Proper 24B: Mark 10:35-45, Job 38:1-7, 42:1-6, 10
For the sake of those who have not been with us for either of the previous two Sundays, let’s take a few moments to review the plight of the Old Testament figure Job. We are told that Job is a blameless and upright man who has many blessings. A curious conversation occurs early on in the saga between God (who rarely speaks in the Hebrew Bible) and Satan, one who disturbs or is an adversary. Satan taunts God by saying that the only reason Job is faithful to God is that he is enjoying prosperity and well-being. God places Job in Satan’s hands for a test.
In the first of these three sermons, Job remains resolute in his love for God despite many losses of family, health and property. He believes that one who loves God will indeed receive the good and the bad. Then we read many, many pages of dialogue between Job and his friends, whom perhaps we could recognize symbolically as inner voices, the voices of his conscience and his ego and his doubts. Job is very verbose in his complaints about being dealt so much misfortune despite being a blameless and upright man. He is operating off a common Hebrew belief that God would reward good behavior and punish bad. The friends reinforce this by urging him to confess to God and be reproved.
Last week we focused on Job’s strong need to speak the anguish of his spirit, to complain of the bitterness of his soul. His friends grow tired of his excessive verbiage.
Frankly, so did I as I read page after page of it. One friend, Zophar, asks, “Should your babble put others to silence?” Bildad asks, “How long will you hunt for words?” I told a story of a philosopher who roamed the earth trying to find those who could help him find a clearer understanding of the Almighty. He came across a boy digging a hole in the sand. The boy dug and dug and dug and then carried handfuls of water from the ocean into his hole. Finally the philosopher asked, “What are you doing?!” The boy answered, “I’m doing the same thing you are doing. I’m trying to fit the ocean into a hole, just as you are trying to fit God into your head!”
It seems that Job was working his head very hard to find an equation, a recipe, a legal formula for how it could be that an upright and prosperous person could be reduced to rubble. I used some of Glenda Green’s writing in Love Without End: Jesus Speaks to shed light on this. Jesus tells Glenda, in one particularly pithy sentence, that,
Compared to the power of love within each person, it matters not whether he was born a prince or a pauper.” (p. 97)
I could almost hear Jesus ministering to Job by telling him that the title of “blameless and upright citizen” was a false identity. His true identity was simply love, and his only assignment in life was to be the love that he was. I could hear Jesus telling him that endless conditions were derailing his innocent perception, which is the ability we all have to be with the moment, to be with what we are doing. In this moment, are you hearing my words, or planning the rest of your day? Job was losing all of his present moments by living his rage at his current condition.
Let’s remember that Job is symbolically in the hands of Satan, the great confuser. Job is no longer feeling unity with God. Job is very angry with God and is spending his days talking about that to anyone who will listen. He then rejects the help offered. He hangs onto his misery and demands a “court hearing” if you will, with God. Again, through the wisdom of Jesus imparted in the Glenda Green book, Job has lost his perception of immortality and infinity through being separated from knowledge of his true self as love. The structures of “this world” want him to measure himself according to his wealth, health, and public esteem. He has internalized these structures, and now he suffers.
Perhaps you recall from my message two weeks ago that I purposely chose some verses from Philippians that were NOT in the lectionary to augment the Job story. I chose my favorite passage from the Bible, where Paul is telling his friends that he has learned to be abased and he has learned to abound. He has learned to live with plenty and he has learned to live with little. He has learned the secret to happiness in any and all circumstances. He can do all things in Christ, who strengthens him. Perhaps Jesus, as quoted by Glenda, would say that Paul has come to view hardship not as punishment, but rather as inclusion in the human family.
God teaches that message of inclusion in all creation today, in God’s dealings with Job. Job was beating his brains out trying to figure out some sort of “cause and effect” formula for his misery.
“In his desperation, he pleaded for explanations. ‘Why,’ he asked God, ‘do good people suffer while the evil are left free to exploit with their profits?’ When the Almighty answered him from a whirlwind, He brought only more questions to Job. ‘Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place? Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom and spread its wings toward the south? Does the eagle soar at your command and build its nest on high?’ God’s message to Job was that the answer lies not in bitterness, or judgment, or even in the search for reasons, but rather in the vastness and grandeur of the universe. Finally Job surrendered, accepting the hardship as his new lot in life. At last he understood that his charter within the brotherhood of man was to accept the bad with the good. By the grace of God he was then restored to his original wealth and his original blessing. However, it was not by justifications of cause and effect that this was accomplished, but by the higher power of acceptance and grace. Life is to be shared for better or for worse, as all men rise together toward a higher plane on which to live. It is the greater wisdom to realize that often what you might consider to be the worst is just an illusion that will also pass.” (pp. 119-120)
It is Thursday morning, October 15, 2009. I am glancing at my computer screen and noting that this message is only three and a half pages long. The old demons of structure harp at me. “You had better find something else to say!” I silence them and glance out the window at the beauty of creation. The wind shakes pine needles from the trees. “Wind, who makes all winds that blow.” The hymn to the Holy Spirit flows through my mind and heart. I close my eyes and thank God for the grandeur of creation, for all the love that has ever been extended to me, and for the love I have extended. My woes creep up to have a final word. I quiet them and turn back to Scripture. It occurs to me that I now feel like one of Job’s daughters, restored to him by God. For Job gave his daughters an inheritance along with their brothers. The wind blows.
We are one.
Amen
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