The Madison Avenue Pulpit

Fred Anderson preaching

THE AWFUL QUESTION

Fred R. Anderson, Pastor © 1994
Job 1: A Series
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 2, 1994
The Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church
New York City, New York

Job 1:1; 2:1-10
Psalm 26
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16


Once upon a time, in a land far, far away. We sense a story unfolding. Is it history? Maybe. It depends upon whose story it is - yours, mine, our story -- history perhaps. But for now, story will do. Like all stories this one allows us some distance, some perspective so that we can hear its questions and grasp its meaning, for it is about faith in the midst of suffering, and asks each of us an awful question.

His name is Job. He "was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil," a man of great integrity in every way. He has also been called a man of great patience, through endurance is probably closer to reality.1 Most of all, Job was an unwitting, unsuspecting and totally innocent bystander to a heavenly conversation which side-swipes him. It asks the awful question which turns his life upside down.

"One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan was among them." This is not the rebellious fallen angel of mythology, nor the fully developed demonic provocateur we discover as the Devil in the New Testament. This is a member of his majesty's loyal secret service -- God's eyes and ears. His job is to roam the earth spying on the evil he finds therein, which may explain why people call him their enemy -- the accuser -- what the word "Satan" means. Satan has returned to the heavenly court to report on his earthly spying. But today Satan will accuse more than humankind. Today Satan will accuse God as well.

God asks if Satan has been doing his job, turning the conversation to Job, reminding Satan that there is no one on the earth like Job -- blameless and upright, who fears God and turns away from evil -- pious and faithful indeed! "Of course!," responds Satan, his sarcasm setting the stage for a dual accusation. "Does he fear you for nothing? You've built a protective fence around him. You've blessed everything Job does. He loves and serves you -- you respond in kind, blessing him and protecting him from evil. That's a pretty neat quid pro quo the two of you have going for one another. Take that away and see what happens!" The accusation is this: Job's religious and moral integrity are the result of God's goodness, protection, and parental care. Satan suggests that Job worships and serves God because it is profitable. Will he if it is not? That is the awful question: Will Job love and serve God simply for God's own sake? Will we?

But notice that it is not only an accusation against Job. It is an accusation against God as well. Can God have such influence upon Job that Job remains upright and blameless, loving God for God's sake, even if all the blessings are taken away? Can God have such influence upon you and me that we love God for God's self alone? God's integrity is being questioned as well. Satan levels the double accusation: "Stretch forth your hand now against all that he has, and he will curse you to your face."

The accusation must be proven false. God consents to having Job so tested -- only Job himself is protected. Satan has permission to tear down the protective fence around Job, that the cruel vicissitudes of life may sweep over him. And indeed, they do. Marauding bandits steal his livestock and kill his servants; lightening destroys his sheep and their shepherds in the fields. While all of this is being reported to Job, word comes that a storm has leveled his children's house killing all of them at once. Job's fortune and future are gone -- wiped out in a morning.

What does Job do? He tears his robe, shaves his head and falls face down on the ground in worship, blessing God. "Naked I came into this life, naked I shall leave it, The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." Such a response is startling to us who have come to see ourselves as the makers of our own lives, the creators of our own destinies. Continue to worship a God who could allow that to happen? How often have you heard it "I cannot believe in a God that would allow Rwanda, Croatia, Auschwitz." Words of people who fear God for what's in it for them, and no longer do so when it is not profitable to them. Our culture seethes with a self-importance which demands that the power behind the universe constantly adjust to our needs, else we don't believe the power exists. But Job is different. Satan was wrong. Job still loves and trusts God. Job repeats his tradition's rituals of grief -- "The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord." -- holding himself together in worship, just as you and I hold ourselves together through such ritual and worship at the time of tragic loss. And we read that "In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong-doing."

But the scene shifts again to the heavenly court. The conversation repeats itself, God not only praising how Job has persisted in his integrity, but actually boasting in him. But it is not over. "Skin for Skin!," says Satan. Let's see if his trust is only skin deep. Let's test this relationship of which you are so boastful, God. After all, "people will give away anything - everything, to save their own lives."2 You see, Satan has been spying on us. He knows our evil ways. He has seen that when push comes to shove, it is our nature to care only about ourselves, to sacrifice everyone else in our lives to save our own hides. It explains the complicity in the atrocities of Rwanda, Croatia, Haiti - a fundamental reflex of self-preservation. It explains the abuse children experience from addicted parents. It explains us at our very worst. Accusing at a more treacherous level Satan says "Touch his bone and flesh, and he will curse you to your face." His integrity is only skin deep.

