what someone else said on Sunday July 31st

 Hey Everyone

We had a special guest speaker today who gave our sermon. My friend Anton has taught classes on the Book of Job as part of courses on World History at different colleges in New York. As a historian, scholar and person of faith, he shared some reflections on the book of Job, its place in history and humanity's  difficulty in understanding and facing this sacred text. 

The readings

Job 38:25-27
"Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunderbolt,  to bring rain on a land where no one lives, on the desert, which is empty of human life, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground put forth grass?

41:1-8;
"Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook, or press down its tongue with a cord?  Can you put a rope in its nose, or pierce its jaw with a hook?  Will it make many supplications to you? Will it speak soft words to you?  Will it make a covenant with you to be taken as your servant forever?  Will you play with it as with a bird, or will you put it on leash for your girls?  Will traders bargain over it? Will they divide it up among the merchants? Can you fill its skin with harpoons, or its head with fishing spears?  Lay hands on it; think of the battle; you will not do it again!
 

42:1-6
Then Job answered the Lord: "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.  "Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.  "Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.'  I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;  therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

The message

Thank you very much for inviting me to speak. I am not a theologian. All I can offer are a few personal reflections on the Book of Job.

My first encounter with the Book of Job came about, oddly enough, thanks to Soviet television. The gradual opening of the Soviet world to previously forbidden information in the late 1980s meant that biblical stories began to pop up almost randomly on the pages of magazines and on TV shows. Like any other previously forbidden information it was eagerly consumed, no matter the source, and so my whole family gathered weekly to watch Japanese biblical anime cartoons on Soviet public TV. In every episode a robot would take two children back to the Biblical past where the kids would witness all the major events, including Job’s suffering. My mother’s verdict upon viewing that episode was swift and firm – that was not the God that she believed in.

My mom is not alone. In my World History classes at City College, I decided to teach the Book of Job instead of the more common Epic of Gilgamesh. Why not have the students analyze a story from the Bible that almost everyone has heard of but few have carefully read? Why not? Because it's so hard and depressing. Like New York City itself, City College is incredibly diverse - I've had students who were Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Agnostic, Jewish, as well as members of multiple Christian denominations. Almost all students took the discussion of the Book of Job in stride and just about everyone felt disheartened by its bleakness.

I tried to teach my students how to analyze the text as social scientists, to try to see what it can tell us about the society that created it. It is in many ways a society very different from our own – after all, Job’s children are killed off and not returned but replaced by others. They are merely an economic resource like his cattle and slaves. Despite the differences the story of seemingly meaningless suffering strikes a universal chord.

Unlike the rest of the Bible that makes modern readers uncomfortable by the inclusion of miracles, I would suggest that the Book of Job makes us uncomfortable because it is so realistic. It is the closest to our darkest experiences of the world - we and others suffer without knowing why. The disclaimer that your Pastor has used to introduce his sermons in the last few weeks, eloquently reminds us that “everything we know about God does not come from the book of Job” and that “the history of God’s communication with the world is a story of love, care, forgiveness and grace.” Indeed, so many of the rest of the stories of the Bible, the stories of God’s presence in the world, seem to work to undo the damage that the Book of Job does to our hearts.

Yet the passages we’ve read today also point us to an important truth – the God of the Book of Job whom my mom has such difficulty accepting tells us, in incredibly beautiful poetry that we cannot fully know the mind of God. God challenges Job's and his friends' insistence that his actions must be understandable – God reminds Job of every way in which Job cannot even fathom God's power and realm of responsibility.

This insight too, appears to be human wisdom shared by many religious traditions. I selected the Book of Job to use in my classes since another text required by the school, the Hindu Bhagavad Gita tells of a similar story of human interaction with the Divine. An equally blameless Prince Arjuna asks Krishna, his chariot driver, for advice in a difficult moment of his life. When Krishna reveals himself to be a god, Arjuna unwisely asks him to show himself in his true form. Though God protects Job from his overwhelming presence by a whirlwind, Krishna actually shows himself to Arjuna who says

“At the sight of this, your Shape stupendous,

 Full of mouths and eyes, feet, thighs and bellies,

Terrible with fangs, O master,

All the worlds are fear-struck, even just as I am.

When I see you, Vishnu, omnipresent,

Shouldering the sky, in hues of rainbow,

With your mouths agape and flame-eyes staring—

All my peace is gone; my heart is troubled.” 

Confronted by the unfathomable divine presence, both Job and Arjuna fall down and ask to be spared. 

Job admits to God that he indeed cannot understand or know God. Yet Elie Wiesel suggested that Job’s quick agreement to wrongdoing indicates that Job actually rebels  - he stops God but reserves the right to think for himself now that he knows what to expect from God.

Poet Alicia Ostriker went further when she wrote that Job’s complaints are a challenge to God to be just, that his is a voice of the “loyal opposition.”  Ostriker explains that once God delivers the message of his power to Job he then admits that he, God, was wrong by bringing restitution. For Ostriker, the moral of the story is that humans should challenge injustice, even when it means challenging God. This does fit with the many instances in the Old Testament where prophets bargain, argue, and even wrestle with God.

But there is a kind of mercy even in the plainest reading of the Book of Job - God does hear him and comes to speak to him directly - a privilege that perhaps no modern human being can claim. And yet in the New Testament – Jesus, God in his human presence on earth, tells us over and over again that we are not alone in our suffering after all. On the eve of his ascension, Jesus makes sure to tell the apostles that he shall send a divine presence, a comforter, the Holy Spirit to be with us.

We are reminded that God knows that we crave his presence with us, his response to our entreaties - and God's message of the New Testament is much clearer about this than the Book of Job. The good news then is that God is with us even when might not know it and even when we can't believe it.