Job
1:1, 2:1-10
For the next four weeks, the lectionary
assigns readings from the book of Job. I
am going to take my sermon texts from that, and I wanted to find a phrase from
the book to give the series a good title.
What I kept coming up with was from chapter 38: “Words without
Knowledge”. I didn’t think that would inspire
much confidence, so I let it go.
Consider this a spoiler alert. Job is about trying to understand why things
go wrong, why there is tragedy, why the innocent suffer, and whether there is
any justice in the world. In the end, it
doesn’t give us a simple, clear answer.
There are a lot of popular sayings that may comfort a lot of people:
“Everything happens for a reason”; “The Lord doesn’t give you more than you can
bear”; “What goes around, comes around”.
Job doesn’t go for any of those. In
the sections of the book that we skip over, Job’s friends show up and try to
convince him of each of those explanations, and they all get knocked down. Go ahead and read the whole book. If there is a section that spells out its
central theme, it comes from chapter 28:20-24.
“Where
does wisdom come from?
And where is the place of
understanding?
It
is hidden from the eyes of all living,
and concealed from the birds of the
air.
Abaddon
and Death say,
‘We have heard rumor of it with our
ears.’
God
understands the way to it,
and he knows its place.
For
he looks to the ends of the earth,
and sees everything under the
heavens.”
So,
if there is no easy, speakable answer, then what is the point? Is it all really just “words without knowledge”?
No, it isn’t. There is a great deal to be gained by
struggling with these matters. Merely
engaging with them is a little bit like going to the gym. You may not ever be able to lift the heaviest
weight, but even trying lesser weights will change you. I’m stealing this idea from a couple of
lectures I heard around 2005 by the Rev. Darrell Woomer. He pointed out that in the opening chapter,
Job’s children are all together at a family reunion when a tornado blows down
the house, killing every last one. Job
survived because he was off on his own, praying that they would not sin while
at the party. In the last chapter, after
his time of suffering, we see him opening his house to his brothers and
sisters, and starting a new family. His
suffering led him to engage with people and to embrace life in a deeper way.
“The
Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning.”
[Job 42:12]
That
isn’t meant to say that if you just stick to it, everything turns out right in
the end. It certainly didn’t do that for
his first children when the roof dropped onto their heads. It does say, though, that for Job (and by
extension for others who endure), the experience of pain and suffering can
change you, often for the worse, but sometimes for the better. But it will change you.
Loss and sorrow and suffering are
inevitable. That is the unspoken assumption
of this book, and it’s an unassailable truth.
It has been said that nobody gets out of this world alive. We take suffering so much for granted that we
are able to ignore it as long as it does not touch us directly. There’s a poem by W.H. Auden [“Musée des Beaux Arts”] where the writer
is looking at paintings in a museum.
Part of it says,
“About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.”
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.”
Last
week, an earthquake and tsunami killed more people in Indonesia than died in the 9/11 attacks. We paid more
attention to the antics of people in Washington.
Everything is very different when
you’re the one involved. The medical
definition of “minor surgery” is “surgery performed on or by someone else”. When you are the one who is troubled, your
own experience can be overwhelming and all-consuming. There you sit in the emergency room with a
spouse moaning in pain, and even though you know that there are a dozen other
patients in the rooms around you, you want to know what is keeping the nurse
away so long. Why has no one come in to
ask questions? How long until a bed
opens up and they’re admitted?
So much, though, so very much
depends on how you meet the inevitable.
Job’s
wife suffers with him, and she wants to get it all over with.
“Do
you still persist in your integrity?” she asks him. “Curse
God and die.” [Job 2:9]
When
you care about someone you don’t want to see them suffer. When a family has been keeping vigil with someone
who is dying, and especially if they have been taking care of them for months
or years and watching the quality of their loved one’s life decrease and their
distress increase, then when the end comes there may be a collective sigh of
relief. There is no shame in that. Yet at the same time, there is the
unanswerable question – generally an unasked question – how much of the desire
to see someone’s trouble end is wrapped up with a desire to see your own
struggle end? (That’s one of several
reasons that I cannot get behind the idea of “assisted suicide”. It’s one thing when nature takes its course,
but another to unduly hasten things. Who
really can assess anybody’s motivations, especially under that kind of strain,
even your own?)
Job does not take the easy way
out. The Accuser (which is the meaning
of the word “Satan”) insists that suffering and pain will undo his faith. His accusation, laid out before God, is that
all human beings have their breaking point and that Job can be used as a test
case.
“All
that people have they will give to save their lives. But stretch out your hand now and touch his
bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”
[Job 2:5]
When
Job’s wife speaks, she echoes the Accuser’s view. Job, on the other hand, meets the situation
with faith that God knows what he is doing.
“Shall
we receive good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” [Job
2:10]
Mind
you, Job’s troubles are not coming from God.
Not everything that happens is God’s direct intervention. That’s the problem with the saying, “God has
a plan for your life.” God has a purpose
for us all, but that doesn’t mean every detail is written out and that we have
no choice in any of it.
One
commentator, Roland Murphy, points out that this story tests God as surely as
it tests Job.
“I think that we may say
that the author has deliberately place God in a no-win situation. If he goes along with the satan’s designs, he
comes across as a heartless tyrant. If
he refuses the challenge, then there is the lingering doubt: Is God afraid to
trust creatures to remain faithful to him?
Maybe the satan has a point. What
is the quality of the love that humans are supposed to have? Is the ‘fear of God’ [1:1] a servile fear
after all? By accepting the challenge,
the Lord shows a trust in his creatures.”[1]
It
turns out that what holds Job together here and throughout the story is the
firm conviction that it is not all for nothing.
He has faith in God, and part of that is believing that God has trust in
him.
That faith, rather than any kind of
rational understanding or reasonable explanation, is what holds anybody
together through the dark days. It’s
more than just saying, “Come on! You can
do it!” It’s the conviction that God is
going through it, too.
It had not yet happened when Job was
written, but we can see God going through it when we look at Jesus on the
cross. There are those two separate
aspects, side-by-side. On the one hand
is the terrible sense that God is uncaring, perhaps even cruel, to allow anyone
to suffer unjustly.
“My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” [Mark 15:34]
At
the same time, there is the solid determination to rely on him.
“Into
your hands I commend my spirit.” [Luke 23:46]
It’s
by exercising that reliance that we discover, as sure as the sun rises, and as
sure as the Son rose, that God has been there every step of the way, and is
always one step ahead of us.
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