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The
Impatience of Job
by Reverend Rich Smith
October 8, 2006
Job 1:1, 2:1-10
The story of Job is as old as human history. It may not
be actual history, but it is not “just a story,” for it resonates with
human experience, and the questions he asks are our questions, as well.
Why do the innocent suffer? How can a good God permit evil? Is God
really in charge? And, how can we handle the seeming unfairness of
life, especially when we’re on the losing end?
This story, set in the faraway land of Uz, roughly present-day southern
Israel, and first told about 500 years before Christ, begins with this
man named Job, a prosperous landowner, father of seven sons and three
daughters, with a portfolio of seven thousand sheep, three thousand
camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, countless
servants, and season tickets in the owners’ boxes at the Redskins,
Nationals and Wizards. A pretty good life, which he did not take for
granted. He feared God in the classic sense, that is, he lived an
upright and blameless life, turned away from evil, and was grateful for
all his blessings.
But then one day, he lost it all. First, a messenger came to him in the
midst of his lunch, and reported that while his oxen were plowing and
his donkeys were feeding, marauders came and carried them all off,
killing the hired hands in the process. Before he could finish another
messenger came and told of a fire that swept through the fields
consuming all his sheep, along with the shepherds. And then came a
report of raiders, who made off with the camels. And finally, the worst
news, of a great wind that came across the desert and destroyed the
house where his ten children were eating, killing them all.
Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground in
prayer: “Naked came I from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I
return...the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name
of the Lord.”
So Job lost everything, except for his wife, his faith, and his health.
But soon even that was about to change, when he was inflicted with what
sounds like leprosy. His wife begged him to just get it over with,
“Curse God and die.” But all he said was, “Shall we receive the good at
the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”
That’s where the lesson ended today, with a man who has lost
everything, sitting on the ash heap, still somehow accepting of it all.
And it’s been quite a reversal of fortune, the kind of thing former
Senator Alan Simpson described when he said about how life in
Washington often is: “One day you’re the toast of the town; the next
day, you’re toast!”
But we who know the story know that this isn’t the whole story; in
fact, it’s just getting started. Three of Job’s friends show up, “The
Comforters” they are called, although they don’t actually provide that
much comfort. And what began as a rather patient and accepting response
to this great loss, this huge injustice, turns into an extended
anguished debate about the nature of good and evil, of God, of the
shape of justice. I always thought the New Testament phrase “the
patience of Job” must have been meant in jest, for it is an oxymoron,
really. Job just does not bear his affliction calmly or with much
patience. He cries out, “I loathe my life; I will give free utterance
to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.....My
spirit is broken, my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me...if
only I could vanish in the darkness.” William Safire took note of this
and wrote a book about Job’s defiance, and called him, in the books’
title, The First Dissident. And that he was, for here was a man who
would not take life’s unfairness sitting down, who demanded an
accounting directly from God, and who gave voice to a moral outrage
that still speaks to and for many of us.
There are times, I’m sure, when patience is indeed a virtue. I’m glad
that many people in my life have been patient with me....from my
parents, to my teachers, the congregations I have served, including
you, and even God! I like to think of myself as a living example of
evolution! I am fortunate that God hasn’t given up on me yet, and I
have in return tried to be patient and gracious with the human failings
I encounter. And I have tried to be patient in my understanding – or
lack thereof – about so many of life’s mysteries, for I have faith, as
the hymn we sang says, “we will understand it better by and by.”
But there are also times when impatience is a virtue, as well! As
Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us in Why We Can’t Wait, written in
the midst of the Civil Rights struggles of the early 1960's, “For years
now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’... This ‘wait’ has almost always
meant ‘Never!’. We must come to see that ‘justice too long delayed is
justice denied.’” When it comes to questions of justice, things we can
do something about, we need to be impatient. (I suspect the Speaker of
the House is wishing he’d been that way with Congressman Foley!) And
when it’s your life that has been turned upside down by misfortune and
calamity, then it’s a very human response to not only ask “Why?” but to
engage that question most forcefully with the One who is supposed to
hold everything in his or her unfailingly powerful hands. And so Job
rose from the ashes, and dared to take on the Maker of the Universe
with the questions.... If you are the God of justice, how could this
happen? ”Where is your mercy now?”
(Choir:)
Once there was a man named Job, so rich in children, land, and flocks,
the greatest of all people in the East.
Yet Job was humble, kind and good, and sought only to walk with God,
to follow in the ways of truth and peace.
