October
25, 2009
"Honesty Before
God"
(James 5:7-12 & Job
7:11-19)
Last Sunday we began our study of Job
by focusing on a common misunderstanding, one promoted by Job's so-called comforters,
and one which finds widespread support even today. It goes something like this. Since we believe that God rewards the good
and punishes the bad, if something bad happens to you, you must have done
something to deserve it. It's the
assumption that people only get what they deserve, or at least that we deserve
what we get. That we're ultimately to
blame for whatever suffering we encounter in this life.
The biblical book of Job resolutely
insists that this is NOT the case. Job
was blameless and upright, a good and faithful man. The fact that he suffered terribly had
nothing to do with anything he did, and certainly nothing that he did
wrong. It was the friends who were
mistaken in their assumptions, not Job himself.
God even affirms in the end of the book that Job spoke what was
right. He really was innocent. He really had suffered without just
cause. One of the conclusions we should
draw from the book of Job is that people DON'T always get what they
deserve. Sometimes good people suffer.
Another common misunderstanding stems
from our reading of this brief passage in the NT book of James which in many
translations refers to the "patience" of our friend Job. Patience as most of us understand it implies
putting up with things, waiting and accepting, letting things run their course,
bearing without complaint. And the
expression "the patience of Job," as it's found its way into
contemporary idiom, calls to mind all of this to the nth degree. ("If ever ANYONE was patient, it was
Job. Remember everything he had to put
up with!")
But since the author of James
presumably had the same book of Job in front of him as we do, we ought not jump
to conclusions about what "the patience of Job" means until we're
fairly familiar with the guy the NT author is talking about here. As we heard in our second Scripture lesson
this morning, the kinds of "patient" words Job spoke actually sound
more like these: "I will not
restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my
soul." And these are just a few of many similar lines spoken by Job in the
middle section of the book, typical in their brutal honesty. As the story moves along, Job becomes even
more bold, accusing God of piercing him with poison arrows (6:4), of crushing
him with a tempest and multiplying his wounds without cause (9:17), of hunting
him down like a lion (10:16), of breaking him down on every side (19:10).
Clearly it's oversimplification and
probably a serious misreading of the book of Job to say that Job bore his
sufferings without complaint, that he was patient in that sense. He complained like this for some 30 chapters,
with some of the strongest and angriest language we ever find in the Bible for
people addressing God. So where did James
get off calling Job a patient man? If,
like me, you were familiar with this NT evaluation of Job long before you ever
encountered the words of Job himself, you might well find yourself wondering
what happened to that silent, stoic, complaint-free calm you were expecting.
But here's where we need to be
careful. In the Greek, the word that
James uses to describe Job is hypomene--which
actually means something like "standing fast," or "holding one's
ground," or "endurance" (as NRSV now more accurately translates
it). Hanging in there, yes. And hanging in there with God, in spite of it
all. But not necessarily bearing without
complaint. Job bore his sufferings, yes,
and endured, and persisted in his integrity and his faith, but he was also
brutally honest with his friends and with his God about how miserable he was,
how unfair his situation was. And he
demanded that God respond and explain why he had to suffer.
So it's partly a misinterpretation of
James' interpretation of Job that leads us to think Job was patient in the
sense of passively sitting by and letting things happen to him, waiting around
and tolerating it all. Far from
it! He stood before God with his fists
held high and demanded justice, using the same standards of justice that God had
given him and applying those to God. And
in this, Job was not thought to be uttering blasphemy or saying things that
ought not be said to God. In fact, he
was standing solidly in biblical tradition.
Elsewhere in the OT--in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, in the book
of Lamentations, and particularly in the psalms of lament--people of strong
faith struggled with God, speaking out from their experiences of suffering,
crying out in pain, expecting that God would honor their honesty, that God
could handle their complaints, and that God would respond.
Job also bears some similarity to the
figure of Abraham arguing with God over the fate of Sodom in Genesis 18, a
story of Abraham's "holy protest" against the injustice he felt would
be done if the innocent were destroyed along with the wicked. The spirit of lament and the spirit of
"holy protest" are both well represented in the Scriptures. Job's is not an isolated case. In the Bible, the kinds of things Job
said--and even the boldness with which he said them--were felt to be within
bounds, one of the ways people of faith could appropriately address God.
We've somehow lost this tradition of
lament as people of faith, and gotten away too from the tradition of protest
that stands there shaking its fist, demanding that the Judge of all the earth
do what is right. But it's important to
be reminded from time to time that God expects complete honesty from us. True faith can include protest. Genuine prayer may at times need to
incorporate complaint.
I've heard people offer prayers of
simple acceptance of God's will in situations in which there's a complete
disconnect with what they're actually thinking and feeling. Before the 'dear Lord' and after the 'amen',
there are powerful, genuine expressions of anger, fear, hurt, and
frustration. But once heads are bowed,
all this gets swept under the rug. Why
is that? Perhaps because we've been taught
that true faith means accepting whatever comes without complaint. But this doesn't accurately reflect the range
of biblical teachings on prayer. Job
carries on a dialogue with God for more consecutive chapters than most anyone
else in the Bible. I believe the
presence of this book in the Scriptures suggests we can expand our definitions
of what is and is not allowed in prayer.
Do we really think we're fooling God when we spit out the words we think
we're supposed to say while everything in us wants to cry out in pain or
anger? God treasures real conversation
with us, and that requires complete honesty on our part. Saying not just what we think God wants to
hear, but what needs to be said. Might
we all, in this sense, approach the injustices of our world with the so-called
"patience" of Job!
So come as you are to this place of worship, bringing your most painful grievances as well as your deepest joys, and let us celebrate honest conversation and true communion with our Lord. Amen.