Job 19:23-27a Psalm 17:1-9
“Job is the most useless book in the Bible!” …
I was surprised to hear that sentence from my father about a
month ago. We were talking about the
series on forgiveness that we have just finished up, and he suggested that we
should have a Sunday on forgiving God.
He went on to recognize that there aren’t really any scriptures that
talk about forgiving God. “There’s just
Job,” he said, “and I don’t like what it has to say … just, basically, that we
have to accept whatever God sends our way and live with it.”
I think that is a common misunderstanding in our
culture. Thanks to the saying, “the
patience of Job,” we have a sense that the book of Job is all about enduring
the suffering that comes our way. We may
feel that it is unjust. We may feel that
it flies in the face of what the rest of the scriptures teach us about God’s
compassion and care. But we have come to
believe (we may even have been taught) that this story shows us that we must just
endure the unendurable without complaint.
That is most certainly not
what Job is about, and a little background might be helpful in understanding
what its message to us really is….
The book begins almost as if it was a folktale:
“There once was a man in the land of
Uz…. That man was blameless and upright,
one who feared God and turned away from evil.
There was born to him sever sons and three daughters. He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand
camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very many
servants; so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. His sons used to go and hold feasts in one
another’s houses in turn, and … when the feast days had run their course, Job
would send and sanctify them …; for Job said, “It may be that my children have
sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.”
The scene is set. Job
was a pious man who kept the law scrupulously, taking care even to offer
sacrifices on behalf of his family. He
was also a very, very rich man. He had
everything that he could possibly desire, yet he had resisted the corruption
and decadence that often come with wealth and power.
From there, things get a little strange…. Satan challenges God to accept a little bet. Take away everything from that upright man,
and he won’t be so confident. Instead of
blessing and praising you, he will curse in your face. God accepts and places Job and everything he
has in Satan’s power to do with as he will – the one exception being that he
cannot take his life.
And so the suffering begins. Job’s flocks are plundered or killed. His servants are killed. His children perish in a freak wind storm that pushed the house down on their heads. Then, Satan sends painful sores to cover the poor man, and his wife leaves him in disgust. And despite all of this, Job remains steadfast in praising God.
Okay … that’s the first two chapters of Job, and if that’s
all you read, then you have the image of the pious, enduring Job that gave
birth to the saying. But there are forty
more chapters to go. So, it seems like
this picture must have been painted order to set the stage for something else,
and as the story continues a very different Job comes out – Job the rebel.
This man rails against the unfairness of his experience. When three of his friends come along and
preach to him that suffering comes from wickedness and blessing from
righteousness and, then, encourage him to repent his sinfulness so that he may
return to God’s good graces, he debunks their false piety and flawed theology. He even goes so far as to accuse God of
injustice. Even as he sits among the
ashes of his life, he is, in spirit, rattling the cell bars of his fate.
For centuries, Jewish and Christian interpreters alike often
seemed embarrassed by this transformed character with his anger and
unrestrained blasphemy. More recently,
many people have been drawn to Job’s anger as a voice of moral outrage against
a God who could condone his fate, let alone the atrocities of the 20th
century.[1] But this story isn’t as straightforward as
that either.
At the very end of the book, God comes to Job in a great
whirlwind and speaks words that are neither a comfort nor an apology. Instead they are a simple statement that God
is beyond the reach of humanity and shall not be judged by such a limited being,
and while they might feel like a rebuke, Job responds by withdrawing his words
against God and replacing them with praise and a reaffirmation of his faith.
It’s a strange book, I’ll admit. Even knowing that Biblical scholars and
theologians have come to the conclusion that Job was probably included to
correct a misunderstanding of wisdom theology by making it clear that suffering
is not punishment for sin, it is still hard to make sense of the story itself. And I don’t blame anyone for wanting to throw
it out altogether. But I love it, and I
am grateful that it has made its way into the Bible.
I love it because in all its complexity, it touches on many
of the issues that are so important to our faith lives and our
understanding. It speaks to the reasons
why we should try to live virtuous lives, the meaning of suffering, the nature
of God, the place of justice in the world, and the relationship of order and
chaos in God’s creation.[2] But even beyond all those things, I treasure
it because it gives me permission to have a faith like Job’s.
Everywhere else in the Bible – at least as far as I have
found … everywhere else the scriptures give me the feeling that I should be
praising God … that I should be thanking God … that I should be blessing the
goodness and wisdom of the One who created me, redeemed my imperfection, and
sustains my physical and spiritual life.
Even in the book of Psalms, where fully a third of the hymns are laments
like the one we heard earlier, almost all the texts end with a return to
praise. Psalm 88 alone holds to lament
until the end, and it certainly does not curse God. It, like the others, only proclaims the
feeling that God has abandoned us in the hour of our need.
Only Job … dear, pious, angry, blasphemous Job throws curses
at God while his fists and his oozing wounds scream his anger at the injustice
he suffers.
And it’s not just that he gets away with it – which he does. No lightning bolt from the clouds. No angel of death. No poisonous snake or tormenting thirst comes
to usher him into death and damnation.
In the end, after he heaps all of his anger and his suffering on God’s
head in such a vicious fashion he gets exactly what he wanted and more. God comes down to meet him face to face …
well … face to whirlwind at least, and he gets it all back: new flocks, a new
wife, seven more sons and three more daughters….
He gets away with it, yes, but what I find fascinating …
what touches my heart is that in the midst of all his ranting and his rage, he
still holds onto his faith. He still has
the space within himself to say “I know that my Redeemer lives…,” and to wish so
fervently that his praise will be remembered.
If nothing else remains of his good and righteous life or his horrible
suffering, he wants his words of praise and thanksgiving to be etched with iron
into a rock to live forever.
It gives me hope because someone else has been there
before. I knew that of course. All of us have been there before. But here is someone whose story has been
written down. Here is someone whose
experience has been made holy by having it inscribed in the scriptures. And that makes my own experience holy … at
least a little.
It gives me hope because it tells me that I am allowed to curse the injustice of my life. I don’t have to sit there and take it, patiently claiming that I deserve it or that it must be for my own good. I can scream at God. I can let it all come out, and that doesn’t mean that I have a weak faith or that I can’t feel grateful at the same time. It doesn’t mean that I am turning away from my Redeemer. It doesn’t mean that I will be punished or that I am going to hell.
It gives me hope because it shows me that it’s okay. It’s okay to feel abandoned. It’s okay to feel persecuted. It’s okay to demand that God come and answer
for the injustices and the suffering of my life and yours. And, … it is okay to let all that pour out
instead of holding it inside.
God will still care for us.
God will still welcome us into her saving, soothing
embrace. Even when we writhe in her arms and beat on her chest in our anger and our pain
and our frustration, God will still love us.
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