Job, the conclusion: The God who sees through our bull

Job 42:10-17

            Job died, old and full of days. Three men in scripture are given this epitaph. Noah, Moses, and Job. Three men, set apart in this way—Noah, the lone saint in the midst of a godless world who is given charge of saving the earth’s creatures; Moses, the reluctant spokesperson who leads Israel out of captivity in Egypt, again saving the “chosen people” from slavery; and Job.

            Now, Job might be the best of the best, like Noah, the one whom God lifts up as an example for the rest to follow, but Job is also not the figure of historical significance that Noah or Moses are. Instead, the power of Job is in the way we see ourselves in him and his friends and the way his words are our words, his frustrations our frustrations, his faith our faith. Job is interesting because, unlike Noah or Moses, we could be Job; we can see bits of ourselves in this person and we can hear our questions coming from his mouth.

            I’m just going to admit that I don’t quite know what to do with the way that the book of Job ends. I mean, after all this back and forth between Job and his friends and eventually God, where everybody is put in their place and God finally emerges as the only one worthy in the whole story; still, here in the end it seems that Job gets his way after all. A part of me likes that; a part of me hates it. Because of the way the story ends, it’s tempting to derive a really shallow moral to the story that doesn’t befit the entirety of the book. I don’t think, having read all of Job, that the takeaway is simply that God will provide double for everything you lose in this life. If anything, I suppose the conclusion is a foretaste of something different—Job is provided for above and beyond his expectations and so will we.

Despising ourselves-- On Job, Orlando, and suicide

Job 42:1-6

There are a million ways to say “I’m sorry!” Some of them are authentic, some are not so much, some are kind of even backhanded. My favorite “I’m sorry!” happens after we put Natalie in timeout and she screams usually tries to get off the chair a dozen times before finally pouting and crying for the whole two minutes she’s usually in timeout. Then, when her time runs out, she gets down runs over to Kate and I, gives us hugs and says, “Sorry daddy” and “Sorry mommy.” That’s my favorite, “I’m sorry.”

            But on the long list of apologies I’m not so sure where to put Job’s, because I’m not really sure how to read this, especially this last verse, “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” Other translations read that Job repented of dust and ashes. Like a ton of phrases from ancient languages we just don’t know exactly what that means. Is it ironic? Is it defiant? Is Job hanging on to a little bit of self-righteousness against the God who he still believes took away everything he held dear? Or is this true repentance? Is Job the hero who could repent in a way the rest of us can only hope to emulate?

            Over the course of the book of Job this word for “despise,” the Hebrew ma’as, is used many times. Sometimes it is used by Job’s friends to tell him not to despise the Almighty (e.g. 5:17) or that God will not despise a righteous person (8:20), most often it’s used by Job to talk about how he loathes his life (7:16, 9:21), despises his work (10:3), and even how young children despise him (19:18 and 30:1). Finally, this word, ma’as, is used twice by Elihu, most importantly to tell Job that God does not despise anyone (36:5). In fact, you can trace the way that various characters use this word that’s sometimes translated “despise,” sometimes “loathe,” and sometimes “abhor,” to get an understanding of the frame of mind of each person. Job uses it out of a sense of pity. His friends use it to try to convict him of wrongdoing. Elihu, God’s spokesperson, uses it as a means of freeing Job from his vision of a judgmental God, and, maybe most interestingly of all, God never uses it. God never utters the word: “despise.”

            God despises nothing. Human beings? We despise all sorts of things. Even in repentance, which is one of our most positive traits, we despise ourselves. God just makes things good. We’re the ones who despise it all.

Not you. God.

Job 38:1-11

Not you, Job. God. Not you, Job. God.

This whole Job story has been leading up to a foundational question. “Where were you, Job, when the foundations of the earth were being laid?”

No, really, where were you? Because it sounds like you have all this figured out. It sounds like you think that God is unapproachable and vast and unknowable and that, on the one hand, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away without reason, but, on the other hand, God should look favorably on the righteous. Who are you, Job, that you know these things?

See, the book of Job makes an interesting turn if you thought that this was going to be a book about a moral, upright character showing us how to be good, pious, devoted God-followers. We’ve been told since the beginning that Job is a faithful person; how he is unlike all other people in the world in that he truly puts God first. He goes out of his way to assure he does nothing contrary to God’s will. So, it’s easy to assume that this book was going to tell us about how Job responded to the Satan-caused suffering by being a model of faith—one which we could try to emulate.

