Happily Ever After? (sermon, Oct. 25, 2009)

Job 42:1-6, 10-17

These days there aren’t many things you could say with confidence that all Americans have in common, but here’s one: we love happy endings. If you need proof of this, look no further than some of our most popular movies: Miracle on 34th Street, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, and, of course, every Disney movie ever made -- I’m sure you can add your own favorites to the list. Part of this, of course, is that the movie industry is in the business of making money and, as one movie critic put it, “you don’t build [movie] franchises on bleak conclusions.”(1) Some argue that the reason for our love affair with happy endings is that the American Dream itself is a happy ending: the little guy overcomes adversity and hardship and makes it big. Deep down, we all believe that we are the little guy, and we dream of facing down our adversity and one day making it big,

While we may think this affinity for happy endings is particularly American, the Book of Job suggests otherwise. After all the suffering, after the painful process Job goes through that ends in his admitting that he really knows nothing about the ways of God, what do we get but a Hollywood-worthy happy ending. And not only that, we get an ending that seems to directly contradict the message in the rest of the book, in which Job and God go to great lengths to prove that the theological belief that the righteous get rewarded and the wicked get punished is flat-out wrong. The last seven verses of the Book of Job suggest that in fact, that is exactly how God works. Job perseveres through his suffering, keeps hold of his faith and in the end everything he lost is restored to him.

Am I the only one here who finds this ending deeply disappointing?

Well, whether you are disappointed or relieved to find that the end of the book of Job suggests that God indeed rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, we all need to look a little more closely at this ending which, at first glance, looks like a happy one.

First of all, before the seemingly “happy” ending in which Job’s fortunes are restored, we hear a final speech from Job. In this speech Job finally finds words with which to respond to God’s long monologue on creation. Although God never once addresses Job’s suffering or his guilt or innocence, Job still learns something from what God has to say: he learns that God’s power is far beyond Job’s ability to understand. Yes, we are unique and special in God’s sight, but that doesn’t mean that we are equal to God or capable of understanding God. As God speaks Job discovers the limitations of being human. “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know,” Job confesses. “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” In other words, Job has experienced God in a completely new way; he now has a whole new perspective, not just on his own life and faith, but also on God’s relationship to creation and to humanity.

To understand what this experience must have been like for Job, let me ask you a question: who here remembers where you were on September 11th, 2001? Let’s see a show of hands. And why is it that everyone remembers this? It’s because that day changed our lives. Even if we didn’t personally know someone who was hurt or killed or involved in the tragedy, the events of that day drew a permanent line in the calenders of our minds. There is life before September 11th and life after. And every American knows that we can never go back to life as it was before September 11th, no matter how much our lives today resemble our lives then. That is what Job is expressing in his words to God: both because of his suffering and because of God’s response, Job’s perspective has permanently changed.

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann suggests that in the book of Job there is a three-fold movement from orientation to disorientation and then to a new re-orientation. At the beginning of the book, Job’s life and faith make sense to him; when suffering hits, he moves into a period of life during which he is profoundly confused and disoriented and nothing makes sense any longer; finally, when his health, family, and wealth are restored, he moves into a new stage of life, a reorientation made possible by God. But within this reorientation there are “persistent traces of loss.” (2)

This three-fold movement in Job’s life is illustrated in the Pennyroyal Claxton Bible. In this Bible, three portraits by artist Barry Moser accompany the book of Job. In the first, Moser has drawn Job as a well-dressed, older man, looking down but with the slightest expression of condescension on his face. In the second picture, Job is naked and covered with sores, looking up with his jaw set. The determined look on his face shows that he wants an explanation for his condition. Moser’s final drawing is captioned “Job, Old and Full of Days.” Here is a man who has been restored to his prior life. He is once again well-dressed and, as in the first picture, he is looking down. But there is no longer any trace of condescension in his face; instead he looks almost confused but certainly humbled. (3) This is not the same Job as before his suffering.

If we return to that so-called “happy” ending, then, with this in mind, we realize that even when Job received back the equivalent of what he had lost, it doesn’t mean that his suffering has been erased or even somehow redeemed. For one thing, since Job knows firsthand that whatever you have you can lose in an instant, then surely he now lives with the persistent awareness that he could lose it all again. For another thing, Job may have been blessed with ten new children, the same number of children that had died before; and he may have had the most beautiful daughters in the land, but we all know those children could not totally replace the children who died, and whatever joy they brought Job, that joy could not take away or make up for the pain Job continued to feel over the absence of his first family.

Of course, the text doesn’t tell us any of this; in fact, it doesn’t give any hint at all that Job was haunted by the memories of his suffering. But, even if he is a remarkably righteous and faithful human being, he is still human. As Walter Brueggemann puts it, to be human is to discover that “the savage reality of loss eventually spares no one.” (4) And so we assume that Job’s experience is the same as ours. He lives fully again, he laughs again, he experiences joy again but he is never too far removed from that savage reality of loss and the pain it brought him.

The text does, however, make clear that Job’s suffering and the new perspective that suffering gave him changed him in another way. Listen again: “The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning...He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch...and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers.”

Not only does the text tell us that Job had three daughters, we find out their names. Usually, in the Old Testament, most of the named characters are men; it is rare that a woman has a big enough role to actually be named in the text. But that’s not all; Job also gives his daughters a portion of the inheritance which would usually be divided among sons. This was simply unheard of. Daughters were property to be married off in exchange for livestock or maybe land, and once they were married, they became someone else’s property. But not Job’s daughters. Something about Job’s orientation, disorientation, and reorientation has brought him to a place where he is no longer willing to accept the cultural norms. After discovering in his suffering that his prior understanding about God isn’t true, it appears that Job is no longer willing to accept as infallible the norms of his society, especially those that unnecessarily cause others to suffer. And so in his reoriented life Job seeks to remedy one such injustice, at least as much as he can within his own family.

In the end, then, perhaps the book of Job does offer us a kind of happy ending. As we come to the end of this book we must still hold onto the deep suffering and despair Job knew, just as, for Job himself, the reality of that experience will always be with him. But even as we refuse to forget Job’s suffering, we can also recognize that, because of his suffering, Job has changed in ways that have allowed him to look beyond himself and do what he can to alleviate the suffering of others.

And so this is the lesson Job teaches us when his suffering has finally ended and his wealth, health, and family have been restored. When we are confronted with the “savage reality of suffering,” -- and, eventually, we all will be -- then we need to be honest about it, honest about our pain and confusion, honest even about the anger we feel toward God. But even in that time of disorientation when we discover firsthand that we understand little about the ways of God, we must still trust that God is there and that there will be an end to suffering, whether or not we see it on this side of heaven.

If, like Job, we are fortunate enough to see the end of our suffering while we still have life left to live, may we embrace the knowledge our suffering gave us. May we embrace the awareness that life is terribly, heart-breakingly fragile, even without the suffering and injustices we inflict on each other. And embracing these difficult truths, may we do what we can to minimize the suffering and to remedy the injustices we see all around us. Amen.

Endnotes:
1. Ansen, David, “Endless Summer.” Newsweek, April 28, 2008; online at http://www.newsweek.com/id/132858.
2. Brueggemann, Walter, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Westminster John Knox, 2003, p. 302.
3. Hoezee, Scott in the commentary at “This Week from the Center of Excellence in Preaching,” http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/viewArticle.php?aID=340.
4. Brueggemann, Walter, An Introduction to the Old Testament. Westminster John Knox, 2003, p. 302.