The awful question leads to more drastic measures. Now everything but Job's life is in Satan's hands, though Job doesn't even know it. Calamity strikes Job's flesh. Covered with loathsome sores, he takes a piece of broken pottery, sits down on an ash heap and begins to scrape his skin. Is it relief for the itching of his flesh, or a distracting counter irritant designed to help him endure the maddening dialogue taking place in his head? We can't be sure. What we do know is that Job is innocent -- his suffering is not punishment for wrongs done. Job knows it too. Why then? He is not yet prepared to conceive some greater purpose to it all. For now he is simply learning that suffering is not just the withdrawal of God's blessing, nor the loss of the good God once gave. Job's relationship with God is turning a corner. He is learning that suffering sometimes involves bearing bad things innocently because doing so serves a purpose we neither can conceive nor understand. Job cannot know of the double accusation, one against God and the other against himself. God is asked if there can in fact be authentic love for God, true worship and servanthood which is not self-serving. Job is asks if, while suffering innocently, it is still possible to believe in God, much less love God. The very nature of the covenant between God and God's people is being tested in Job. Is this relationship between God and us dependent upon the mutual benefit it brings, or is there more to God, to us, and to our relationship than that? Little does Job know that how he responds will answer for both himself and God.

The pious words are gone. Not even rituals help now. There is only raw honesty, tearing at his insides more violently than the potsherd at his flesh, as the awful question begins to dawn on him. Does he love God for nothing? Is his love for God only for the good it will bring Job? Or, does he love God for God's sake alone?

Job says nothing, keeping it all bottled in, lest in opening his mouth one of his thoughts escape and he says more than he wants to say. It should be a word of caution to each of us. In such situations, it is often best to say nothing, lest we end up either being a fool or speaking the accuser's treacherous words. Which is, of course, precisely what Job's wife does. Whereas Job's friends, who we will meet next week, arrive and sit with him in silence for seven days before speaking, she foolishly speaks, unwittingly, yet baldly pressing Satan's question: "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die."

Isn't it interesting that those who are so quick to abandon God in the face of innocent suffering are often not the ones suffering themselves, but the bystanders? Perhaps that is because what they really have been all along is nothing more than bystanders. But Job is no bystander.

Should Job abandon the notion of God altogether, accept responsibility for himself, even if that means taking his own life; should he curse God and die? That is what comes from abandoning God -- death. Soon Job will learn there are conditions in life where death seems more acceptable than life. Job can end it all right there in a verbal barrage of euthanasia. But he will not. Only the fool says there is no God,3 and Job is no fool. God has, he is beginning to suspect, given him over to another power for reasons Job cannot yet comprehend. He will wait. Yet, as we will see next week, he will be anything but sanguine or tolerant of what is happening to him. He will listen, argue, challenge, even make demands of God until the fire of his suffering makes sense.

For now, we must wait with him. But we wait, remembering that another was given into the accuser's hand, but without the provision that his life be spared. We meet him at this table, the one who loved God only for God, and loved us only for ourselves. In the intersection of that love he suffered all that can be suffered, and thereby won victory over suffering and death, not only for himself, but for you and for me as well.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job, THE OLD TESTAMENT LIBRARY, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press), 1985.

J. Gerald Janzen, Job, INTERPRETATION, A BIBLE COMMENTARY FOR TEACHING AND PREACHING, (Atlanta: John Knox Press), 1985.

Marvin H. Pope, Job, THE ANCHOR BIBLE, (New York: Doubleday), 1965.

  1. James 5:11, RSV, though "endurance" is a better translation of the Greek hupomonae than the more traditional "patience," interestingly, the NRSV now translates it "the endurance of Job."
  2. Pope, p. 28.
  3. Psalm 14:1

JOB'S DEMAND

Fred R. Anderson, Pastor © 1994
Job 2: A Series
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 9, 1994
The Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church
New York City, New York

Job 23:1-17
Psalm 22
Hebrews 4:12-16
Mark 10:17-31


Innocent and upright, Job sits on the ash heap surrounded by three friends. Oblivious to the dialogue in heaven between God and Satan, which has brought on his suffering, Job is a victim of Satan's double accusation which Job alone can dispel. Is Job's love for God, his righteousness and uprightness simply offered for what's in it for him? Or does Job love God for God's own sake, regardless? And, does God have influence over humankind to evoke love and goodness in us for their own sakes rather than how we might be rewarded for living that way? Must there be a reward attached for us to love goodness, and walk in God's ways? That is the allegation. Only Job can answer these questions. And, he must answer without God's help in any way. He can't even know that this is a test, and that God knows he is upright and innocent in all of this.

