He Went to Paris
Job 42:1-6
In
today’s song, Jimmy Buffett sings about a man who spends his life
searching for answers to questions that bother him so. The man is nameless, which is
very appropriate since the main character of this song resembles so
many people I know. It
seems for every person from whose faith provides them all the answers
that they need, I know one or two more who are still searching for
answers to questions that bother them.
Why did this horrible event happen to me? Why do good people suffer? Why do bad people seem not to
suffer? Why does God allow
injustice? Why?
Scripture
shares a story of a man much like the one we meet in Buffett’s song. It’s found in the Old
Testament right before the book of Psalms. You’ve probably heard of him.
His name is Job.
Now
Job is famously known for his patience.
This reputation is due to a verse in the book of James where it
declares that “You have heard of the patience of Job . . .” But the truth is that word
patience was a poor translation and newer translations—even the New
King James Version—chose to use either endurance or perseverance,
because Job was anything but patient!
Job was a man who demanded answers from his friends and from
God!
Job
evidently was a man known far and wide for his righteousness and his
wealth. He had it all:
money, land, livestock and sons—all a man of his day and age could
wish to own. On top of it
all, they appeared to get along really well. Job had the kind of
family and life that we all pray for.
Then the story takes a very nasty turn.
Job
catches the attention of Satan, who approaches God with a question: Is it possible that Job is only
righteous because he has it all? Perhaps
he is only a good man because God has blessed him with material
things, like land and livestock, as well as with those things that
matter most, family and good health.
God doesn’t believe that Job is a fair-weather disciple and
so God allows Satan to test Job. In
short succession, Job loses everything: livestock, children and his
health.
Now
this is where most folks stop and get hung up. Why would God allow such a
thing? In fact, this is
the question that haunts the rest of the book. Out of the 42 chapters of the
book of Job, 39 of them focus on Job searching for an answer to the
question that bothers him so.
Grieving
his loss, Job sits on a scrap heap scratching his sores with a broken
piece of pottery. His wife
nags at him to curse God and he refuses and continues to sit and
scratch. Then three of his
friends show up and do what all friends should do when trying to
comfort a grieving friend. For
seven days they sit with him and are silent companions to his pain.
Someone
once told me that this was the perfect example of pastoral care: being present for others in
their pain and grief. And Job’s three friends were the perfect
example of pastoral care for a week, then they blew it by opening
their mouths.
Perhaps
you can relate? You are
sitting with a friend in a funeral home or a hospital or at the
workplace and they are asking, “Why?” Why is my good father dying of
this painful cancer? Why
did God allow my baby to die? Why
are these awful things happening to me when I’ve lived a good life? Why?
All
the unanswered questions lie heavy in the room. In those moments, you begin to
feel like your friend’s problem is not grief, or cancer, or the pain
of broken relationships—none of which you can fix. Rather the temptation is to
think that if we can somehow answer the question” Why?” everything
will be okay for our friend. So
we open our mouths and we try to answer the questions.
That
is exactly what Job’s friends did that day. In the end, four of his friends
chimed in with their opinions on why bad things had happened to Job. Eliphaz maintains that even the
most innocent of humans will suffer justly; however, since Job is as
innocent as a human can be then his suffering will be over soon. Eliphaz is even “kind”
enough to enumerate the sins that Job should repent and ask
forgiveness for doing. Bildad
suspects Job is innocent but he is sure that someone must have sinned. Since Job’s children were
killed, they must have been the sinners.
Granted no one knows how they sinned, but they simply must have
or they would not have died. Zophar,
on the other hand, confesses that since Job is suffering, Job must
have sinned.
Job,
however, refuses to accept their explanations. He knows that he and his family
did not deserve this tragedy especially since there were people who
exploited the poor and intentionally broke laws and sinned who did not
appear to be suffering!
About
that time, his fourth friend, Elihu, shows up to add his two cents
into the conversation. According
to Elihu, even the righteous suffer so that God can teach them. Job’s problem is that he is
so mad at God that he can’t see God at work around him, let alone
hear God and learn from him. What
Job needs to do is to quit complaining and accept God’s discipline.
Then
God shows up!
God
shows up and for every question Job had for God, God has two questions
for Job. And anyone who as
a child or teenager argued with a parent can appreciate how Job must
have felt!
Why
do you talk without knowing what you are talking about? Where were you when I created
the world? Have you ever
ordered the morning to get up? Have
you ever been to the deepest depths of the oceans? What do you know of
death? Do you know
the number of clouds?
