11 October 2015 Coleshill United

"Facing the darkness"

Bible readings for 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B): Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Mark 10:17-31

There have been two significant deaths recently in this community. Sometimes it feels as if we can only see death, that we are always looking at disaster, and we do not know how to cope. Sometimes it feels as if God has gone missing. Like Job we would like to be able to put our case to God, to think it out with God. That is what Job feels. But Job does not give up on God, even if he cannot sense God. If God is in the darkness, he will go into the darkness to have the conversation with God. Jesus too knew what it was like to feel that. He cries out "My God, why have you forsaken me?".  In Mark's gospel we hear Jesus trying to help people make sense of all this. He wants the man who approaches him to pay attention to God rather than to himself. He wants us to pay attention to what we are holding on to instead of letting ourselves go into the darkness with God. The Christian community can be a surrogate family for people who have lost everything. We will not be released from the hard times, but carried through them.