Job sits suffering in silence, saying nothing, lest in doing so he unwittingly voice one of the conflicting thoughts assailing his mind -- thoughts of doubt about himself, thoughts of doubt about God. Enduring the emotional roller coaster of such introspection, he moves like a sine wave from high to low, from insight to confusion, from hope to despair.

Such thoughts are part of the human condition when we encounter hardship or difficulty. What have I done to deserve this? We each know that one. What could I have done to avoid this? That usually comes later. What is the judgment of God for me in this? It is a question worthy of consideration when confronted with adversity or trial. There is always something to learn. But in the cross-fire of self-questioning it is increasingly clear -- Job is innocent and knows it; God, he thinks, should know it too. Why then his suffering?

Three friends arrive to bring comfort and wise counsel. Approaching from a distance, they do not recognize Job, so profoundly has his affliction changed him. Tearing their robes, covering themselves with dust and ashes, they weep. Judiciously they sit with him in silence for seven days. They know it best to say nothing, lest they prove themselves fools, speaking the accuser's treacherous words, as Job's wife had done, or claim to understand what Job is going through, as so many foolishly do when trying to provide unsought counsel to one in grief.

On the eighth day the silence is shattered. Job erupts in a series of curses: Damn the day of my birth; God damn the day I was conceived. Better I should have died at birth.1 Remember, I told you last week, Job is anything but serene in his suffering. Though he will not curse God and die, Job curses his own life. He knows that what he is living through is worse than death and begins to plea for it, hope for it. Cautiously, solicitously, a friend ventures a word, reminding Job of how in the past, Job has instructed others in hardship. Why is it, now as hardship has come to Job, he should be impatient or dismayed? Does Job not know that the innocent never perish. The upright are not cut off, whereas "those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same."2

Thus begins a series of poetic dialogues between Job and his friends in which they first discuss, and eventually argue about life, God's justice and blessing, and Job's motivation for serving God. Behind and within these twenty-four chapters of dialogue lies not only exquisite poetry but the sum of the religious wisdom of the day. The friends argue that righteousness always brings prosperity and wickedness misfortune; that prosperity is proof of divine favor, and misfortune proof of sin. The formal name for this is the doctrine of individual retribution - the orthodoxy of the day. Israel's very life was built on the conviction that walking the ways of God's torah would bring life and peace, and abandoning God's ways would bring judgment, both nationally and personally.3 Notice in the psalter alone, how often and in how many different ways this conviction is affirmed:

"Do not fret because of the wicked; ...

they will soon fade like the grass.

Trust in the Lord, and do good;

you will enjoy security.

Take delight in the Lord,

and he will give you the desires of your heart."

Finally, "I have been young, and now am old,

yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken,

or their children begging bread."4

It is a wonderful sentiment if you have more than you need, but a particularly cruel one if you are a refugee mother whose child is starving, or a father who has lost his job through no fault of his own.

Granted the Bible continues to press on us the goodness of following God's ways. But is it a quid pro quo? After all, as early as Genesis 4 we see innocent suffering as Cain slays his righteous brother Able. Righteous and faithful Uriah becomes a victim of King David's lust. Again and again Jesus reminds his listeners that people's blindness is not the result of their sins, that calamities and disasters are not signs of people's sinfulness.5 Still, Job's friends press their orthodoxy upon him. Obviously he has sinned, if only in some secret way -- this is the reason for his suffering. If he will confess it, God will restore him.

Needless to say, his friends' counsel does not help. We, at least know what they do not know -- Job is innocent! And, his innocence proves that their answers are wrong. To Job, the reasons behind his unjust suffering remain as tangled and unclear as the reasons you and I seek sitting with one we love who is undergoing unexpected, unearned pain, whether physical or emotional. It is as senseless as the chaos we see in our daily papers, or the loss of one we love who has died too soon. It doesn't square with the loving, good God we have been taught to believe in, much less love and trust. But it doesn't square with placing the blame on the sufferer either, much less ourselves.

Job will have none of it. Notice that what has been called patience in Job is anything but equanimity, forbearance, or tolerance. Vacillating between hope and despair each passing dialogue takes Job deeper into the mystery of life. Dejected, pleading that God should allow him to die, return to the dust and sleep in the land of the dead, he spins the dreary dirge:

Mortal, born of woman,

few of days and full of trouble,

comes up like a flower and withers,

flees like a shadow and does not last.

