NOTE: This Sunday we begin a five part in-worship look at the Book of Job for Lent. I will also connect the lectionary gospel and psalm to this study.
Introduction
I have yearned
to lead an informed discussion about the book of Job. It is a rich and
paradoxical folktale filled with theological wisdom that some people like to
reference without ever having read. There are those who claim that Job explains
the mystery of suffering and others who would have you believe it can help you
live a more faithful life. There are
even some preachers and teachers out there – especially on-line – who will tell
you that Job helps us comprehend the seemingly inscrutable ways of the Lord.
But as far as I can tell, all of these assertions are simple-minded and wrong.
First, Job
does NOT try to explain why an all-loving and all-powerful God would allow and
tolerate the magnitude of human suffering that has cursed creation since the
beginning of time. Yes, Job and others cry out in fear and despair, “Why me,
Lord?” Who among us has not? But the wisdom poetry of this text never answers
that question.
Second, Job
does not try to “justify” or defend the mysterious ways of the Lord in a broken
and imperfect world. Other texts attempt this, trying to clarify the ways of
the holy to an anxious and bewildered people, but not Job. In fact, such intellectual
and theological reductionism is the farthest thing from this poet’s mind.
For Job, you
see, is fundamentally a portrait of what a maturing faith looks like in the heart
of suffering. Job’s anguish answers no questions and solves no dilemmas – at least
in an obvious way. Instead, Job shows us what a life of faith often looks like
with all its warts, cracks, beauty and failures: Job doubts, questions,
challenges, rebukes, resents, bargains with, fights, fumes and eventually embraces
a path of faith that honors the holy even as he wrestles with the all too real
human tragedies of death, disease, money problems, loss of social esteem,
betrayal, emptiness, fear and anxiety.
That is why
I figured that as I prepared to embrace a Holy Lent this year, it might just be
as good a time as any – and maybe even the right time – to reconsider
the wisdom of Job for our lives and our times.
Over the next five weeks I hope to lead you through a critical
reflection on Job that will be part Bible study, part textual analysis, part
historical description and part conversation in faith. So, if you want to bring
your own Bible with you to worship, that would be fun, too.
Insights
There are
three broad ideas I want to share with you that I hope will set up
our study.
(I’ve also prepared an outline of the texts and themes I will be covering over
the next month, too so if you want to do a little home work…. you can really go
to the head of the class!) But for today, let’s see where these three themes
lead us:
First, Job is part of what is
known as the Wisdom tradition of the Old Testament – so I want to spend a little
time coming to terms with what that is all about, ok?
Second, the roots of Job go
deeper than Israel – they clearly
come from a folk tradition that is non-Jewish in origin – that may go back to
Babylon and certainly include words not used anywhere else in the Scriptures.
This has led scholars to conclude that Job was probably translated from another
language at some point in time, but began in an oral tradition that goes back
to the second millennium BCE. It was probably written down more or less in the
form we have today 500 years later by an anonymous Jewish poet but some of the
speeches from Job’s friends come from an even later date. So this was a real
work in progress.
And third, the opening question
shaped by the strange narrative in the first three chapters of Job in essence
asks us to wrestle with the fact that human suffering is ubiquitous. Suffering does not begin in
sin, it is not the consequence of divine justice nor is it the product of evil
alone. Suffering is built into the fabric of life – and Job was shaped intentionally
to answer the fears and confusion that often come from a more fundamentalist
faith. I’ll say more about that in a few minutes, but this is a key challenge:
what does faith mean and look like in a life saturated with suffering?
Those are
the three themes for this morning: Wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible, the
Gentile origins of Job and the challenge of faith when confronted by human
suffering. So let’s get down to it, ok?
Earlier this
week, as I was reading a blog from Fr. Richard Rohr, I came across this
wonderful summary of both the organization of the Old Testament and a
theological interpretation of that very structure. Quoting Walter Brueggemann, one of our
nation’s finest Old Testament scholars, Rohr writes:
The Hebrew Scriptures are divided into three major sections: the
Torah, the Prophets and the Wisdom books. Walter Brueggemann says, and I think it is pure genius,
that these three sections represent the ordinary and healthy development of
human consciousness in a sequential way. The Torah gave the Israelites the Law
and a sense of their chosenness. For healthy development, any culture or family
must follow this pattern of first providing structure, which develops identity,
boundaries, and self-worth as beloved and special.
The second set of books
involves the Jewish Prophets and they represent the birth of critical thinking.
