The Bible comes to us from ancient cultures, written in
dead languages. This has made the Bible
difficult to translate. Even more so, scholars caution against taking something
from our personal life and superimposing meaning on a Biblical passage. But
then there are those times . . . when the tone and temperament of a Scripture verse
seems oddly familiar. That is what
happened to me when I actually studied Job 38 the first time. Let me explain.
I heard it like a parent who has been busy shouldering the
weight of the world, trying to make order out of the chaos that is familial life,
their back turned to their child, maybe folding the laundry for a husband and
four children. After hearing complaint
after complaint, lament after lament from a child, God now turns. Get
ready. Gird your loins. Maternal wisdom is about to be dispensed. God reminds Job that while he
was born yesterday, the Ruler of the Universe has been around to do the hard
work of bringing things into being for a long, long time—for ages and eons. God had to prepare, set boundaries, and
“Where were you, Job? Where were you
when all of that hard work had to be done, limits had to be set, and the
necessary suffering and labor pains brought the world into being? Where were you, Job? Job 38, verses 8 through 9 read: Or who shut in the sea with doors when it
burst out from the womb?—when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness
its swaddling band. That’s not Dad
talking. That’s the Mother of All
Creation dispensing wisdom.
I liken it to many
conversations the adolescent and not-so-smart Mike Mulberry had with the
long-suffering, Sandy Mulberry. When I would
ask my mom if she had gotten around to washing my “special jeans” for an event
at school, I think my mom’s response was something like, “Your jeans? Your
jeans? Do you see all the wash I’ve been
doing for the last two days? Here . . . let
me see . . . did I get to your one, pair of special jeans when I’ve
been washing everyone else’s clothes, I’ve been hanging them out
to dry, I’ve been folding them and putting them away. Huh, I
guess I didn’t get to your “special jeans.”
Any other questions?”
“Nope. Thanks,
Mom. I’ll be moving on.” I felt like I had been hit with a
whirlwind. I had been rightfully
reminded me of my place in the universe.
God speaks to Job out of a whirlwind, out of both creation
and chaos. God says to Job, “You spend
all this time talking about your chaos and suffering like you don’t think I’ve
been in the midst of it, in the mess of it, in the muck of it. The reality is, Job, chaos and suffering are
as old as creation itself.”
I think sometimes suffering happens in the world because to
bring something new into the world, to give birth, requires labor pains and a
new way of becoming that is just hard. The
Christian theologian, Douglas John Hall, speaks of our human existence
constituting suffering. We cannot help
but experience loneliness, boundaries or limits, temptation, and anxiety—forms
of suffering that happen just by being human.
Hall goes on to assert that it is not only the nature of being human
that creates suffering but the nature of “becoming” into our full role as
covenant partners with a Tender God who also knows suffering.[1] We all may remember a time when the only path
made to get to the other side of growth was through suffering and pain,
requiring us to leave the familiar, the old habits and practices, to even
admit, “Yes, I was wrong and will need to be better.” If we are to be better, to grow, our
suffering may not only be a necessary cost of discipleship but also a way to
move us from complacency.
And God suffers. Because God is forever creating and
re-creating the universe in love.
“The Bible does
not claim that all suffering is the will of God or that no suffering is the
will of God. Or, that all suffering is due to sin or that no suffering is due
to sin. Or, that all suffering is bad and to be avoided at all costs or that no
suffering is bad.”[2] Sometimes the complexity of sin and
suffering, as people of faith, leaves us with more questions than answers. Too often what is taught in our early years,
simplistically, to keep us in line, is that God seeks retribution for our
sins. So, we learn, suffering is a
result of our sin—for not cleaning our plate, picking up our clothes, or lying,
or giving sass to our parents. “One more
time, one more time, Mister, and you are going straight to hell!”
That is why so many people, in various
churches, have spoken to me about their love the book of Job. The
book of Job begins with a man who has done everything right in the
world. And, it would seem, his wealth, his large family, and his
health all come from God’s favor because Job is a just and righteous Jew. Simplistically,
Job does well, without much suffering and struggle, because he lives
righteously and well.