Then suddenly, Job is again fired by the conviction of his innocence, confessing words which we regularly use in our own funeral and memorial liturgies:

"O that my words were written down!

O that they were inscribed in a book!

O that with an iron pen and with lead

they were engraved on a rock forever!

For I know that my Redeemer lives,

and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;

and after my skin has been thus destroyed,

then in my flesh I shall see God,

who I shall see on my side."

Does Job know the full implication of what he is saying? Probably not. In the context of the poem, Job is pleading for a vindicator, an umpire, a witness who will go before him to God to prove Job's integrity. The Christian church will look back on these words and see in them a foretelling of the Christ as he comes to stand between us and God as our vindicator. But that is more than these words can bear in Job's mouth. For now, with words which say more than he can comprehend, and concepts as yet unfamiliar, the poet has, if but for a moment, broken through the ceiling of his day's religious consciousness to suggest something new -- a time beyond death when we will be vindicated in the flesh, and God will be our friend.

No sooner have the words come out of Job's mouth than he falls back into despair. But notice -- in this vacillation between hope and despair Job remains a man of faith. This is to say that hope and despair can both be acts of faith, if they turn us to God. Job has not given up on God. The despair of innocent suffering which may drive the bystander away from God and into atheism, draws the person of faith deeper into the relationship of faith. The pressing question in innocent suffering is not so much "Why?," but "Where will we turn with it?" Will we return to God and seek a redeemer, or curse God and die?

Virtually every argument that has ever been offered to answer the "Why?" question -- how evil can exist in a world created and governed by a good God -- is offered by Job's friends in these twenty-four chapters. But none satisfies, either Job or us.

Eliphaz finally counsels peacemaking with God, telling Job to confess the sin he is hiding. Job is enraged. Peace under such terms would betray not only Job, but more -- God. Job will not speak any more falsely about God than he will about himself, even to alleviate his suffering. There is only one way to answer this. "Oh that I knew where I might find him.... I would lay my case before him." Unwilling to live by the axiomatic truth of his friends, even though religious, ancient and pious, Job insists on living out of the relationship of integrity which he has always known with God. Thus provoked, Job turns from his friends to challenge God's silence. In righteous indignation Job demands to see God!

"Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power?

No; but he would give heed to me.

There an upright person could reason with him and I should be acquitted forever before my judge."6

It is not a request. It is a demand, a rebellion against the way things are, an act of resistance offered in prayer.7

Job is hounding God for vindication in the one place you and I always have permission to do that -- in prayer. For prayer is the only form of revolt acceptable to God.8 In those years I served as chaplain to a group of newly widowed people struggling with their anger at God and their sense of having been let down by the death of their spouse, I always said to them, "Take the Psalmist's cue, do as Job did, vent your anger at God. Tell God you feel let down and abandoned. God can take it. After all, our anger is only a sign of the importance of the relationship, a sign of who we know to be in control, and a sign of our final trust, a of love." For we only enter into such urgent pleas with those we desperately love and trust. Job's demand is both an act of rebellion and love -- insolent loyalty.

The words which have so long been bottled up within him, the frustration, the hurt, are now hurled at God. But the words are no sooner out of his mouth than Job again falls into despair, as he waits.

We too must wait with him. But for this day, let us remember that faith lived in real life is more an emotional roller coaster than a steady and triumphal climb to heaven. Let us remember that faith is not the opposite of despair. When falling from hope to despair, the critical question is not our desperation, but to whom we turn in it. And more, that Job's patient faith is a model for us all in adversity. We have permission to revolt against our circumstances and accost God in prayer. That is the stuff of faith when it confronts the real stuff of life. We too can make Job's demand.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.


NOTES:

  1. Job 3:16
  2. cf. Job 4:1-8
  3. Exodus 23:22ff; Leviticus 26:3-22; Deuteronomy 28.
  4. Psalm 1; 37:25; 69; 73; see also, Isaiah 58:6-14, Jeremiah 17:5-8 Ezekiel 18.
  5. 2 Samuel 11:2-27; John 9:2ff; Luke 13:15, Matthew 5:45.
  6. Job 23:6-7.
  7. Janzen, p. 165.
  8. Ibid.