The Prophets have clearly been the most neglected part of Scripture for both
Jews and Christians, because neither showed much capacity for healthy
self-criticism. You can see the rise of critical thinking in young people, but
it is mostly oriented toward others instead of themselves. Parents often feel
their teenagers oppose them on everything! And yet it is a necessary stage,
though it often doesn't go far enough…
(Authentic prophetic criticism always includes the self and moves away from
hubris towards humility.)
(And humility is what) the Wisdom section of the Hebrew Scriptures
(is all about.) It includes the books of Job,
Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs and many of the Psalms. Such Wisdom literature
reveals an ability to finally be patient with mystery and contradictions and
the soul itself. Wisdom people have passed through a major death to their ego...
+ All of us need structure, training and guidance; that is foundational.
Games have rules, sports have well-defined practices and boundaries, religions
and societies have essential laws and precepts.
+ Small wonder that both Proverbs 9 and Psalm 111 teach that: Fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We have to start with the
basics and create a structure.
But structure alone does not always create compassion or justice: for that
we need the critique of the prophet. Fr.
Rohr suggests that prophets see our brokenness and our shadow sides and call
them out into the light.
Prophets cry out against slavery and oppression, they challenge
unfairness and injustice. They give a name to our narcissism and point out ways
that we might live into faith, hope and love.
+ That is why the Lenten journey always includes the story about Jesus
being forced out into the wilderness: he, too had to confront himself, his
fears, his doubts and questions for 40 days and 40 nights.
+ Jesus needed to die to himself – to be fully humbled so that he could
fully trust God – that’s why that story is included for us on the first Sunday
in Lent.
For some reason, you see, it is only when we die to ourselves – when we own
our own brokenness and are humbled enough to see and think and feel beyond the
limits of our structures – that we can create alternatives. Marcus Borg, who
sadly died not long ago, used to say that humility is at the core meaning of
transformation: only the humble have
the ability to see and speak of an “alternative wisdom instead of the
mere maintenance of social order, the status quo and conventional wisdom.” How
did Jesus put it in the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the poor in spirit –
blessed are the humble and meek – blessed are the pure in heart – for they
shall become the comforted ones of God’s kingdom?
+ Are you still with me? Job comes
out of the Wisdom tradition – that collection of insights born of structure and
prophetic self-criticism that gives rise to creative alternative insights.
+ And at the core of the Hebrew Wisdom tradition is a comfort with knowing
that we can’t know everything. It is
embodied humility. The ability to trust without always seeing, to laugh at
ourselves and know that there is always more light to be shared by God’s grace
than we can know or even imagine.
In a word, the Wisdom tradition is comfortable with mystery. Think
of Jesus in the garden before his Passion: what does he pray? Not MY will,
Father, but THY will be done, right? St. Paul once said to the church in
Corinth that was getting too big for its britches – treating some people as
second class members – now some of you have become puffed up and full of
yourselves… but, the Lord, willing, we’ll find out what you are really made of
and put that arrogance to death. A more
tender statement can be found in Psalm 131:
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high. I
do not occupy myself with things too haughty or marvelous for me.
Rather, I have calmed and quieted my
soul like a weaned child at her mother’s breast… hope in the Lord from this
time and for ever more. The wisdom of Job is all about
humility and trust.
And that humility and trust is a
fascinating development in the maturation of the Job cycle. In its original
non-Jewish form, this folktale concluded with Job being rewarded for his
faithfulness. If you already know the story, there are two very clear endings:
+ One takes place after the Lord rants at Job for five chapters because
Job has presumed to comprehend the mystery of the Creator of Creation. God will
have none of it and explodes with righteous indignation.
+ The other ending occurs in the final 17 verses of the book wherein God
restores everything that had once been taken away from Job so that the epilogue
winds up sounding like a fairy tale where everyone lives happily ever after. The
scholar and author, Elie Wiesel, says in his commentary about Job that he
doesn’t trust this epilogue at all; not only does it rings false to reality, it
certainly rings false to the experience of Jews in history.
So what we have here is biblical and
theological interpretation in action.
Writer and poet, Stephen Mitchell, reminds us that one of the paradoxes
of this great Jewish story is that “the hero is a Gentile… and the author of
this story is as well.” He comes from the land of Uz – probably Edom to the
south of Israel but maybe to the north in what might be modern day Syria – we
don’t really know. We just know that he
isn’t a Jew – but Jewish poets and theologians played with the story and changed
its original purpose to a more nuanced conclusion..
You see, the hero in the Jewish version
of Job DOESN’T win. He
remains a victim – because that’s how real life often works out. Further, his
piety is NOT rewarded. Contrary
to some earlier Jewish theology – notably Deuteronomy – that can point towards a
type of Hebrew karma where good people are rewarded and bad guys reap what they
sow; here, the good and blameless servant, Job, gets the shaft. Talk about a
paradigm shift: not only does Job’s name literally mean either HOSTILE or
PENITENT, talk about paradox; but as the story unfolds the blameless one
becomes NOT whole, NOT upright and maybe NOT even blameless.
