Sermons

The Awful Question

The Madison Avenue Pulpit
The Rev. Dr. Fred R. Anderson, Pastor, Copyright 1994.

October 2, 1994

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Proper 22, Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary

Job 1:1; 2:1-10
Psalm 26
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away. We sense a story unfolding. Is it history? Maybe. It depends upon whose story it is - yours, mine, our story -- history perhaps. But for now, story will do. Like all stories this one allows us some distance, some perspective so that we can hear its questions and grasp its meaning, for it is about faith in the midst of suffering, and asks each of us an awful question.

His name is Job. He "was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil," a man of great integrity in every way. He has also been called a man of great patience, through endurance is probably closer to reality.¹ Most of all, Job was an unwitting, unsuspecting and totally innocent bystander to a heavenly conversation which side-swipes him. It asks the awful question which turns his life upside down.

"One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan was among them." This is not the rebellious fallen angel of mythology, nor the fully developed demonic provocateur we discover as the Devil in the New Testament. This is a member of his majesty's loyal secret service -- God's eyes and ears. His job is to roam the earth spying on the evil he finds therein, which may explain why people call him their enemy -- the accuser -- what the word "Satan" means. Satan has returned to the heavenly court to report on his earthly spying. But today Satan will accuse more than humankind. Today Satan will accuse God as well.

God asks if Satan has been doing his job, turning the conversation to Job, reminding Satan that there is no one on the earth like Job -- blameless and upright, who fears God and turns away from evil -- pious and faithful indeed! "Of course!," responds Satan, his sarcasm setting the stage for a dual accusation. "Does he fear you for nothing? You've built a protective fence around him. You've blessed everything Job does. He loves and serves you -- you respond in kind, blessing him and protecting him from evil. That's a pretty neat quid pro quo the two of you have going for one another. Take that away and see what happens!" The accusation is this: Job's religious and moral integrity are the result of God's goodness, protection, and parental care. Satan suggests that Job worships and serves God because it is profitable. Will he if it is not? That is the awful question: Will Job love and serve God simply for God's own sake? Will we?

But notice that it is not only an accusation against Job. It is an accusation against God as well. Can God have such influence upon Job that Job remains upright and blameless, loving God for God's sake, even if all the blessings are taken away? Can God have such influence upon you and me that we love God for God's self alone? God's integrity is being questioned as well. Satan levels the double accusation: "Stretch forth your hand now against all that he has, and he will curse you to your face."

The accusation must be proven false. God consents to having Job so tested -- only Job himself is protected. Satan has permission to tear down the protective fence around Job, that the cruel vicissitudes of life may sweep over him. And indeed, they do. Marauding bandits steal his livestock and kill his servants; lightening destroys his sheep and their shepherds in the fields. While all of this is being reported to Job, word comes that a storm has leveled his children's house killing all of them at once. Job's fortune and future are gone -- wiped out in a morning.

What does Job do? He tears his robe, shaves his head and falls face down on the ground in worship, blessing God. "Naked I came into this life, naked I shall leave it, The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." Such a response is startling to us who have come to see ourselves as the makers of our own lives, the creators of our own destinies. Continue to worship a God who could allow that to happen? How often have you heard it "I cannot believe in a God that would allow Rwanda, Croatia, Auschwitz." Words of people who fear God for what's in it for them, and no longer do so when it is not profitable to them. Our culture seethes with a self-importance which demands that the power behind the universe constantly adjust to our needs, else we don't believe the power exists. But Job is different. Satan was wrong. Job still loves and trusts God. Job repeats his tradition's rituals of grief -- "The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord." -- holding himself together in worship, just as you and I hold ourselves together through such ritual and worship at the time of tragic loss. And we read that "In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong-doing."

But the scene shifts again to the heavenly court. The conversation repeats itself, God not only praising how Job has persisted in his integrity, but actually boasting in him. But it is not over. "Skin for Skin!," says Satan. Let's see if his trust is only skin deep. Let's test this relationship of which you are so boastful, God. After all, "people will give away anything - everything, to save their own lives."² You see, Satan has been spying on us. He knows our evil ways. He has seen that when push comes to shove, it is our nature to care only about ourselves, to sacrifice everyone else in our lives to save our own hides. It explains the complicity in the atrocities of Rwanda, Croatia, Haiti - a fundamental reflex of self-preservation. It explains the abuse children experience from addicted parents. It explains us at our very worst. Accusing at a more treacherous level Satan says "Touch his bone and flesh, and he will curse you to your face." His integrity is only skin deep.

