Ask the Question: June 24, 2018

Job 38:1-11                                                                                         
Year B, Pentecost 5                                                                            

             Shortly after college, I served as youth minister in a small Methodist Church in the middle of Pennsylvania.  It was the beginning of what would be a very short long distance relationship.  It was clear to me in my first few weeks in this town that my relationship from college was not going to work out. But I refused to accept it. I had a key to the church and was living right next door in the old rectory.  One night I went over and decided to pray about it. I asked God if this relationship was worth saving.  I asked God to give me a sign that this was going to work out. I begged. I pleaded. I cried. Suddenly, there was a clap of thunder.  I thought, well that could really go either way.  Maybe God was really in favor of this doomed relationship.  I asked God for another sign as that one was unclear.  There was another clap of thunder and bolt of lightning and the lights in the sanctuary were extinguished. All I could see was the rain pelting the stained glass image of Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane. If you ask God a question, you should be prepared for an answer you might not want. I was not prepared. I sat in the dark wondering how I could spin this one. I was reminded that Jesus said that we should not ask for signs and this was a reminder of that.  I left the dark church and returned home to plot the way that I would save this relationship. 

            This reading from the Book of Job comes at the end of the book.  Most people know this Biblical book as it is often referenced in relationship to the question of “why bad things happen to good people.”  Job was a good and righteous man.  God loved him as he loves all his children, but he also distinguished him as one of the most righteous of his children.  Job had a good life.  He had a wife and many children who loved him. He had land, animals and money. Things were going swimmingly. Then God and Satan got into a little argument about Job.  Satan argued that Job was only good because his life was good, and what would happen if things turned bad?  Would he still be righteous? They decided to test Job. Now, this part in and of itself is problematic, and I don’t have time to address it.  My guess is that this was the author’s way to dramatize the suffering and make it a good story.   So let’s just skip over the whole God and Satan making a bet part.

            We can’t be sure why, but things got ugly for Job. His animals died. His children died. His wife died. He lost everything. When he was the only one left, he caught some illness that covered him with boils.  To his credit, he lasted a long time before getting angry. I would have never made it as long as he did.  However, even he could not stay positive through this devastation.  Yet instead of giving up and deciding that there was no God or at least no God worth talking to—he talked to God.  He talked and talked. He defended his innocence.  He questioned God. Why would God let this happen to him?  Why was God absent?  Why was God ignoring him?  He was asking the questions that many of us ask at one point in our life. He begged God to respond and give him an opportunity to state his case.

            Finally, after all of this catastrophe, God spoke out of the whirlwind. He started off with one of my favorite quotes from scripture: “Gird up your loins like a man...” Men in this time wore tunics.  If they were about to go into a battle, or partake in any major physical exertion, they would gather the fabric up around them and tuck it in their belt. When God told Job to gird up his loins, he was inviting him into a confrontation, one that promised to require energy and work. One translation interpreted this phrase as, “Pull yourself together.  Up on your feet.”  (See: https://churchpop.com/2016/02/02/an-important-biblical-skill-how-to-gird-up-your-loins/ for helpful illustration on how to gird your loins.)         

            After that God proceeded to ask Job question after question.  “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” “Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his?”  In other words… “Who do you think you are talking to?”  We talked about this reading at our staff meeting and at vestry and I could not find one person who thought this was a helpful response from God.  In seminary, we are trained to provide pastoral care to those in need.  One professor told me, “The greater the tragedy, the fewer the words.” Because sometimes, there is nothing helpful to say.  However, there are unhelpful things one can say and God would have surely flunked his class in pastoral care with this response. 

Yet…for a moment, let’s look past what we think of this response and look at how Job responded. After many chapters of God’s questioning, Job finally says, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted…I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you…”   While God’s response might not appeal to us, it seems as though it worked for Job.  He might not have liked the response, but he was grateful for it because it proved to him that God was still there. God cared enough to appear to him personally. 

            Originally the theme of this sermon was going to be, “If you ask God a question, you should be prepared for an answer you might not want.” But I thought a lot about the times I asked God questions and ignored the answers.  If I had just listened to God about that guy, it would have saved me months of heartache. A more recent example was my decision to adopt. There were many times when I heard God whisper in my ear “Adopt” and I ignored him because that was not my plan.  The thing is that even if we are not prepared for the answer, we should still ask the question. 

For some reason, Job needed this talk.  In some ways, it was what he had asked for.  Perhaps the reason that God went on so long was because it took Job awhile to get on board.  Perhaps God sat there with him for days or months.  I like to think that is what it looked like—that Job came to his revelation slowly and God was patient with him.  Because even when I have asked the question and ignored the answer, the seed was planted.

Would it have been better had I listened the first time? Sure.  But eventually I got there, because I never stopped talking to God and at some point…I let him talk and I listened.  Ask the question that you are afraid of asking.  Ask it. You might not like the answer. If you don’t like the answer that’s a good sign because that indicates that you are really hearing God.  If it was your own voice, it would be telling you what you want to hear.  If you are not ready to hear the answer, that’s ok. Keep asking.  Keep talking.  One day, you will find the strength to accept the answer that God has given you and to follow the path that moves you closer to who God wants you to be. Ask the question.   

