October 7, 2012 – Job 1.1, 2:1-10 (Guest Sermon)
Job 1.1, 2:1-10 Sunday, October 7, 2012 First Lutheran Church
Beloved.
“Have you considered my servant Job?”
I love this line from the Old Testament reading today. There is an informality, a casualness about the way the story of Job begins. There’s Job, the upright man. There’s God having a look at Job, one pretty interesting member of the creation. And there’s ha-satan, in Hebrew, the Satan, not the Devil or Satan as we might ordinarily conceive of Satan, but a character with a particular function in this story: The Accuser, he is sometimes called, or perhaps The Adversary, or The Prosecutor. What the Satan needs to do is set the testing in motion. And then disappear.
We’re going to be reading the Book of Job for all of this month, and Michael will lead us deep into the struggles of the Patriarch Job, the sorrows of his family, the arguments of Job’s friends, and finally the wild and wonderful response of God near the end of the Book of Job, when God speaks at length of the immense responsibility of caring for the entire world, in all of its splendour and terror and mystery and might. The Book of Job is strange and amazing. But my first point is this: at the end of it, the Satan isn’t there. Because this is not a story about the terrible wickedness that the Devil hurls our way. Nor is it a story about the terrible wickedness that God allows to be hurled our way. Rather it is a story about a man and his Lord and the strength of their bond in bad times and good.
I love the unfussy way Eugene Peterson sets up this scene in his version of Job in The Message.
One day when the angels came to report to God, Satan, who was the Designated Accuser, came along with them. God singled out Satan and said, “What have you been up to?”Satan answered God, “Going here and there, checking things out on earth.” God said to Satan, “Have you noticed my friend Job? There’s no one quite like him.” (Job 1:6-8a, The Message)
In any version or translation, you can tell by the style of this anecdote that this is no ordinary story. One detail that isn’t immediately apparent from the way the lectionary is presented today is that the whole “Have you noticed my friend Job?” scheme happens twice, once in Chapter one and again in Chapter two, almost word for word. God and ha-satan go through this business twice. The repetition marks this, in part, as a very old type of folk tale. Who will help me plant the seed? said the little red hen. Who’s been sitting in my chair? said the Papa Bear. Little pig, little pig, let me come in, said the wolf. A repeated motif tears you away from your dependence on realism, on the banal and everyday, and it should catapult you into the realm of the wondrous and the speculative. Something that happens over and over again in an old story like this means that reality is heightened, extended.
The repetition also makes sure we are paying attention to the way these events in Job’s life are presented to us. What is about to happen to Job – the loss of children and estate, the pain of physical suffering – is not arbitrarily visited upon him by a vengeful or capricious God who glances down once and notices this guy and zaps him. God is noticing Job not once, but twice, and indeed it is clear to me in this story that God is noticing him all the time. Yes, God does seem to allow the Satan to set up an elaborate trial for poor Job, but the very first line of the tale says that Job is “upright.” That’s important. He is known as a good man. He is righteous. But he is not upright all by himself. He is best understood as being in right relationship with God; Job is on the correct path to God and with God. Job knows it. God knows it. They are, in Eugene Peterson’s words, friends. They are close.
We are wide of the mark if we take up this tale and conclude that it means God allows or instigates or encourages suffering. We have here a sustained, full, curious consideration of suffering: what suffering is like, how to get through it. Yes, I suppose Job and his friends throughout this piece do ask “What does it all mean?” but in the end they will find out that that is not the important question to ask, although it is okay to ask it. What matters is who is with you during the suffering, or (putting it another way) who you will allow to accompany you during the time of suffering. And are your ears still open to hear what is going on in God’s entire world while you are being tested?
I have had several conversations lately with students at my university who are wondering where God is during tough times. During awful times. This is partly because I gave a talk at the beginning of the academic year about where God is during tough times, and it opened up a whole mess of questions for some of the young people who heard me. I almost regret doing this talk. I was asked to do it; I was handed the topic. And I found it difficult to formulate for students an answer that satisfies them.
The thing is this: I am blessed, I am quite certain, with never having felt distant from God, in good times or bad. I don’t know how unusual this is. This is part of the lovely inheritance I received from my mother, who had the most stalwart, calm, happy confidence in God’s good presence in her life, no matter what. (I miss her all the time, but especially on a day like Thanksgiving, because she had a real gift for giving thanks.) I have had lots of problems with other people, oh boy, and lots of problems with myself. But no problems with God. God is here, right here, right now, and always has been and always will be. I simply know that.
