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We must learn to see, to recognize the living God, even when the world around us looks like loss. Over the past few weeks, in sermons, liturgies, and forums, we have been digging into this theme as we’ve addressed topics of grief, death, and hope. This sermon is about recognizing the living God even when the world around us looks like loss.
The story of Job is going to help us do this, to learn to see. In the excerpt we heard from Job, he cries out from the pit of despair, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” He has lost everything at this point; his children, his livelihood, his health. His friends come to offer comfort and instead become his accusers. They assume his suffering means he did something wrong, that he is a sinner.
By the time we get to chapter 19, Job is alone. He is rejected, sick, exhausted, and alienated from God. You can hear his pain as he asks his friends, “How long will you torment me and break me in pieces with words?” (Job 19:2) Everyone has turned against him, and he feels like even God has gone silent. And then, something miraculous happens. In the midst of his lament, Job pivots. From the depths of his being, a voice rises strong and clear, not from his ailing body, but rather from his very soul.
I know that my Redeemer liveth…
Thank you, Brigid. That was a teaser for The Messiah happening here in only a month. Buy your tickets today!
In Handel’s Messiah, Job’s words are used to proclaim Christ’s resurrection. But in their original context, they are Job seeing with the eyes of his heart enlightened, like we talked about last week. Through his suffering, Job shifts from experiencing the world body-first, to experiencing it soul-first.
You can hear it in his words:
“I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth…”
What Job is doing here is what Doyt and I like to call, The Great Inversion. If you attend the Friday Bible Study, you’ve been talking about this lately. The Great Inversion goes all the way back to the second chapter of Genesis when God created humans from the dust of the ground and breathed life into them. We are made of dust and breath, body and spirit, matter and mystery.
In this life, the dust leads. We are body-first creatures: driven by hunger, work, fear, pain, and ambition. While our breath keeps us going, our bodies define the limits. But sometimes, the order shifts and our souls take the lead, like it did for Job. This often happens in sickness, grief, or times of tremendous suffering. That’s where Job is in this scene.
He is stripped of everything material in his life, literally sitting in a heap of ashes. His friends have turned on him. His body is failing. And yet, from a pile of ashes, he cries out, “I know that my Redeemer lives.”
That is the voice of the soul rising first. Out of dust and despair bursts the breath of God, nefesh, demanding that life and justice belong to God. Long before Easter morning, Job sees soul-first. From this point forward, he lives as a soul-first human, someone whose deepest truth comes from the divine breath within.
We also hear these words in the funeral liturgy; maybe they sound familiar. Next weekend, I will be taking my son, Oliver, to a funeral for one of his high school classmates. Oliver’s friend, Corey, died in his sleep a couple of weeks ago, very unexpectedly. I imagine most of us vividly remember the first time we experienced the death of a peer in childhood. While extremely rare, it does happen.
When we discussed this in our sermon review meeting, each person recounted their first encounter with death of this kind, whether it was a car accident, an illness, or something else.
I bring this up because when I take Oliver to Corey’s memorial service at St. Mark’s, the first words in the liturgy will be these:
I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord…
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.
In the midst of grief, Job’s words offer comfort. They help us shift into a place of seeing soul-first with the eyes of our hearts enlightened.
Another place we see this shift is in the gospel reading from today, the Road to Emmaus. Jesus has died and this story occurs in the liminal space between his death, resurrection, and ascension. Two disciples are walking home from Jerusalem. We don’t know who they are, just two people shellshocked by grief, hope extinguished.
The resurrected Jesus joins them, but “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” Just like Job, they don’t recognize the life standing beside them. Resurrection looks strange to body-first eyes.
But when Jesus breaks the bread, their souls wake up before their eyes do and they finally see. He is recognizable not by face but by essence: in the breaking of the bread, their hearts burn. His body bears wounds, eats bread, yet moves through walls, no longer body-first but soul-first.
The Great Inversion is the pattern of resurrection. It is the outward and visible sign of “the bad thing is never the last thing.” We who are made of dust and breath are invited to live soul-first, just as Jesus does in the resurrection. We practice living soul-first every time we come to this table.
Think about it. You don’t come to communion because your stomach is growling. One tiny wafer and a sip of wine doesn’t fill you bodily. It feeds your soul. It nourishes your nefesh, your very being, the essence of who God made you to be.
While Job saw this dimly through his suffering, the disciples saw it fully in the risen Christ, and we experience it in the act of receiving communion.
The challenge that lies before us is to recognize the living God, even when the world around us looks like loss. That is the resurrection. In it, Jesus reverses the order of creation. The soul now leads and the body follows, just as Jesus does on the road to Emmaus. Jesus is still embodied, but his essence is divine breath; nefesh restored to primacy. This isn’t something we can see with our eyes or our bodies. This recognition comes through soul-connection, through presence, compassion, and the Eucharist.
What would it mean for us to live as if our souls spoke first? As you ponder that question, <What would it mean for us to live as if our souls spoke first?> I have a few things to highlight for your consideration.
Resurrection is not just Jesus’ story; it’s our model for living now. To live soul-first is to:
Recognize the divine spark in every person.
Let compassion precede judgment.
Allow the Spirit to animate our actions, not our fears or appetites.
See relationships, justice, and community through resurrection eyes.
When we live soul-first, we become what Job glimpsed: people confident that God’s life runs deeper than decay. In baptism, we begin this inversion, dying to self, rising to new life. Each Eucharist becomes Emmaus: our eyes opened again to Christ among us, our hearts burning within us.
In the end, Job’s cry becomes our own:
I know that my Redeemer lives.
And every time we gather at this table, we taste that truth again. Bread becomes presence, wine becomes life, and we remember that dust and breath belong together, body and soul, heaven and earth, God and us.
May this meal awaken in you the quiet certainty that resurrection is already happening, the living God is here, now, in the breaking of the bread.