SERMON: ST BARNABAS  12 June 2005

Readings:   Job 29: 11-16        Psalm 98        Acts 11: 22-30; 13: 1-3        Matthew 10: 7-13

May the love of God surround us, opening our hearts and minds to truth. Amen. 

Aaah, the sweet, gentle rain! So welcome! You can almost feel the blades of grass rejoicing and the earth slaking its thirst at long last. But no doubt, human beings being what we are, we will take this blessing and use it to support some whacky theological theory. We seem to have an almost infinite capacity to hit on an idea and then to use whatever evidence we can muster to support it.  

A few years ago Sarah was looking for Christian resources to use with young children and she wandered into Koorong Bookshop. All around the shop there were references to the Jabez prayer – there were Jabez prayer mugs, key rings, illuminated texts, rulers, pens... anything you could think of – all with the prayer on it.  She had absolutely no idea what the Jabez prayer was.  

And so she undertook a little research. It turns out that The Prayer of Jabez is the title of a book published in 2000, written by an American called Bruce Wilkinson. The prayer is based on two verses from the book of 1 Chronicles.

Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, "I gave birth to him in pain". Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain". And God granted his request (1 Chron 4:9-10).

Wilkinson says these verses contain "the key to a life of extraordinary favor with God" (p. 7). The logic runs something like this: Jabez prayed for blessing and got it, so we should pray for blessing, and we will get it.  We clearly need to adapt our understanding of the prayer for modern circumstances: when it comes to "enlarging our territories" Wilkinson says we are not talking simply about land, but any area of our life that we might want God to expand. His example is this:

If Jabez had worked on Wall Street, he might have prayed, "Lord, increase the value of my investment portfolios” (p. 31).

At the heart of this is a simple, mechanistic view of our relationship with God. Pray the right prayer, do the right thing, and God will bless you. The corollary of this is also clear: if you haven’t got what you want, then you have not said the right prayer or, possibly, done the right thing.

This ‘prosperity doctrine’ is compellingly simple. But it is profoundly wrong. Those who are getting wealthy because of the Jabez prayer are those who are selling the merchandise, not those who have been gulled into an intellectually and morally bankrupt reading of the Old Testament.

The Old Testament story of Job, from which we heard today, argues against the ‘prosperity doctrine’. 

In outline, the story goes like this: 

Job was a man of great wealth, the richest man in the East in fact. He had 7 sons and 3 daughters and accustomed to seeing himself as much blessed by God. He was also a good man, giving generously to those in need and refusing to do evil. The text then tells us that Job got caught in the middle of a dispute between God and Satan. Satan, in his customary mode of acting as the accuser, the prosecutor, argues that Job only respects God because of the many blessings that God showers upon him. God disagrees and sets out to prove Satan wrong, offering him the chance to do whatever he likes to anything that belongs to Job. 

Life then quickly descends into chaos and loss for Job. His animals are killed, his children are killed, his servants are killed. He himself begins to suffer from a painful skin disease.  

Job’s friends are clearly hooked into the prosperity doctrine, or at the very least, to its corollary.  They try to convince him that he has incurred God’s wrath and that he must have done something wrong. But Job rejects this, knowing that he hasn’t. In despair, he rails against God for treating him so unfairly. In the end, after a severe talking to from God, Job comes to the realisation that God’s ways are so far beyond our understanding that we cannot hope ever to fathom them. Simple cause and effect relationships do not even begin to encompass the workings of divine grace and favour. 

The Job story originally ended at this point but a later writer, apparently captive to the prosperity doctrine, added a further section  in which, once the moment of revelation is reached, Job’s life turns around once more and he becomes twice as rich as he was before and has as many sons and daughters as before. 

Quite what the message of this story is meant to be is not clear. It is the vehicle for some of the most beautiful poetry in the Bible and also for some of the most acute observation about just how unhelpful friends can be in times of trouble. But over all it seems to suggest that good fortune is not given by God as a reward for righteousness, nor is bad fortune given as a punishment. God’s ways are not our ways.

The logical extension of this is that we cannot earn God’s favour. God’s love for us is unconditional. We do not build up credit or debit points with God that are then translated into blessings or curses upon us. Life is not a loyalty scheme, where we get bonus points for doing the right thing and punished for doing the wrong thing.  

Jesus himself also rejected the kind of causality that underpins the prosperity doctrine. You may remember the story of a man who had been born blind. When Jesus was asked why the blindness had occurred, he categorically denied that it had anything to do with the sinfulness either of the man himself or of his parents.

But the fact that we cannot buy our way into God’s favour does not mean that we should abandon acts of kindness and mercy. It is clear that generosity, openheartedness and compassion are part and parcel of following Jesus. Throughout the New Testament we are told, in word and action, to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, heal the sick, take care of widows and orphans – in short, to do good.  

But we are to do this as a natural outflowing of our love for God and of God’s love for us – not to earn God’s favour, and not because we think it is a way of ensuring that bad things won’t happen to us.  

We are God’s hands in the world. As the body of Christ in the world today, we are those who carry on his work. It is a privilege and a joy to do this – to be the bearers of the Christ-light. It does not insure us against having bad things happen to us, nor does it mean that our lives will overflow with material goods – in fact, the contrary is probably true. But it does mean that our lives will be more completely turned towards God – that we will live more fully as God wishes.  

Generosity of heart, compassion – the virtues that marked Barnabas, whose feast we celebrate today – are core characteristics of the members of the body of Christ.

Recipients of God’s grace ourselves, may we be bearers of it to others. Amen.