October
18, 2009
"Bad Things, Good
People"
(Job 1:1-12 and 2:1-13)
We began our series on Biblical wisdom
this fall by focusing on Proverbs, a book of practical theology, a set of concrete,
down- to-earth instructions. Elders,
parents, and wisdom teachers showing young people the way to go. Teaching them by word and example how to
prosper in life, how to avoid its pitfalls and dangers.
Among other things, I’ve emphasized
that according to Proverbs, life works in fairly predictable ways. Human actions have consequences, and we can
know ahead of time what those consequences will be. Life is tidy.
The created world is a neat, orderly, and well-organized system. Perhaps that's why Proverbs is appealing to
this Presbyterian pastor who does, after all, appreciate things being handled
"decently and in order." The problem, of course, is that life doesn't
always work according to the rules.
Probably the most striking evidence
that Proverbial advice does not apply equally well in all situations is the
repeated assurance throughout the book that good behavior will be rewarded
while the bad guys will get it in the end.
So, for instance, we read that "the wicked are overthrown and are
no more, but the house of the righteous will stand" (12:7) or again, that
"no harm happens to the righteous but the wicked are filled with
trouble" (12:21). We don't need
anyone to tell us that it ain't necessarily so.
It's obvious--for some of us, all too painfully obvious--that life
doesn't always turn out this way.
Fortunately
for the reputation of Wisdom Literature in particular and the integrity of the
Scriptures as a whole, the Bible does offer an alternate perspective to balance
the overly simplistic notion of rewards and punishments in the book of
Proverbs. For the book of Job is
precisely about life not always working according to the usual rules.
Let's briefly review the plot of the
two chapters we read from the book of Job this morning. . .
No sooner have we been introduced to
Job than we learn that he is blameless and upright, that he fears God and turns
aside from evil, that he goes to great lengths to live a holy and righteous
life. We then overhear a conversation in
heaven between God and "the satan", a Hebrew word which isn't quite
the equivalent yet of the proper name Satan we see in the New Testament. Here "the satan" (literally:
"the adversary" or "the accuser") is a member of the
heavenly court who stirs up a bit of trouble by making a bet with God about
this man Job. When God points out to the
satan what a righteous man Job is, the satan answers "Well, sure, he's got
everything going for him--riches, terrific real estate, a household of
servants, a huge family. But I'll bet
that if you took all that away, he wouldn't remain faithful for
long." God accepts the satan's bet,
(a fascinating image of God, by the way!), and allows the satan to begin to
afflict Job. And so Job loses all of his
livestock, his servants, his house, and all of his children. To emphasize how rapidly all of this happens,
the narrator notes that while each messenger was still sharing his own
respective piece of bad news, another messenger would arrive with more bad news,
and then another, and another. (Ever had one of those days?)
In spite of all of this, Job at the
end of chapter 1 persists in worshipping God, "'the Lord has given, and
the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the
name of the Lord.' And in all this, Job
did not sin or charge God with wrong-doing." So far, so good for God's side of the
bet. Even when, in chapter 2, the satan
ups the ante a bit and encourages God to afflict Job's own body with terrible
boils, Job still persists in his integrity.
It appears that God has won. Job
does indeed fear God without all the comforts of his former life, saying to his
wife "Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not the
bad?" But at whose expense has God
won the bet? God and the satan may both
be impressed with Job's integrity. But
poor Job is still down there, grieving the loss of all he once held dear,
scraping at his sores with a piece of broken clay pot, and having no clue that
the only reason for his suffering was this strange wager in heaven.
In any case, at the end of the chapter
we meet three of Job's friends, who hear of Job's misfortune and arrive to
offer him comfort. Notice the marvelous
example of friendship they offer us when they first arrive, as they too tear
their robes and sit with Job in his ash heap.
Not one of them says a word for seven days and seven nights. They just
sit there with their friend, silently acknowledging the depth of his
grief. Perhaps a lesson for all of us
who so desperately want to DO something when we see a loved one in pain.
A little girl came home from kindergarten one
day. Her mother asked her how she had
been. She said, ‘Good. I helped another
girl on the way home.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ said the mother. ‘What
happened?’
‘Oh, she was on her bike, and she fell into a mud
puddle.’
‘And so you helped her out of the puddle?’ asked the
mother.
‘No,’ said the kindergartner. ‘She was out of the
puddle when I got there.’
‘Was she hurt?’ asked the mother.
‘Yes,’ said the little girl. ‘But I couldn’t fix her
scratches. She was just sitting next to
the puddle crying.’
‘Then how did you help her, sweetheart?’ asked the
mother.
