Sunday, October 18, 2009

St. David’s Episcopal Church, DeWitt NY

The Rev. James C. Bresnahan, Interim Rector

“On Suffering”

Job 38:1-7, (34-41)

38:1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements--surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? "Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go and say to you, 'Here we are'? Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind? Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens, when the dust runs into a mass and the clods cling together? "Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, when they crouch in their dens, or lie in wait in their covert? Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God, and wander about for lack of food?

For three weeks now, our Old Testament readings from the Book of Job have drawn us into the deepest questions of life – about loss, about suffering, about death. What we heard read were but short excerpts from the long book of Job – teasers to lure us into reading the entire book, which I hope you will sometime.  The book is neither history nor fiction.  The author rather has taken an old legend of a righteous man who suffered, and expanded into it into a play of sorts probing the whys and wherefores of human suffering.

 

Allow me now to take you on an oral journey through this probing book.

 

At the beginning we meet Job, a man of great wealth, virtue, and reputation.  He has large land holdings, a large family, a large home, large flocks, and a large coterie of slaves.  He works hard at leading a righteous life. He never fails to offer religious sacrifices on behalf of himself and his family. He believes that he has found favor in God’s eyes, and that his righteous life has protected him and will protect him from the losses and miseries unrighteous flesh endures. He thinks.

 

Here’s what follows: A mythical conversation is held in a heavenly court, where a figure named “the Accuser,” which we translate as Satan, hurls a challenge at God.  You think Job wills to love and serve you, God. Well, that’s only because things are fine in his life.  Why don’t you see what happens if affliction comes.  See how devoted he will be then. See if he will not curse you then.

 

God, it is said, accepts the challenge. Satan is allowed to afflict Job.

 

First, Job’s children die and he loses as well his possessions, home, farm, holdings, everything.  Job mourns their loss, but does not lose faith.

 

But what will happen if Job himself is attacked? Satan throws that question back at God. So God allows Satan to attack Job with loathsome sores from the crown of his head to the tip of his toe.

 

Job’s wife yells at Job, Curse God and die. Curse God. Job refuses. He bears his pain. And it is pain, deep pain over terrible losses and bodily affliction. Job continues to assert his innocence.

 

Enter three so-called friends who carry this play through another scene. Their aim, they think, is to comfort Job.  You’d expect that from friends. But the magnitude of Job’s losses are so overwhelming that for seven days they cannot bear say a word.  Meanwhile Job, still unwilling to curse God, bemoans the day he was born.

 

Then, in a three cycles of speeches, Job’s three friends in dialogue with Job, explore the question of human suffering – and all in a heady, intellectual way with no heart and no feeling.

 

One friend lays out a theology of suffering.  Your suffering, Job, is God’s payback for wrongs you committed.  God is just, Job. If you are afflicted, you deserved it. You did something wrong to deserve it. God does not let God people suffer. Think, Job, think! Think what you must have done wrong to deserve all that God has inflicted on you.

 

But Job cannot think what he did wrong, cannot imagine how he could deserve this. He asserts his righteousness and innocence before God. I have a right to complain, Job says, a right to argue and fight with God. And I will.

 

A second friend says, No, you can’t argue with God.  It’s irreverent. It’s stupid to do so. Just be silent and take your deserved suffering like a man. But Job won’t.  You don’t understand, he says.

 

As the chapters of the book continue to unfold, Job’s friends are ever more insistent on Job’s having had to have sinned gravely.  They continue calling on him to recognize his sin and repent. If you don’t, they say, something worse will surely follow.  Job, in a strong defense, again asserts his right to complain.

 

His friends give up on him.  He just doesn’t get, they think, that bad things happen to people who do bad, and good things happen to people who do good.

 

On top of all his losses, Job now has lost his friends.

 

Enter a new character, who in a series of speeches defends God.  Job, if you would just shut up long enough, you’d understand that God is trying to teach you a lesson. Learn it! Having so spoken, this character too disappears.

 

Lastly. God gets re-introduced and is dismissive of Job’s friends. Then, over a series of several chapters, God speaks as out of a whirlwind as one whose ways are beyond all human understanding - Job’s understanding or the understanding of Job’s so-called friends. Job listens to the voice of God and is humbled by his own lack of knowledge about so many mysteries of life. He faces the stark fact that to be human means not to know.

 

The book ends there.  Job still having no insight into the mystery of evil, tragedies, and injustices, and death, but giving up justifying himself and giving up arguing with others who don’t know what they are talking about.

 

He simply goes on not knowing and not stuck anymore either over needing to know. He moves on in conversation with God.

 

What is the message of the Book of Job?  Surely, we can find in it several messages. Clearly, for one, it is saying that when someone is suffering, it is no comfort to offer theological explanations for it, such as, ‘It was God’s will’ People who suffer don’t need explanations; they need friends who listen to their story.

 

The Book also has this message: Living a good life offers no protection from bad things.  Bad things do happen to good people - like crucifixion. 

 

If that’s the case, then what is religion about if it is not about answers and not about protection from harm? 

 

It’s about living fully in this suffering world, not hiding our eyes or hearts from it. It’s about bearing each others’ burdens, being kind to each other and gentle, not knowing how wounded others are. It’s about realizing how our own hurts need healing.  It’s about responding to suffering with compassion and heart. And it’s about one day putting behind us the ‘Why me’ questions that have no answer so that we might have energy for what we can do and need to do.

 

I hope you’ll read the Book of Job. After that, you may want to read or re-read Rabbi Harold Kushner’s best-seller, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.”  It’s a book for everyone’s library.