First Reading: -from Job: 9, 10, 13, and 19
[Job is speaking to his "comforters."]
How can a human being be justified before God?
Should God come near me, I see him not;
Should he pass by, I am not aware of him;
Should he seize me forcibly, who can say no?
Who can say to God, ‘What are you doing?’
He is God and he does not relent.
Though I am innocent, I myself cannot know it;
Therefore I say: ‘Both the innocent and the wicked he destroys.’
My days are swifter than a runner, they flee away; they see no happiness;
They shoot by like skiff’s of reed, like an eagle swooping upon its prey.
Would that his terrors did not frighten me;
that I may speak without being afraid of God.
Since this is not the case with me, I loathe my life.
But I would speak with the Almighty; I wish to reason with God.
You are glossing over falsehoods and offering vain remedies, every one of you!
Oh, that you would be altogether silent!
This for you would be wisdom.
Your reminders are shy maxims, your fabrications are mounds of clay.
But as for me, I know that my Vindicator lives,
and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust;
Whom I myself shall see: with my own eyes, not another’s, shall behold him,
And from my flesh I shall see God; my inmost being is consumed with longing.
I will carry my flesh between my teeth, and take my life in my hand.
Though he slay me yet will I trust in Him,
But I will maintain mine own ways before Him.
My days are passed
away, my plans are at an end, as are the cherished purposes of my heart.
Second Reading – from Prairie Group Papers, November 2001
Rev.s Bertschausen, Budd, and Wolfe
The Rev. Roger Bertschausen
Before Job’s trials, God had been locked in the straightjacket of the Deuteronomist covenant: God "had to prosper good and punish evil." At the heart of the Deuteronomist covenant was a world of crystal clear expectations, a world of clear-cut cause and effect: behave well and you will be rewarded by God; sin and you will punished by God. With great justice, God oversaw all that happened in the world. This was a world guided by reason above all else: each action had a logical, predictable consequence.
The Rev. Dan Budd
Job is a story of an ancient ancestor of ours who thought that he could control his life and the lives of those he loved by being correct in his behavior, proper in his ritual observance, and perfect in his very being. Job thinks life and worship and living his faith means doing everything just right. Being on top of the food chain, having the largest brains sometimes gives us the notion that we can control life’s events. We develop illusions that it we just do the right thing in the right way, that if we think the right thing with the right words, all will be well. We develop illusions that we can make people love us if we do things just right, or that we can keep our loved ones out of harm’s way by being upright and perfect ourselves. We develop illusions that we can guarantee happy endings because we have been good and have done good things and wished only good for everyone everywhere. We develop and believe in illusions that right behavior; right thought and even right action will result in trouble-free, happy living. And we can easily develop the illusion that certain rituals, performed in just the right way, will guarantee us what Life will not.
The Rev. John Wolfe
It is a simple equation. Obey the moral law and you and yours will prosper. Disobey or ignore it and all hell will break loose. Thus can all our lives be weighed, and all things be accounted for.
It is a long established equation: as ye sow, so shall ye reap, obey God’s ordinances and prosper, defy them and suffer.
The origin of the Hebrew Scriptures is the Exile in Babylon. Here the Bible was invented. The period following the exile was a time of stern determination and hope deferred. But Job's comforters’ arguments – the Deuteronomist’s – were not the only arguments. The creator of Job, raised up a different possibility, the possibility that we are rewarded (and/or punished? not according to what we do (or do not do) – (much less according to the sins of our fathers and grandfathers) – not according to what we deserve or do not deserve, but only according to our ability to receive what good there is in existence. The divine economy is not a system of rewards and punishments but of grace and understanding.
Hence, Job’s story is grand satire, irony.
Against those who insisted that everything can be explained in terms of cause and effect, obedience or disobedience, the redactor of Job contrived, or perhaps borrowed, the figure of a completely innocent man. Himself one who had done no wrong. One all of whose forebears were blameless. So, the argument that Job suffered because, as it is written, "the sins of the fathers will be visited unto the sons of the second and third generation," was not only immaterial but patently ridiculous.
Indeed, it can be argued that Job’s tale was the first, the prototype, of all those other masterpieces of irony and satire that bejewel the Hebrew canon:
-- the Genesis story of Adam and Eve that makes it clear from the beginning that anyone who thinks he or she can tell the difference between god and evil with absolute certainty, as if he or she were God, will surely die. The moral of which story is that there is nothing as unrighteous as a righteous man or woman.
