Scripture: Job 38 and 39
In a different lifetime I spent about a dozen years teaching part-time at a UCC college near Chicago. Mostly I taught courses in my doctoral field which was US religious history. Sometimes I got roped into teaching other courses, including some I didn’t really want to teach or didn’t feel qualified to teach. One of the ones that fell into that category was called “Introduction to Christian Theology”. When the department chair asked me to teach this course, I said that I didn’t really consider theology my field, that I would really have to brush up on what some major Christians theologians had to say about different subjects, that I didn’t approach the Christian faith primarily from a doctrinal perspective, and that I might very well embarrass the department and myself. He didn’t seem to care. He I think was desperate for someone to teach the course. He assured me that I could approach the class any way I wanted, so I reluctantly said OK.
What I ended up doing was teaching a course on the Book of Job, that is teaching a course on basic Christian theology, using the book of Job as the reference point. We started out just by reading and discussing the book of Job itself, and then everything else we read or talked about was in one way or another a riff on the book of Job. I tell you this for one thing to let you know that you’re getting off easy with three weeks of sermons on Job, since once upon a time I stretched Job out for something like thirty-six hours worth of class time. I also mention this because I remember a certain point of view from one of the readings I assigned in that course that was quite different from the point of view I have been talking about so far, but that I think needs to be mentioned before we wrap up with Job—or I should say—since we’re not going to wrap up Job—before we temporarily end our discussion of Job.
One of the authors we read in that class began his discussion of the issues that Job raises about God and evil and suffering, by recalling a time in his childhood when, in the community where he lived, a black man named Willie Earle was killed by a lynch mob, not hanged but brutally beaten, repeatedly stabbed, and then shot to death many times over. Earle was an epileptic who had been fired from his job and had taken to drinking. He had been arrested and charged with the murder of a cab driver. The cab driver was a WWI vet who had never been able to work at a job other than driving a taxi. Willie Earle may have been guilty of the murder of of Tom Brown, the cab driver, but he never got his day in court. Thirty-one people were charged with the murder of Willie Earle. They did get their day in court. The defense didn’t call a single witness or make any argument. Several of the defendants admitted taking part in the killing of Willie Earle. Nevertheless, all thirty-one were acquitted.
The author had been too young to know what going on at the time, but later when he found out about what had happened, he described this event as his initiation into awareness that he lived in a world in which things were not fair. The cab driver did not deserve to die. Though perhaps not innocent, Willie Earle did not to deserve to die, certainly not in the way he did, and some or all of thirty-one people did deserve to be held accountable, but were not. Unspeakable violence and racism had always existed beneath the surface of the pleasant, peaceful town and had intruded into the author’s idyllic childhood world of country lanes and baseball games.
You could say, “What does this have to do with Job?” The story of Job is not about racism. The evil that Job experiences doesn’t come from other human beings. He is not the victim of human cruelty but of mysterious misfortune, mysterious in the sense that it seems to strike randomly and can’t be attributed directly to any human action, and so we attribute it to God, as does the book of Job at least at the beginning. So what does Willie Earle have to do with the Book of Job?
Well, more than you might think, at least from this author’s point of view. And he has a bunch of things to say about that, but let me try to summarize somewhat briefly one of things I think he means to say. If we look around us in the world, look at everything that’s taking place, look at all the different kinds of suffering human beings are experiencing, we may very well be bewildered, and we can hardly fail to have questions fill our spirits—why? How is this possible?—but…if we are directing our questions primarily to God, we are directing in the wrong direction, because the vast majority of human misery in the world is attributable to human beings. And so if we scout around for the relatively fewer cases where we think we can get away with holding God primarily accountable for some presumed injustice, and conveniently ignore or pay passing attention to the enormous amount of grief that is thoroughly preventable and clearly attributable to human beings, then we are just engaging in a clever game of avoidance.
We are the ones, we humans collectively, who need to be questioned, not God. The question is not, “Where was God in the ship’s hold in middlepassage?” The question is, where were we humans? The question is not where was God when Willie Earle was being killed and his killers acquitted with a wink and knowing smile from the jurors? The question is, where were we humans? The question is not, “Where was God in the camps at Auschwitz?” The question is where were we humans? The question is not “Where was God when indigenous people were being murdered by death squads in central America?” The question is where were we? The question is not “Where is God in the midst of the AIDS epidemic in Africa and South Asia?” The question is where are we. The question is not “where was God in Katrina?” The question is where were we—before, during, and after the storm.
You hear what I’m saying here. I’m really just trying to repeat what someone else said, but you can probably tell I have some sympathy with what he was saying. There is a question that needs to be put to us. What about all the suffering human beings have caused, countenanced, condoned, ignored, or refused to see? In the context of that question, when we raise these profound questions about how a good God can allow such suffering and when we go round and round discussing and debating these questions which we know deep down will never be answered once and for all, when we do that we are really just attempting to divert attention from ourselves. Instead of focusing our attention on matters that we can do at least a little something about, we focus our attention on matters that we can do nothing about except talk. Jesus once warned us not to get all hyper about the speck that is in the other person’s eye and ignore the log that is in our own. From some people’s perspective, maybe, God has a bit more than a speck in her eye, and as I’ve heard some people say who find themselves dealing with a tragic circumstance, they say that God will have a lot to answer for when someday they get a chance to confront him directly. Maybe so. But whether there is any kind of a speck in God’s eye or not, there is undeniably log in our own. And it would be a lot more becoming of us if we attended quite a bit more to the enormous log in our collective human eye, before we go around demanding answers from God.