Scholars tend to think that in the time
after the destruction of the first Temple, during that period when Israel was
returning to a devastated Jerusalem and some priests were reconstructing a
theology of order and clear structures – think in the beginning God created the
world… and on the seventh day (the Sabbath) rested – others in the wisdom tradition
were working out a way of understanding faith from within the whirlwind of real
suffering. Their experience showed that there is often no direct correspondence
between evil and brokenness. Sometimes, life makes no sense. And that is what
the opening of Job tries to convey to us if we are paying attention beyond our
naiveté.
+ Chapter one/part one of the prologue introduces Job as a good man,
blameless before the Lord – but he is also a man who is terrified of God. He is
always second guessing himself, offering burnt offerings for this or that
imagined transgression, a soul defined by anxiety.
+ And there seems to be a good reason for his anxiety, too as part two of
the prologue unfolds: on the day when
the angels came to testify before the Lord God, the Accusing Angel, Satan,
showed up and engaged the Lord our God in a cruel wager: Let’s see if I can’t get your
blameless servant, Job, to curse your face? To which the Lord our God
agrees: Sure, Satan, give it a shot and
let’s see what happens! (To which the father of depth psychology, Carl
Jung, said in his commentary on Job: Good
Lord, with a God like that who NEEDS a devil?!)
+ And then just to make sure we grasp the fear and trembling of Job’s life,
a series of calamities occur: invading
enemies attack Job’s live stock and killed them all including his servants. And
before one of the survivors could finish his tale of woe, another came along to
report that not only were the oxen destroyed but also the sheep and the camels.
And before that messenger could complete his report, another shouted that a
huge windstorm had just collapse the house where Job’s sons and daughters were
feasting and they were all now dead, too.
Got the picture? Job lived in fear of
his God. God seems capricious and cavalier when it came to the lives of the
faithful. And Job lost everything that gave his life value and meaning – his
livelihood and his family – all because of a sacred wager with the Devil. In his sorrow, Job cries: NAKED I CAME FROM MY MOTHER’S WOMB AND NAKED I SHALL RETURN. THE LORD
GIVETH AND THE LORD TAKETH AWAY; BLESSED BE THE NAME OF THE LORD. He grieves but he still loves and fears the Lord.
To which Job’s wife shrieks: Are you NUTS,
man? You MUST have done
something wrong for the Lord to wreak such vengeance
upon you. Stop clinging to your
innocence. Just curse the Lord and die –
and hurry up about – so we can get this over with! But Job replies: Foolish woman, God has given us blessing so
we must learn to accept the bad fortune that comes from the Lord, too.
Do you
sense the clash of theological perspectives I mentioned being defined here? How
a traditional notion that God only punishes only the wicked is giving way to something
more modern? It isn’t fully unpacked, but you grasp the tension?
Conclusion
We will leave Job’s story right there for today and pick up on it next
week – with one caveat: I believe that
as contemporary, even post-modern women and men of the 21st century,
we need to do the same thing with the story of Job in our generation as did our
ancient cousins in Judaism. And as contemporary Jewish scholars continue to do
today: and I mean wrestle with this
story. Refuse to be entrapped by fear or superstition or even traditionalism.
+ Raise questions – and follow them to their prophetic and compassionate
conclusions. Explore alternative and non-conventional wisdom in the spirit of
Jesus and the prophets.
+ For then the way of the Lord becomes a living vessel – pregnant
with the steadfast love of the Lord and God’s compassion – and aching to give birth
to the fullness of God’s grace.
In this hope I ask you to pray with me:
It is because we long for peace, Lord, that we open our hearts and minds
to you this day. It is because we long for wholeness that we hunger and thirst
for your nurture. It is because we need forgiveness that we seek new beginnings
born of your grace. So we come to you entering the depths of our soul to plead for
peace, to summon true wholeness and to beg forgiveness for ourselves and one
another. In this our soul is embraced by you and we are embraced with one
another. Blessed are you, O Lord our God, the light within our longings.
(John
Philip Newell)
credits:
1) www.thepropheticscroll.org
2) mycentralnewyork.blogspot.com
3) www.pinterest.com
4) kalabalu.wordpress.com
credits:
1) www.thepropheticscroll.org
2) mycentralnewyork.blogspot.com
3) www.pinterest.com
4) kalabalu.wordpress.com
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