-- the epic tale of Abraham and Sara and their petty insistence that God should behave like God. They laughed at the bizarre possibility that a hundred-year-old man and a ninety-year-old woman could have a baby, a clear departure from the proper way of things. Hence the name of their son, Isaac, which, in Hebrew, means a joke.
-- the beloved story of Ruth, a Moabite woman, not a Jew, not a Hebrew, a Moabite woman (remember, "no good thing can come out of Moab…," in today’s parlance and politics, an Arab, an Arab who would become the great-grandmother of David, King of the Jews.
And so on, and so on.
What we have here is an entire literature of satire and irony, fable and fancy – argument, all of it, against the Deuteronomist.
A literature defying the Deuteronomist, exposing the strict observance of the law as a captivity more onerous than that imposed upon the people by their Babylonian oppressors.
It is like taking off a great, sodden coat that in the guise of warming us has only weighed us down.
Herein is the Divine economy: we are rewarded only "according" to our ability to receive what good there is in existence.
In the words of the poet, Archibald MacLeish, in his play, "J.B.":
Mr. Zuss: Oh, there’s always someone playing Job.
Nickles: Thousands! What’s that got to do with it?
Thousands . . .
Burned, crushed, broken, mutilated,
Slaughtered, and for what? For thinking!
For walking round the world in the wrong
Skin, the wrong-shaped noses, eyelids:
Sleeping the wrong night in the wrong city –
London, Dresden, Hiroshima . . .
(To which we might add:
New York, Washington D.C.,
the Dominican Republic and Kandahar).
"There is always someone playing Job;" or as another colleague said last week – "there is no suffering that Job underwent, that we don’t understand." Thank God, few of us have it happen all at once; the loss of all of our wealth, the death of all of our children, the destruction of our reputation, while undergoing intense physical suffering form disfiguring illness.
But even in the relatively minor suffering that all of us endure, we find the story of Job compelling. It is one of the great legends of our culture. Some 2500 years old, it has the kind of deep, rhythmic, resonance that allows for new insights, every time you go to the well.
It may seem an odd choice of text for a Thanksgiving feast. At the very moment when we are asked to offer our gratitude, why would anyone want to ponder a story of extreme deprivation? On a national holiday that celebrates abundance and gatherings of family and friends, why would we study the journey of a man who lost not only his possessions, but also his family and friends and most of his faith in God?
You can blame the program committee of Prairie Group – but in truth, I can’t think of a better story for this moment in history. For too long, Thanksgiving (as practiced in the United States) has been dominated by that ancient "Deuteronomic" choir. That particular choir sings in old Puritan three-part harmony: the reason America enjoys so much prosperity is because God is pleased with our hard work and enterprising spirit. Our wealth, and the amount of food on our table, is an outward sign of inward grace. Or to translate into a more secular vocabulary: "I must be doing something right, because my life is going fairly well." Of course there is a dangerous corollary to this: "I must have done something wrong, if I am facing tragedy, disease, or suffering." At a time of national uncertainty and terrorism and war, the Deuteronomic equation is especially troubling. This prison of Deuteronomy Law (that offers nothing but goodness and blessings to its faithful followers) would have absolutely confounded the early Pilgrims. Their original Thanksgiving couldn’t have had very much to do with a sense of entitlement, ; a belief that God materially rewards an especially favored tribe. The early settlers had just come through famine and illness that killed most of their community, and unrelenting hardship. I believe that in order to understand how they were able to offer heartfelt thanks, in the midst of such hardships, we would do well to pursue an in-depth look at the story of Job.
I have read the text of Job dozens of times over a lifetime. I have preached on it at least 10 times, and I have read my secondary books of commentary and analysis focusing on this particular legend. How is it then, that at the conference I attended in St. Louis last week, I was continually astonished by countless aspects of the story that were entirely new to me? Such as:
In other words: a God of justice alone, is worse than no God at all.
Every time I read Job, I find that his comforters have taken on new and disturbing characteristics. We will always see these ultimately unhelpful counselors through our modern eyes. The consensus at Prairie Group this year appears to be that his first comforter was a therapist/coach who proclaimed that ultimately this was a good experience that Job was suffering through: "happy is the one God corrects" . . . "cheer up Job!" . . . "this too shall pass." The second comforter was kind of a Jesuit/accountant: "you’re just going to have to try harder" . . . "the Deuteronomic Law can be turned around in your favor". . "even though the financial markets are depressed now, we can work the market to maximize profits." And the last comforter was characterized as a spineless plea-bargaining attorney: "what you need to do is negotiate". . . "Your screaming and complaining is only going to result in even more punishment."