But that’s not particularly helpful to someone who doesn’t feel it. So I’ve been trying to listen and imagine these very different situations for others.
Perhaps one of the problems here is our very human but sometimes very ill-advised need for cause and effect explanations. Yes, cause and effect does work in some situations. Here’s one. For some reason, I throw the car key on the seat of the car. I lock the door of the car and slam it. I stand there and scrunch up my eyes like this. Arggghh. I go inside the building, phone Michael, and ask him to drive across the city with a spare key. I make Michael a tiny bit miffed at me. Cause and effect.
But we get so wound up, with statistics, reasons, evidence, and we want everything to fall into a nice tidy line on a graph somewhere. This was the reason for that. And you know what? That way madness lies. A few items do allow themselves to be charted on graphs. But many elements of our blustery and breathtaking existences in this amazing world – well, if they fit on a graph, it’s a graph that hasn’t been invented by human hands. It’s God’s graph, maybe. I wouldn’t dare to say.
What strikes me about Job’s story is his vulnerability. I had a tiny taste of what that vulnerability was like, last week, when I gave blood. I quite often give blood, and I know that it’s not a big deal, and you get to eat cookies afterward, and the cookies are free! So I gave blood, and I was in the cookie lounge afterward, and I was trying to read a magazine, and then…the magazine went all fuzzy, and then there were nurses all around me with ice packs. I had fainted. How embarrassing. That hadn’t happened before.
I had to stay there for quite a while. I wanted to get on my feet and get going, back to work, or at least back home, so I could look like a pathetic, fragile little Susie in my own home. Lick my wounds in private. But I couldn’t get to my feet. More ice packs, more lying down. Pathetic. It was suggested that someone come and get me. Once again, I tried to phone Michael. I rehearsed my lines in my head: “You know that thing with the car key? Well, this time, it’s me. I’ve locked my wits, apparently, inside my own body, and I can’t get out. Come and rescue me.”
But I couldn’t find him. I had to wait, and be patient, and breathe deeply, and think a little, and pray a little, and wait some more. And then I finally could get up and get moving again.
That vulnerability bothered me. I don’t like being vulnerable. And I thought about Job, sitting in the ashes, inflicted with sores. Vulnerable. But, in at least this part of the story, what grace he handles it with! At one point Job says this: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
And I thought also about the vulnerability of Saul of Tarsus, struck blind on the road to Damascus, struck blind by the Lord, struck blind by the Lord whom Saul has been viciously persecuting, struck blind for three days. During which he has to sit and wait, helpless, on his way to becoming Paul, defender of the Christian faith. But he does not know that. He does not know anything except that he is helpless and has heard the voice of the Lord. Now Saul’s case is very different from Job’s. Job is an upright man. Saul is described in Acts as “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” He doesn’t merely engage in the odd bit of mayhem; he has dedicated his life to “ravaging the church” says Luke (Acts 9:1, 8:3). Saul’s blindness, his time of trial, is, unlike Job’s, apparently warranted. But warranted, unwarranted, complete mystery: none of these is the point. The point is that God speaks to and speaks with both Saul and Job. God is with them both, bad man and good man. God is there.
There are times when we are going to feel vulnerable, very vulnerable. Naked. The human, profane world tells us this is a terrible feeling, something to avoid or escape. But the number of times these stories of profound vulnerability turn up in scripture should tell us instead that these periods of waiting, nakedness, bafflement can open us up (if we allow this to happen) to the presence of God, our Lord and our friend. For myself, feelings of fear and anxiety mean I am trusting myself too much, I am counting too heavily on my own ingenuity or courage. I am a little too inclined to be a God unto myself.
At times like these it really does help to allow ourselves to be stripped down to fundamentals. Think of a wonderful Psalm like Psalm 121, the one that begins “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” In that Psalm, there is a little line that means more to me than any lofty promise about being delivered from snares and pestilence. Psalm 121 says: “he will keep your life.”
He will keep your life. Whatever that means, whatever shape that takes. God is with us. God keeps us. Thanks be to God.
Sue Sorensen
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