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Mystic
Congregational Church, UCC Mystic,
Connecticut Sermon
from October 22, 2006 “And God
Answered ...” Rev.
Patricia L. Liberty
Scriptures: Psalm 104 Job 38:1-7,
42:1-5 Last
week we left Job
with one foot at the edge of despair and the other losing ground fast.
The growing chasm between his pain and God’s seeming indifference,
Job’s protestations pierced the silence around him and crossed the centuries
to settle around the places of our own brokenness. We
know something of Job’s truth. What
we value is sometimes lost to us for reasons that are beyond our control.
The unspeakable happens. Our
inner compass loses true north. We
cannot find our way. A split second
can change our lives forever. A
moment in time can occasion the need to reinvent our lives in ways we never
dreamed. When
it was Job’s turn to reinvent his life, his wife, who apparently had survived
all of the mayhem, quietly suggests that Job curse God and die.
It’s always nice to have the support of a loved one when you need it
the most. Picking their way across
the smoldering wreckage of Job’s life comes his three friends, the prototype
of the theological Three Stooges. There’s
Eliphaz with his mushy brand of self-serving piety of whom Walker Percy says,
“He’s one of those types who slithers up to people in pain with his lips
pursed with unctuous murmurs of concern while his pockets are filled with treats
spelling out the four spiritual laws.” The
annoying thing about Eliphaz is that he’s turned some of the strongest faith
affirmations into cross-stitched slogans suitable for hanging on the wall. Job’s
second friend Bildad is the type who has a bumper sticker that says, “God said
it. I believe it. That settles it.” He’s
a religious authoritarian who can do nothing but spell a party line of religious
orthodoxy. He’s like a mosquito
buzzing around the heat of human anguish. You
can’t help but want to swat him. Then
there’s Zophar who’s basically just a Bildad who’s gone to seminary. He has better language and more finesse in spewing his crummy
theology. He apparently didn’t
eat in the dining hall where most of us learn the most important lesson of our
academic career: No matter how much mustard you put on baloney, it’s still baloney.
It’s
tough to call them friends but they seem to be all that Job has.
It only serves to heighten his isolation and distress.
It is difficult to find true companions when the trek leaves across the
landscape of despair, anguish and doubt. As
Meg Hess notes, “They are a study in how people come to terms with their own
helplessness as they bear witness to the suffering of another.” The
enduring appeal of Job is that he meets us in vulnerable moments and speaks
words that are familiar. The drama
of Job is as old as the hills and as new as the last tragic thing that happened
to us. As the endless droning of
his friends failed to reach Job’s growing faith crisis, the nature of his
question changes from “Why does the righteous suffer?” to “Where is God in
my distress?”. It’s
important to note that Job never doubted that God existed.
He just wasn’t sure what to believe about God in light of his
experience. Job never questioned
that God was just but he struggled with how God meted that justice out. Job didn’t expect reward from God for his righteousness.
He simply needed to know if his deep distress mattered to God in any way.
Unlike his friends, Job truly loved God and wasn’t willing to let God
off the hook with shallow theology and, because of his lived experience, he no
longer had the option of illusion. In
a Cecil B. De Mille kind of moment, God enters center stage with thundering
voice and out of the whirlwind says, “Where were you when I laid the
foundation of the earth? Where were
you when I planned the earth, shut up the waters and painted the heavens.”
Job is awestruck and, for the first time, pretty much speechless.
He demurs but God is nowhere near finished.
Some of the best poetry in all of Scripture follows as God grills Job on
his knowledge of universe construction. But
this is more than a cosmic dueling with the woefully under-equipped Job. Obviously, if this were a power struggle, there would be no
point. God is not telling job to
put up and shut up. Rather, the
writer of this epic tale invites Job and all who wander in his footsteps to a
deeper relationship with God that begins with the age-old affirmation that
God’s ways are not our ways. Our
projected sense of moral order is not God’s.
Our understanding of how the world works is incomplete at best. Robert
Frost in his poem Mask of Reason constructs
a dialogue between God, Job, and Mrs. Job that takes place years after Job’s
affliction. In one line, God says
to Job, “My thanks are to you for releasing me from world bondage to the human
race.” God’s encounter with Job
reminds him and all who struggle that there is wisdom beyond our wisdom; there
are some questions that have no answers, easy or otherwise. More importantly, God’s coming to Job reinforces that
academic answers are finally empty next to lived experience undergirded with
revelation. The answer to Job, of
course, is God’s presence. In the
encounter, Job realizes that he is invited to trust the One who is God even in
the midst of his inexplicable pain. Years
later, the disciples would say to Jesus, “To whom else can we go?
You alone have the words of eternal life.” Yesterday,
at Peter Edmonstone’s memorial service, I suggested that, in the face of his
untimely and tragic death, there was, indeed, no other place we can be that
together, in God’s embrace. When
the shattered pieces of life shred the fabric of faith, we are like Job invited
to meet the true and living God whose presence answers few questions but
addresses a very deepest needs. When
it all comes to a close, Job is a changed man.
But it isn’t the content of the speech that heals him.
Rather, it is fact that a God whom he had only heard about has now come
to him personally. Theological
constructs are not the source of Job’s redemption. Rather,
it is relationship with God that transforms his profound suffering. Job meets God and sees that the skewedest track of his life
has led him to paths of joy and suffering.
Best of all, Job realizes that in all things his path was held in the
hand of a God who was waiting to embrace and wipe away his tears. God
never does answer Job’s question. Instead,
God shows up. I don’t know about
you but I’ll that over an answer any day.
Job’s response was, well, now I get it.
“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear.
But now, my eyes see you. Therefore,
I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
The Hebrew word for “seeing” here has nothing to do with our eyes.
It is heart-seeing. It is
knowing born of pain that has met with us and to comfort.
By that, I mean not the kind that offers answers but, instead, joins in
the questioning—the kind of comfort that speaks few words, that communicates
great love, that points beyond itself to bear witness to the truth of who God
is. Despise here does not mean the kind of self-loathing and
hatred with which we associate the word. Rather,
it means genuine humility born of deep pain met by deeper love, the authentic
struggle met with divine grace. A
contemporary translation by Mitchell renders the text more true.
“I have heard of you with my ears; but now my eye has seen you.
Therefore, I will be quieted, comforted that I am dust.” Job’s
experience has invited him to take his place in the human family with all the
joy and sorrow that that means. There
to encounter a God who cares enough to meet him in the places where that journey
takes him. The Book
of Job never sought, in my opinion, to answer the question of why good
people suffer or why the wicked appear to prosper. Rather, it is an invitation to those who are willing to enter
into a relationship with God to have a sense of the mystery and power of God
which is, finally, our only source of comfort in moments when our days unravel
that fragile sense of safety we create for our lives. God is there to shout at and to be present with us.
It is the eternal invitation to trust that beyond the seeming absence,
there is presence. In the midst of
deep struggle, there is healing. In
the midst of all that is true about human life, God remains God.
And that is enough. Amen.
Thomas G. Long: “A Second
Look From the Land of Uz” Stephen Mitchell: “The
Book of Job”, North Point Press, 1987 Marvin Pope: Job—Anchor
Bible Commentary Meg Hess Walker Percy: “Lost In
the Cosmos” Burton Z. Cooper: “Why,
God? A Tale of Two Sufferers” Ataloa Snell Woodin: “Speak,
O Lord: The Silence of God in Human
Suffering” Randy Klassen: “Job’s
Thirst for Righteousness: A Parable
of Post-Modernism” Anna Grant-Henderson: OT
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