GOD'S IMPOSSIBLE QUESTIONS

Fred R. Anderson, Pastor © 1994
Job 3: A Series
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 16, 1994
The Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church
New York City, New York

Job 38-41 (selected verses)
Psalm 104
Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45


Job has demanded to see God face to face -- to argue and lay his case before God. The notion, in and of itself, is startling. Remember, the demand is made in the context of a faith which confesses that no one can see God and live; God's righteousness and holiness would immediately consume any who were not righteous and holy. Job is tired of debating the theological orthodoxy of his day: that prosperity is proof of righteousness and divine favor, and that his misfortune is proof of his sin. This doctrine of individual retribution, upon which Israel's very life was built,1 has Job in a box. He knows that he is just and upright. We know it too, having heard God say so at the beginning of the story. God has been listening but has remained silent, a silence Job has confused either for God's absence or indifference to his suffering.

It is a common error all of us make. With the psalmist of last week, we cry "Why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far away from my groaning and complaint?" But do not equate silence with absence or indifference -- they are quite different things. Sometimes silence is respect - as was the case with Job's friends through their seven day vigil with him. Sometimes silence is the only authentic way to be present -- there is nothing to say -- as in those moments when we support the grieving. And sometimes silence is forbearance, giving us time to work through what needs to be done to demonstrate who we are. None of these is God's absence or indifference.

This silence is God's forbearance. Remember, this has come about for Job because of Satan's double allegation about Job and God. Does Job love God for God's own sake, regardless, or only so long as it is profitable for Job? And, does God have influence over humankind to evoke love and goodness in us for their own sakes rather than how we might be rewarded for living that way? Those are the questions only Job can answer. God's silence is God's forbearance as we wait to see what Job will do.

Job has a complaint. He wants not only to see God, but to take God to court! In the face of such a shocking demand, there is an even greater shock. God appears. Ironically enough, it is in a whirlwind, just as Job had feared.2 But rather than crush Job, much less indulge Job's obsession with his own integrity, God goes on the offensive with God's impossible questions.

"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."

Is God simply pulling the rug out from beneath Job's feet -- overwhelming him with God's majesty and power, and reminding Job to get back in line, quit sniveling, and take the good with the bad? Is that what these questions of "Who do you think you are?," "Where were you when ...?," and "Are you really able ...?" are all about? Is God really just playing politician with a divine filibuster -- a windy attempt to talk around, yet avoid the real issue, a blustery power game meant to exhaust Job until he knuckles under and allows himself to be dismissed? Or is something more at work here, something which may reveal more about Job and his importance to God than Job knows. Is God putting innocent suffering in a more profound context, not only for Job, but for us as well?3

The answer comes when we look closely at God's impossible questions. Are they only rhetorical, designed to leave Job whimpering in the dust? Or, are they real questions which when contemplated beyond their rhetorical nature, not only give answers to Job's questions, but remind him of his vocation as well?

Job has maintained his own innocence between the rock of the theology of individual retribution and the hard place of his innocent suffering. Doing so, Job has made some significant charges about God and the way God has ordered life. He has suggested that God's design in creation is one of darkness4, in the words of poet Robert Frost a "design of darkness to appall."5 Is that true? Is God's purpose in creation perverse? Or is it simply inadequate? Those are the questions God's impossible questions address.

Virtually every question God asks in today's lesson deals with a subject Job has raised in the debate with his three friends, conversations about God as creator, the purpose of creation, and what it means to be God's creatures. Job has acknowledged that light and darkness, order and chaos, wildness and civility, justice and inequity, the good and the wicked co-exist in the world, seeing this as a judgment on God and the way God governs. God's response names each point, countermanding the theology of both Job and his friends, demolishing the notion of a mechanical world of justice expressed in the doctrine of individual retribution.

God has not designed the world that way. Creation is wonderful, meaningful, worthwhile -- yes, even playful. But God has not made it thus by the sheer elimination of darkness, wildness, chaos, or evil. Rather, God has drawn them together in a balance of light and dark, civility and wildness, order and chaos, good and evil to create a world not only of spectacular beauty and power, but one where authentic freedom and love are real possibilities. For without such balance between opposites, without the choice, there can be no good freely chosen. God will not adopt a stance of overwhelming, totalitarian power applied from the top down in a mechanistic way, as a means for governing the world.6 God will not crush wickedness every time it appears, not only because doing so would eliminate all of us at one point or another, but more, because in such a totalitarian world, freedom would not be possible. And without freedom, there can be no authentic love.

The question of the prologue now stands in bold relief. In a world where we are not only free to choose good or evil, but free to make choices which serve only ourselves with no regard for others, can God have influence on humankind to evoke in us reason for living out our vocations to love and do good for someone's sake other than our own? Is our living motivated out of love for God, or only because we fear what God will do if we don't live God's way?

