God of Mercy, Hear Our Prayer (10/4/15)

Job 1:1, 2:1-10

This was a tough week to write a sermon. Yesterday was World Communion Sunday, and I would have preferred to write a message that tied what we do here in Houston to what Christians do all over the world. I wanted to do that, but there was yet another mass shooting in this country, this time in Oregon. Such events beg the question: Where is God in the midst of this tragedy?

God of Mercy, Hear Our Prayer (10/4/15)

Job 1:1, 2:1-10

          Good morning. Before I get to the sermon, I want to start with a word of prayer for all those who were touched by the shootings on Thursday. As we did last Sunday in the Prayers of the People, I will conclude the prayer with the words, “this is our prayer.” Please respond by saying, “God of mercy, hear our prayer.”

God of mercy, please watch over all those who have been touched by the shooting at Umpqua Community College. Welcome home all the victims of who died in this act. Comfort all those who lost friends and loved ones; comfort all who witnessed this terrible event. We pray that all will know God's love and comfort during this time of crisis. This is our prayer.

God of mercy, hear our prayer.

Sermon

          I don’t have any jokes for you this morning. No clever remarks, just grief and anguish. This was one of those weeks when the events of the world overtook my best efforts at sermon writing. I’ve got no words to explain what happened in Oregon on Thursday. Nothing can ever truly explain the mind of a person who exists so far outside of the reality where the rest of us live. I cannot relate to the anger and the sense of isolation that afflicted the shooter. I mean, we can all relate to a certain level of anger, even blind rage, from time to time. But that combination of the extreme isolation and the seething anger, that’s completely alien to me.

          I think the story of Job might shed a little light on this week’s events. But first I’d like to tell you a story about a man named David. He grew up in a town, oh, just a few miles from here. He was a smart kid from a working-class family. He lived in a shabby house in an otherwise-good neighborhood.

          David was well liked by most of his classmates. He wasn’t on the A-list; he wasn’t the captain of the football team; he wasn’t one of the rich kids who drove a nice car to school. His parents worked odd hours—they were never going away for the weekend and there was never gonna be a big, drunken party at his house. Still, David was invited to most of the parties in town.

          David worked hard in school. He made good grades. He got a paper route as soon as he was old enough and he saved his money. When he turned sixteen, he quit most of his sports and got a part-time job at the mall. He stayed on the wrestling team. He wasn’t very good, but he loved the sport—it matched his work ethic. And besides, it was a small school; there was no one else at his weight class. By the end of his junior year in high school, David bought his own car.

          David didn’t have enough money to pay for college, and he didn’t want to go into debt, so he joined the Army after he graduated from high school. David served for five years, all during peacetime; he was never in harm’s way. He went to college on the G.I. Bill. David studied engineering in college and he got married somewhere along the way. He finished college when he was twenty-eight; he had a wife and two kids, but he didn’t have any student debt. Things were looking good.

          In the eighth or ninth grade, like so many other kids around here, David started using tobacco. Sometimes it was Skoal Bandits. Other times it was whatever he could sneak out of his dad’s can. And sometimes he didn’t even have to sneak it—his dad and his uncles would let him do it when they went deer hunting.

          David quit using tobacco shortly after leaving the Army. It seems that most of the girls he met—after he left Washington County—thought it was gross. And maybe a lot of girls back here thought it was gross, too, but it was just something that everyone did. So he quit.

          Many years later, David began to feel some pain in his jaw. The pain wouldn’t go away, so David went to see his dentist. The dentist took x-rays and then told David to see his doctor. The doctor said it didn’t look good. David saw another doctor and then another. It was cancer. They had to remove part of his jaw. The doctors were sure they got all of the cancer. Well, they were pretty sure.

          David was never quite the same after that. The doctors were able to put prosthesis in his jaw. Everybody thought he looked good, all things considered. David didn’t. All he saw was a deformed face. He stopped going out. He lost weight. The prosthesis made his jaw hurt, so he ate less, and he lost more weight and that made the prosthesis hurt even more. Then he learned that the cancer had returned. This time it was his esophagus. David had become a prisoner in his own body.

          David was never a particularly religious man: he went to church as a kid, though not every Sunday. Occasionally he’d chat with the chaplain in the Army, but after that, well, life just got in the way. Still, David believed in God, and when the cancer returned, he was reminded of the story of Job.

          David identified with Job’s suffering. He was disfigured and isolated by his cancer. He didn’t understand why this was happening. Yes, he knew that he’d used tobacco when he was a young man, but he really didn’t think God was going to punish him for that! And fine, even if God was punishing him for something, he wasn’t sure what he had to merit this punishment. And even if he had done something awful, surely a just and loving God wouldn’t punish David’s kids by taking David’s life. Right? How was that fair?

          This is the problem of suffering. We don’t understand how a just and loving God would allow there to be suffering in the world. And we are very quick to jump to an easy answer: God must be punishing someone. That’s usually the wrong answer. The story of Job is not that simple.

          God makes this a complicated story. God seems rather cruel. Now you might be tempted to say, “but pastor, Satan is the one who inflicts these torments on poor Job.” And yes, that’s true—but only after God gives Satan the power to do so. God places just one limitation on Satan’s ability to torture Job: Satan may not take Job’s life. He can inflict sores on Job’s body; he can take Job’s children and earthly possessions; but Satan may not kill Job.