‘Well,’ answered the little girl, ‘I sat down and
helped her cry.’[1]
The
problem, of course, as you'll remember if you've read the book of Job, is that
the friends do open their mouths at the end of seven days, and then they can't
seem to stop themselves from offering volumes of unhelpful advice. And much of their advice sounds like that
same old proverbial wisdom -- "As you yourself know, Job, since we studied
under the same teachers, the righteous are rewarded by God and it is only the
wicked who suffer. Since you are
suffering so greatly, you must have done something REALLY awful to bring this
all on. So examine your life carefully,
won't you? Once you determine where
you've gone wrong, and repent of your sin, God will no doubt deliver you from
your trouble." And so poor Job
finds himself in the unenviable position of having to defend himself to his own
friends even as he sits there scratching at his sores, grieving the loss of his
sons and daughters.
Now because of the way they're set up
in the book, it's easy to dismiss the words of Job's friends as so much
foolishness, a stubborn adherence to insupportable old rules. But how many of us have been on the receiving
end of similar advice over the course of our lifetimes? Well-meaning words from friends and
acquaintances who'd have done us far less damage if they'd just had a seat in
our ash heap and kept quiet, or plunked down in our mud puddle for a good
cry? But instead, some of us in this
room have heard in moments of crisis words like these: "It's all for the
best really. . . Just think of all you're learning from this experience. .
." or even "If only you had more faith. . . " Such thinking even rears its ugly head when
we say to ourselves in particularly grim moments "what did I do to
deserve this?" It's important to
remember as we read through the book of Job that even God insists that it was
Job, and not the friends, who was in the right.
Job had not done anything to deserve his fate. It wasn't that his faith wasn't strong
enough, that he wasn't good enough, that he hadn't tried hard enough. The tragedies Job endured had nothing to do
with any of that. He was--and
remained--a righteous man.
Now this is not to say that Job is perfect, in some existential sense of being completely without sin. The friends have been quick to point out that all humans are sinful, and Job himself seems to allude to a few minor transgressions on his part as well. But for Job, and even for God, this point is not ultimately relevant to the situation at hand. The question is whether individuals are always punished for specific willful acts of disobedience, and always rewarded for righteous behavior. Job is introduced from the start as an obedient and reverent man. To the end, Job persists in maintaining his innocence. Lest with the friends we assume that Job is mistaken, the narrator and God both agree that Job is blameless and upright. This is not just a story about suffering, but a story about innocent suffering.
Now certainly any number of the tragedies in our world can be blamed on human sin—that’s where Proverbial wisdom is right on target. But not all of them can, and this is where the book of Job helps us. A flash flood does not discriminate between the just and the unjust. No one contracts Alzheimer's disease because they deserve it. A miscarriage is no indication of hidden sins. Because the book of Job so resolutely insists that Job was a person of integrity, we must--all of us--flat out deny the claim (too often proof-texted from the Scriptures) that people only get what they deserve. They don't. Good people, people of profound integrity, people of incredible faith, people who appear to be doing everything right, are the victims of life's tragic unpredictability everyday. Certainly this congregation has seen ample evidence of this. It’s all around us in the never-ending multimedia news cycle as well.
When I began this series I noted that the three wisdom books we'd be covering--Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes--offer three unique perspectives on the world. You can already begin to see how this is the case. It has been said that biblical wisdom is instruction for how to live, or that it is the "art of steering" through life (Zimmerli). But notice the situational nature of wisdom. Proverbs may teach us a great deal about how to live under normal circumstances, when all is going well, but the book of Job offers a powerful example of how to live in times of crisis. The largest portion of the book recounts Job's response to his suffering. Since are told that how Job spoke and what he said was right in a way that the friends' words were not, we'll want to examine Job's words to see what we can learn from this fascinating character about how to live when tragedy strikes. For now, suffice it to say that he wasn't as patient as many of us have been taught that he was. He complained bitterly to God for some 30 chapters in the middle of the book and those chapters are integral to the rest of the story. So do stay tuned for next week's sermon when we'll look at a couple of those chapters in more detail. . .
But for today, remember that while
Job's friends may have gotten it wrong, God knew all along that Job was a
righteous man. Remember that while Job
never learned why he suffered, he was firmly convinced throughout that he was
in God's hands. Like Job, we too can
affirm that no matter what may happen to us, we belong to God. For reasons we do not understand, God may
allow tragedy to strike us, but God will never let us go.
In that firm conviction, I invite you
now to stand with me and--in spite of all in this life that seeks to unsettle
us--to affirm together God's steadfast love, using the Affirmation of Faith
printed in the bulletin.