And then disaster struck him down, his children and his servants died,
his cattle slain, his body racked with sores;
and Job cried out to God in anger from deep within his pain.
You who have formed me and given me breath,
taught ne to treasure this life:
Why must I wander in the shadow of death? Where is your mercy now?
Is there no comfort, no end to my grief? No one to answer my cries?
If you are present, come be my relief: Where is your mercy now?
Look to my aching heart, speak to my empty heart,
you are the only hope I cling to:
Where is your loving face, where is your saving grace, where is your
mercy now?
All those who waken to hunger and pain, children of violence and war,
those who are taken and those who remain: where is your mercy now?
Now in the darkest night, lost in our pain and fright,
grant us some tiny light to follow;
Where is your loving face, where is your saving grace, where is your
mercy now?
We are the creatures you raised from the dust, we are the children of
God;
Why do they suffer, the blameless and just? Where is your mercy now?
Look to our broken hearts, speak to our angry hearts,
you are the only hope we cling to;
Where is your loving face, where is your saving grace, where is your
mercy now?
You are the Spirit that brings us to birth, God of the broken and poor,
Look to your people, the lost of the earth: Where is your mercy now?
–Marty Haugen, “Where is Your Mercy, Now” in Tales of Wonder
One doesn’t have to look very far to find ways that this question is
being asked today. A couple of nights ago I finally watched the movie,
The Smartest Guys in the Room, about the rise and fall – mostly the
fall – of Enron. The anguishing part was not so much how a few people
managed to get rich and then lost it all, when their house of cards
fell, their schemes were discovered and they were brought to trial and
convicted of crimes, but about all the blameless victims, the workers
whose jobs were lost and whose pensions were invested in Enron stock,
whose value went, in once case, from $348,000 to $1,200, who found
their pensions accounts frozen while their bosses cashed out. Further
victims were the people of California, whose energy market was
manipulated with a manufactured elctricty shortage, and their
then-governor Gray Davis, who was made to take the fall for the crisis,
and voted out of office in a recall election. Even though those behind
this are being brought to justice, it doesn’t look like justice will
ever be fully done for the victims. And Ken Lay’s death before he could
begin serving his prison sentence may be the most cruel injustice of
all, for after all, we all die, but now much of his ill gotten gains
are protected from restitution, which would have been at least an
attempt at justice. Those workers who were blameless and upright stand
with Job in their crying out. Not so much at God, perhaps, but at a
system that would permit all this.
A couple of hours north of us, in what has always appeared to be such
beautiful and peaceful Amish country, the community is reeling, and
burying its young girls. In their private anguish they must surely be
asking some very tough questions of God, while in their more public
faith they attempt to see it all in terms of God’s will, some larger
plan. Personally, I would be right there with Job, raging against any
God who would make the killing of innocent young girls a part of the
design of the universe.
But while I would never label any tragedy as the will of God – and in
the dozens of funerals I have done have never said something like, “God
must have needed another angel....” – there is some wisdom in the Amish
response. They have not turned bitter towards God or the outside world.
They have prayed for the one who slew their children, even forgiven
him, and reportedly said that his wife would be welcome at the
funerals, and many of them attended his, yesterday. As syndicated
columnist Terry Mattingly put it, “To grasp the Amish point of view,
it’s crucial to understand that they truly believe God desires justice,
but also shows mercy, and they believe that these are not contradictory
things. They believe that this killer will not go without punishment,
but they also believe that his punishment is in God’s hands.” Perhaps
they have already been through the experience of Job and, like Job,
have persisted to hear God’s answer, and know that ultimately, they –
and their children – are in God’s hands.
All of this really has to do with who we think God is and how,
therefor, we practice our faith. It’s a larger issue than simply asking
why bad things happen to good people. It has to do with making bargains
with God, such as, “If I do thus and so for you, God, then you will
protect me, protect my children, keep anything bad form happening to
me.” And that, in fact, is the issue that frames this story of Job, for
the reader knows that Job’s misfortunes come as a test. The satan says
to God: Job’s faith can’t possibly be real. He only praises you because
his life is so good. He thinks he’s made a bargain with you. Take it
away and watch what happens! And God agrees to the experiment. (I don’t
think God would really agree to something like that, or that God
micro-manages the universe in such a way as to do that, but remember,
this is a story.)
And I should also point out, as an aside, that the satan in this story
is not the devil, or personification of evil, that we usually picture.
