A sermon on Job 2
Job 2.1-13, Matt 5.13-20 5th February 2023. 9.30 st Luke’s
What is God playing at? What is Job playing at and What are the friends of Job playing at? The book of Job is a really remarkable book. Its just astonishing to find a piece of literature like this, to talk this openly about faith and what it means. Its sort of like a Home Group, with Issues.
Bishop Martin has asked us to preach on the OT this year. We did it last year by preaching on Children’s OT stories and what do they mean for us, but then I looked at what we did and saw some big gaps and the book of Job would be one of them.
Chapter 1 of Job starts off on earth with a decent righteous man Job who has a big family and lots of sheep and camels and stuff
and then in the heavens Satan meets with God and says Job only obeys you, because of what he can get out of you. Its basically cupboard love. Job is playing the system. So long as Job goes to Church and you give him the ox and donkeys and make him rich then of course he’s going to keep coming to Church. He only comes to church because you give him stuff. Take away that stuff and then you’ll see what’s he’s made of.
So, God says Okay. But you can’t kill him. And We the reader should be saying What, wait, no, what?
So Job’s life falls apart. His animals are killed and stolen, all his children die in a collapsed house accident. And Job goes into an understandable shock of grief and depression and sorrow and melancholia and any other number of words along those lines – for the next several chapters we see him being numb and being emotionally stable and unstable and frankly when you see what he went through then fair enough.
I think its great that there is such a book of Job, to be so up front and honest about pain and suffering and grief and anger – about mental health – and then when I tell you that this is one of the oldest books in the bible. The way that its written suggests, say scholars that especially the opening and closing chapters are written before the book of Genesis was sorted out.
So, its really ancient, and looks at a question we’ve been asking ever since.
Job sits in a pile of ash and his friends come and sit with him in silence for a week and then they say – are you sure, are you really sure this isn’t some how may be your own fault? Maybe you’ve brought this on yourself.
And Job says No and they say Yes and this goes on for another 30 chapters or so and then God -Spoiler alert – enters the stage and there’s a sort of dialogue there and it closes with Job being told by God – You were right! (which begs the question ‘What was Job right about?’) and then in a slightly sickly Hollywood style, the story ends with Job getting more stuff than he had at the beginning – again he has another 7 sons and three daughters and lots of sheep and camels and so on, and that makes you say What? How is that a happy ending and how does that answer anything and What are you playing at God?
So lets have a go – What is God playing at with this.
Note that Satan is merely one of the Angels – this is not one of those gnostic pagan spiritualities that sees God and the Devil as some how being Good vs Bad – equals – and ooh who will win? The book of Revelation picks this up nicely by having the Archangel Michael do battle with Satan at the end – that’s angel to fallen angel – not God to creature.
Satan is a word that means the Accuser – and that’s rather good to remember – the Devil is good at accusing – listen out for this as we hit Lent and Jesus in the wilderness and the temptations. Note his lack of real power, God has the power, the accuser says to God – You blessed him, so why don’t you stretch out your hand and remove the blessings, strike everything he has – so note that the power is with God, not the accuser.
Here’s a test – is Job only in it for the blessings – and the answer is no. Job stubbornly insists on Not cursing God.
Job curses the day he was born, but doesn’t curse God.
Job doesn’t stop believing in God. Even when his own body is covered in sores.
So what is God playing at? – and we never really get an answer to this. At the end of the book of Job we meet God again. And there God tries to convey to Job the complexity of what it means to be God, running a universe requires a big perspective –
there’s a moment in the comedy film Bruce Almighty where Bruce is given the power of God – here you have a go – and so Bruce says its easy you just say Yes to every prayer! – so suddenly everyone wins the lottery which means they barely win a dollar –
and God closes his speech to Job by pointing to Behemoth and Leviathan – a great land monster, a great sea monster – and God says Yes I made them, they’re not evil but they’re not safe – and that’s sort of how this world runs –
the world isn’t perfect – in the way that we would like our front rooms to be – it is wild and dangerous, it is ordered and beautiful, its not evil but there’s plenty about it also that isn’t safe and so this is really the call to trust God.