But there is more behind God's impossible questions. Listen to them as real questions rather than rhetorical ones and they help us understand what it means to be a creature in this created order. Then the answer to God's question "Who do you think you are?," is plain. We are the zenith of creation. We are the only ones in the entire created order made in God's own image. It answers the psalmist's question "What are we that you should be mindful of us? Mortals that you should care for us? For you have made us a little less than divine beings, crowning us with glory and honor, and giving us dominion over the works of your hands."7 It is a reminder of whose image we bear -- who we are. It asks whose we are. As for "Where were you when ...?" God is saying, "Wake up! Don't you remember that I have placed all of creation into your hands for your dominion. Where were you at creation when I said:" "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."8 This also answers the last question "Are you able...?,"and does so with a resounding "Yes!" God has given us dominion as stewards. Get with the program.

In the first speech God has refutated a theology that would reduce God to a totalitarian power imposed from above to crush everything that is not good, and challenged Job, indeed all of us, to a deeper commitment to our vocation as God's image bearers in the world. It ends with this question: "Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Anyone who argues with God must respond." But Job is not so sure. Whether still angry, not yet convinced, or both, Job is not ready to do more than listen. He asks a rhetorical question of his own: "If I am of no account, why ask?"

Now we are at the moment of truth. Told again to gird himself for a struggle, God levels the question which reveals what is really going on when we question innocent suffering: "Will you condemn me that you may be justified? Do you have an arm like God's?" God's second speech says that if Job wants to take on the role of being the sovereign of the universe he had best demonstrate his ability to do so. Is he able to manage the monsters of land and sea, the Behemoth and Leviathan -- symbols of the earth and sea's chaos at their most powerful? Is Job able to play with them as God does? More, is Job able to use these awesome realities to serve God's ultimate purposes in the world? God does! The impact of the rhetorical question is clear: Job must give up the notion that the creature can define the creator, or instruct God on issues of justice and sovereign rule, lest God be turned into nothing more than the dispenser of reward and punishment based on our puny conceptions of good and evil. God's ways are not our ways. God's justice is not reducible to our conception of it. Job is innocent, but it is quickly becoming a matter of pride. Is Job ready to stop pressing his innocence at the expense of God's complicity? There are other factors at work in his suffering. There is more than Job's integrity at stake. Will Job abandon God to justify himself?

Yet, the question "Are you able?" is more than rhetorical, and presses an even more profound truth on us. Yes, we are able to manage the ambiguities of life created by the tension between chaos and order, light and dark, good and evil. We are able, in the language of the gospel today, to drink the cup, be baptized with the baptism which bears innocent suffering because it serves the redemptive purposes of God, if we remain true to God. Indeed, living in this world does mean innocent suffering. The question is not "Why?," but "Where do we go with it?" Do we suffer it blindly, curse God and die? Or, do we bear it as God's servants, just as Job has done, just as Jesus Christ will ultimately do, trusting that through it God is at work, not only to contain chaos and evil, but ultimately to use them and transform them into God's means for redeeming the world? More about that next week. For today, the promise behind God's impossible questions is this: when caught in suffering that is innocent, Job, indeed each of us, is able to bear it if we do not doubt God's intention and motivation, but draw near to God, yes, even demanding God's presence.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Thomas Dozeman, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, After Pentecost 2, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993,

Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job, THE OLD TESTAMENT LIBRARY, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press), 1985.

J. Gerald Janzen, Job, INTERPRETATION, A BIBLE COMMENTARY FOR TEACHING AND PREACHING, (Atlanta: John Knox Press), 1985.

Marvin H. Pope, Job, THE ANCHOR BIBLE, (New York: Doubleday), 1965.

  1. Exodus 23:22ff; Leviticus 26:3-22; Deuteronomy 28
  2. Job 9:16-17
  3. Thomas Dozeman, p. 94.
  4. Job 12:22
  5. Robert Frost, "Design, " The Top 500 Poems, William Harmon, ed., (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), p. 910. Note that Frost is working with the theme in Job 12:22.
  6. Janzen, p. 244.
  7. Psalm 8:4-6, my paraphrase.
  8. Genesis 1:27-28

THE ONLY THING BETTER THAN AN ANSWER

Fred R. Anderson, Pastor © 1994
Job 4: A Series
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time
October 23, 1994
The Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church
New York City, New York

Job 38:1-6, 10-17
Psalm 34
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 10:46-52


Job had demanded to see God face to face -- to lay his case before the Lord in a lawsuit. Surprisingly enough God responded, but immediately when on the offensive asking: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?"

