A Man Named Job

First Presbyterian Church, Fort Scott, KS

Job 1.1; 2.1-10

There are many ways to read this story of a man named Job.  But one way to read it is that it’s a story about someone who is in pain.

The story of Job is 42 chapters long.  Here’s my summary:

Chapters 1 & 2: Job has everything and then has everything taken away because of a conversation between God and one of the sinister angels named Satan.

Chapters 3-37: Job is visited by three friends who try to comfort him but do a terrible job.  They are “know it alls” who just make his pain worse.

Chapters 38-42: God finally appears to Job in a whirlwind to deal with Job’s complaints.

One college professor introduces the book of Job to his students with an episode of the television show, The Simpsons.  So let’s try that.  The episode is entitled, “Hurricane Neddy.”

“In this episode, Ned Flanders has his home destroyed by a hurricane and his business looted by an angry mob.  These events throw Ned into a theological crisis, because he is by far the most pious character on The Simpsons.  Ned approaches his pastor, Reverend Timothy Lovejoy, and asks, ‘Reverend Lovejoy, with all that’s happened to my family, today I kind of feel like Job . . . Reverend . . . I need to know, is God punishing me?!!’

Reverend Lovejoy’s qualified response seems especially hollow: ‘Short answer yes with an if; long answer no with a but’.

In the next scene, Ned tells himself, ‘In my darkest hour I can turn to the good book.’  As he opens the church Bible, however, he gets a paper cut on its gilded edges.  At a near breaking point, he cries out, ‘Why me Lord?  Where have I gone wrong?  I’ve always been nice to people.  I don’t drink or dance or swear.  I even kept kosher just to be on the safe side.  I’ve done everything the Bible says, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff, what more can I do!  I feel like I’m coming apart here.  I want to yell out but I . . . I just can’t dang diddly do dang damn didly dern do it’.”

(Jeremy Schipper: “Healing and Silence in the Epilogue of Job”).

Let me ask you this question: is Ned “trying to find an explanation for his pain or a way of articulating his pain”?  At first, he asks the Reverend Lovejoy for an explanation – “Is God punishing me?”  But he winds up yelling out to God in a kind of jabbering nonsense.

So what about Job?  Does Job want an explanation for his pain?  Or is he trying to find a way to express it – to others and to God? 

And what about us?  What do we do with our own pain?  Maybe some kind of explanation would help.  Maybe it wouldn’t.  Is that what we want?  Or do we want to voice and express our pain somehow?

Pain comes our way in all sizes and shapes.  Sharp and dull.  Quickly abating and long lasting.  Physical and emotional. 

Often we’re not even very good at predicting what kinds of pain are worse.  I told you last week about my appendix.  I’ve also broken my arm in a grotesque way, with my wrist going sideways.  I’ve torn the ACL in my right knee, and endured months of painful therapy.  And while those episodes were painful, I have had migraines that were far, far worse.

But I’m lucky.  The physical pain I’ve experienced, even my migraines, have faded.  Some people live with physical pain that is chronic and unrelenting.  That kind of pain wears you down over time.

Even so, I think most of us would agree that emotional pain is far, far harder for us to deal with.  The pain of betrayal or rejection.  The pain of being overlooked or unloved or abandoned.  The pain of a failed friendship, or a failed marriage, or a failed career.  The pain of depression and despair.  The pain of losing those you love.  As I listen to others talk about their pain, it seems to me that there is no pain like losing a child.

One of my teachers, Nick Wolterstorff, lost his 25 year old son Eric in a mountain climbing accident.  His reflection on that loss is captured is his book, entitled, simply, Lament for a Son.  I have read it three or four times, and never cease to be deeply moved by the expression of his pain.

The book of Job reminds us that giving voice to our grief and pain is part of the life of faith.  Without this permission we might become artificially cheerful and optimistic, pressuring each other to smile all the time and tell each other that everything is “fine, just fine.”

The book of Job, I should tell you, is a kind of folktale.  “Jared, do you mean to tell me that this didn’t really happen?”  Yes, that’s right.  This isn’t journalism – it’s not an attempt to provide on the scene, realistic reporting.  This piece of literature is Israel’s theological reflection on pain, suffering, and God.

It was likely written in the sixth or fifth century BC, but the story that it tells is set over a thousand years earlier.  Job is not a Jew, but a wise, god-fearing Gentile.  His wealth is not accounted for in silver and gold, but in sheep, camels, oxen, donkeys, and servants.  In that ancient world, numbers had meanings, and 7 and 3 were the numbers of perfection.  And Job is described as having 7,000 sheep and 3,000 camels.  And he had 7 sons, and 3 daughters.  These are clues given to us as the readers that we are reading a folktale set somewhere in the ancient near East in a time before silver and gold became the common currency.

It’s an exaggerated account of a righteous man’s suffering.  Job is described as “blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”   And God even says of him, “There is NO ONE on earth like him (1:8).