That’s where we thought this was going, because, like Job’s friends or, to some extent, Job himself, we are looking for answers to our own questions. Not God’s. Ours.

I know that my Redeemer lives!

Job 14:7-15, 19:23-27

One of the biggest worries I have in using the Narrative Lectionary is that there is an extended period of time between Easter and Advent—well over half the year—when I am not preaching from the Gospels. Now, I’m not one who believes you have to have a Gospel reading—obviously we don’t—and I do think there is a LOT for us to learn from the Old Testament, but there is a problem with reading from the Hebrew Bible and this is that the good news in the Old Testament gets kind of tempered by our own Jesus-expectations. Since we know we end up with Jesus the temptation is to find little value in the prelude to him. Who cares about the expectations that the Hebrew people had of the coming Messiah when we already know who he ended up being?

However, there are occasions where these Old Testament folks seem to get it—much better than ourselves, in fact. There are times when they are actually some of the best examples of faith without sight that we have. Again Job is one great example. Job has everything ripped away from him—his stuff, his work, his land, his family; all of it is taken from him. But, more than that, Job, like all the people in the Old Testament, also lacks a promise of eternal life. Now, I’m not saying that he’s not going to be saved ex post facto because of Jesus or anything like that; just that, even like some people in our world today, he has never heard of that promise, because, in this time in history, nobody knew of that promise.

I mean, the descendants of Abraham had promises of land and descendants and a great nation. Those were the covenants God made with them. And all of those are wonderful promises for a nation, but individually there are people like Job who experience few of the rewards of those promises. His land is gone; his family is dead; his nation might be the greatest in the world, but even if it were that great is that enough to comfort him? Doubtful.

            Job has nowhere to turn. So he turns to God, and in his desperate longing we hear echoes of a deeper promise that he could not have known but is one so familiar to our ears. Listen closely: 

As waters fail from a lake,
   and a river wastes away and dries up,
¹² so mortals lie down and do not rise again;
   until the heavens are no more, they will not awake
   or be roused out of their sleep.
¹³ O that you would hide me in Sheol,
   that you would conceal me until your wrath is past,
   that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
¹⁴ If mortals die, will they live again?

The rings of grief: Job and Eliphaz

Job 4:1-9

There’s a splendid chart I came across at some point in my life that looks something like this...

 It’s titled “Ring Theory.” There’s an inner circle, small, confined, and then several rings growing further and further out. In the inner circle is the aggrieved or afflicted. This is the person who is affected primarily by a loss. Then a step further out is significant others, parents, siblings and the like. Then a step further is true friends. A step further is colleagues. The last ring is lookie loos, which I think is Australian for people who slow down their cars to check out accidents or something like that. In this chart comfort goes in and on the bottom are the words dump OUT with arrows pointing away.

            The purpose of this chart is to demonstrate the appropriate way that we are to deal with grief in the case of any profound loss—maybe a death or maybe a personal loss of some other kind. The appropriate way to address all grief is inside-out, starting with those most closely affected and moving outward. This might seem obvious, but in subtle ways people do not get this. The principle is that those closest to the loss—a spouse, parents, maybe children—get to share their grief with ALL those further out. And the next ring gets to share their grief with friends and neighbors further out in the circle and so on. But nobody gets to share their grief in the other direction. No true friend gets to lay their emotional burdens on the family; no acquaintance or stranger gets to use an event as an excuse to dump their own issues on friends or family members. We’ve all seen this happen. If you haven’t it might be because you’re the person who does it.

            This is why I’m always nervous opening up the mic at funerals to whomever may come up. Most people who get up to talk at a funeral—90% at least—do a great job of honoring the person who died and they express emotions appropriately without laying their emotional burdens on those closer to the situation, but there’s sometimes that person who stands up and who, for whatever reason, lacks the emotional intelligence to understand on which ring they are standing. It’s a friend or acquaintance who plays up their emotions over those closer to the loss, or it’s even a close friend or extended family member who feels the need to tell the family how they should be feeling.

Job: Sitting with the questions

Job 1

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.”