That figure does not exist in the Old Testament, and doesn’t really
take form until Dante and the Middle Ages. The satan, in Jewish
thought, is simply one of God’s assistants, whose role is to be a
tester, or an adversary whose job is to find out the real truth about
what people are made of. He is not one half of the dualistic forces of
good and evil, and actually does a lot of good by keeping God grounded
in the truth.
And in proposing this test of Job, he is responding – or rather, the
writer of this tale is responding prophetically – to what faith in that
era had become: a matter of making deals, striking bargains, carrying
out rituals in order to appease God – all based on the theological
conviction that “you get what you deserve” in life. If you were
successful and wealthy, it was because you were a good person. And if
you were poor or sick, it was God’s punishment for your sins. Faith was
all about rewards and punishments. And this kind of faith is hardly
dead. In spite of Jesus’ own protests against it, in for example his
parable of the vineyard owner who paid all his workers the same no
matter how long they worked, or his parable of a prodigal son who
received a welcome home full of grace he did not deserve, or his
observation that the rain falls on the just and unjust alike, the
reward-and-punishment model of faith still persists. It’s displayed not
only on religiously-oriented TV where talk-show guests revel in how God
has blessed them, or the hosts of such shows who speculate that
hurricanes are divine retribution for sins of the French Quarter --
it’s the kind of faith many of us are tempted to practice, for if we’ve
done well, we like to think that our virtue had something to do with
it, and we wish there were something we could do to protect it, take
out some divine insurance policy so that nothing bad will ever happen
to us or those we love. Isn’t there some bargain we could strike with
God, so that we’d never have to feel any pain? But as Carol Newsom says
in her reflections on this story, “The agony of love is that it cannot
ensure the safety of the one we love so deeply. All the prayers, all
the good advice, all the superstitious rituals...cannot guarantee it.
Loving is risky business; there is no way to bargain with God about
that. Vulnerability is a condition of our being finite and mortal
creatures. The greater evil would be to fear loss too much to risk
loving at all.” (New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IV, p. 359) And she
cites the poet Mary Oliver:
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things;
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends upon it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Faith is never a matter of striking a bargain with God, doing good so
that we will be rewarded in this life or the next, but a matter of
living boldly, and loving recklessly (as Bishop Spong likes to put it),
that is extravagantly, of realizing that while there is evil in the
world that we cannot always avoid, there is also a lot more of goodness
that we don’t deserve. There is much mystery to life, as God made clear
to Job from the whirlwind, but it is more the mystery of why God loves
us at all, the mystery of grace. We are grieved and troubled by the
wrongs that occur partly because they stand in such contrast to the
goodness that abounds, the goodness we believe God intends. Evil is the
aberration, not goodness. As Bishop Tutu said recently, “The media tend
to inundate us with rather unpleasant news. We have the impression that
evil is on the rampage, is about to take over the world. We need to
keep being reminded that there is a great deal of good happening in the
world. Ultimately, good prevails.” And as United Methodist Pastor Bob
Kaylor writes, “ We need to start living that reality. Somewhere along
the line we got the idea that the afterlife was the ultimate
destination for humanity, rather than....what Jesus was talking about –
God’s kingdom breaking in to transform this world and doing so through
us.... The issue isn’t escaping this sinful world, but transforming it
through God’s grace.”
At the end of the story, like a country music song played backwards,
Job’s life was restored. He got his health back, he got his family
back, he got his flocks and farms and everything about his life back.
If he’d owned a pickup truck, surely that would have come back, too,
maybe a dozen of them. Scholars debate whether this was the original
ending to the story, and I suppose were it being written today, it
might not have ended this way, but with Job still fuming and raising
his dissenting voice. I might be more comfortable with that kind of
ending, but then I am learning to live with ambiguity, with mystery,
with the world-in-process, held in balance by paradox. I know that
there’s a lot I don’t know. But I do know this: in freedom God has
given us this world to love, to hold tenderly, and to care for
unceasingly, and that, as Job discovered, we are never alone. Whether
it is friends who sit with us, or a God whose presence is discovered at
the end of our anguished cries, there is a Presence that surrounds and
upholds. Understanding may come by and by; living the life that we are
given comes now.
Rainer Maria Rilke, in Letters to a Young Poet, wrote “Be patient
toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions
themselves...Do not seek the answers which cannot be given you because
you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live
everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually,
without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
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