Words without knowledge -- it describes the entire dialogues between Job and his friends. It is a critique on the sum of the wisdom of the day, for that is what the dialogues are. But it also challenges Job's increasingly distorted questioning of God's motivation. From the whirlwind God has challenged both Job and his friends, laying before us what it means to be God, governing a world in which order and chaos, good and evil, light and dark co-exist, but do so as a purposeful part of creation. It is not an accident of creation nor something that has gotten beyond God's control. Rather, without such balance between opposites, without such choice, there can be no freedom, much less good freely chosen; no love for God for God's own sake. God will not adopt a stance of overwhelming, totalitarian power applied from the top down in a mechanistic way, as a means for governing the world.1 God's ways are not our ways. Nor is God's justice reducible to our conception of it. God will not crush wickedness every time it appears, nor obliterate the dark side of life. Rather, God will use it. Yes, Job is innocent. But there are other factors at work in his suffering. There is more than his own integrity at stake. Will he condemn God so that Job may be justified?

As today's lesson opens, Job takes his hand from his mouth and responds: "I know ... no, even more, You know you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted."2 Then, repeating two of the questions God has asked him, Job seems to capitulate to God's fiery filibuster. Is that it? Is Job completely overwhelmed by the otherness of God? Is the poet telling us that our only possible response in suffering is stoic surrender to the will of God? Are we to humiliate ourselves with words of self-deprecation and lie down in the dust and ashes of our mortality? Or is this high sarcasm defiant still, a tongue-in-cheek response to escape the wrath of an arbitrary despot? Has the poet exposed God as a blustery orator who is only mollified by acts of extreme obeisance and self-humiliation, demanding that we constantly confess our frail humanity? These are two classic explanations of Job's response.3 One interpreter has even offered a third conclusion, seeing in Job's response a final, desperate act of defiance which rejects God as nothing more than an unjust and cruel overlord. To this interpreter, Job comes of age and leaves God behind to cast his lot with all who live in dust and ashes.4

Each of these answers miss the point. Each have been so overwhelmed with Job's suffering they have failed to see the larger framework of the story. God has arrived, spoken face to face with Job and Job is still on his feet! Job is righteous. Job is upright. Job is vindicated. His suffering has been innocent, if incomprehensible, and for a purpose which Job never comes to understand. But facing God's questions Job realizes he has heard a new perspective, one for which he had dared to speak, but one which he did not comprehend. Indeed, he had dared "darken counsel with words without knowledge." Recognizing that now, Job will no longer assert his ability to assess what God is up to in his life. Cutting short his "I know" with the stronger "You know that you can do all things.," Job is saying "Don't ask me questions which only you can answer. I have learned my lesson." And lest we think this mere tacit agreement concealed in false humility, Job goes on to openly say, "I have uttered what I did not understand.," -- God's very accusation. And so Job's words amount to a complete retraction of his previous assertion that creation was out of control, perverse, or designed by God to afflict us. Yet, if this is not fawning, deceptive humility, or worse, being grounded into nothingness for his presumptuousness, what is it? Job has just been given the only thing better than an answer. Job has been reconciled to God.

Last week we left Job sitting in silence, with his hand clasped over his mouth, having answered God with a rhetorical question, "If I am of no account, why ask?" But now Job speaks. "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;" It has been called the difference between hearsay religion and authentic faith. One is built on what others say about God, the other out of a dynamic, day to day relationship with God. Until now Job had lived out of what others had said about God -- hearsay! Now Job has seen God face to face, and it has changed him, as such encounters always do. It reminds us that there is no real change in us so long as our relationship with God is a matter of hearsay. New life emerges only when we draw near to God so that God can draw near to us. Then change begins. In his suffering, Job has been forced to move beyond the easy answers of others, beyond what he has been taught, beyond even the theological orthodoxy of his day, to reach out into the terrifying unknown and risk encounter with God. Doing so he is changed.

Suffering can do that for us. As I have said throughout this series, the question in the book of Job is not "Why innocent suffering?," but rather "What will you and I do with our innocent suffering? Where will we go with it? Who has the power to transform it into good?" Let me be more practical still: Job has used his suffering to get angry at God -- to argue with God. Notice that such anger is not sin -- not a distancing ourselves from God. Only unspoken anger is sin -- only it creates distance.5 Only anger which is harbored -- nurtured, allows the separation to fester and grow. Voiced anger begins conversation, and forges new relationship, as every couple who has ever been angry with one another knows. As I have told many a husband or wife in marriage counseling, expressing anger in honesty is not destructive, but the stuff which strengthens as well as changes the relationship. Job's anger expressed at God has actually drawn Job nearer to God. And, drawn into the presence of God, Job is changed.