Question
after question after question for Job—none of which Job can possibly
answer. None of which
Job’s friends can answer. None of which we can answer—even with
our Bible or our science or our educated minds. So when God had finished asking
questions,
1 Then Job
answered the Lord: 2 "I know that you can do all things, and
that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 3 "Who is this
that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I
did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
4 "Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you
declare to me.' 5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you; 6 therefore I despise myself, and repent
in dust and ashes." Job 42:1-6
One of the things we
learn from the book of Job is that it is okay—even faithful—to ask
questions of God Whenever people struggle to reconcile their faith in
God with the injustice and tragedy of living in a fallen world, they
are joining in a struggle shared by faithful people throughout the
history of our faith. And
when they call out to God and demand answers and justice, they are
joining their voices with the great heroes of our faith. From Abraham
asking God if he would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if there were five
righteous people there, to Moses asking God if he really wanted to
destroy the Israelite people and begin again, to David and the other
psalmist who continuing ask God why something happened, to Jesus
asking, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” Scripture gives us many
examples of people of great faith who ask questions of God. They ask
questions that come from deep faith and not skepticism. These are the questions that
children ask of their loving parents.
Questions that come from a deep and abiding relationship.
I think it is no
surprise that God’s chosen people were named “
Israel
” which means “he who struggles with God.” And if you spend much time at
all reading the biographies of people of great faith, you discover
that most—if not all—of them at some time in their lives struggled
with questions that bothered them so.
The truth is that many
of our questions in this life remain unanswered. We don’t know why some get
cancer and die while others recover. We don’t know why we pray for
physical healing and some get miracles and others do not. We don’t know why a tornado
hits one home and not another. We
don’t know why some are born into poverty and abuse while others
have what seem to be charmed lives.
If we reflect on life much at all, we all have questions that
bother us so. Job teaches us that we don’t have to be silent with
our questions, we can take them to God and God will answer.
Of course, what we also
learn from Job is that God does not always give us the easy answers we
are looking for. I suspect God doesn’t give us easy answers because
the answers are not that easy. Just
as we can’t understand all that went into God’s creation of the
world so too we can’t understand how all the pieces of our lives and
the lives of others fit together. Nor can we understand the love of
God that must allow for the possibility of suffering in order to give
us freedom to choose for ourselves. God doesn’t give us easy answers
because there are no easy answers.
So Job does not get
answers. After all the
questions and all the speculations and all the struggle, Job gains
something even greater—the presence of the God who loves him so. I love what the Wesley Study
Bible note says about this passage:
“God’s primary mercy is the gift of God’s presence. All other gifts that come to us
are reminders, symbols, or shadows of the gift of God’s presence.”
Our greatest need is
not answers but God. The
message of the book of the Job is that no matter what happens, no
matter how unjust and tragic, we can move forward with our lives
because God goes with us. And
when we cry out in pain and confusion, God hears our cries and
responds. So Job can say, “I have heard of you by the hearing of the
ear, but now my eye sees you!” No
longer is God an abstract concept, a religion, or a set of beliefs
rather God is someone that Job has seen for himself and with whom he
is in relationship!
Job doesn’t receive
answers to the questions that bothered him so, but Job lives a good
full life because his life is changed as a result of his encounter
with God. The Scripture
goes on to tell us:
7 After the Lord
had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite:
"My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends;
for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. 8 Now
therefore take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job,
and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall
pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you
according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right,
as my servant Job has done." 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite and
Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the
Lord had told them; and the Lord accepted Job's prayer. 10 And
the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his
friends; Job 42:7-10a
There
are those who say that faith means you don’t question God. There are those who say that
faith means that we have all the answers to life’s questions. But this passage would
indicate that Job, with his questions and his complaints and his final
acceptance of the mystery of God, was the most faithful of his
friends! Job’s friends
with their easy answers received the wrath of God! Job—interestingly enough upon
interceding and praying for his friends—was rewarded!
At
my orientation to
Divinity
School
, someone shared a quote from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke in his book Letters to a Young Poet, which says
“...I would like to beg you dear
Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in
your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were
locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search
for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you
would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you
will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the
answer.”
Looking back on it, the use of the quote was a
subtle way of preparing us for the fact that the more we learned about
God, about the Bible, about people and about ourselves, the more we
would know that we didn’t know. Rather than going to
Divinity
School
to find answers, we went to learn to ask better questions and then to
live those questions. And
that I believe is the lesson we learn from Job.
Faced
with suffering and injustice, Job pounded on the door of God. He never
turned his back on God. He never gave up on God. Job persisted in his
questions, because he believed in the loving, righteous character of
God. He held on. He
persisted. He endured. He
lived his questions and in doing so, he found God.
May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths,
and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your
heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and
exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and
peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from
pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your
hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that
you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what
others claim cannot be done.
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