June 14, 2020 - Honest to God - Job 3:1-10; 4:1-9; 7:11-21

Honest to God
Job 3:1-10; 4:1-9; 7:11-21
Pentecost + 2 – June 14, 2020

Intro: Kate Bowler is an associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke University

·     In 2015, diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer at age 35

·     In the midst of her treatment, she wrote an essay that she sent off on a whim to the NY Times, which was then published and generated thousands of responses

o  People emailing and writing, sharing stories of grief and loss and uncertainty, their search for meaning in the pain and the tragedy

·     And she received an in-box full of strangers giving reasons for why she had gotten cancer

o  Reminders that death was not the end

o  People offering advice

o  People sharing platitudes, like the title of her subsequent book, “Everything Happens for a Reason” (to which her husband replied to their neighbor when she said that, “I’d love to hear it – the reason my wife is dying…” effectively ending the conversation)

 It’s a common reaction for most of us in the face of deep pain and loss and grief – to be uncomfortable

·     To want to help in some way

o  And so we offer our own sort-of similar experiences: “I know just how you feel. When my aunt had cancer…”

o  We offer clichés meant to comfort:

§  God never gives us more than we can handle.

§  At least… fill-in the blank (at least you have other children/can try to have other children; at least you had all these years together; at least they caught it early...)

§  God has a plan/everything happens for a reason

·     In our discomfort, we long to make some meaning out of suffering; to believe that out of suffering can come good, that it can – on the other side of it, if there is another side – work for good somehow for the person suffering or for others

·     And sometimes we offer up our certainty of the reasons why bad things happen – suggesting that illness or death or trauma is a punishment for something we’ve done – or that a lack of healing comes as a result of a lack of faith

You may have been on the receiving end of these kinds of well-intended words – and you know how they can wound

Surely Job knew what that was like

·     In chapters 1 and 2 last week, we met Job, who had it all, and suddenly lost everything – livestock, servants, even all of his children in one tragic windstorm – and then his physical body was afflicted with sores from head to toe

·     At the end of chapter 2, his wife encourages him to “curse God and die!”

o  Yet in all of these things, the Bible says, “Job did not sin with his lips; Job did not charge God with wrongdoing”

·     But in chapter 3, Job begins to let loose.

o  In the company of his 3 friends who sat with him in silent commiseration for 7 days and 7 nights, Job doesn’t curse God, but he does curse the day of his birth, even the night he was conceived; life is so awful he wishes he had never been born at all

·     And perhaps it’s no wonder that Eliphaz, his buddy, feels like he has to say something here

o  Message version: “Would you mind if I said something to you? Under the circumstances it’s hard to keep quiet. You yourself have done this plenty of times, spoken words that clarify, encouraged those who were about to quit…

o  You’ve been hit hard and you’re reeling from the blow. But shouldn’t your devout life give you confidence now? Shouldn’t your exemplary life give you hope?

o  Shouldn’t you know the way out, Job? – ultimately, he and the others will pressure and push Job to confess his sin so that God will heal him…

·     It is so hard to sit with someone in so much anguish and pain, physically and emotionally – and just sit. Just be present. Just listen and love.

·     We so want to fix it!

·     Our “helping” tends to do a better job of minimizing our own pain rather comforting the one who is hurting

·     Sends a message that raw pain and anguish isn’t acceptable, isn't faithful

·     Leap to defending/protecting/explaining God, putting a positive spin

 

But what we see in Job is that God doesn’t need our defense, our protection, our explanations

·     God can handle our laments, our grief, our anguish, our questions, our anger directed at God

·     Job is honest to God in chapter 7 – the first time he speaks directly to God in the book of Job, but it will not be the last!

·     Job knows that he is innocent, that he does not deserve this suffering (Job, like his friends, still has a theology of retribution – that bad things come as a result of sin)

o  And so he turns his cries directly to God

·     He laments and questions and complains

o  As the Message puts it, “my complaining to high heaven is bitter, but honest.”

·     Life recently has been so, so hard, and Job wants answers!

o  He feels targeted by God, he wants a break, a reprieve – even his sleep is disturbed by nightmares!

·     I’m not saying that Job gets satisfying answers to these questions – but isn’t it refreshing to see him just lay it all out there with no restraint, trusting that God can handle it

·     But when God eventually shows up to respond, God will commend Job for his honesty, for persisting in relationship with God even when it is hard

·     And that is good news for all of us who have ever gone through pain and struggle and wondered why and got angry at God or felt abandoned or wished that God would show up and answer our question

·     Because we don’t have to put on a happy face or keep a stiff upper lip when it comes to our relationship with God; we can wrestle and complain and mourn and question and get angry and despair, and God is with us in and through it all

·     And there is freedom in being able to be honest to God, to be real, to be authentic and vulnerable – in being who we really are in the moment and not having to pretend to God

o  Because in Jesus, we see a God who knows the depth of suffering

o  Luther called that the theology of the cross – that we can see God’s power most clearly hidden in vulnerability and pain on the cross – and so we can call a thing what it is and not try to sugarcoat it or deny it

·     We can’t always make sense of it – but through it all, God loves us, even with all of our raw pain and emotion, and God grieves with us in it, holding us in our sorrow

·      And for that we say, Thanks be to God. Amen.