The awful question leads to more drastic measures. Now everything but Job's life is in Satan's hands, though Job doesn't even know it. Calamity strikes Job's flesh. Covered with loathsome sores, he takes a piece of broken pottery, sits down on an ash heap and begins to scrape his skin. Is it relief for the itching of his flesh, or a distracting counter irritant designed to help him endure the maddening dialogue taking place in his head? We can't be sure. What we do know is that Job is innocent -- his suffering is not punishment for wrongs done. Job knows it too. Why then? He is not yet prepared to conceive some greater purpose to it all. For now he is simply learning that suffering is not just the withdrawal of God's blessing, nor the loss of the good God once gave. Job's relationship with God is turning a corner. He is learning that suffering sometimes involves bearing bad things innocently because doing so serves a purpose we neither can conceive nor understand. Job cannot know of the double accusation, one against God and the other against himself. God is asked if there can in fact be authentic love for God, true worship and servanthood which is not self-serving. Job is asks if, while suffering innocently, it is still possible to believe in God, much less love God. The very nature of the covenant between God and God's people is being tested in Job. Is this relationship between God and us dependent upon the mutual benefit it brings, or is there more to God, to us, and to our relationship than that? Little does Job know that how he responds will answer for both himself and God.

The pious words are gone. Not even rituals help now. There is only raw honesty, tearing at his insides more violently than the potsherd at his flesh, as the awful question begins to dawn on him. Does he love God for nothing? Is his love for God only for the good it will bring Job? Or, does he love God for God's sake alone?

Job says nothing, keeping it all bottled in, lest in opening his mouth one of his thoughts escape and he says more than he wants to say. It should be a word of caution to each of us. In such situations, it is often best to say nothing, lest we end up either being a fool or speaking the accuser's treacherous words. Which is, of course, precisely what Job's wife does. Whereas Job's friends, who we will meet next week, arrive and sit with him in silence for seven days before speaking, she foolishly speaks, unwittingly, yet baldly pressing Satan's question: "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die."

Isn't it interesting that those who are so quick to abandon God in the face of innocent suffering are often not the ones suffering themselves, but the bystanders? Perhaps that is because what they really have been all along is nothing more than bystanders. But Job is no bystander.

Should Job abandon the notion of God altogether, accept responsibility for himself, even if that means taking his own life; should he curse God and die? That is what comes from abandoning God -- death. Soon Job will learn there are conditions in life where death seems more acceptable than life. Job can end it all right there in a verbal barrage of euthanasia. But he will not. Only the fool says there is no God,³ and Job is no fool. God has, he is beginning to suspect, given him over to another power for reasons Job cannot yet comprehend. He will wait. Yet, as we will see next week, he will be anything but sanguine or tolerant of what is happening to him. He will listen, argue, challenge, even make demands of God until the fire of his suffering makes sense.

For now, we must wait with him. But we wait, remembering that another was given into the accuser's hand, but without the provision that his life be spared. We meet him at this table, the one who loved God only for God, and loved us only for ourselves. In the intersection of that love he suffered all that can be suffered, and thereby won victory over suffering and death, not only for himself, but for you and for me as well.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Bibliography:

Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job, THE OLD TESTAMENT LIBRARY, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press), 1985.

J. Gerald Janzen, Job, INTERPRETATION, A BIBLE COMMENTARY FOR TEACHING AND PREACHING, (Atlanta: John Knox Press), 1985.

Marvin H. Pope, Job, THE ANCHOR BIBLE, (New York: Doubleday), 1965.

1. James 5:11, RSV, though "endurance" is a better translation of the Greek hupomonae than the more traditional "patience," interestingly, the NRSV now translates it "the endurance of Job."
2. Pope, p. 28.
3. Psalm 14:1

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