So begins the book of Job.

And that’s just it, it’s the beginning of the story. Not the end. And we’re not even sure Job’s words are wise words—not yet. This is a perfect example of scripture that can be quoted terribly out of context, because Job’s supposition about God’s giving and taking is about to be put to the test over the course of the next 40-odd chapters. This story could begin with chapter 1, skip everything that follows, and resolve with God saying, “Well, guess Job was faithful. I guess he earned everything back and more!”

But it doesn’t. In-between the loss and the resolution: that’s where the book of Job teaches us about our role in the vastness of the universe, about how little we are, and about how our losses (and our gains) are only a small part in this divine play.

For forty chapters we are caught in the interplay of God and man. Who is God? Who are we? That’s the relationship the book of Job is concerned with addressing. Figures arise to question Job’s character—every conceivable angle is pursued for a reason why Job loses everything.

Everybody tries to tease out an answer. Surely it’s karma that leads to Job’s losses; surely, Job is secretly doing something he shouldn’t be doing. There has to be a reason for so much suffering.

Then Job proceeds to make his defense. He goes back and forth with the visitors who are certain the reason for the calamity has something to do with Job. You reap what you sow, after all. We will come to all this is in the weeks ahead as we venture further into the book of Job, but chapter 1 is clear: Job is blameless, faultless, above reproach. “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.” He even makes offerings in case his family sins in secret. If anybody was truly deserving of everything he had Job was the man.

And that’s exactly the point. What follows is a long-form discussion, debate, even a trial of what a person deserves in this life, and in the end Job is found wanting because Job is not God. Job is vulnerable. The book of Job explores how the things that happen to us—good and bad—interplay with our behavior and our role as created-creatures. Do we really reap what we sow? Is karma the rule of the day? Or are we subject to the random whims of the world, of Satan, and of the darkness that lives inside of us?

Standards, shame, and being special: Why it's easier to believe in God than to trust that God believes in you

1 Corinthians 12:1-13

Enter through the narrow gate, says the Bible.

            It is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to go to heaven, says the Bible.

            Sometimes the Bible seems to set a standard we cannot approach and sometimes we might believe because of this that there are only a few defining characteristics of the Christian faith. I mean, if there’s a narrow gate surely we had better be acting in a certain way to squeeze through it. And doesn’t the Bible say something about conforming to the image of Jesus? Doesn’t that mean we’re supposed to stop chasing what we want for the sake of what God would want for us?

            Anything good must be bad, we might think, if the way is truly so narrow.

This is one way to think and act as a Christian, but I don’t care much for it.

For one thing, for every example the Bible gives us of trying to conform to something else it gives us an equally strong example, like today, of the rewards and, indeed, virtue of being yourself, living out your gifts. Dr. Seuss was a Lutheran, perhaps you knew that. And Dr. Seuss was one of the best there ever was at teaching us that we are unique and special and, yes, a little weird, and that one of the most holy callings we have as human beings is to be you and me in all our strangeness.

            You are uniquely qualified to use the particular gifts you have been given. You are special. That’s the first word Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 12.

            The second word is that, because of you being the only you there will ever be, you have a tremendous amount of responsibility. You must be you. It’s surprisingly difficult to be you, though, because there are many things in this world that want you to be something non-descript and ordinary. It’s these things that feed our belief that we have no special gifts to offer; that there’s nothing you are particularly good at. I hear people say that ALL THE TIME: I’m not really good at anything. Firstly, that’s a lie. It’s maybe a lie perpetuated by a world that suggests the only things a person can be good at are subjects in school, how you skate or hit a baseball, or how well you make somebody money. We test a dozen or so subjects in school, we participate in a few different sports and hobbies, we have what seems like a variety of majors if we go to college, and then there are jobs and careers that someday present themselves for us in the realm of “work.” But the truth is that these may have little to do with our actual gifts. At best our gifts help us to excel in other areas of our life, but part of the problem with standardized testing and ACT scores and work reviews and even job duties is that we sometimes confuse our performance with our gifts. If we struggle in one area we assume we are no-good at anything.

Show me a test that can measure empathy or humility or grace.

            Show me a Confirmation curriculum that will teach you to have faith.

            Show me a worksheet that reveals character.