When God Shows Up (sermon on October 18, 2009)

Job 38:1-7, 34-41

This is now our third week hearing a passage from the Book of Job, so it's probably a good time to take a step back and review what happened to bring us to this incredible moment in chapter 37 when God responds to Job. When we first met Job, he was a faithful and righteous servant of God who also happened to have been blessed with land, wealth, good health, and a large family. After God gave the satan permission to test Job’s faith, Job lost everything: first his livestock, then his servants, then in one fell swoop, all ten of his children. When those losses didn’t shake Job’s faith, the satan took away his good health, causing Job to be covered with oozing, itching sores all over his body. At first, it looked like Job was going to persist in his faithfulness and integrity: “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God and not receive the bad?” he asked.

Still, Job was not immune to grief. He took a piece of broken pottery with which to scratch his sores and he sat upon a heap of ashes, where he received visits from three friends, each of whom wanted to offer Job some theological advice.

One commentator suggests that the book of Job establishes a theological triangle. In one corner we have the belief that God is good. In another corner is the belief that Job is righteous. In the third corner is the belief that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. The problem is, these three beliefs cannot coexist; only two of them can be true at a time, and so the characters in the book of Job must choose. (1)

So, which two corners of the triangle did the friends choose? Well, they sincerely believe that God is good and that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, so they reject the idea that Job is righteous. Like the politician who plays the role of strict moralist in public while engaging in distinctly immoral behavior in private, Job’s friends believe that Job must be covering up some secret that only God knows and that secret is the reason for Job’s suffering.

As we heard in last week’s passage, Job totally and completely rejects that argument. So which two points of the triangle does he affirm? Well, he knows he is righteous and he too believes that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, so what Job rejects is the belief that God is good. God has let Job down in a huge way. In his suffering, Job has discovered a whole new side of God and there is nothing good about it in Job’s eyes. Some would say that Job almost commits blasphemy in the accusations he hurls at God; one scholar goes so far as to say that “by any meaning of the word blaspheme, Job blasphemes time and time again.” (2)

“God destroys both the righteous and the wicked,” Job declares, and God “mocks the calamity of the innocent.” He even insists that “the earth has been handed over to the wicked.” (Job 9:22-24). In spite of his blasphemy Job still wants nothing more than for God to show up and give Job an explanation. Job must harbor at least a sliver of hope that there is still a plausible explanation for everything that’s happened -- some explanation that will restore all three sides of that theological triangle. Job wants to hear that explanation...and he wants to hear it from God. Job is as desperate and determined as the husband standing outside the house of the man with whom his wife committed adultery, demanding that the man show his face and account for his actions.

Ever heard the expression “be careful what you wish for...”? Well, it could have been Job who coined that phrase because after all of Job’s raging and debating with his friends, after all his demands for God to offer an explanation, God finally shows up. And God proceeds, not to restore the corners of that triangle, but to throw the triangle out of play as easily as a grown man tossing a frisbee across a lawn.

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” God thunders from the midst of a whirlwind. “Gird up your loins like a man...”

Now I know the language might seem a little outdated here, so let me make it very clear: God is calling Job out. That phrase: “gird up your loins like a man”? -- well, back when men wore long robes, you had to tuck your robe into your belt in order to engage in any physical activity. God is telling Job to “man up” and get ready for a fight. “You want a piece of me?” God is saying. “Then you’ve got it.”

And then God gets down to business, not fighting Job with jabs and left hooks, but with words. “I will question you,” God thunders, “And you shall declare to me.” Actually, Job isn’t going to declare much of anything, probably because, as any rational human being would be when God’s voice comes crashing around you from out of a whirlwind, Job was terrified.

Certainly it must have been terrifying, heart-stopping, panic-inducing, yes, to hear God’s voice as Job, but don’t you also think Job was relieved? I mean, he had been waiting a long time for God to offer him some explanation of his suffering and finally it looks like God has come to do just that. But when God speaks again -- and this speech continues way beyond what we heard today; it is nearly four chapters long -- God doesn’t say much of anything about Job at all, and certainly nothing that addresses Job’s suffering. Instead, God wants to talk about creation and to ask Job some rhetorical questions:

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”
“Who determined its measurements...or who stretched the line upon it?...who laid its cornerstone?"
“Who has put wisdom in the inward parts or given understanding to the mind? Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? Who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens?”

As if to be sure no one misses God’s point, and least of all Job, those “who” questions alternate with “can you” questions:
“Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of waters may cover you?”
“Can you send forth lightnings?”
“Can you hunt the prey for the lion or satisfy the appetite of the young lions?”

