Sermon for July 24

The readings  

Job 31:35-37

 ‘O that I had one to hear me! (Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me!) O, that I had the indictment written by my adversary!  Surely I would carry it on my shoulder; I would bind it on me like a crown;  I would give him an account of all my steps; like a prince I would approach him.

38:1-11

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:  "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?  "Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?—  when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band,  and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, "Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped'?

The message

This is our fourth week with the book of Job.  I am going to start with the same introduction as the last 3 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. 

In our first reading today, Job asks God for something we all would want if we were in a situation like his, something we see as a basic human right. Job wants the opportunity to defend himself, to hear God’s case against him, to question the cause of his sufferings and argue if it was fair or deserved.  Job announces  “Here is my signature”. This is a reference to a specific action which needs some explanation. In this case the signature is the last letter of the ancient Hebrew alphabet (which resembles an X). This was used as a symbol for exemption from judgment, which Job feels that he deserves. We see a mention of this signature or mark in Ezekiel chapter 9 verses 4-6, a rather brutal reading where God’s punishment is unleashed on the people of Jerusalem in response to their sins.  

The Lord called to the man clothed in linen, who had the writing case at his side; and said to him, “Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of those who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.” To the others he said in my hearing, “Pass through the city after him, and kill; your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity.  Cut down old men, young men and young women, little children and women, but touch no one who has the mark. And begin at my sanctuary.”

In our first reading, Job continues to maintain his innocence, insist on a clear description of what he supposedly has done, the chance to answer those charges and also ask for mercy, exemption from judgment.  Over the next few chapters, Job continues to argue with this friends and petition God for answers. In Chapter 38, for the first time, God speaks to Job. As the audience, we are left thinking “it’s about time”, we are curious about what God will say and we are hopeful that God’s words will offer solace, comfort and explanation. After all, when God finally responds to Job’s questions, challenges and prayers, that should be a good thing.  Of course, God does not necessarily make us feel all that much better, we are not given the answers, closure or comfort we hope for.  God’s responses to Job, here and in the next 10 chapters or so, are complicated. God’s words are difficult to understand, do not really address the cause of Job’s suffering and do not tell us why bad things happen to good people.  Throughout history, many people who looked at God’s speeches in Job understand them in two different ways.  1: they expose the ridiculous notion that we somehow have a right to question God or 2: they confront Job’s (and everyone elses’) very limited idea of the world as a place where all suffering is a matter of law and guilt or innocence.

What exactly God is saying in these speeches is one of the most aggressively debated parts of the entire book. Perhaps the most important lessons we can take from these speeches are shared in both cases. Our knowledge is limited and our ability to observe is limited. We are invited to trust something apart from us, to recognize that there are things in the world beyond our wealth, power, minds, ideas and observations.   Ultimately God’s speeches remind us that God is God and we are not.   

Our reading from Job chapter 38 where we have God’s first words is the only use of yhwh for the Lord’s name in main sections of Job (it does occur in the prose of the opening and closing chapters).   In ancient Jewish beliefs, the name of God was too holy, mysterious, and powerful to be captured by words or spoken aloud.  In texts and scripture ,God’s name was indicated by 4 hebrew consonants, y,h,w, h.  There were no vowels in the name of God and that meant it could not be said. (even in English today, you cannot properly say a word without any vowels).  In reading the sacred texts, people faced with the yhwh often said “hashem” meaning the name or “adoni” meaning lord. As God starts speaking in Job, God’s otherness and mystery is stressed.   The alternative is that what we can know about God is what is revealed by God, That Scripture points to God, church points to God, Christ points to God, our experience of joy and grace points to God.  That is where we answer the mystery, well that is where the mystery is answered for us (we don’t figure it out, its revealed to us).   

We have a hard time sitting with mystery.  Just like Job, we do want to know it all and have things operate in a neat and orderly way.  Over 3000 years after the use of “yhwh” for the name of God, biblical scholars and researchers in the 18^th century decided that they would take the vowels from Adoni, the Hebrew word for Lord and add them to “yhwh” because we could and we do not need that much mystery in our faith. That is where we get the name Yahweh, which becomes Jehovah in English.  We did not want to sit with that mystery anymore.

Throughout history people have sought to understand the world. The thought was that we could observe the world and figure God out.  The truth is that there are limits to our knowledge, to the things we can understand. Job meets those limits in these conversations with God. Today, we reach those limits in our research, in theories like the Hisenberg uncertainty principle that tell us particular things cannot be known (in this case the position and speed or momentum of a subatomic particle).  We reach those limits in astromony,  In an interview with Christianity Today, Jastrow, a leader in astronomy research (and not particularily religious) says "Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact. "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

Job was sitting there, at the moment reason stops, long before the astronomers of today. We need to turn to God’s simple advice to Job at the beginning of the conversation.  God tells Job to “gird your loins like a man”.  This was a reference to adjusting your clothing by tucking up and tying the bottom of your robe to allow for more and quicker movement in combat. God knows that Job will not be comforted by a pat on the back and a good job, instead Job will be confronted by questions he cannot answer, mysteries he cannot solve and an incomplete, unsatisfying ending.