Happily ever after. That’s what Job got: His happily ever
after.
But why
does he get to live happily ever after? That’s what I’m curious about, because
there are plenty of really good folks who don’t get a happily ever after. We
don’t have to look very far to see evidence that this is often not how the
world works. So, what did it take for Job, and what might we learn from this?
Job’s case
is actually fairly simple. He gets his happily ever after once he admits he
doesn’t know a thing about God. Then, he confesses and bingo: Things are set
right. That formula is a good starting point, but I’ve got to admit it also
makes me uncomfortable for several reasons. First, being humble and confessing
doesn’t bring people back from the dead, and second, my job is quite literally
to say things about God, which is part of Job’s problem. I can try to preach
with humility and an understanding that I haven’t got it all figured out, which
is very true, but still I am saying things about God all the time. Job’s story
reminds me of why it can be very tricky to say much about God without subtly
trying to be God.
There’s an
old Latin saying, “Traduttore, traditore” that in English means, “Translator,
traitor.” It is often meant in relation to translating the Bible—that whoever
attempts to take an idea in one language and translate it into words in another
will inevitably be a traitor to the original text and its meaning. This is very
true of the Bible, but a level deeper, it’s also very true of our entire
experience of God. Every time you attempt to speak of God’s nature you are filtering
God through your little perspective. To attempt to give words to God is to be a
kind of traitor.
Every week
I preach I am a kind of traitor. And, yet, without talking about God, we would
have no shared knowledge of God to form a community of faith. This is a tension
in which we live as fallen, broken human beings attempting to name the
unnameable, even as we need each other to tell us that greatest of all stories.
More than
anything, I believe Job’s story is a cautionary tale about our desire for
certainty. The certainty Job needs is not the certainty of good things awaiting
us, not the certainty of having God figured out, and not even the certainty of
knowing that we will live. Instead, we should cling to the certainty that God
has named us, called us, and loved us. It’s a matter of direction. When the
direction of our proclamation is from us to God, it is like seeing through a
particularly dim mirror, but God’s actions toward us are clear and consistent.
God chooses us, God loves us. We can’t do it in reverse.
Job tried.
The book of Job is 37 chapters of trying to figure God out. Then, God shows up
on the scene and every assumption the characters made is obliterated in the
face of divine majesty. Who created the world, Job? God asks. For the
next four chapters, God lists the amazing features of the earth—landforms and
weather and creatures alike. We have no problem ascribing majesty to God, but
it’s important to remember that that majesty is also evidence that we will
never understand. How could we?
As we live
in particularly uncertain times, God gives us a kind of roadmap through our
grief—not to try to understand but to admit we cannot. If we are going to do that,
then we can’t so much concern ourselves with larger narratives—with the reason
this or that is happening—or with doing theology, except to say that God is
bigger than we can hope to imagine.
This might
seem obvious, but when things get tough, it is particularly easy to slip into
the habit of making everything about us. We go about our daily business, zoning
out and letting life live us. We tolerate so many streams in life that carry us
downstream, tolerating things in the vain hope that we will one day get off the
boat and trudge into the unknown. Rather than looking for God with wide eyes we
wait in vain for God to show God’s self. We put all the responsibility on God
while simultaneously putting God to the test using our standards. Meanwhile,
the miraculous is right in front of our eyes if only we open them to see. God
is in the little things and the big things, the exciting things and the boring
things—we just have to open our eyes.
However we continue
to respond to the pandemic as a church, let it be with an eye toward the
miraculous. The story of Job is the story of a person learning that he is not
God. And that happily ever after? It’s not so much the reward as the inevitable
conclusion to a life in right relationship with God. After all, what can be
taken from us? Our wealth, our family, our life? What of it?
In the way,
Job reveals why we need salvation beyond this life. I always come away from Job
thinking, “Yes, it turns out for Job in a way, but what of his family—the first
family—the ones who died by chance or by Satan?” Where is their salvation? What
they need is not a change in perspective but a God who turns even death upside
down. For those of us still living, we need eyes wide enough to imagine a God
who does just that every single day. Death to resurrection—not mere restoration
of fortune or a replacement family but the dead raised.
The book of
Job gets us going but it doesn’t take us there. It’s a book that begs for a
Savior. In that way, it’s a perfect book for our times. Like Job, we may find
ourselves putting along, assuming God is littler and our world is darker than
it is. Like Job, we might make everything about us. Like Job, we may lose sight
of the miraculous.
When that happens, it’s a good time
to leave Job behind. So, with five weeks of Job done, let’s get back to Jesus.
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