It isn't about Job... or us.

Job 31:35-40, Job 38:1-11

The story of Job has been leading up to this seminal question. “Where were you, Job, when the foundations of the earth were being laid?”

I don’t know how many of you have been following along with the book of Job, but to this point, Job has lost everything—his family, his wealth, his land, his servants, everything but his life. His friends have come offering terrible advice, and Job has responded with his own misunderstandings about God, unable to imagine any God but the one who gives and takes away. Job lacks what we might call the “gospel,” he has had no preacher to offer it to him, and so he feels no hope for the future.

All of this is to say that Job may hit a little close to home today. Like Job, we may well be lost, confused, and grieving. It’s almost worse that it’s not completely clear what we are grieving. So, we come back in-person today and in some ways that might feel great, and in some ways, it might also feel awkward, or confusing, or uncertain. You may be wondering when we will get back to normal, but those who have gone through grief—the long road, not the shortcut of pretending it’s all over—know that what we knew as normal is gone and we will have to grieve that.

            Job was looking for normal, but he also knew he couldn’t get it. He knew there was no going back. So, he grumbled and fussed and complained about how unfair it all was, and for 37 chapters, God let him rant, waiting and watching. “Then the LORD answered Job from the whirlwind.”

            I want to talk today about what God didn’t do. God didn’t do theology. God didn’t answer Job’s questions or argue Job’s points. God didn’t explain the nature of good and evil or even respond to any of the demands that Job levied. God didn’t use logic, didn’t cite any studies, or demand that Job follow some kind of formula.

            Instead, God simply asks, “Who do you think you are, Job?”

            “Who created the world?”

            “Who gave you this life?”

            “Where were you, Job, when it all came together?”

            This is not the response Job is expecting. Job lost everything. Job didn’t deserve it. Job is crushed by grief. But you know the secret? It isn’t about Job! At first this might seem like bad news for Job, but Job already knew this. Sometimes there is freedom in hearing an uncomfortable truth. God tells it to Job like it is—not how he wishes it would be.

            You know where I’m going with this, don’t you? It isn’t about us, either! That desire to return to normal is born from a desire to feel like things are under our control, but they never completely are. Naturally, that’s not an argument for any particular action. It’s extremely unclear what we as a church should be doing in this moment, but the question we should be asking is the same: “Is it about God, or is it about us?”

            It’s kind of an impossible question, and it’s the last thing we want to be thinking about when we are trying to navigate our first pandemic, but it’s also the question that God brings to Job in a similar position. What world did we create? Who are we?

            Though this may feel harsh for a person who is already feeling the fullest extent of grief over loss, this is exactly the question that will bring us through that grief. Who do we think we are? The best news is that we are not God, because if we were, this feeling of being out of control would be evidence of a world that no force can harness. If we were God, then our failures would be final. The reminder that we are not God is both law and Gospel—a harsh reality-check and the only hope of salvation. We need to remember the majesty of a creator whose creation bears testimony to wonders beyond our imagining.

            We need more imagination.

            We are going to need it all the more in the months ahead. We need wisdom, yes, but wisdom comes from having enough imagination to see the opportunity present in every obstacle. Rather than attempting to fit an abnormal time into our own hope for normalcy, we need the requisite imagination to make things new. I have tremendous hope for the church to be that body who responds in this way, because the church is that rare force that is strongest in weakness, defined not by our greatness but by our love for the margins, the least, the last, and the lost.

            This is a time pregnant with imagination, and when I hear God speaking to Job (and I think all of us) about the wonder of creation, I can’t help but be filled with some of that spirit that I tend to think inhabited those forefathers who founded this country. These were flawed folks, to be sure, but they had both the imagination and the guts to stick with an experiment that birthed the broken and beautiful country in which we live today. At our best, we are a people under God who recognize that none of this is ours, yet in the imagination gifted to us from on high we can form something better. The question, as always, is whether we are up to the challenge.

            Imagination fades quickly when we are stressed. In the last several months, there have been many times when my imagination has left me. We should be kind with ourselves, acknowledging that each of us is dealing with more stress than we probably realize. But through that stress, there will be moments of opportunity, moments where God may speak to us and say, “Who are you?” Who created you? And if we can see the answer—if we can see the God who crafted us and this world—then perhaps we can imagine a new and better way forward.

            But even if we don’t—even if we are stuck in the mud, searching for normal—we have a God who meets us and asks, “Who are you?” Who made the foundations of the universe? Well? It isn’t about us. Thank God.