Then the Lord answered Job (Job 31:35-37; 38:1-11)
31:35 O that I had one to hear me! (Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me!) O, that I had the indictment written by my adversary!
36 Surely I would carry it on my shoulder; I would bind it on me like a crown;
37 I would give him an account of all my steps; like a prince I would approach him.
38:1 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
4 Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone
7 when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
8 Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? —
9 when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors,
11 and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?”
–Job 31:35037; 38:1-11 (NRSV)
July 24, 2016 Sermon Notes
During the preparation for this week’s sermon I heard Shane Blackshear’s interview with writer Jessica Kelley. She is the author of Lord Willing?, a book which chronicles her experience of losing her four year old son, Henry, to a rare form of cancer. In September 2012 Henry was diagnosed with a brain tumor that turned out to be malignant and extremely aggressive. Jessica and her husband took Henry home on hospice and he died just in December, just a few days before Christmas. It was tragedy the likes of which no one should ever have to go through.
Her book trailer provides an introduction to her story:
(Video: Jessica Kelley’s YouTube Page)
The interviewer spent a lot of time trying to understand why Jessica Kelley wrote this book. She described as not only therapeutic for her, but also as something designed to help equip other people before they go through the crises they will inevitably encounter in their own lives. As Kelley described, she had long before begun to question the ideas that she had been taught as a child. Growing up, she had been told that God had a blueprint for everything that happened. If that was true, and God was all powerful, it must mean that all tragedy and evil in the world happened at the explicit command of God.
Even before Henry’s diagnosis his mom decided that the blueprint theory did not square with her understanding of God. Both in the pages of the Bible and in her life itself she had experienced a God who was loving and generous. If that was the case, how did tragedy and evil still occur? Over time she began praying, studying, and reading widely from the Christian tradition, and came to see a world of struggle between light and dark, good and evil, God and the consequences of sin. This warfare idea helped her have faith in a God who is on her side, struggling and grieving alongside her, but also a God who has asked us to take up the struggle as well. Lord Willing? is her explanation of how God gets down in the trenches to offer us love, compassion, and support to get through the challenges of life.
It was powerful to hear this interview as I wrestled with this sermon. In this week’s text Job is finishing up his complaints to God and his friends. He has laid out chapter after chapter of litanies proclaiming both his innocence and his faith in a just God. He spent so much time complaining to his friends that eventually there was nothing left to say to them. He then had to take his complaint directly to God. He begged God for a hearing and asked God for an explanation. Occasionally he even claimed to know more than he actually did.
Finally, God answers Job directly. God unleashes a series of questions on Job that points out the limitations of Job’s knowledge. In some ways, God’s questions to Job seem uncaring and hurtful. After all, Job has truly been suffering. How dare God answer in such a way that his complaints and frustrations are utterly ignored? This seems to be a case of adding divine insult to real injury.
Moshe Greenberg, Professor of Bible at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, offers another way of looking at this passage. Instead of ignoring Job, or belittling his questions, Professor Greenberg says that in this story God is saving Job from his own worldview. His previous wealth, prestige, and comfort had isolated him from a world of injustice and suffering. He had been sheltered from reality. Only when all of that was stripped away Job was finally able to see the world as it truly was.
In today’s text, Job’s constrained worldview is expanded by God. Job is told that in the world in which he lives chaos is real. Pain is real. Suffering is real. However, God says, “I have set a limit.” God has given Job a place in that world, and has given Job work to do. That is why Job is told to “gird up his loins.” In a culture where people wore long flowing robes, girding up one’s loins meant tying up the ends of of the garment around one’s waist. Only then was the person ready to go into battle or pick up a shovel. God was not out to humiliate Job, but out to expand his perspective. Job was shown his relationship to the world and to God. He was assured that God is with him even in the midst of the suffering of the world.
Through her experiences, her study, and her writing, Jessica Kelley has come to believe a very similar thing about God. Instead of a architect who ordains all suffering as part of some inscrutable blueprint, she has come to believe in a God who looks like Jesus. The God that she believes in has entered our world, suffered alongside us, and offered us the assurance that God is bigger than the tragedies and evil of this world. As she reflects on Henry’s death she writes:
While I don’t believe my son’s life was taken for a mysterious higher purpose, I know this pain will be met with purpose as I partner with God to spread the knowledge of his tremendous love. Henry’s death has become a means for me to share my picture of a loving God who is not orchestrating the evil and pain of this world, and to share how my picture of God infuses my faith with passion, even in the midst of incredible loss.