Job's faith has served him through the struggle, because it has continued to send him back to God with his complaint. In the encounter his innocence is vindicated. Job ends with his integrity in tact. He makes no confession of sin, guilt or pride. Nor is Job accused of any of these. He has simply been living with a false notion about God. Which is to say, you and I are not saved by our opinions about God -- our theology, orthodox or heterodox as it might be -- but by trust in God, the dynamic we call faith.

God has not overwhelmed Job nor driven him to false humiliation, much less driven him away in anger. God has allowed Job to see things as they really are, so that in wonder Job can respond, "I despise what I have said." Here, our English translation fails us. Job does not say "I despise myself," as the NRSV translates verse 6a.6 Using the biblical word which simply means a change of mind -- "repent" -- Job is better translated "I despise my words. I let my mouth overload my life. I withdraw my case, and doing so, repent of these ashes and dust; I will leave them behind." Job does not repent in ashes and dust. He repents of ashes and dust.7

It is the final signal that Job has received something better than an answer. It is the sign that in the encounter with God, real healing has occurred, real change. Job no longer needs to claim his innocence, nor hang onto his suffering as a point of identity. We all know people who have not been able to leave their suffering behind, but made it an insufferable part of their identity. Not so for Job. He has learned of the trustworthiness of God in all things. He can leave the ash heap of humiliated suffering behind, the sure sign that authentic healing has come when one has suffered.

Having withdrawn his case against God, God pronounces the verdict: Job was right about his innocence. His friends were the ones who were wrong. Not only had they offered theology when what Job needed was compassion -- theologians beware and take note! -- they had misrepresented God, adding to Job's suffering. They must go to Job and offer a burnt offering, and Job will become an intercessor on their behalf. This is not only complete vindication for Job -- as all who see his friends parade through the streets with their seven bulls and seven rams will immediately know -- it is more. Since God is not bound by our notion of justice -- personal retribution - God can respond to the plea of the righteous one, and deliver his theological friends from the punishment they rightly deserved. The one who sought a mediator has himself become the mediator through his suffering.

The one who wanted a vindicator has become a vindicator through his suffering. God did take a risk in creating a world where good and evil co-exist, so that we might have freedom and choice. But what other way was there to create the possibility of a relationship between us and God, built on love rather than fear, trust rather than trepidation? Job has loved God for God's own sake. But more, Job shows that God can create in us authentic love which suffers innocently because doing so serves God's purposes. Job has vindicated God.

Someone said to me early on in this series, all of this is very well and good if you are innocent. But what does it mean for me? What it means for all of us is, that innocent suffering is redemptive, not for oneself, but for those who need redemption. Job is the poetic archetype of the One who will later come, the One who will not only suffer, but die -- not on the page through fictional poetry, but in the flesh and blood of human life. Job suffers to disprove Satan's double allegation, Jesus dies to do so. But even more, Jesus will tempt the tempter, seduce the seducer, and take evil at its worst to prove that humankind can love God and one another for love's sake. And when it is done, evil will have unwittingly served God's purpose. Evil will have been transformed into good by innocent suffering, to become the means of redemption for us all. That is the mystery of the cross. There Jesus reveals the depth of human love -- for God and for us, and becomes, in the image of our Epistle lesson today, the one to save all who approach God through him.

In the story Job interceded for his friends. So the risen Christ intercedes for us even now. The only thing better than an answer, Jesus Christ draws us beyond hearsay religion to authentic faith. In him we find a day to day relationship with the living God where there is forgiveness for our failure, comfort in suffering, and power for new life. But more, in him we know that our redeemer lives, and at the last he shall stand upon the earth, and in our flesh, we too shall see God, and see God on our side.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.


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NOTES:

  1. Janzen, p. 244.
  2. See Dozeman, p.105, and Janzen, ps. 251, for a discussion of the translation of qere-kethib as second person masculine singular form of "to know" and the impact of the Masorete editor on the text which has cause many to translate this "I know" rather than the more grammatically correct "You know..."
  3. Habel, p. 577.
  4. J. Curtis, Journal of Biblical Literature, 98, 1979, pp. 487-511, as cited in Habel, p. 578.
  5. Ephesians 4:26.
  6. The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Metzger & Murphy, ed., (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 672 OT. To the editors' credit they acknowledge as much in the footnote, recognizing the verb "despise" does not have an object in the Hebrew, and therefore must be read more contextually.
  7. cf. Habel, p. 582f, and especially Janzen, p. 255f.