Of course, the answers to these questions are clear: The “who” is none other than God, the creator of heaven and earth. And as far as whether Job can do any of those things, clearly the answer is “no.”

So, Job gets his wish: God shows up. But what are we to make of this speech that makes God seem, if we’re really honest, like a blustering, bragging bully?

Well, first of all, it seems obvious that God is making a point: Job and his friends don’t know what they are talking about when they try to explain why Job is suffering, any more than they can fathom or explain the complexities of creation. And God also wants Job to understand something else: much as his suffering has consumed him lately, the world simply isn’t all about Job. “Who, who, who...” God keeps asking. And the answer is not Job, it is never Job, the answer is God. And yes, it is the same God Job has worshipped and obeyed his whole life long, but as Job now learns, God is not who Job thought God was, not completely anyway.

When God shows up and responds to Job and his friends, God completely shatters any boxes -- or triangles -- they may have constructed to contain God. In his speech to Job, God shows that the human mind’s ability to understand Godis severely limited. There is simply no three-sided or four-sided or any-sided figure complex enough to explain or contain the God who created this entire universe out of what was once “a formless void” and who continues, every day, to sustain it (Genesis 1:2). And God makes clear to Job that although human beings enjoy a special relationship with God, we simply are not the center of the universe, nor are we the only creatures over which God feels a Maker’s rightful sense of pride and joy.

In this speech God strikes a final blow at Job: having lost everything but his firm belief in who God is, God ensures that Job now loses even that. But the most important thing in the book of Job is what happens in chapter 38: God shows up. God responds. And when this happens, when God enters the conversation, God restores Job’s relationship with God. That relationship does not return to what it was before Job’s suffering -- when something so life-altering happens as happened to Job there can never be a return to how things were before. Instead, their relationship is transformed. From this point on it will never be the same as before, but it will be no less real and significant to Job.

This week the New York Times ran a story about a military program called Operation Proper Exit. This program has taken two groups of wounded veterans of the Iraq war back to Iraq in the hope that returning them to the place they left either unconscious or in agonizing pain might help them achieve some degree of closure. Most of the returning veterans were amazed at the differences between the Iraq of today and the one they left years ago at the height of the fighting -- they were struck at the quiet, since there were no longer constant sounds of mortal shells exploding; they were also amazed that the most recently assigned regiment has so far not lost one soldier to the war. During their visit, a Command Major said to the veterans, “This is the new Iraq, and what you did here is part of that.” (3)

Obviously, returning to a more peaceful Iraq isn’t going to change the veterans’ memories of their time there, nor is it going to restore their lost limbs or instantly heal their psychological wounds. But it gives them new information about a place that deeply affected their lives. It gives them new experiences with that place beyond the violence and suffering that had been their most vivid memories. So far, studies have shown that Operation Proper Exit is helping the veterans who participate. Some report that their night terrors stopped completely; others that they finally felt free from the guilt they carried home. Returning to Iraq transformed their relationship with a place that will always be a part of them.

When God shows up to argue with Job, God clearly makes the point that human suffering is just one part of the complex and mysterious world God created. But the very fact that God shows up reveals to Job -- and to us -- that we human beings matter enough to God that God will show up, even one on one, even if it is to argue, even if it is to put us in our place and make sure we understand that God is God and we are not, that God’s ways are not our ways and cannot be explained by our logic.

Job doesn’t get an explanation from God. In fact, when God finally finishes his speech about creation, Job probably has more questions than answers. But he knows that God cares enough to make that speech to him, to be with him, to show up. The God who created the universe from nothing speaks to Job! And that act changes and restores Job’s relationship to God. His suffering is not taken away or explained, but still there is a change and that relationship which had seemed dead suddenly receives new life. All because God shows up.

There is a haiku by the sixteenth century Japanese poet Masahide which, I believe, perfectly expresses what happens to Job when his suffering causes him to question everything he thought he understood about God and then when God speaks directly to him, restoring their relationship and offering Job a new vision of God. I will end with Masahide’s words.

Barn’s burnt down
now
I can see the moon.


Endnotes:
1. Rolf Jacobsen, in the Working Preacher “Sermon Brainwave” podcast for June 21, 2009. http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=71
2. John C. Holbert in the Working Preacher lectionary commentary for June 21, 2009, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=6/21/2009&tab=1.
3. Nordland, Rod, “Wounded Soldiers Return to Iraq, Seeking Solace,” The New York Times. Thursday, Oct. 15, section A1. The article can be found online here.