Reflection on a 1970 sermon title
On March 1, 1970, the Rev. Gurney O. Gutekunst, pastor of Christ Church Methodist in Glens Falls, preached on the topic: “God’s Faith In You,” The Post-Star reported at the time.
It’s too bad the church’s video archive doesn’t date back that far.
It sounds like an inspiring sermon.
Yet, the sermon title alone speaks volumes.
God is the eternal optimist who has faith in you and me even when we do not have faith in him and even when we might be antagonistic to him.
Unlike electricity service, God’s faith in us never loses power or even experiences a brown out.
The Book of Job is a good lesson about God’s faith in us.
God had faith in Job when Job’s not-so-comforting comforters unfairly chastised Job, when Job’s wife not-so-politely suggested that Job drop dead, and when Job himself, not-so-full-of-faith, felt as if God “hath cast me into the mire” and no longer heard his prayers.
I like to think of Little League baseball as a metaphor for the story of Job.
Coach God hollered out from the home team’s dug out: “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?”
God’s team always plays with the home field advantage because God owns the cattle on a thousand hills that supply the rawhide to cover the baseballs.
(Pause a moment and sing along with me if you are old enough to be reminded of this once-contemporary Christian song from decades past.)
In the other dugout, Coach Satan, after spitting a disgusting chew of tobacco, sneered, “Hast thou not made a hedge about him, and about his house, and all that he hath on every side?”
Coach God benefited from a strength that Coach Satan lacks: omniscience.
God knew that he could put Job in the batter’s box with a broken arm, broken leg and an allergy to the uniform fabric, and Job would still hit it out of the park.
And at the end of the ballgame, Job led the rest of the players in a prayer meeting to renew their faith in the God who never lost faith in them.