A commentator, William Safire writes that the book of Job is nothing but a series of surprising and unexpected twists and turns:
"God surprises us at the outset by his doubt, as he requires a test of the human motive in worship. The pious Job of the prologue surprises us by exploding in a curse at God’s creation. After the visiting Elihu assures us no personal revelation is in the works, God surprises him and Job with his appearance. God again surprises us with his refusal to deal directly with Job’s challenge; Job surprises us by suddenly caving in; the epilogue surprised the reader by delivering perfect retribution, directly against the point of the book; and God stuns us on last time by threatening to clobber his own apologists and by saying he agreed with at least a portion of Job’s seeming blasphemy all along."
On this confounding journey we are also instructed about what won’t help us. Job’s wife encourages him to "curse God and die," but bitterness and a refusal to engage with reality lead only to despair. There also doesn’t seem to be any comfort, whatsoever, in moral theology, or in the application of reason and logic, or in educated arguments, or in ancient rituals.
So what does save Job? What saves us? What allows us to offer a heartfelt giving of thanks in a world that is full of suffering and challenges and tragedy?
I believe John Wolfe expresses it best: we are here to receive what good there is in our existence, according to our ability to take in the grace, and the understanding that is given to us. In order for this to happen, we need Job. William Safire writes: "The book of Job stands as a firewall between the victim and the blame." Suffering is no longer understood as the punishment for sin. When Job says, "I looked for good, and then evil came. When I expected light, then came darkness." He was describing the human condition. We finally understand: this suffering is not our fault.
What saves Job, is that he lives out his drama in the midst of a compassionate community. Even his irritability and provocative and ultimately uncomforting comforters have a part to play. They egg Job on to question and to discard his old understanding of a Deuteronomic God. They sit with him 7 days in silence before they even speak to him. They are forgiven in the epilogue, and they are also restored to favor.
A church, at its best, is such a compassionate community. What is said or sung here on any given Sunday may not provide the particular comfort you are seeking, but we are together. We all have walked through the "valley of the shadow." We bear testimony that survival is possible. And as St. Augustine said, "By reason of mine own infirmity, I have come to know compassion." A compassionate community is made up of human beings very much like you: strong and weak – right and wrong – full of joy and heart-broken with sorrow – talented and flawed – sometimes good and sometimes not so good – howling with complaint and resting in blissful contentment.
What saves Job is his insistence that he must see God with his own eyes. An early Unitarian! He hopes for a direct encounter with God. He knows that only as he experiences God will his questions be answered. Only a direct experience of the holiest of holys will satisfy his longing.
What saves Job is his understanding that life (and religion) is a fluid and evolving process. I heard a marvelous new definition of God this week formulated by a theologian named David Miller. The word "God" means: "I don’t know." Job learns more about all "he doesn’t know" as the story advances. And when the voice in the whirlwind speaks to him, Job finally begins to understand that he knows much less than he thought. "Where were you," God asks, "when I laid the foundations of the earth? Where were you?"
In the happy ending of the epilogue, all of Job’s wealth and children and good fortunes are returned to him. But, as Archibald MacLeish notes in the play "J.B.", now that Job understands that loss and suffering are a part of every life, Job is vulnerable to lose it all, once again.
How may time will you I know and forget,
lose and gain, and lose and gain?
I don’t know.
I suspect that this evolution of our understanding
and the constant changing of our circumstances
will continue to be in flux
until we take our last breath
As long as we are taking in air
As long as we are taking in nourishment.
As we live and breathe – we need nourishment.
Real nourishment.
Real bread.
The communion bread that we taste together, is (in our tradition) not about creedal tests, or theological agreement. It is about seeing God in the world, seeing God in a piece of bread. Jesus said, "Eat this in memory of me." Eat this, and remember those relationships of love that matter. Communion is about understanding that we are a part of a mystery. When we acknowledge that there is some "I don’t know" in a meteor shower, some "I don’t know" on a crisp Sunday morning, some "I don’t know" in the eyes of our neighbor, some "I don’t know" in broken bread.
Something that has the shape of enough.
As Tom expresses it, there is something in eating "a small piece of bread (the complex product of grain and yeast, and sun and rain and the hands of many) that grounds us in the miracle of reality; shocks us into gratitude."
May each of us receive something of what is good in existence.
© The First Unitarian Church of Worcester, 2001