But then it all falls down—Job loses his family, his wealth, and his health. And the assumption of Job’s friends, simplistically, is that Job has done some great sin to inherit this evil. Even Job’s wife tells Job to curse God and die. Job protests. He argues. He contends, in truth, that he has done nothing to endure such suffering and refuses to blame God for his suffering. Meanwhile, Job's friends tell him that his suffering is a signpost of his sin. When God shows up, it is only Job who has spoken correctly of God.
God speaks from the whirlwind to tell Job, "The becoming of all of creation caused me great suffering, unimaginable suffering. It is the nature of things." It could be correctly said that our creative power is born out of a willingness to enter into the suffering of growth and newness.
We have to get this as Christians so that
we don’t spend all of this anxiety fretting over our sins, thinking that God is
going to or has gotten all retributive on us, paying us back for our
unwillingness to be moral bean counters out of fear that we will suffer or
struggle. Yes, as we grow spiritual muscle, there may be times
when the work we do as Christians feels serendipitous, all things come into
rhythm and harmony, and things give way to let us know we are on the right
track. But, as we grow, there are times when to grow, to “become” as
not only an individual but also a community, means that we give up on
adolescent dreams of providence and prosperity where all the traffic lights turn
green on the way to our destiny. Sometimes the work before us
requires a willingness to slog through, to know we will be taking one step
forward only to be thwarted to take two steps back. To know that
resistance to the work we do is not that we are in the
wrong. No. It may very well mean that we are meeting
resistance because we are faithful.
It was the great freedom seeker,
abolitionist, and writer, Frederick Douglass who said,
Let me give you a
word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human
liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born
of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and
for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it
does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess
to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are [people] who want crops
without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning.
They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may
be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and it never will.[3]
It
may seem odd to begin the preaching I am doing on Job the next few weeks by
going back to the beginning. But I want
us all to see how the story emphasizes the comedy of Divine Beings that begins
the book.
All of the Divine Beings come
together as they survey the world. It is
the Satan, not the evil being we associate Satan with, but the one who is the
necessary questioner and foil to God to bring about the story. Satan is the one who is “necessarily against”
to bring forward truth. The Satan
believes there is a simple morality tale at work in the world. Humankind is only good because they think they
will be rewarded for their righteousness.
God points out Job, the faithful one, and the Satan asks to make an
example out of Job. Let me show you, the
Satan says to God, that humankind only does good because you promise them
prosperity. “Go,” God says, “I have much
more faith in humanity than you do.”
It is the Friends who echo the logic
of the Satan. They assume that because
Job has suffered, he must have done something wrong. And because you have done something wrong,
they declare, God is now punishing you, Job.
In
the end, God refuses to engage Job’s friends because they don’t know what
they’re talking about.
I hope you can take both messages of
deep wisdom within you. That is my
fervent hope and wish for you as individuals and as a congregation. There are any number of shame and guilt
peddlers out there who get inside of us and make us believe that we inherit the
whirlwind, suffering and chaos, because of some sin that we have done. Yes, there are consequences for our actions
and we need to take responsibility. But
God is not a bean counter promising punishment for our sins. We can look out on the world and know that is
not true. Some of the most deceitful,
nasty, violent people do quite well for themselves in the world. Some of the most just and righteous people in
the world have gone through the most terrible things. Don’t believe the Divine drama. Don’t let the Satan get into you.
But also, be aware that what I do
wish for you as individuals and as a congregation is your growth and
flourishing. As outlined in our
Scripture for today, to bring about the newness of life, creativity, and
justice, can often mean we have to walk through the suffering of becoming, the
labor pains of a new world. In a culture
that is sometimes about avoiding pain altogether, we can miss out on so much
beauty, growth, and well-being because we are unwilling to experience divine
labor pains. In tenderness, God suffers
seeking to draw limits and borders, provide tenderness and goodness, and create
and re-create the good earth.
May we join God in that everyday work,
knowing that there will always be adolescents who complain about not having
their special jeans washed. May we
become and, in becoming, know the joy of growth, tenderness, and new life. Amen.
[1] Douglas John Hall, God and Human
Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross (Minneapolis: Augsburg
Publishing House, 1986), pp. 66, 120
[2] Terrence E. Fretheim, “To Say Something—About God, Evil, and
Suffering,” Word and World, Volume XIX, Number 4, Fall 1999.
[3] Frederick Douglas, “If there is no struggle, there is no
progress,” Blackpast, 1857, https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1857-frederick-douglass-if-there-no-struggle-there-no-progress/.
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