Pentecost 19 - Year B

Job is a book of the Old Testament that is surprisingly modern that still speaks cogently about suffering and our relationship with God, two and a half thousand years after it was written. It raises questions that we ask ourselves about the meaning of pain and suffering, and about the "silence of God" in the midst of pain.

Job's plight is story that is relatively well known to us, both as people of faith and as members of the general community. For example in popular culture, we talk about the "patience of Job" and Job's comforter" - a false or malicious friend. In the Book of Job, Satan, the tempter, approaches God, and God draws Satan's attention to His servant Job. And Job is, well, the poster-boy of piety and godliness. He's the ideal father, good man and firm believer. God is so pleased with him that he has blessed him materially, familial and socially. Satan, in effect says that Job's piety is simply a function of his being blessed; remove the protective perimeter from around him and his true colours will be revealed.

As you know Job is stripped of his wealth, loses his family and health. It is in this extreme state that his "friends" come to comfort him. In summary, they voice, inter alia versions of what 2½ thousand years later would be called prosperity theology - the belief that if you're good, holy, pious, God will reward you materially - a concept popular in some American churches and is often coupled with the idea that you should give generously to the pastor/church - in some cases there seems to be little distinction between the two.

In a secular setting, these beliefs are called the Just world fallacy by psychologists - the erroneous belief that bad things generally don't happen to good people. If misfortune befalls others that somehow they are to blame for it - we ourselves are excluded from such reasoning however usually. For example, we have a tendency to believe that when people are victims of crime, accidents or misadventure they are somehow to blame. It creates a sense that we are not living in a random universe and that things aren't accidental. In Job's case, they argue, he must be a secret sinner or otherwise this trouble would not have befallen him. I will return to thinking errors later in the sermon as they are germane to our understanding of Job.

In the reading and throughout the Book, Job keeps the faith and his trust in God despite the urgings of his wife and friends - "curse God and die" remains undiminished. But it seems he is less worried about the calamity that has befallen him, than bewildered by why it happened - or more particularly why God allowed. There is a sense that Job's suffering would be easier if he knew the "why".

He wants to discuss what is happening to him with God - he wants to make sense of his suffering and this is a cry that we all can identify with. Making sense of suffering also raises questions, complex ones: Why does God allow suffering? If God is love, why do we have wars? etc, etc. We don't have to go too far out of our family, circle of friends or work colleagues to find cases where similar questions can be asked. Like Job, we would like to have answers about the suffering or injustice, about things that make no sense. Why does God allow it!

In our suffering, we may feel that we only experience silence from God. Like Job our suffering would be made easier if we could discern some useful purpose for it. It's inexplicableness makes it harder, if not impossible to bear.

What sort of sense can we make of this? What can we tell ourselves, that at least gives some type of comfort, spiritual or otherwise.

I was talking before about thinking errors that are part of our humanity and our psychological processes. We seem to have an inbuilt capacity for personal deception, we jump to conclusions, we make unwarranted assumptions and our perceptions of reality can be awry. Well at least from other peoples perceptions.

So what has this got to do with Job and the anguish that he and we are assailed with at times.

I would like to suggest that our understanding of God and God's ways are in part built on our own construction of how we think that God should respond. Although scripture advises us that God's ways are not our way (Isaiah 55:8-9) we often try and understand God based on our own knowledge, insights, culture, gender, historical era, education, life experience etc. It's easy to see it in Job's friends when they suggest he has brought everything on himself by his sinning. We may expect that God should be more reasonable with us, more like us and explain himself. In other words we may like God to conform to our expectations of God.

As children we have/had a simplistic understanding of God. He may appear as a Charlton Heston type character or looking like Michaelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Our view of God may not simply be a visual one, we may also have ideas about God's character, personality that we have accepted without too much thought or theological reflection. In adulthood, our concept of God may not have changed and may be influenced by our understandings of what we expect God to be like.

The point that I'm trying to make is that God is beyond our limited and human abilities to fully understand. As Job says, "How great is God - beyond our understanding!" (36: 26). God's actions are God's and not ours. Just as God made Job rich and then poor (and later rich again). God's actions do not have to justified or explained to us. They do not have to conform to how we expect Him to behave.

But this seems to to be at variance to God's relationship with us - God so loved the world that he sent his only son into the world.

I hope that nothing in the forgoing would lead you to believe that God has abandoned us and carries on regardless, and that we are incidental collateral in his plans. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Old and New Testaments are replete with examples of God's love for us. Indeed, the theme of the Bible is God's love of humanity.

I would like to start drawing the sermon to a conclusion by integrating some of the other readings into it. In both Job and Mark readings today, the scriptures clearly state that God is aware of our suffering. For example in the NT reading today we read; Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16). That does not mean that God will automatically intervene and solve our problems but He may give us the strength to bear the load.. But it is clear the gods is with us. God is aware of our suffering and in Christ Jesus God has experience pain and suffering, more so than most of us. We should and must bring ourselves and our lives to Him, our problems and sufferings, prayerfully.

To summarize, I think that the readings today dealt with inexplicable pain and suffering and a seemingly absent God. For many of us Job's predicament is one we can relate to, the questioning of his friends most likely echoes the thoughts that we have had about God, sin and suffering. But we can learn from Job - he kept the faith, and he had what marriage guidance counsellors call, an unconditional positive regard for God. His love for God wasn't contingent on God keeping him rich, healthy or safe. I think that he understood at a deep level that God's ways can be unfathomable but we have to have faith in God. Life can be a mystery, it may not conform to our expectations of God and God's "duty" to us. But we are constantly assured that God does hear us. That's something that Job understood and it's something that we need to understand too.

Dr John Murray
10 October 2009