Where's the joy? October 18, 2015

Year B, Pentecost 21                                                                         
Job 38: 1-7, 34-41 & Mark 10:35-45                                                             

            When our stewardship chair (Eleanor) and I decided on a date for the ministry fair and the kick off to our Fall stewardship season, I immediately looked at the readings for the day.  Since our theme is joy, I was hoping I could find something related to joy in the readings.  When I saw the Old Testament reading was Job, I knew I was in trouble.   The only thing worse would have been the Book of Lamentations.  But I thought, well this is the end of Job….this is where God finally answers Job’s prayer.  Surely this is the good news we have been waiting for.  As I mentioned last week, the primary question that Job had was not why all these bad things were happening, but where God was in the midst of the pain and suffering. One would hope that when that answer came, there would be relief, possibly even joy.

            Then I read the text and it did not make me joyful.   The text begins with, “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind…” First of all, it is almost never good news when God enters the conversation with a storm.  It’s not like the storm was a coincidence. This was God’s storm.  From the storm, God said, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.”  That is not the tone that I was expecting.  I have read this text many times and every time it comes up, it shocks me.  To begin, God told Job that he knew nothing.  Then there is the “gird up your loins” line which seems a little peculiar.  In biblical times this phrase was used when people were preparing for battle, when great courage was expected.  God was basically saying, get ready because this is going to get uncomfortable.  This is not going to be an easy conversation.

            God proceeded to ask Job over 70 questions…none of which Job could answer…none of which he was expected to answer.  The first question is a good example of what comes, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”  If I was to sum up the questions, it would probably come down to, “Do you have any idea who you are talking to?”  One would think that would be an obvious question.  Job has been questioning God. But what God is saying is that any knowledge that Job may think he has is a tiny tiny fraction of what God knows.  It is a mere drop in the ocean of God’s vast knowledge. And I understand that (as much as my tiny tiny human brain can) but I still find myself disturbed by God’s response.  After all that Job has been through, I would think that it would not be too much to ask for a little compassion on the part of God.  We know that God is a loving God, but that side of God is not evident in this reading.

            I could say, well this is the Old Testament vengeful and wrathful God.  Jesus brought us the softer and gentler side of God.  Yet I do not really believe that.  I believe that the God we meet in the Old Testament is the very same God that we meet in the New Testament.  It’s just different sides to a very complex and incomprehensible God.  At the same time, as Christians we have received some special intel from God.  God came in the form of a man so that we could get to know God.  God wanted to be known.  God also knew that as humans, we needed to know him.  We need a relationship with God. So God with his infinite power and infinite knowledge was born to a peasant in the form of a baby and then lived among real people, people like Job, who wanted to be in the presence of God. 

            This is not to say that once Jesus came in the form of man, we all got with the program.  We can see from the Gospel reading that even the disciples were still having trouble understanding.  Jesus had just told them about his death so they would understand the kind of sacrifice he was making.  They responded by asking him whether they could be in the seat of power when he received glory.  While Job could not understand the God of absolute power, the disciples could not understand a God who acted as a servant.  Not only that, but Jesus expects us all to be servants.

            Where is joy…where is the joy in a God who comes from the storm and makes us uncomfortable?  Where is the joy in a God who asks us to sacrifice and serve?  It’s not a happy or carefree joy, but it is joy.  There is joy because we have a God who is present in our lives.  When God asked Job all of those questions, the questions referenced many of Job’s questions.  God had been listening to all that ranting and raving.  While Jesus has asked us to make sacrifices and serve others, he is only asking what he has already done.  We have a God who listens to us, knows us, wants us to know him, and who wants us to experience joy, not only here but in the life to come.  

            One of the questions that God asked Job was, “Who laid [the earth’s] cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted with joy?”  The joy that God brings is bigger than us.  We have a God to whom the stars sing and the heavenly beings shout with joy.  And that same God who has the power to create the stars-- came down from heaven so that he could heal the sick, feed the hungry, give hope to the hopeless, forgive the sins of many and then be insulted, betrayed, abandoned, beaten and killed.  There is nothing we can do, nothing we can say to a thank a God who did all of that. 

There is another hymn that is sung around Christmas that I love.  The last verse is:

 What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.[1]

Our God, the creator of all things, the salvation of all people continues to ask something of us.  God thinks that we have something to give.  There is joy in that.  God thinks that we have something to give.  Who are we to question God?

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[1] In the Bleak Midwinter, Christian Rossetti

There is no answer: October 11, 2015

Year B, 20 Pentecost                                                                         
Job 23                                                                                                 

            When something horrible happens, like the mass shooting at the community college in Oregon last week or the shooting in Charleston three months ago (or any shooting for that matter), one of the first questions that people ask is why. Why did this happen to innocent people?  What were the motives of the shooter?  That is what I often find myself preoccupied with, the motive of the shooter.  I want so desperately to understand their reason, what brought them to such a dark place.  But even when they leave a letter or a video, the reason is never satisfying.  It never makes me feel better.  However, there is something in each one of us that craves reason.  If there is a reason, then we can wrap our head around it. Perhaps we can even find a solution so that it won’t happen again. 

