Today is Veterans' day. We remember those who served in battles past and we pray for those who serve in battles on this day. We give thanks for their sacrifice even as we pray for the day when swords will finally be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks and war will be studied no more.

There are times when the world seems to come crashing down. One week buildings were falling to the ground in New York. This week they are collapsing in Afghanistan. Who knows what will happen where in the months ahead? In the course of world events the innocent will inevitably be wounded or killed along with combatants. Neither faith nor works can preserve bystanders from danger or damage. This is not a new story.

Life is complicated. Simple answers to hard questions are often in short supply when we want them most. And yet some people want an explanation so badly that almost any answer will do. Look at Job's friends.

Job has lost it all- possessions, power, and social standing. Members of his family are dead. His own health is a shambles and all manner of trying things are wearing him down- not the least of which is his friends' attempts to help him.

Job's three friends have been working hard to put Job's tragic experiences of loss into a context they could understand. Bildad has just finished a long and terrifying discourse about the fate of the wicked. Elihu and Zophar, the other two members of this meaning seeking tag-team alternate with Bildad throughout much of the forty-two chapters of the Book of Job.

The theological wrestling styles of the three friends vary, but each of them holds tightly to the assumption that Job has somehow sinned. The friends cannot see the connection in Job's words or actions, but they know it must be there. Surely God has done these awful things to Job. And surely it is because of something Job has done. Their claims move from suggestion to assertion. There must be a rational cause and effect - some reason why a person would be struck down or laid low.

Bildad, Zophar and Elihu need to find a reasonable explanation for Job's misery. Job's pain and misfortune is like a red-hot coal that has popped-out of the safety of the fireplace and rolled a little too close to where they stand.

Job's friends want some distance -so they create it. We could say that they are simply looking for theological perspective, and that would be true, but it is only part of the story.

They are looking for ways to assure themselves that they are safe. Like people stepping back from the flames of a forge, the three friends are trying to distance themselves from the heat and their fear of the falling hammer.

If they can just find some category that will hold Job and not themselves, they can avoid feeling uncertain, afraid, or dependent on things they cannot understand. If the three friends can accurately describe why bad things happen, perhaps they can not only hold Job difficulties at arm's length but maybe even avoid fully experiencing pain and loss within their own lives.

This is an exercise that is doomed to fail.

We cannot avoid pain, or loss, or all matter of challenging things in this life.

But the good news is in the rest of the story. Look at the way the people of this country have responded to a national tragedy. People have moved toward the rubble of loss as strangers and walked away as brothers and sisters. Death and destruction have shown their face and there is a resurgence of spirituality and a religious awakening underway in this country.

The good news is that when we allow our relationships to find their greatest depths we will have embraced not only the sorrows that are unavoidable, we will opened ourselves to discovering the depth and breadth of the joys that are available in this life. That's the deal.

And this holds as true in our relationship with God as it does in our relationships with other people. We cannot know exactly what will happen next. We certainly cannot control it. And we do not get to know all the details of what is around the next bend in the road until we arrive and see it for the first time. It is easy to profess faith when the sun is shining and Ed McMahon has driven up in the Publisher's Clearinghouse van. It is more challenging when we have been broken in some way or the vehicle in the driveway is a hearse. But there is value in holding to our faith beyond the bounds of all that is reasonable- because reality is larger than we might first imagine.

Metaphorically speaking, Job is stuck in the mud, half-submerged in a ditch by the side of the road of life for much of the Book of Job. But he still holds onto the belief that he will be vindicated. Job knows that he has done nothing to deserve what he has experienced and believes that, at the end of the road, God will be with him. Read the whole book sometime - see the rest of Job's story.

If we look back in our memories at the series of surprises that have carried us to this very moment- how much of our life, now, is as we imagined it would be when we were children looking toward a distant future? Yes, there have been challenges that we never expected to face. But there have also been places filled with light we did not make and love we never expected to receive.

If the life we have led thus far is so full of mystery, why would we imagine that what comes after this earthly life can be described with any great precision? We can decide to move forward trusting that faith is worthwhile or we can demand detailed certainty and instead discover distance and disappointment.

Job waited for a vindicator who would redeem his situation. His friends simply wanted a safe explanation that would hold pain and loss at a safe distance. Unfortunately the three friends' approach holds all of life at arm's length- it's close enough to still get punched in the stomach when one least expects it but far enough away that one can rarely get close enough to others to experience a full embrace.

The more important the issue, the harder it is to let down our guard. The Saducees did not believe in the resurrection. They were convinced that there was nothing after life as we know it. They were not willing to challenge their own theological assumptions- the stakes were too high. If they even admitted to the general possibility of an afterlife, they would be forced to redefine the nature and boundaries of their own current lives.

The Sadducees' wrangling with Jesus was not even strenuous enough to be called theological wrestling. They were simply playing silly games, hoping to make Jesus look like a fool. Instead the Sadducees looked like simpletons whose example of marriage practices after life assumed that if death is not the absolute end than it has no import at all- life as we know it just goes on and on and on. Both of the Saducees' projected options offer no vision larger than the limits of this life.

But Jesus calls them and us to a bigger canvas that will not fit the current frame. Neither our current worldview nor our physical embodiment is sufficient to hold what will be. We do not even have concrete words for what comes next. We live by faith. And by faith we are transformed-in this life and the next.

Our God is the god of the living, the creator of heaven and earth. Does darkness, or difficulty or death itself present a barrier to one such as He? He was there at the foundation of all things and will be there long after all those things that even now are passing away. This is our Redeemer- the vindicator of Job, the one who empowered Paul-first by blinding him, then by filling him with a vision sufficient to illuminate the lands of the Gentiles with word of the Light of the World.

We began with Job who lamented that his words might be written down. Job longed for the words to last as a testament to others. He wished that an iron pen might be used to engrave the letters on a rock, and that the letters might then be filled with lead. This was the practice of conquering armies who stamped enduring victory statements on the walls of valleys though which they had struggled to make their way, but had come out alive on the other side.

The heart and the hope of Job's words are preserved, not engraved on a rock, but stamped with lead and present to this day within your reach. Imagine Job standing with us as I read the second paragraph of the opening anthem of the burial office

As for me I know that my Redeemer lives
And that at the last he will stand upon the earth,
After my awaking, he will raise me up; and in my body I shall see God.
I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him who is my friend and not a stranger.

Job wished for an enduring message of lead letters set into carved rock. The message has endured but above and beyond the mere words is the power that came forth from two pieces of wood fitted together and set into a socket of stone. On this simple cross our Redeemer, vindicated the hope of faith by his willingness to die, for all of us, and showed the astonishing reality of life by then being raised from the dead. Resurrection is no longer a puzzle to be explained, it is a promised to be experienced. It is God's answer to those who wait for vindication in all times and in all places

I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord.
Whoever has faith in me shall have life, even though he die.
And everyone who has life,
and has committed himself to me in faith,
shall not die for ever.

I do not know the twists and turns that lie in the road ahead. I cannot be assured that we will always be safe from the dangers of this world. But I do know that we can never be lost and that loving deeply is worth the risk and the pain that sometime comes along with the joy. And I believe, with Saint Paul, that the Lord is faithful and that he will strengthen us and guard us from the evil one. May the Lord direct our hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ. AMEN