And this blameless man has the worst things imaginable happen to him.  The first chapter describes how in a meeting with the angels or heavenly beings, God gave one sinister angel named “the Satan” permission to ruin Job’s life and take everything away.  And so his sheep, camels, oxen, and donkeys are stolen.  Then his servants are taken.  Then his ten children are killed.

Now if we did not catch the clues that alert us to the exaggerated character of this story, we would be tempted to compare our pain and suffering to Job’s.  We might hear this story as one-upping all our stories of pain.  You suffered a little, did you?  Well, Job suffered a lot more than you.  Your pain isn’t all that bad!

Instead, we are invited to hear this story as an invitation to bring our own pain and confusion before God and our friends, to admit that it is part of our lives, and to be honest about the fact that sometimes we wonder whether God can be trusted.  Maybe that’s saying it too nicely.  Perhaps there are some of you here whose trust in God has been completely shaken.  Whether in anger or despair, you no longer believe that God is good and has your best interests in mind like a loving Parent should.

So it’s not just a story about pain.  It’s a story that raises questions about God, and whether God can be trusted.

In the first chapter, we witness a meeting of all the heavenly beings with the Lord.  And one of the figures is named “the Satan.”  We’re given no more information on Satan.  He appears a kind of sinister double agent who is quickly on his way to deserting the angelic ranks for his own dark path.

But it isn’t the Satan figure who puts Job in the crosshairs.  It’s God.  God is the one who says, “Have you considered my servant Job, there is no one like him, upright and blameless?” (1:8).

And the Satan responds, “Does Job fear God for nothing?”  Do you hear the sting and the bite of that question?  God is being challenged: your creatures serve you only because they get something out of it.  Job only fears you because life has made him wealthy and happy.  Take it all away and he’ll turn on you.  That challenge hangs over the entire story of Job.  Of course, as we read this story, the same question hangs over our own lives.  “Does Jared, does Greg, does John, does Monica, does Charlie, does Kellye fear God for nothing?”  OR, as the Satan suggests, are we fair weather fans, ready to ditch God when life turns against us?

And so God gives the Satan permission, first to strike Job’s wealth, servants, and children.  And then, in the passage we read today, gives him further permission to strike Job’s own body with painful sores from head to foot.  And how are we supposed to feel about this?  How DO you feel about this?  On the one hand, it is obvious that Job’s pain is NOT punishment.  On the other hand, what kind of God agrees to put a human being through this kind of terrible and painful ordeal?

Did you notice that Job’s wife only gets one line?  “Curse God and die” (2:9) is her response to her husband’s pain and loss.

This is kind of a story full of guys.  Job is male, his three friends are male.  But the only woman who gets a role is Job’s wife.  And she only gets one line – and is then dismissed as foolish.  Yet perhaps her one “foolish” line is the most serious, illuminating line in all the speeches made in the book of Job.  Perhaps her line should hover over our reading of these conversations.  Maybe the fool is not so foolish.

The truth is, some of the most important questions and issues in life never get expressed without the experience of pain. 

Author Peter Scazzero writes:

“God often uses pain to get us to change.  My experience working with people as a pastor over the last twenty-two years has convinced me that unless there is sufficient discomfort and anguish, most will not do the hard work to take a deep, honest look inside.  This seems especially to apply to men and women in midlife.  It has rightly been said, ‘We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing’.”

(Emotionally Healthy Church, p. 76).

Those of you who are nearing midlife, or have already been through it, know what he’s talking about.  Those of you who are younger might not.  In fact, if you’re young, you might wonder whether Job’s life story has anything to offer you at all.  It does. 

And here’s what it offers you: Life probably won’t turn out like you’ve planned it.  Life won’t unfold along the lines of your dreams or even your assumptions.  Doors that you plan on swinging open will stay shut, forcing you to go in a different direction.  Life accomplishments that you think will take 4 or 5 years will take 20 or 30.  The stability and evenness you expect will turn out to be a series of rocky and turbulent ups and downs.  You will experience forms of loss, disappointment and failure that will stop you in your tracks.  And it’s important that someone tells you this now.  So that you can start planning on how you want to respond.

All families develop strategies for avoiding troublesome topics or sensitive matters.  And after awhile, you get pretty good at knowing what to avoid.  For religious people – people like us who are part of the church – this same dynamic is at play.

We are so busy singing to God, praying to God, serving God, loving God, and talking about God, that we get pretty good at avoiding a powerful and anxiety producing question: can God be trusted?

But there ARE questions that remain, stubborn questions that never quite disappear.  Is God even real?  When we say “God,” sing to God, pray to God, are we naming anything at all?  And if there is a God, how can we really know with confidence what this God is like?  We don’t even know basic things like how many species live in the deep oceans, or why human beings need sleep.  Why are we so sure God exists at all?  And if we think she or he or it does, what reasons do we have?

Job’s story is a gift to us, because it invites us into a new kind of freedom.  It gives us permission to give voice to our own pain and confusion, and to ask hard questions of God that usually remain buried and hidden.  There will be more questions than answers, but that too is part of the life of faith.  I hope you’ll begin reading Job on your own.  And I hope you’ll join us these next couple of weeks as we explore this powerful story further.