          God is complicit in the torture. Why? Because Satan doubted Job’s faithfulness, God said to Satan, “No, you’ll see, you can torture him all you want, Job will remain faithful.” So it becomes a bet between God and Satan. God is convinced that Job is truly a righteous man; Satan believes that Job is faithful only because Job is a successful man.

          To get a better understanding of this complicated story, we need to understand who Satan is. A few weeks ago, I told you that Hebrew was a language of verbs; nearly every word is derived from a verb. The name Satan is derived from the Hebrew verb, to accuse. In Hebrew, his name is ha-Satan, and that translates to “the accuser.”

          That red guy, with the pitchfork and the bat wings and the barbed tail, he comes along a lot later. At this point in history, and in this story, that figure does not yet exist: “The Satan in Job, though ominous, is not the full-fledged demonic figure that he becomes in the New Testament and in other later Jewish writings.”[1] This Satan, this Accuser is simply here to test Job, to put his faith on trial, to see if Job remains faithful if he loses all the blessings—his land, his livestock, his children—that God had bestowed upon him; all of this to satisfy a bet between God and Satan. And God wins. Yay. Job remains faithful. Yay, God? Really?

          I’m sorry, but that doesn’t sound like a loving God to me. Yes, at the end of the story, Job’s property is restored to him, but not the lives of the children he lost. Perhaps it’s best to view this story not as a work of history, but as a parable.[2] Consider the way the story begins: “There once was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.” It’s worth noting that this land of Uz is not mentioned in any other book of the Bible.[3] By contrast, many of the Old Testament prophets begin with highly specific references to dates and places. Consider the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel:

·        Isaiah begins with the verse: “The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

·        Jeremiah begins: “The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also in the days of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of King Zedekiah son of Josiah of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.”

·        Or Ezekiel: “In the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the river Chebar, the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. On the fifth day of the month (it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin), the word of the Lord came to the priest Ezekiel son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar; and the hand of the Lord was on him there.”

These are very specific locations, with references to kings and years. We know where these places are and we can find records of these kings—records outside of the Bible. But Job, from the land of Uz, not so much. The story doesn’t even mention the name of Job’s father. It might as well begin with the words, “Once upon a time.” It’s more like a story about a man named David, who grew up in a town near here.

          Even if we read the story of Job as a parable, it’s still difficult to draw conclusions. Job represents an example of perfect faithfulness. This is an impossible example. Only Jesus, the Son of God, the Word incarnate, can be perfectly faithful. No other human can attain this level of faithfulness. Yes, of course we should try to remain faithful at all times, but we know that we are human, imperfect, and fallible. We will always fall short. We know this. God knows this.

          So maybe this is also a parable about how we deal with others who are suffering. Job’s wife offers an example of what we should not do. She tells Job to curse God and die. That’s it: get it over with quickly. Sure, the penalty for cursing God is death, but it’s a quick death. It ends the suffering. But Job doesn’t opt for the easy answer.

          It is difficult to sit and witness another person’s pain. Job’s wife can’t deal with Job’s suffering. If Job followed her instructions, then maybe it would make life easier for Job’s wife. I think this is often where we find ourselves when we try to comfort someone else. We want to say the perfect thing; we want to provide comfort; we want to take away the pain. Sometimes that just isn’t possible.

          Much of the Book of Job is filled with Job’s lamentations. All we can do is listen to Job, sit with him, and hear his story. We are powerless to change his reality. Perhaps this is also how we’re supposed to deal with the suffering around us, whether the suffering is a loved one who’s been diagnosed with cancer, or a community that’s been touched by violence, such as what we all witnessed in Oregon last Thursday.

          Let me make one thing clear: I don’t believe that God sends all these awful, earthly torments our way as punishment for some transgression. Some bad things just happen. I don’t know why good people die in traffic accidents. I don’t know why kids get cancer or why they have to suffer through their treatments. I don’t believe that a loving God sends these things as punishment. How could a young child sin so badly that God would punish that child with cancer? How could a loving God punish a parent by inflicting cancer upon a child? That would be as cruel as God making a bet with Satan, and then allowing Satan to take Job’s children, just to test Job’s faith. That doesn’t make sense.

          A gunman shooting up a college campus doesn’t make any sense, whether it’s in Oregon or Southern California or Virginia. A young man entering a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and then murdering nine people, that makes no sense at all. Even here in Western Pennsylvania, right up the road in Collier Township, the same thing happened. None of it makes any sense.

          Maybe God isn’t in the shootings, but certainly, God is there. That great Presbyterian, Mr. Rogers once asked his mother where God was in the midst of a tragedy. She told him to look for the helpers. Without a doubt, God is present among the first responders to all these tragedies. And without a doubt, God is there when any of us reaches out to a friend or a loved one, when that person is sick, or in pain, or in a dark and lonely place. Sometimes we can’t make sense out of suffering and tragedy. That is for God, not us. All we can do is keep the faith with those who are suffering. We don’t have to try to explain the tragedies or the suffering. All we have to do is be present and listen. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Benediction

          Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that we are called to offer comfort to those who mourn and grieve. Go forth and be instruments of God’s peace and reconciliation. Do not return evil for evil to any person, but know that we are all loved by God, and that we are called to reflect that love to everyone we meet. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, let all God’s children say, Amen!

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[1] Kathryn M. Schifferdecker. “Commentary on Job 1:1, 2:1-10,” retrieved from: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1421

[2] Schifferdecker.

[3] Schifferdecker.