Job Cries Out
Sermon by Jamie Howison on Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Ah, the book of Job. I have to say that this is one of my favourite books of the Hebrew Scriptures, though far from the easiest. We are getting a four Sunday whirlwind tour through the book, and one that just barely scratches the surface of what Job invites the reader to wrestle through.
When I was a divinity student at Trinity College, I took a course called “Wisdom Literature: Job”, taught by a wiry and utterly challenging professor from St Michael’s College named Anthony Ceresko. Fr. Ceresko taught a course in Wisdom literature every year, with one year largely focussed on Proverbs, one on Ecclesiastes, and one on Job. It wasn’t that I was so committed to Job that I waited until that year rolled around; by no means! I just liked the idea of digging into the wisdom tradition, and as it happened it was the year of Job that best suited my schedule.
And so Fr. Ceresko offered a couple of weeks on the wisdom tradition generally, introducing us to the fairly content and grounded world of the Proverbs, the somewhat troubled vision of Ecclesiastes—“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, “All is vanity”—and then on to the puzzling matter of Job. “The Book of Job,” says the introductory essay in New Oxford Annotated Bible,” does not explain the mystery of suffering or ‘justify the ways of God’ with human beings, but it does probe the depths of faith in the midst of suffering.” And that it does.
Our quick jump through the book doesn’t begin to do it justice, nor even really touch on what the masterful author was attempting to do. Last week we had a reading that opened with the first verse of chapter one— “There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil”—and then jumped to chapter two where we were told that the Satan—literally “the adversary”—had been given permission from God to test Job right down to his very bones. And the Satan does… so much so that as our reading ended last Sunday, Job’s wife comes to him and tells him to just “curse God and die.” But no, he won’t do that, and he answers her by saying,
“Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”, with the text adding, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”
Right after that, Job is joined by three friends—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite—who come to sit with him in his distress in the ashes. “They sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights,” the text says, “and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.”
Here’s the interesting thing, though. To this point in the story, it is all written in prose, but at the beginning of chapter 3 if shifts to poetry, where it remains until partway through the final chapter—chapter 42—when it shifts back to prose again. That’s over forty chapters of poetry compared to just over two and a half chapters of prose, and if you read just the prose—just the opening two chapters and the closing section of chapter 42—you have a picture of a patient, just, unflinchingly faithful Job, who is vindicated for his long-suffering faithfulness. But inserted between the opening and closing sections, we hear Job rage, complain, agonize, assert, and challenge God to show him what he has done to deserve this mess that he is in.
O that I knew where I might find God,
that I might come even to God’s dwelling!
I would lay my case before the Lord,
and fill my mouth with arguments. (23:3-4)
That is from chapter 23, which is a response to a rather uprightly pious speech by his so-called friend Eliphaz, who has said to him,
‘Agree with God, and be at peace;
in this way good will come to you.
and,
If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored,
if you remove unrighteousness from your tents… (22:21+ 23)
That’s how so much of the book works, you see. One of these friends will come forward and say, essentially, “God rewards the good and punishes the wicked; you are clearly suffering and being punished, therefore you must have acted wickedly; repent and be restored.” And then Job will respond by saying, “show me.” Show me, Lord, where I have sinned, and I will repent. But until you show me where I’ve gone wrong, my suffering is meaningless. With the odd little pause, that’s the shape of the book from chapter 3 right through chapter 31, which concludes with the line “The words of Job are ended.” And then from chapter 32 through 37 another character arrives named Elihu, who launches into a new series of speeches all saying essentially “God is greater than any mortal, so just surrender Job.”
Interestingly, Job makes no reply to Elihu’s speeches, which has led many biblical scholars to wonder whether these speeches might be later additions. We’ll never really know, of course, and in some ways it isn’t that important. What we do see is Job as a man who can’t back away from a core conviction that something has gone badly, badly wrong. That’s where tonight’s text really begins to make sense, as Job laments… with some real urgency, I’d have to say!
‘If I go forward, God is not there;
or backward, I cannot perceive God;
on the left God hides, and I cannot behold him;
I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.
God has made my heart faint;
the Almighty has terrified me;
If only I could vanish in darkness,
and thick darkness would cover my face!
I just want to disappear… but I can’t just accept the words of these so-called comforters who say I must—MUST—deserve this suffering. No. Come and show yourself, Lord, and tell me what I have done.
So we get just one brief section from that long, long section in which the friends—the “comforters”—come one after another, calling Job to confess his sin and be restored, and Job insistently replying, “show me, Lord, and I’ll confess. But until I can see where I’ve gone wrong, all I can do is protest.” Next week we’ll have an excerpt from the four-chapter response from God, spoken “out of the whirlwind,” but for now I think it is important to sit with Job and to hear his protest.
It is important because Job is not the only one who faces apparently meaningless suffering; he’s not the only one who feels a need to rise up and shake his fist at the very throne of God, saying, essentially, “show me, Lord, how this makes any sense at all.” Even for the person who manages to face their apparently meaningless struggles—whether that’s a physical condition or some other great loss—with grace and patience, there will be a little bit of Job tucked away in them somewhere, probably not too terribly far from the surface. That voice will begin to murmur from time to time, often in the middle of the night when our emotional selves are the most vulnerable, saying, “yes, yes, I know you love your God, and that’s fine… but why this? Why you?”
It is perhaps an odd text to have in front of us on the weekend of the Canadian Thanksgiving; not something the architects of the lectionary would have taken into consideration when they landed Job’s agony squarely on our plate on this day. That’s why in many parishes the decision will have been made to duck out of this particular set of readings and opt instead for the safer, more predictable reading from Joel, which is assigned as the Thanksgiving weekend Old Testament text. But I don’t think that is a wise move to make, because the truth is that we will always have in our midst some people who have a little bit of Job’s voice nagging at their ear, pressing that question of “why me? why this? why now?”
We need to be able to ask those questions, if only on those moments of late-night panic when our defenses are low and our anxieties high. We need to remember Job—not just the so-called faithful Job who accepts whatever comes his way, but this Job as well. This Job, who cries out, protests, shakes his fist at the very throne of heaven, and stubbornly dares to say, “show me what I’ve done; show me how this makes any sense at all. Show me.”
And maybe for people who are living with those deep-seated struggles, it is particularly important that this reading lands on the Thanksgiving weekend. Maybe this is precisely the time to remember that things are not always as they should be, and to dare to press God for an answer. And for those of us who are finding our lives to be relatively in balance and who aren’t walking with deep physical or emotional challenges, it is significant to pause here tonight and to remember those whose lives are not in such good shape.
I know that’s true for me. I had a thanksgiving lunch today surrounded by friends and in the company of a partner, and tomorrow I’ll host a smaller gathering in my home with just a few folks from my family circle. Each of those gathering is important, for it is good—and biblical—to feast together in gratitude. But in between those two thanksgiving meals it is important for me that I hear Job’s voice crying out in anguish, longing to be met by his God; longing for some sense to be made of his life.
Let his voice sound in your ears—“Today also my complaint is bitter; God’s hand is heavy despite my groaning”—and then just leave him there for this week. His story isn’t over, but of course neither is ours.
