29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
ob 28:1-7; 34-41
October 18, 2009

God in Pain1

Job is a troublesome text. Nobody knows for sure who wrote the Book of Job, and nobody claims to fathom all of its depths, but anyone who knows the least thing about it knows that it’s trouble. It dares to ask the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" And the book of Job is trouble, too, because the answer it provides to this question is a host of other questions.

Today’s reading contains Job’s "answer," such as it is, but in order to hear it in context, we need to go back a little in the story. The book opens with a scene in the heavenly court of the Lord God. One of God’s servants, called the "Adversary" (also known as Satan) offers the Lord a small wager. They both agree that God’s servant Job is a just and upright man, a credit to his Maker.

"That’s just because you’ve been so good to him," Satan argues. "But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face." (Job. 2:5)

And so God gives Satan permission to treat his servant Job as a kind of moral guinea pig. "Do what you like," God tells Satan, "but spare his life." And so the stage is set for our story.

Woah! Stop right there! What kind of a God would treat a good and faithful servant like that? Surely not a God who is just and good! We are lost before we begin.

Perhaps it would help if I told you that the prose prologue to Job was probably added by some "theologically correct" editor long after this dark wisdom poem was written, an editor who couldn’t abide the notion of Satan acting without permission from God. Perhaps it helps to point out that, just as this unknown editor’s prologue is a bit too neat and tidy, so is the fairy-tale ending he tacks on as an epilogue. (That comes next week.)

Let’s admit it: The picture of God in the prologue of Job simply doesn’t match the God revealed in Jesus Christ. I suggest we hit the fast-forward button.

When we do, the story gets worse. First Satan causes Job to loose all his vast possessions. Then he engineers the deaths of his sons and daughters. Although deeply hurt and confused by these terrible losses, Job does not accuse God of being unfair.

The Adversary ratchets up the pressure. Job contracts a skin disease both painful and disfiguring. He has to scrape himself with a piece of broken pottery and, because this skin condition is a form of leprosy, he is cut off from his community. Job sits down in an ash heap, signifying the isolation brought on by disease and grief.

His wife advises him to make and end of it. "Curse God, and die," she tells him. (2:9) Renounce your faith and live as best you can without it. This Job refuses to do. He sticks to the conventional piety that sees God as the source of both good and evil. "Shall we receive the good from the hand of God, and not the bad?" he asks (2:10). No matter how great his suffering and confusion thus far, Job will not accept that God has abandoned him, and he will not blame God.

Next Job is visited by three so-called "friends." "Job’s comforters," they are often called. They start off well. They sit with Job in his ash heap, without saying a word, for seven days and nights. That’s comfort. That’s sharing their friend’s suffering. Then, like many of us, they open their big mouths and try to say something helpful, and just make matters worse.

Job’s "comforters" encourage him to examine his life in the greatest of detail. Surely there must be something he has done to deserve this suffering. Dig deep, Job. All this is bound to be your fault.

Back when I was a seminary intern, I visited a young woman in the hospital who had numerous medical problems. She had had several operations. She also had a blood condition that caused lesions on her skin. During my visits I had listened while she struggled with, and rejected, the notion that her suffering was punishment for particular sins. It was hard for her to come to this conclusion, because she had grown up with an alcoholic father, and tended to take responsibility for everything that went wrong.

One afternoon I walked into her room and found her sobbing.

"Is he gone?" she asked.

"Is who gone?"

"That minister," she replied. "He walked in here, took one look at me and said, ‘My, my, young woman, you must have done something terrible to deserve this. Would you like to confess it so you can be healed?’"

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Well, I thought about all the work we’ve done, and about what you said about God’s love for me. Then I told him to get the hell out. I’d have thrown the bed pan at him, but I was sitting on it at the time."

All Job had was pot shards, but he showed great forbearance by hurling nothing at his "friends" while they subjected him to their lengthy speeches and their theology of retribution. One, a fellow named Zophar, tells Job he should be thankful God is letting him off easy. "Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves." (11:6). Buck up, old bean. It could be worse.

Comforters indeed.

Job oscillates between faith and despair, and finally resolves that he will confront God himself. He will put the case for his innocence before God. But how can he? God is not a creature to be seen and touched. As we read last week:

If I go forward he is not there;
            or backward, I cannot perceive him . . .

        At last God speaks to Job out of a whirlwind with the "answer" of today’s text, which is not an answer at all, but a series of overpowering questions:

"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

      Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

      "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
      Tell me, if you have understanding.

      Who determined its measurements - surely you know!
      Or who stretched the line upon it?

                    On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone
                    when the morning stars sang together
                    and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

      The questions go on for pages and pages:

By now you get the message, and so does Job.

Job is firmly put in his place. He is a mere creature, like the mighty lion and the lowly raven. God is God, the maker and sustainer of all that is. Job is mortal; God is other. Because he is creature, not Creator, there are some things Job cannot understand. Job has neither the wisdom nor the perspective of God. His words are "words without knowledge." He is forced with the psalmist to throw up his hands in wonder and bow his head in submission:

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them - they are more than the sand;
I come to the end - I am still with you. (Ps. 139: 17,18)

Job’s suffering is now seen, not as the result of some cruel wager in the heavenly court, but "as part of a vast scheme of things which is far too transcendent for any mortal to comprehend."2  The issue for Job is no longer, "Why do I and other good people suffer?" but "How may I find peace with God in the midst of my suffering?"

The answer Job receives is less an answer than a peek into the mind of God. Job stands no longer in total darkness, but in a tiny shaft of light streaming from the Source of all light and all darkness.

Job is not the only mortal whose sufferings seem all out of proportion to any wrong that person might have done. Suffering cannot always be explained. It does not always fit a moral logic. To be human is to suffer, both justly and unjustly. The challenge in the midst of suffering is not so much to explain it as to find God within it. Those who suffer often report that they do not find God; instead God finds them.

Job has his answer, such as it is: Who are you to ask? The fact that God replies, albeit out of a whirlwind with a voice that bursts his eardrums, it is enough for Job. He doesn’t need an explanation so much as he needs a reply.

The wisdom of the Christian faith goes a step further than the wisdom book of Job. It offers us another Job-like figure, righteous and blameless – this one born in a stable and raised in a town called Nazareth. His name is Jesus, and his innocent suffering – far from providing the case against a just and loving God – provides the case for such a God.

As God's Word made flesh, Jesus freely takes on the undeserved suffering that is part and parcel of being human. His suffering, embodied on the cross, should have been a testimony to God’s cruelty and indifference. Instead, we Christians insist, the cross is the God’s answer. The answer to suffering is grace in person, nailed to a tree.

We don’t always see the transcendent logic of this, but, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, ". . . we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. (Hebrews 2:9).

Perhaps Job finds a kind of grace in God’s reply. At least he’s still standing when God’s speech is finished. In Jesus we find a yet more mysterious and costly grace – the grace that shares our suffering, and by the mysterious power of the cross, leads us into God’s embrace. Jesus is our "pioneer," Hebrews says, our way to God the Father, but not the kind of pioneer evoked by Western films. He is our pioneer in brokenness and longing -- more Job than John Wayne.

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" God asks Job. There is no need to ask that question of Jesus. He was right there, "when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy." And he is with us now in our suffering. His nail-scarred feet lead the way through the valley toward the light.

　

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[1] The title of a book by Barbara Brown Taylor

[2] Texts for Preaching Year B (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993) 551

 

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