Hilton Head Island, SC – July 11, 2021
The Chapel Without Walls
Job 1:6-12, 20-22; Job 2:1-9
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” – Job 1:21b (RSV)
Theologically, the Book of Job is one of the most profound books in the entire Bible. The story of Job is a long epic poem which originated somewhere “in the east,” which is to say, in Persia perhaps (modern-day Iran), or maybe in Lower Mesopotamia (southern Iraq). Apparently the poem was adopted into Israelite religion about the time of David and Solomon (around 1000 BCE or so), and was given a monotheistic basis with Adonoy (a Hebrew word meaning “Lord”) as the sole deity in the long narrative.
The opening paragraph of the first chapter says that Job was a very wealthy man who was completely devoted to God. He had seven sons and three daughters, and “seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, …and very many servants.” The fictional Job was to ancient Middle Eastern agribusiness what Jeff Bezos has been to 21st-century monopolistic omni-marketing.
As Job lived somewhere east of Israel, so also, according to the beginning of the story, did Satan. The concept of Satan originated somewhere around the Persian Gulf in the mists of Middle-Eastern antiquity, and somehow he wangled his way into Israelite religion. I am sorry that happened, because it has created unfortunate theological detours ever since, but other things like that also happen, as we shall shortly see. The devil disappears after chapter 2 of Job, though, never to be heard from again, and the book has 42 chapters. So I urge you not to make too much of the Prince of Demons. He is just the means for an introduction to the theological issues highlighted by the Book of Job.
The opening chapter says that “the sons of God” (presumably angels, who also came from Persian religion) presented themselves before God. Satan, the classic “fallen angel,” was with the other angelic beings. God pointed out to Satan how committed Job was to God. Smarmy Satan told God that if God would give him a crack at the noble gentleman, he wouldn’t be so faithful. So God told the devil, “Have at him, but you can’t lay a finger on the person of Job himself.” I have always thought that the notion of a dark power opposed to God is not a good idea, so I caution you not to make too much of the first two chapters of this book. Nonetheless, it does give the story an interesting opening.
Without going into the details, in no time all of Job’s critters were stolen, all of his servants were killed by marauding tribesmen, and a great wind, much stronger than Tropical Storm Elsa, came and destroyed his entire family, with the exception of his wife. But she treated Job like dirt, which only added to the enormity of his woes. Everything bad that could happen to Job did happen to Job. The introduction claims it was Satan who caused this havoc.
This was like the building in Miami collapsing. Job’s whole world was turned upside down. But Job refused to blame God for what had happened to him. It says, “Then Job arose, and rent his robe, and shaved his head, and fell upon the ground, and worshiped”! No complaints, no vituperations, no fist-shaking against the Creator of heaven and earth. “Naked came I from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (1:20-21). And then the final statement in the first chapter: “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (1:22). The problem with Job’s statement is that he apparently thought God caused this cascade of calamities, but God didn’t. Job misinterprets what has happened to him, and why it has happened.
Traditional Israelite religion said we should never blame God for anything. If bad things happen to us, just suck it up and keep a stiff upper lip. Well, that’s a lot easier said than done. When we are stricken with illness, when someone who is more precious to us than life itself dies, when a hurricane comes and destroys our home, few if any of us would be as calm and sanguine as noble Job. The Psalms are filled with complaints against God, especially the Psalms of David, but Job is the straightest of straight arrows, at least in the first two chapters.
How are we supposed to act when terrible things happen? When suffering descends upon us, what are we supposed to do? Is it not natural to ask God why all this has befallen us? Who can be so praiseworthy as to take calamity in stride, as though it is nothing? Nothing? Nothing! When sorrow engulfs us, it is everything, and who but God can obliterate it? But will He? Will He?
There is a fancy word which is sometimes used to try to explain the origin of suffering. It is the word theodicy. It comes from two Greek words: theos (God) and di-ke (judgment or right.) Thus theodicy is purported to be the correct kind of judgment about God with respect to suffering. To express it differently, theodicy is our human attempt to make sense of how or why pain and anguish happens to all of us in the course of a lifetime. Hurt happens, and inevitably we wonder why. Why us? Why me?
The Greeks had a concept by which they tried to explain both good fortune and bad. Both happen to us because of fate. To the Greeks, fate was a definite and observable force, but it was impersonal. The things that happen to us are meant to happen, they said, but no one can ever accurately figure out why. Why are some people rich while most others are not? Why do some people live in good health until the day they die at a ripe old age, and others are plagued with illnesses for their entire pain-wracked lives? Why are some people excellent athletes and others are as awkward as cow with a crutch? It is fated; that’s why. There is no other explanation.
The Bible abhors the notion of fate. The Bible teaches that everything that happens is connected to God. But is that true? Did God rain down disaster upon poor old Job? The Bible says that Job was righteous; therefore how could he suffer? The devil made it happen, the first two chapters of this stellar epic poem tell us, although those chapters are in prose, not poetry. That suggests they were added as the introduction to the poem later when the Israelites conscripted it into their religion. But it also implies we are not to make too much of Satan being the cause of Job’s woes.
