jose so that he can pay his mortgage and keep his daughter in Catholic school. Grace doesn’t let us give up or let circumstances of life dictate to us who we will be.  Grace gives us the ability to decide and act.

Jesus grasped the hand of Simon’s mother-in-law and her fever left her. Grace healed Simon’s mother-in-law and it got her up to continue working so that her son could continue working for Jesus. Simon, the Apostles and Jesus preached, “Si Se Puede!” to those whose felt that they were hopeless victims without any power in their lives. That’s why said, “Let us go to the nearby villages that I may preach there too.”  Jesus’ words got people to believe in themselves. His words drove out the demon of self-defeat and desperation. Jesus went out to the people who were afflicted with all sorts of problems. He went out to those at the margins not the center.  He went out to the wounded, not the healthy.  Internal injuries and external wounds alike were healed by Jesus of Nazareth…and that’s why people flocked to him.  He proclaimed GOOD NEWS that the sufferings of the present, though real, are not going to be overcome with hatred and resentment but by Grace and action.

As believers we know that Jesus is here. He’s here in 95116. He’s not going to give us a new address, a new house, a better job, or anything like that. What he will give us is this: his very SELF. Disclosed in Word and Sacrament, Jesus is in the NOW!  Jesus lifts the HEART and moves our SOULS to RESPOND to the invitation to DO SOMETHING WITH WHAT WE’VE GOT.  He reminds us that we’re his beloved sisters and brothers and that WE ARE BLESSED. Isn’t this GRACE? Jesus rips that silly magazine out of my hands and makes me look at where I am instead of wishing where I’d think where I’d rather be. No longer am I filling myself with the Bread of “Anywhere But Here,” but fed with the BREAD OF the “Here and Now.”  And THAT is grace. And that is my and your strength.