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Sermon - October 8th, 2006
And Then Came Trouble
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: Job 1:1, 2:1 - 10
Once upon a time there was a guy named Job whose story has inspired the writing of volumes or books and the preaching of generations of sermons. Job is one of the most eloquent complaints to God we have in all literature. Job attracts both believers and non-believers because we know Job well. He is part of our culture. We have met Job, and he is us. He was the one who was punished for being good, suffered for no reason, tested because he was righteous. His claim to fame is his patience. Although, if you read all the way through Job, you will wonder why? The patience of Job is hard to find in the book of Job. He is the one who asked God for us, “Why is this awful stuff happening to me? What did I do to deserve THIS?”
Job had it all—wealth, comfort, big house, fine clothes, servants, lovely wife, ten wonderful children, and respect from the community. He was a good man, in the sight of his neighbors and in the sight of God. He was even good for the sake of his children, because every time they had a party or a celebration of some kind, first thing Job did the morning after was go to the temple, dragging along 10 animals, and offering them to God JUST IN CASE one of his children sinned. It was like paying for insurance.
So what kind of God did Job believe in, make offerings to, complain to? I think he believed in a God who was ready to pounce on whatever sin someone committed. Was that why Job was so righteous and good and careful to do nothing that possessed even a hint of wrongdoing or the slightest whiff of sin? Did he believe in a God who rewarded those who kept their noses clean and punished those who messed up or messed around? That was a very common belief system that still lingers with us today. He believed that God was not to be trifled with and Job had no intention of trifling. So he sacrificed and sacrificed until he could hardly get the smell of roast lamb out of his clothes or his nose. But as long as he kept at it, he believed he was safe. God would surely protect someone who was holy, saintly, pious, blessed.
So he thought. Except, he was wrong, because one day trouble came and his whole life unraveled. He lost everything, his livestock, his servants, all ten of his children, and his health. Job came into the world with nothing, then he had everything, then came trouble, and he had nothing again. That was when Job’s wife said to go ahead and curse God, so that God would have to put an end to Job’s life and misery. But Job couldn’t curse God. After all, God was God. But Job did respond with profound and persistent questions. He refused to take silence for an answer. He refused to take clichés for an answer. He refused to let God off the hook. He did not take his suffering quietly or piously—he protested, he protested mightily!
Then those three friends showed up—running to help Job. At first they stood a long way off, tossed dust up in the air on their heads, hoping that they would not catch the same thing that Job had caught. Their best work was done in the beginning, before they opened their mouths. For seven days and seven nights they sat on the ground with Job, as shocked as Job was by the enormity of his suffering.
It was Job who broke the silence. He started complaining to God. Job had had it. He cursed the day he was born and the light and the dark. What was God doing making his life hell and hiding its meaning from everyone? Job said this out loud in front of God and everyone.
His friends took all of this very seriously; but, they really weren’t listening to Job. They had a lot of advice they were dying to say to Job. Job’s pain and suffering became a forum for their agenda.
Eliphaz went first. “Would you mind if I said something to you?” It was a rhetorical question. Because he immediately says, “Under the circumstance it’s hard to keep quiet.” And he lays it on Job: “Has a truly innocent person ever ended up on a scrap heap?” Eliphaz told Job not to blame the universe or fate when things go wrong, to think of his suffering as a blessing, because God is stepping in and correcting him. “Take it to heart,” Eliphaz said, “And you won’t go wrong.”
Job’s response to Eliphaz was that God was using him for target practice and the poisoned arrows were painful. He said, “God has dumped the whole works on me!” Job told Eliphaz he preferred death to this.
Job wondered about it all. Job accused God of confusing him with the great monster of the sea. Job wondered if God was just having a bad day. Or maybe God was losing it; after all, running the universe was probably very exhausting work. It could take the zip out of anyone—maybe even God. Maybe God needed a vacation.
Then Bilbad came running to Job defending God. Job’s kids must have done something, he told Job and a lot of other things. But Job was most upset by the comment about his children. So, when Bilbad was done, Job let him have it. He had already heard it all and didn’t believe it. Job told Bilbad, God was powerful, but not gracious. God killed everyone eventually, the wicked and the righteous, and then, Job said, God laughs.
These words about God were as shocking then as they are to us now. Job believed there was something wrong with the universe and if something was wrong with the universe, something was wrong with God.