That is a point of view that I do think we need to take seriously. That’s why I’ve spent a bit of time with it this morning. But after we acknowledge that there is a truth in that angle of vision that we need to hear, I also need to say that that is not the approach God took when God finally responded to Job out of the whirlwind. God could have risen up in righteous indignation and said to Job essentially what I’ve been saying this author said. God could have said to Job something like: “You have the nerve to question me about my sense of fairness and justice? What about your sense of fairness and justice? Don’t you have enough to do among yourselves in these matters, that you waste your time making accusations against me? And I don’t care how “good” you are, Job, not you or anyone else. You’re all involved. Tell you what. When you get justice all figured out among yourselves, and you can come to me with evidence that you’ve done all in your power to make the world fair, then we’ll talk. Until then, don’t bother me.” God could have said something like that. God could have asked the same kinds of questions I was suggesting earlier: Where were you, Mr. Job, when Willie Earle was being beaten and stabbed and shot-gunned to death? Where were you, my sons and daughters, when the Katrina storms came, and before, and after? God could have said things like that.
But God didn’t. Instead, God said, as you have heard: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins and I will question you. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know!…On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all in the heavens shouted for joy? Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst forth from the womb? Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place?…Where is the way to the dwelling place of light?” Those are some of God’s words, a small part of the words God finally speaks to Job. And they are effective words, or at least they seem to be effective with Job. As to how effective they are with others who have read them over the years, that seems to be a matter of ongoing discussion.
Many people reading these words have pointed out that however beautiful they are, and however impressive they may be, they don’t answer Job’s question, any of Job’s questions. God doesn’t patiently explain to Job why it is that it is necessary for some people to experience the pain that they do. God doesn’t tell Job that what human beings experience as being unfair is really necessary to punish them, or correct them, or discipline them, or get their attention, or in order for some greater good to take place, or to provide them with growth opportunities. None of that. God doesn’t want to talk on that level. Many people say that God just seems interested in overwhelming Job, and us, with the rhetorical flourish and with the message that God is God, and that God alone knows anything about the deep mysteries of the universe, and human beings are small and are not meant to understand and things are not meant to be any other way.
And Job does seem to be overwhelmed. Job answered the Lord, “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.” Which some people interpret as Job realizing the truth of what God says, that Job is in no position to ask such questions or demand explanations from God, not because we have not dealt with our own matters of justice and fairness, but just because Job is a human being and humans beings are not meant to ask questions of God. I don’t read Job’s response that way, and I guess you know by now from what I’ve said the previous two weeks, that I certainly don’t buy into that theory that human beings have no right to ask questions or make protests to God. For reasons that I have tried to talk about the last two weeks those questions and protests on our part are signs of faith, not faithlessness. And God later says to one of Job’s friends, “My wrath is kindled against you as you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” I don’t think God is telling Job to just sit down and be quiet and be resigned, and I don’t think Job understands God to be saying this.
Another option is to say that the reason Job didn’t talk back to God this time is that Job got what Job wanted after all. It only seemed like what Job wanted from God was answers and explanations. What he really wanted, what we all want deep down, is not so much answers as a presence. It didn’t matter what God spoke to Job. It mattered that God spoke to Job. If God had wanted to demonstrate some imperial greatness, God could have just ignored Job. Who is this little ant making squeeking noises down there on earth. I don’t have to bother with him. But the fact that God did bother, heard what Job said, took it seriously, cared enough about Job to respond, to respond at length and eloquently, all that really was an answer, not the answer Job sometimes seemed to want, but a better answer, in the long run a deeper and truer and more authentic answer than the one Job might have thought he was asking for.
I’m sympathetic to this approach to God’s words to Job. I do think there is meaning in the fact that God bothered to respond to Job at all. But I don’t think it is true that it doesn’t matter what God said but just that God said something, and I don’t think it is true that God avoided Job’s questions altogether.
It’s true that’s God’s words sound like they are challenging Job: “Where were you when I was laying the foundation of the earth and creating the dawn?” As though God was saying, who do you think you are? But what God is also saying— I don’t know what the right way to read these words is, but I can tell you that what God is saying to me here is not just “who do you think you are?” What I hear God saying to me is something like this:
“I am the God of creation. I am the one who flung the stars into space and set the planets in orbit. I am the one who laid the foundation of the earth. I am the one who brought forth oceans and rivers and streams. I am the one who created the morning and put the dawn in its place and thought up sunrises and sunsets. I am the one who made the eagle and the deer and the horse— and you. And when I did all these things the heavens were filled with sounds of joy. I am the God of creation. I am not the god of destruction. I don’t go around zapping people with disease, poverty, pain, or grief. It’s not my nature. It’s not who I am.
And let me tell you something, my beloved children. It’s not who you are either. You were not there when I laid the foundations of the earth, but you are somewhere now, and you can continue to ask questions about the pain you find around you and that you harbor within you, but it is your nature not so much to answer questions as to bring something more life-giving, more loving into the place you find yourself.” I know I’m straying pretty far from what God is actually quoted as saying in Job, but I’m doing the best I can with the poor words I have this morning to tell you in a few sentences what I hear God saying to me through those words.
I do believe that we need, like Job, a word from the Lord—of some kind. Maybe that word will be that we are beloved creatures of God, creatures of whom God is mindful, maybe it will be a harder message that we should attend more to the business that is ours and less to the business that is God’s, or maybe it will be not so much what we would think of as a word from the Lord, as just some wordless assurance that the Holy One, who was there at the beginning of time, who resides in the heart of creation itself, that this Holy One is present with us along our journeys and that though our journeys may not always be joyful and will sometimes be filled with pain, they are and will be, now and forever, holy—because God is in them. Praise be to God. Amen.
Jim Bundy
August 27, 2006