Country singer Michael Peterson sings, “You know you’re in trouble, when the bartender cries.”
Such is the theme of much of American folk music. For our human experience
has taught us that suffering shapes much of our lives. And, in our suffering,
often it seems that God is absent, or at least silent. At those times,
we feel that we have to have “the patience of Job”—that is, to sit passively with God’s silence. And yet, as we will discover, when Job’s patience ran out, he began to
discover a God that he never had really ever known.
The Book of Job is the story of a man, Job, who was “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” This blameless man got caught up in a wager between God and “the Satan,” a prosecuting attorney
figure in God’s royal service. The wager between God and the Satan
was over whether Job was righteous because God had blessed him, and whether Job would remain righteous if his prosperity were
removed from him. Therefore, Job lost everything—his property, his servants, his children, his friends, neighbors, and
his health. And most of all, Job lost his assurance that God was a “Just
God,” rewarding those who were righteous and punishing those who were evil.
In the midst of his suffering, as his whole world has been collapsing about him—Job screamed out in pain and frustration
to God. He screamed out in pain for God to give him meaning to all his
grief and suffering. That scream has been the scream of persons from Bosnia to Baghdad to Brownsville to Blacksburg to Beckley. And yet God’s assurance
remained silent in the face of humanity’s suffering.
Finally, Job lost his patience with God. Therefore he demanded that God come down from heaven and that God answer for
God’s injustices to Job. And yet, in Job’s demand that God
answer to him, Job had taken seriously his God and his relationship with God.
Finally God answered Job through two speeches. In those speeches
the distance between the Creator God and the human creature became apparent. Tom
Are, a fellow Presbyterian Minister, put it this way, “...God introduces
Job to the realms of biological, zoological, and meteorological wonder. In the
mist of these realms—which mortals cannot fully comprehend—there is order and wisdom; not an immediate and inflexible,
or a particularly obvious order, but rather a more flexible order that demands patience and wonder and profound wisdom.”
(Interpretation, 2006, p 294-298)
In God’s
speaking to him, Job discovered that he simply could not understand the mind of the creator. God is God—and Job is not
God!
In response to Job’s discovery of God, Job uttered a profound statement of his faith. He said, “I
had heard of you by the hearing of the ear” or as the Good News Translation put it, “In the past I knew only what others had told me...” Through
this profession of Job’s faith, Job disclosed his own faith journey. In
the past Job had known God only through what others had told him about God—his instruction in the faith by his family
and friends—and his participation in the worshipping synagogue community.
But, God had not left him with only second-hand knowledge, for Job continued, “...but now I have seen you with my own eyes.” Through Job’s
suffering, as the storms of life had swirled all about him—in the midst of those storms, Job had sensed God’s
stooping down to him and having compassion upon him.
And as the result of Job having met God face-to-face, his life was transformed. Job testified to that transformation
in saying, “therefore I am ashamed for
all that I have said and I repent in dust and ashes.” The word
“repent” in Hebrew means
“to change one’s mind”. As a result of God speaking to Job, Job realized that previously he had not
really known God. And yet, in the midst of his suffering, Job had come
to know God as the Creator of the Universe who had chosen to have a special relationship with his human creature Job. And Job claimed a future tied to the God, which he had come to know through
his suffering. Because Job had refused to passively submit to stock answers
that had been presented by his friends and family, Job had come to find meaning amidst the grief and the ashes of his former
life.
Bill Brown, former professor at Union-PSCE, now at Columbia Seminary, put it this way, “Defiance and despair, outrage and protest, all are a part of being honest to God and neighbor, indeed, they are part and parcel
of the ongoing search for answers.”
At the same time as God was having compassion on Job—God was angry with Job’s friends for not speaking the
truth about God. They therefore were to take offerings to Job and to sacrifice
them to God for their sinfulness. Job in turn would pray for them.
Job did pray for those who had been his tormentors, and later invited them to dine with him in his home. Job was able to be reconciled with them, for Job had experienced God’s compassion in his own life.
In Job’s willingness to forgive those who had tormented him—I am reminded of how Mrs. Coretta Scott King
and Dexter King, several years ago met with James Earl Ray, the murderer of Dr. Martin Luther King. And during that meeting, they forgave the man who had caused so much pain to their family, and to
our nation as a whole. Certainly, the King family could not forget what
James Earl Ray had done. At the same time, in their forgiving him, the
King family refused to be bound by the pain of their past—the pain that this murderer had caused. They claimed a new future, trusting in the God who redeems us.
The desire to forgive another person who has harmed us is always is initiated by the Christ, who from the cross forgave
those who crucified him. For us to be able to forgive another person is
to be freed from being a hostage to hostility. It is to be freed, in order
that we might be able to move from being a hostage to hostility, to being able to embrace the hope of God’s new future.
In the closing verses of the Book of Job, God chose to restore Job’s life of what once it had been. God’s restoration of Job was not done out of any sense of obligation or
any sense of repentance on God’s part. Rather, Job’s restoration was an act of God’s compassion on Job.
In that restoration, God blessed Job twice what he had before. But it would be naïve for us to think that even with
his new family of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, the new family would replace those children that had been
killed by the tornado. Instead, Job had learned to accept his grief over the loss of his children, and at the same time, to
remain open to God’s future blessings.
Life began anew for Job. But life was not the same as before. It never could be the same as before, since Job was not the same as before.
For Job had been transformed through his face-to-face encounter with God.
That transformation was manifested in his stewardship of life. Previously,
Job had spent incredible sums of money in seeking to appease the God that he had feared.
And yet, he had come to see the gifts that he had been given; they were exactly that—they were gifts. He came to see that he had been blessed—not so that he might horde his gifts, but rather that
he might use them in being a blessing unto others.
Further, in the Hebrew tradition, daughters could only inherit an estate if there were no sons. Job however chose to go against that tradition and culture, and to provide for his daughter’s and
his son’s financial independence.
Finally, when his life had been prosperous, Job had sought to help the poor, the orphaned, and the widows. Even in his suffering, Job had cried out against the injustices in which the wicked gained wealth
from the poor’s suffering. Therefore, I believe that the transformed
Job continued to give wise counsel and leadership to others toward the caring for the weakest members of that society. I believe that the transformed Job used his new wealth to help provide for the
needs of the poor, the orphan, the widow, the blind, the lame, and the resident alien that was living in that land. For through his suffering, Job had come to see that God had given him gifts not to make him happy,
but to make him useful.