What is God playing at? I don’t know. I do know that the answer is not an answer.
That the answer that Job gets is an encounter. And maybe that’s what’s needed, an encounter with the living God, that we can see and know in Jesus, through prayer and worship, and life.
Ok what is Job playing at? Oddly Job is commended at the end for his persistence. God says that Job was right – but Job has said so many varied and contradictory things about who’s fault this all is and whether he would have liked to have been born or not – so what was Job right about? –
He was right about arguing with God, right about not lying down and taking a cheap answer – ‘oh yes it must be my fault’ – he is not going to accept the narrative of his friends that this is all his fault – and instead he is going to wrestle with God.
And of course, it is Jacob who wrestles with God and is given the name Israel – one who wrestles with God.
So, you will suffer in this beautiful wild world, I’m sorry about that, and often it will not be your fault, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t protest and cry out to God about it. Job was right to argue and pray.
Pause for a moment to think about Mrs Job – the only line she gets is – Why don’t you curse God and die! – which sounds a little discouraging – or as one commentary put it – you can see why the Accuser didn’t kill off the wife!
But I’ve heard another approach to this – we never hear of her death, and at the end when Job has another 10 children – we do not hear of the wife there, so it would be quite acceptable to see that this same Wife has stuck with him throughout all this mess. So, she’s a keeper.
In which case you could bear in mind how very often when disaster strikes it is the women who pick up the pieces and try to get society back on its feet and moving.
Job will sit in the ashes for a week – so who is cooking, who is looking after whatever farmstead they still have left – that will be Mrs Job – so then you could hear Mrs Job as being a bit frustrated at Job processing his grief, while she can’t and she must instead carry on – perhaps she is listening to Job and sees, wrongly, the direction of his thought and so her comment is about hurrying Job on to the end of his grieving so that he can then get up and help.
Have a think but I don’t think that Mrs Job is as simple as we like to make her out to be.
And What about the friends of Job, what are they playing at?
The one thing that they do that is commendable is they go and sit with him in silence, over awed by his sorrow. For a week they just sit there.
CS Lewis wrote a book called a Grief Observed. Its brilliant, particularly the first chapter which describes what grief feels like, I can never read it without crying. He wrote about seeing friends cross over the road to the other side of the street to avoid him because they don’t know what to say, when he doesn’t really want them to say anything, he just wants them to be.
We never know what to say, there are no good words to say when you go to see someone who is grieving, who has suffered some blow, what matters is that they know that you’re there.
The trouble only starts when the friends open their mouths and say stupid stuff like – ‘Are you sure this isn’t your fault?’ Their stubbornness and stuck-record approach to listening is also a bit disappointing – how do they think that anything they’re saying is helpful to Job? They come with intent to sympathise and comfort, and if that’s your intent you won’t go far wrong. But it would see they forgot that.
What is the take home from all this. I’m really not sure.
If you’re a Friend, then Go, go visit, go with intent to comfort and sympathise and don’t worry about needing to demonstrate how they brought this on themselves or some such stupid thought. But Go, that’s the important bit, hug and make tea and just be with Job and Mrs Job.
If you’re Job then know that its okay to get angry at God to protest and to struggle with your faith and to say What are you playing at? God commends Job for his struggle.
The solution I’m afraid is not that if you keep protesting that God will eventually give it all back to you – the Hollywood ending where Job gets 10 more children – that is not recompense for the suffering, it is not a reward for the persistent struggling with God – it is simply part of the weirdness that passes for the gift and grace of God. This closing chapter is simply a generous gift of God.
The solution I think is found in Job seeking an encounter with God. Somehow in that encounter, as we read in Revelation 21 – where we see a new heaven and a new earth and every tear will be wiped away –
the solution is found in that relationship with God that enables protest and tears and ‘why was I ever born?’ –
and that holds on to God because who else can you go to to complain! –
so trust in the promise that there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. Amen.