This reflection was written by Nathaniel McMaster, one of our M. Div students, as a sermon for morning prayer service at the Church of St. Francis of the Birds, Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts, Québec and Trinity Church, Morin-Heights, Québec, on October 6, 2024. and is featured in this month’s Dio E-Newsletter, a monthly update shared with the wider community.

In the name of God, amen.

There is nothing like a crisis to make the scriptures seem all of sudden acutely relevant.
Perhaps some of you have been reading the news about Hurricane Helene and the devastation it has
wrought across a wide swath of the Southeastern United States. I have been following every
development with great concern, because that is the region my family comes from. They are all
safe, thank goodness, and our town in central South Carolina was not too badly affected. But places
I know well, places not all that far away, are truly in crisis.

My cousins run a store in the mountains of western North Carolina. Their little village,
Chimney Rock, has essentially been washed away. There are no roads. There is no power. There is
limited access to food and drinking water. The dam overtopped and, at one point, state officials
warned, was in danger of “imminent failure.” The torrential rain—over 30 inches, nearly a meter,
in the span a few hours—triggered landslides and rockfalls. The Broad River swelled to its highest
level ever recorded, demolishing bridges, filling buildings with mud, tearing houses, cars, and
people away to God only knows where. My cousins’ store has been reduced to a pile of debris.

So it is fitting, I thought, that this Sunday we should read from the Book of Job, about as
depressing a story as you could hope to find. In the Book of Job, Satan, much like Hurricane
Helene, arrives on the scene unexpectedly, as if from nowhere. Indeed, God asks him, “Whence
have you come?” (ii. 2 RSV). Then just as quickly he vanishes from the stage, never to appear in
the story again. Yet his performance, however brief, is impossible to forget, also much like the
terrifying violence of a hurricane. Satan wreaks havoc upon Job’s life, leaving him to wonder
whether it is even worth it to try to pick up the pieces. His wife certainly doesn’t think so. After all
this suffering and abasement, she scorns Job for holding fast to his integrity, telling him rather to
“[c]urse God, and die” (ii. 9 RSV).

One of the questions that the Book of Job therefore poses is, How can we hold fast to our
faith when everything is falling apart? Satan had wagered with God that Job was only faithful
because God had blessed him. He had no reason to question God’s benevolence. It is easy to have
faith when all is well, or so Satan argues. But I cannot help but wonder if Satan had it wrong. It
occurs to me that it is precisely when everything is falling apart that we cling most dearly to our
faith. When everything is falling apart, faith might be all we have. There are no atheists in a
foxhole, my grandfather the Marine colonel would say. When we have no cause for fear, however,
no dire need of hope, faith can seem superfluous. How, I would ask, how can we hold fast to our
faith when everything is going well?

I like the Book of Job for several reasons, among them that it warns us against conflating
heaven and earth. The Reverend Robert C. Neville, formerly dean of the Boston University School
of Theology, once joked that Saint Paul wrote in his long-lost “Third Letter to Timothy,” “Longing
for heaven, you [might] think you have arrived when in fact it is only South Thessaloniki.” What a 1
disappointment that would be! That is to say, our expectations sometimes cloud our view of reality.
The history of my comparatively short life is already littered with visions of projects and future
plans, small and large, never begun or never completed. Why? Not usually because I lost interest,
but often because I forgot to account for some irksome inconvenience, or because I chose to do it
how I wanted rather than follow the instructions—or simply because sometimes life gets in the way.
My intentions might have been pure, my objectives noble, but high ideals do not necessarily lead to
success.

It has been in these times of failure, of disappointment, of recalibration, that I have been
most aware of a need for faith. By faith, in this instance, I do not mean the belief that everything
will work out, but the presence of mind to take stock of what is happening clearly and rationally, in
concert with what we know of the world and of God. This is the sort of faith I often see personified
in those struck by tragedy—and I think it is an important lesson in how to live, for those of us not
struck by tragedy. Unless, like Job’s wife, we are willing to “curse God, and die,” it is actually
quite difficult to abandon faith in the aftermath of tragedy. On the contrary, when all is well, it is
quite easy to let faith simply fade away. Longing for heaven while enjoying the blessings of peace
and prosperity, you might think you have arrived when in fact you are still stuck here on earth.
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews presents us with a fascinating paradox in today’s
reading. Though God put the world in subjection under Christ, yet Christ himself was subjected to
the world and its suffering. As a result, we do not “see everything in subjection to him” (ii. 8 RSV).

I take from this that we human beings are more likely to trust in what we can see, in what we think
we understand, even if it isn’t what we know to be true. The English nonconformist theologian
Leslie Weatherhead wrote, “I want to appeal for more agnosticism in our Christian thinking.” He
goes on to explain that he means by this a willingness, “while holding tightly to Christian
essentials,” to rely less on the certainty of mankind and trust more in the unknowability of God. 2

How can we hold fast to our faith when everything is going well? An important step, I
think, is to remain vigilant that we do not conflate heaven and earth. To those surveying the
remnants of their homes shattered by fallen trees or mourning the death of a loved one swept away
in the floodwater, the distinction must be painfully clear. Their lives have been torn asunder—and
all that it took but a day to destroy will take months, even years, to rebuild. Their faith, though it
has doubtless been tested, might well be all they have. If you feel so called, there are, of course,
ways you might to contribute to relief efforts. An army of Christian organizations, such as the
United Methodist Committee on Relief and the Episcopal Relief & Development Fund, are hard at
work in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and in countless other areas around the world affected by
natural, and man-made, disasters.

_____________________________

Robert C. Neville, “Problems to Solve in Seminary” in The God Who Beckons: Theology in the Form of Sermons 1
(Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1999), p. 196.
Leslie D. Weatherhead, “What sense is there in all this suffering?” in Salute to a Sufferer: An Attempt to Offer the 2
Plain Man a Christian Philosophy of Suffering (New York: Abingdon Press, 1963), p. 54.

Often, in times such as these, our first impulse is to act—to donate, to volunteer, even to
preach a sermon. This is a commendable instinct. But while we give to help those around struck by
tragedy, let us not be too quick to take solace in the safety of our own harbor. True faith arises not
from satisfaction when all is well, nor from despair when all seems lost. Rather, true faith arises
from the ability to look beyond what is, towards all that lies ahead—be it good, be it bad—and still
to be willing to walk the road. It is this willingness which allows us to share in Christ’s exaltation,
for though Christ foreknew both the tragedy of his crucifixion and the triumph of his resurrection,
he knew also that neither was the end of the story. Amen.

Nathaniel McMaster