In a way, the collapse of the building on Miami Beach is a modern-day version of Job. Things happen. Why do they happen? In that instance, the cause was defective construction. The cause was the knowledge years ago that the building had serious structural problems. The cause was that the residents did not want to pay the exorbitant fees necessary to overcome the deficiencies, if they could ever be overcome. Nobody is blaming God for this, but blame shall be adjudicated, and the monetary lawsuits will be astronomical.
Last week we watched a movie on HBO called Let Him Go. It was a latter-day Psycho, but without Norman Bates and his terrifying mummified mother. In the opening scenes of the movie, there is a three-generation family living on a ranch in Montana: two grandparents, played by Diane Lane and Kevin Costner, their son and his wife, and their three-year-old grandson. The father of the boy dies in some sort of unexplained accident, and later his widow married a man from North Dakota who turns out to be a monster, as is everyone else in his family. But the grandfather says to the grandmother, as they try to sort out their grief over the loss of their son and their unhappiness with the new husband of their daughter-in-law, “Sometimes that’s what life is, Margaret: the list of all we’ve lost.”
Job lost nearly everything near and dear to him. At first he acknowledged it in numb silence, but then he began to wonder why he was confronted by so much colossal loss.
If we live long enough, nearly all of us lose our parents. If we live longer than that, we may lose our brothers or sisters or children or spouses or best friends. But many people also lose their wealth and assets, and the loss may have nothing to do with any mistakes they made; it just happened. Illness or disability may turn healthy people into mere shells of what they once were. I have lived long enough that, to one degree or another, by now I have known many hundreds of parishioners, past and present, who have endured terrible misfortunes. Things happen to everyone, but many things happen to some folks which are simply inexplicable. And then what?
It is the calamitous statistical improbabilities that really throw us. Crib death takes a baby from the parents. A freak accident erases the life of someone much loved by many. Another misfortune alters an agile athlete into a person incapable of ever walking again, let alone performing at a high level of physical prowess. Dementia turns millions into mentally shriveled or otherwise altered personalities.
The words fortunate or unfortunate hint at or point directly to the Greek notion of fate. But if we ponder it deeply, most of us will conclude that there is no such an unseen power as fate. Furthermore, it also becomes impossible for some of us to imagine that God is the Divine Manipulator behind every occurrence in our lives. Things happen because things happen, and we can deduce nothing other than to observe that sobering and unsatisfactory realization. Life is what causes things to happen.
Many Christians whose lives are relatively trouble-free for as long as they live attribute their good fortune to God. They feel blessed, and acknowledge that they are blessed. They believe that it is God who has showered them with blessings. That is a very natural conclusion. And anyone who is able to perceive it in that light truly is blessed.
But what about those whose lives seem to be a litany of hardships and woes? What about those who feel like they never catch a break, and outside observers would also affirm their thinking; the only luck they ever seem to have is all bad. How can we explain that? And is it not also natural for them to wonder why bad things happen to good people? Not everyone blames God when painful events interject themselves, but many do.
I am not saying you should accept this, but I hope you will think about it. I no longer believe God is the determining factor behind the occurrence of either good things or bad things. In this world all kinds of things happen to all of us, and we may undermine supportive theology if we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how God is involved in any or all of it. Things happen - - - period.
It seems to me that either we encourage God’s presence with us or we insist on His absence from us after the things that happen have happened. Do we thank God for our good fortune, since, as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas and Calvin said in one way or another, “All good comes from God,” or do we happily affirm the good things without thinking much about their origin, while holding it against God when the bad things come? Do we acknowledge God’s presence with us whatever happens, and seek His guidance when the hardest things happen, or do we ignore all of it and just try to trudge on through life as best we can, supposing that we must face life entirely alone?
Remember, in the Bible, particularly the Hebrew Bible, it is claimed that good things happen only to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. It is presumed that is the way God wants it to be. But is that truly what God wants, and is that truly the way things turn out?
When Job was angry at God, he said, “He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me” (Job 16:9). If we are honest with ourselves, we may have had similar thoughts at certain painful points in our lives. God understands why we feel that way, and He doesn’t hold it against us, even though the Bible frequently claims that He does. Anger at God when tragedy strikes is a very common human response, but lovingkindness from God toward us in such circumstances is a universal divine response. It would be almost abnormal if we did not feel anger or hurt or sorrow or incredulity when a disaster hits home very close to us, but we need to know that God did not cause it nor does us He blame us for imagining that He did. After all, He once felt similar intense pain Himself when a man in whom He uniquely dwelt and whom He uniquely loved died, after being cruelly nailed to a cross.
Things happen: strange things, excruciating things, sad, mystifying, incomprehensible things. But what happens when things happen? That is the question that will be addressed in the sermon next Sunday.