Then Job asked for a mediator who would make it possible to talk to God. But Job also said that if he ever had the chance to talk to God, God would just show off that power, storm around asking questions, and pay about as much attention to him as his friends were. So Job talked some more about wanting to die, hoping that the discussion with Bilbad was over.
It was, but then along came Zophar, to give his two bits to Job. His lecture began with comparing the ability of a stupid person to change into a smart person with a donkey’s ability to give birth to a human. In other words, Zophar was telling Job he was stupid. So Job told Zophar, “Well, when you die, I suppose all wisdom will die with you!”
And their dialogue went downhill from there, if that is possible. Job’s friends got angrier, and so did Job. Instead of standing alongside of Job, they defended God. “God is just,” their logic told them, “therefore Job must be guilty.” That’s what we do when someone questions our ideas about God. We defend our idea of God, because we don’t know who God is otherwise. And not knowing who God is, is terrifying.
However, Job was convinced of his innocence. Job declared he did not want to die. He wanted vindication. He wanted God to face judgment. Job wanted a lawyer who would take his case to God and win.
Eliphaz’s last word to Job was that God didn’t really care whether anyone was good or bad. Bilbad’s last word was that he had decided all humans were comparable to the status of worms. Zophar, thank goodness, decided not to put in a last word.
Finally the friends were silent again. That was when Job started talking to God. He declared his innocence to God. He dared God to appear and prove him wrong. God didn’t come. Elihu did, instead, a fourth voice and he talked almost forever saying near the end of his speech that God was never going to show up, not in a million years.
In the end, all of Job’s friends are self-appointed ministers who presumed to speak in God’s place and whose interpretations were more painful to Job than his suffering and God’s silence.
So Job roared, “Let me have silence, and I will speak and let come on me what may. I will take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in my hand!” And then, one of the most famous lines in Job, “See, God will kill me, I have no hope; but I will defend my ways to God’s face.”
God did not kill Job. Instead God spoke to Job at last, for four whole chapters. But not to answer Job’s questions or accusations. God answered with the mystery and vastness and unlimitedness of God’s presence and power. Because God is God, God is not in human explanation or definitions. There are no words that can define, confine, or explain God.
God talked about the seas and the ice and the snow and the wind. God talked about ravens and lions and ostriches. Yes, ostriches! Job kept silent. God asked Job, “Would you make me wrong just so you can be right?”
God opened the divine throne room a crack and out tumbled two great creatures. They were two monsters of the land and sea. God told Job, “I made these, just as I made you.”
Then Job began to understand that God was not at all what he and his friends had thought, not even close. God and the universe was a mystery. Rain fell on uninhabitable lands, ravens fed on the blood of other creatures who died that they might live; ostriches, silly and deprived of any sense, left their eggs on the ground to be crushed by passing beings, but God made them and sustained them, too. And if that wasn’t enough, the terrible sea monsters were also in the world, and they were important, too. The universe was not the mechanical, easily understood, readily appropriated place that Job or anyone else thought it was.
Because the universe was like that, God was like that too, and more so. The universe is dangerous and wondrous, unpredictable, beautiful, and even quite hilarious. Freedom and grace are alive in the universe and God is the author of it all.
So the lesson of Job is that we are not condemned by God. Nor do we have to condemn God to find our place in the universe. But how easy it is to assume that somehow our actions, whether good or bad, demand the reaction of God. How easy it is for us to assume that we are the center of the universe; that all things revolve around us, around our needs. How easy it is for us to forget the mystery and wonder and surprise that the universe holds for us every single day. How easy it is to confine God into some sort of formula, some kind of equation, some theological statement.
When the dust settled, Job was strangely at peace. Then Job said to God, “I have spoken of the unspeakable and tried to grasp the infinite. I had heard of you with my ears; but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I will be quiet, comforted that I am dust.” Why was Job comforted and quiet? Because Job, of all people, had a profound experience of the living God and no words could begin to describe and define that. There was no explanation available to Job—only the wonder and awe of the experience.
So when our lives don’t turn out the way we want or expect, let Job lead you to face the questions. First, we may hear all the stock answers—from our friends, I’m sorry to say, even from the Church. However, when we let Job give voice to our own questions, our suffering gains in dignity and we are brought closer to the voice and mystery of God. Remember it was in the midst of Job’s suffering, and questioning, and complaining, that he experienced the mysterious, unexplainable but very real presence of the living God.
Amen.