            Why do bad things happen to good people?  It is the question that never goes away.  Countless books have been written on the subject, but there is no easy answer.  There is no answer.  When this question comes up, people often turn to the Book of Job in the Old Testament.  Job is a classic story of really bad things happening to a good person for no clear reason.  In the beginning of the Book of Job we hear that Job is a righteous man, basically one of God’s all stars.  He had 10 children and thousands of livestock.  He was wealthy and successful. 

Then in one day, it was all gone.  All ten of his children were killed in a freak wind storm, lightning struck his sheep and shepherds, and an enemy stole his camels and oxen.  That was all in one day.  The next day he woke to find himself covered with boils from head to toe. He became so deformed that his friends could no longer recognize him. He went from having everything, to having virtually nothing.  The rest of the book comprises his rants toward God, long speeches, and conversations with his three friends who liked to pontificate about the reasons for his suffering. 

The reading from today is Job’s response to one of his friend’s speeches.  In this speech his friend suggested various sins that Job must have committed to deserve such suffering.  Surely he must have done something truly evil to warrant this dramatic turn of events.  This was a safe assumption in this time period.  It was common for people to assume that if bad things were happening, it was because they had sinned in some way.  God rewarded the righteous and punished the sinners.   His friend suggested that he repent and turn back to God. He needed to stop complaining and submit to God’s authority.  In other words, stop fighting this! 

It is rarely a good idea to lecture someone who is suffering especially when the premise of the lecture is wrong.   Job was an upright and good man.  We know that from the beginning of the book and surely his friends knew that as well.  But much like we do today, his friends were trying to find a reason for the suffering.  If they could find a reason, then they could find a solution.  Job would not accept that rationale.  To the end, he defended his innocence. 

What Job wanted was an opportunity to speak to God face to face.  He felt that if he could defend himself before God, then God would see that Job was a good man who did not deserve such treatment.  What Job was struggling with were not the reasons why, but the lack of response from God.  God had been absent for Job.  Job’s search for God was relentless, but also fruitless.   “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.” Job was searching for God and the harder he looked, the more distant God appeared.  Job was not asking “why.”  He was asking “where.”  Where is God when my life is falling to pieces? Yet through his ranting and his raving, he never lost hope.  Sometimes his words sounded as though he was hopeless, but they were not, because they were still words that he was sharing with God.

A poet named Wendell Berry wrote, “The distinguishing characteristic of absolute despair is silence.”  The poet went on to say that there is a difference between someone who shares their despair with another person and a person who can only admit it to themselves.  As long as Job kept ranting and raving, he held onto hope.  You have all experienced that with yourselves or another.  When you stop hearing from someone, that is when you worry.  When you find yourself withdrawing from others, that is when there is cause for concern.  While Job’s friends are often criticized for their obnoxious lectures, at least they were present.  They were there.

The last line of our reading is Job saying, “If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face.”  Many read this as Job giving up, finally admitting defeat.  He was asking for death.  Or….it was something else.  Job’s friend said that Job had accused God of being cloaked in darkness, of hiding in the darkness.  Perhaps what Job is saying here is that if God is indeed in the darkness, then that is where he needs to go to find God.  If the only way he can find God is by vanishing into the darkness, than that is what he will do.  Does that sound like giving up to you?  It’s desperate, but it is not giving up.  Hope and desperation have a lot more in common that we can imagine.

Eventually God does appear to Job.  That is our reading for next week and I don’t want to spoil anything.  But suffice it to say, it turns out God was there the whole time and heard everything Job and his friends were saying.  That does not come until chapter 38!  All of the horrible things happened to Job in chapter 1.  We can assume that Job did a lot of praying, pleading, whining, yelling, begging, crying and moping during that time.  He had to go through a great deal before he could meet God face to face.

            This past few months we have been inundated with stories of shootings, children washing up dead on beaches, historic flooding and droughts….just to name a few.  There are reasons for some of these things, but they are not necessarily reasons that we can agree on.  Asking why won’t get us anywhere.  What we need to start asking is where.  Where is God in all of this?  And if we can’t find God in these places of heartbreak and heartache, that means we need to look harder.  Not only that, we can become the signs of God’s presence.  We need to stand up and let the world know that we are the hands and feet of God.  God gave us this world for which we are stewards.  A steward takes care of the land when the owner is away.  We should be taking care of this land and in doing so, we take care of one another. 

The world is in darkness and we carry the light.  Perhaps the answer is not what matters, as much as the question itself.  Because as long as we keep asking, we are searching and we are caring.   Job’s friends told him to stop searching and  arguing and give up.  That was bad advice. God wants us to continue to question injustice wherever we see it, to search for God in the rubbles of the wars that we have waged.  God wants us to raise our voices and not be satisfied with platitudes and easy answers.  There are no easy answers.  There are hard questions and when we stop asking them, then we’ve really given up.  Now is not the time to give up.  If the darkness surrounds us, then we get our light and we wade into the darkness.  If enough of us do that, it won’t be darkness for much longer.