The patience of Job
Early on in reflecting on the lessons for today I wondered where the proverb that most of us have heard would have actually come from? The patience of Job. If you read the book of Job you cannot help but recognize that Job himself is anything but patient. In fact, over and over again, you will encounter a man who has experienced unimaginable loss and who argues with God, powerfully argues, that he didn't deserve it. Job is not an example of patience.
I had to look up the answer. That I had to look it up and didn't know it is, in part, a measure of my having grown old, and it is also a function of not knowing the Bible as well as my Baptist friends. Good source of the proverb is from the New Testament, the letter of James 5:11. It is also a product of a mistranslation from the Greek into English. In the King James Bible we read, “Ye have heard of the patience of Job.” This led to generations trying to read Job as having been a long-suffering faithful servant. Modern versions use words like: steadfastness, perseverance, endurance.
Job is almost unbelievably steadfast through 42 chapters, and to get there he endures a lot.
Job
You may remember that two weeks ago I made reference to the book of Job, from which we read the opening. In a kind of big picture way, what the book of Job is dealing with is the experience that is all too common, even universal, that innocent people suffer, bad things happen to good people.
Personally I have thought of Job as one of the most important books in the Bible precisely because it is dealing with and experience that is so prevalent and is a formidable challenge to anyone trying to live a life of faith in a God who cares about the world, to say nothing of a God who loves you and me.
I once used to frequently make the claim that on the basis of the evidence in the world around us, the news we see on TV, the news we read about in papers and magazines, made it easier to believe in evil than in God. I no longer see that as quite so obvious, but the world I look at leans in that direction.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once powerfully said: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
He was echoing a fuller statement from Unitarian minister in the 1850's who said:
"Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."
I do believe that conclusion -- but sometimes the "arc" seems infinitely long.
As I indicated two weeks ago, the preliminary setting for the bulk of the book is a strange scenario where God accepts the wager of his prime prosecutor, Ha Satan, that God would test the strength of Job’s trust by taking away everything that mattered in Job's life. All of that was just to see if Job would remain faithful or not.
This week we have heard from the beginning of the ending of the book. It is the dramatic re-entrance of God into the narrative.
In the intervening chapters that were summarized in the reading last week that we didn’t hear, Job is visited by four of his friends.
Job's friends1
Job's friends initially responded as any genuine friend would in the face of catastrophe.
- They showed up, empathized with him.
- Spent time with him.
- At first they were Silent.
- then in chapters 4-25 they give speeches to Job.
Their speeches are pretty intense and Job is not very receptive to their message.
Eliphaz the Temanite. After Job complains to God about the injustice of his suffering, he is the first to speak. For Eliphaz it seems clear that Job must not fear God. His basic assumption is that suffering must be punishment from God is his basic assumption.
Bildad the Shuhite is the second to speak. He advises Job that he should confess his wrongs. It is clear to Bildad that Job must not be upright and righteous, since it is his deep conviction that God's infinite justice means that God punishes the wicked. Before God no one can be righteous.
Zophar the Naamathite Tells Job he deserves even more than what he got. He recognizes that sometimes God allows the wicked to flourish.
Elihu arrives later than the 3 initial friends. He focuses first on a rebuke of the 3 friends. For Elihu the 3 friends primarily understood God as a God who makes sure that sinful humans are held accountable. For example punishing the sinful. Rather he is keen to say, God is greater than any mortal can imagine. God's justice is supreme. He focuses on God's supreme greatness, beyond what we can understand.
Elihu’s speeches immediately precede the reading we had today.
Arguments advanced in later centuries
Down through the ags, humans have made the same kind of presumptions the first three friends of Job had. I cannot begin to count the times I have heard people say in response to some terrible event or circumstance in their life the kind of rhetorical question aimed at God, “why me? what have I done to deserve this?”
There have, however, been other arguments made in response to the suffering the innocent.
One approach is to argue that God causes people to suffer so that they can be stronger. Or to understand Truth more fully. The argument would maintain that suffering is for education. Another variation is to posit another force in the world that is in opposition to God. That’s where the devil comes and the mis-reading of the title “Ha Satan” in Job. Such a dualism understands the forces of good and evil to be at war with one another, and at one time or another one force may be stronger than another. A Christian dualism would always maintain that good (or God) will prevail in the end.
A 3rd argument that one encounters frequently has to do with “free will.” This view argues that at the creation, God recognized that “free will” was a supreme good for humanity and so it was built in. This view would describe the suffering and evil in the world as the product of “free will” rather than of God’s omnipotence. The final chapters of the book of Job gives us another alternative response to evil and the suffering of the innocent. In a nutshell this response says something like this: God is a mystery beyond understanding and explaining. God's ways are not our ways. The only way to find some understanding before the incalculable suffering of the Innocent ones is to see with new eyes, with mystical eyes, of the sort that Jesus brought to his followers.
Lord spoke out of a whirlwind
As I said I understand the book of Job to be a very important book in the Bible. I’ve taken some time to present an overview of the text up to the point where we begin today’s reading. I want it to carry some of the solemnity that’s required if we’re going to even begin to imagine what is happening in chapter 38.
I imagine God running out of patience with Job. As if he were to say, "Enough already. Enough of trying to understand, to follow the rituals, to do the right thing, or blame the right figure."
"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…”
I think of this moment as not unlike the earthquake that Matthew describes in his gospel at the time of the Resurrection. This is a big deal.
Mystical awareness
If we are to rightly understand these words we have to be able to see and hear and speak with a new awareness. It takes a mystical awareness. It takes a sensitivity that is comfortable with living with questions and not needing the answers, at least not right away. It’s almost not human, because we instinctively want to know the answers, we want to know the solutions, we want to know how the story ends.
James & John want to tell Jesus what to do
We are like the disciples that we also heard about today. James and John want to be able to tell Jesus want to do. They want things to be my way or the highway, love it or leave it. They want to be able to sit with Jesus at his right hand.
I recognize that impulse within me. Perhaps you do as well. And it makes total sense that the disciples were not pleased with James and John. But they could not really understand Jesus’ response either.
The son of man came to serve not to be served. The tables are turned upside down, and our expectations are turned on their heads. To see and recognize this is to see with mystical vision, as if we get a glimpse of what it was like to be there when God laid the foundation of the earth. This is what happened to Job when he ran out of arguments. This is what happens when God speaks from the whirlwind and the earthquake. But it also happens in the still small voice that Elijah heard. It happens in untold, countless ordinary events and circumstances that becomes luminous with the presence of God.
The intensity of the Resurrection is what makes real the movement that motivated us last week as we claimed the promise of God: that our Lament might live into the Hope of our Longing.
We live in a time of unfolding mystery. In so many ways we don't know what tomorrow will bring, but with Job we can bow in reverence because we can see and hear and know that God is God.
It is no time to be demanding that we are right and they are wrong, whoever the "they" is. Like James and John we really want to be right, we really want to be -- well, at least, equal among equals.
Like the moment when Job was touched by God's voice in the midst of the storm, Jesus speaks to us in the midst of our lives. We have our plans or expectations. We have our hopes and the expectation that they will be fulfilled according to our specifications. Like Jesus' disciples through the centuries, we must hear his response with new ears and listen with new understanding:
"The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."
It is in fact great good news that we don't have to be right. We don't have to be "top dog." Jesus has put everyone above him. The Lord himself has made everyone more important than he. If that is where he is -- how much more do we need to be there with him.
Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment