The
reading
Job
42:7-17
After the Lord had spoken these words to Job,
the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: "My wrath is kindled against you
and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as
my servant Job has. Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my
servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job
shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according
to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job
has done." So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the
Naamathite went and did what the Lord had told them; and the Lord accepted
Job's prayer.
And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when
he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had
before. Then there came to him all his
brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with
him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil
that the Lord had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money
and a gold ring.
The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more
than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a
thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys.
He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah,
the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch.
In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job's daughters; and
their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers After this Job lived one hundred and forty
years, and saw his children, and his children's children, four generations. And
Job died, old and full of days.
The
message
This
is now our last Sunday with the book of Job. After 6 weeks of hearing,
preaching and worshipping God shaped by this challenging book, we have come to
the last words in Job. The conclusion
offers us some comfort but in many ways, it creates more questions than it
answers. If your like me, you want to ask “why did God do this to Job”, but all
12 chapters of God’s speeches in the book tell us that is a question which we have
no right to ask and of which we cannot understand the answer. We would all love for the book of Job to end
with a sure answer to the question “why do bad things happen to good
people”. All we are told is that bad
things are not a punishment for sin.
We
are not given answers, we are given reassurance, confirmation that certain
things are true or false. We are left with God’s reassurance that bad things do
not happen as punishment for sin or as signs of God’s displeasure with us. We are left with reassurance that a good God
is ultimately in control of all things seen and unseen, understood and
mysterious, known and unknown. We are
left with reassurance that God is present in suffering and God hears our
prayers. At the end of Job, humanity is
placed in a relationship with God which centers on God’s ways and power.
Today
I hope to review many of the things we have discussed over the past 6 weeks and
share some thoughts about what they mean for us as we live as the people of God
here and now. I have spent more hours reading, facing, discussing and learning
about Job over this time than ever before.
I found myself more anxious and confused about what to say or how to
shape each Sunday service during this time that I have in a number of years.
Even the practice of selecting hymns and prayers proved complicated. Over the 6 weeks, I included songs generally
reserved for times of waiting like Advent and Lent and times of promises
fulfilled like Christmas, when Christ is born, Easter when Christ is Risen and Pentecost
when the Holy Spirit comes to us. I also
choose songs with themes like the end times, prayer and justice. Somehow this
story from unknown centuries ago needed all of those things to help explain it.
Job
is the story of a faithful, devout and fair person who endures total loss, the
tradgic death of his family and the sudden disappearance of his wealth, status,
property, quality of life and health. As readers, we know these things happened
because God and Satan, the adversary or persecutor, discuss the question “Will
people remain faithful if they are not rewarded”. This questions has been posed by many
throughout history and across faith traditions.
Rabi: a Muslim woman and sufi mystic from the early 8th century wrote: O God! If I worship You for fear of Hell,
burn me in Hell and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from
Paradise. But if I worship You for Your Own sake, grudge me not Your
everlasting Beauty. Many others before and after her have thought about,
prayed over, wrote and spoke on that same question. Job seems to be in the wrong place at the
wrong time when Satan asks this question and Job becomes the experiment or case
study. Job is subjected to the unimaginable, the collapse of his entire world
and the failing of his power to do anything about it. Job and those around him, the 4 of his friends
who remain with him, to help and offer comfort, have no idea what just happened
or what is going on.
More
than half of the book of Job centers on these conversations between Job and his
friends. During this time, they do not
help and do not offer comfort. None of them offer prayer, seek God’s voice or value
much more than being right. They each use their time and words with Job to tell
him, he has sinned and was being punished for his failings. They go through the
conventional wisdom of the time, finding 20 different ways of telling Job the
world is fair, God is fair, giving out rewards and punishments as we deserve,
Job
must have sinned and that is why these things happened. Job has to spend all
his time countering every one of their arguments, insisting their wisdom is
wrong and he is innocent. Job’s friends
get more aggressive, annoyed and frustrated with each interaction. Today, this invites us to think seriously
about how we comfort others, how we share God’s word and make choices. Are we concerned about being right or are we
concerned with being loving, caring, understanding and faithful to God’s word.
During
this time as Job fights with his friends, he also demands answers from God. For
a long time, God is silent. Perhaps,
this is part of the experiment. After
all, if God just appeared at the moment of Job’s loss or the first time Job
started to cry out, what would that show. I get the sense that God is suffering at this
time too, watching faithful Job endure these things and knowing they could be
stopped, reversed and restored with a simple word. This makes us wonder how God feels when we,
aware or not, do awful things to those close to us and far away.
At
some point, enough is enough, God decides Job has remained faithful despite
undeserved suffering. Now God has this
awkward moment of showing up, saying “hey it’s God, the one who put you through
all this, how’s it’s going?” God appears
in a whirlwind and questions Job, revealing the limits of human knowledge and
arrogance of trying to know the mind of God. Job repents, recognizing his
inability understand the actions of God. After this God declares Job was
correct, he was innocent and his suffering was not caused by sin. After this, there is a time when Job prays for himself and then a time for Job
to intercede for his friends (despite their insistence that sin is punished by
a fair God, theirs will be forgiven by a loving God). After this, there is the restoration of Job’s
wealth, family, land and status which he has another 140 years to enjoy. Whatever this was, the Job experiment is now
over, and as far as I know, never done again.
Job
remains so interesting and challenging to us today because we can still meet
and talk with Job. At the church service this past Tuesday at the assisted
living home, there was a group of volunteers from West Virginia. As they joined us for worship and waited to
start their work, they were getting news and reports from their home area, a
town completely wiped out in floods. They had stories of some neighbors who
lost everything and they asked for prayer.
As they prepared to leave NY, they were not sure what waited for them
back home but they knew praying would help and that they would help when they
could get there.
There
are lots of Jobs in refugee camps across Syria, Palestine and other areas. Places
literally established for those who have lost everything. There are Jobs crying out in the churches of places
like Nigeria, where Christians are being excluded, tortured and killed because
of their faith. There are Jobs in our cities and communities, people facing
horrible illnesses in the prime of their lives, people killed for doing their
jobs or because of their race and people sleeping on the streets around this
building. Many times, they ask God why and struggle with faith in a loving
creator who allows these things. This can be an uncomfortable question but it
gets truly uncomfortable when they ask us why we do not do anything about it. After all, the God who does not hold our sins
against us is also the God who demands we love our neighbor as ourselves. Our work as Christians, as people of God, is
not to answer that question of why God allows suffering. We can listen and try
but it is our work to help those in suffering, to assist with their needs, and
show them God is present in their suffering.
I
am going to conclude our time with the book of Job with the same introduction
as the last 5 weeks. Everything we know
about God does not come from the book of Job.
The history of God’s communication with the world is ultimately a story
of love, care, forgiveness and grace, one fully told through the life, death
and resurrection of Jesus. When we hear God’s actions in Job that are
uncomfortable or appear to be extremely unfair or cruel, we have to look again,
understand the context, purpose and history of the story or even put those
things aside and remember our God is the one who loves us, forgives us, invites
us to live better lives and promises us eternal life.
Next week, we start a 4 week series on the Lord’s prayer. As
we gather for worship, we will look at the words Jesus taught to remind us of
God’s grace, presence and comfort
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