Not our ways - a sermon for Evensong at Coventry Cathedral 29th July 2018

There are some people out there who believe that if you’re friends with God, you’ll lead a charmed existence.

They are those who’ve listened to preachers of a prosperity gospel and managed to forget that the subject of the Gospels themselves, Jesus Christ, was subjected to a terrible death, which he had done nothing to deserve.

Those who want to feel that the otherwise disturbing muddle of life circumstances is contained within an absolutely ordered universe, where good behaviour is rewarded and bad behaviour punished.

If they want to hold on to that world view, they would do well to avoid reading the book of Job, source of tonight’s first reading.

Job, you see, is an upright man, revered by many, approved by God, and his life circumstances when the book begins affirm the belief that was prevalent in Old Testament times, that worldly success was a sign of a good life, and a testimony to God’s favour.

God looks at Job and smiles with loving pride.

Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’

However, - and it is an BIG “However” , things don’t stay that way for long.

Convinced that Job’s righteousness is only possible because all is going well for him, Satan persuades God to allow him to test Job’s faith. Disaster strikes, Job loses children, cattle, and later health and strength – all part of a process that seems to us at best capricious. What is God really up to, when such things happen?

How can we continue to have faith in one who deals so unfairly with humanity?

Enter Job’s friends, rallying round as best they can – though it turns out that they are not actually much help to him at all.

Like so many others before and since, they want answers to the problem of suffering – and in the absence of answers, they’re prepared to furnish some of their own. It’s perfectly understandable. We all want to make sense of the pain and evil we see around us. We want to find safety in an explanation, in some kind of reason.

If we can explain things, then we can tame them.

If we understand why bad things have happened, then we can make sure that they won’t happen to us….

Except, somehow, we can’t.

I’m sure that Job’s comforters set out with good intentions, but their attempts to help him make sense of his ordeal, their wild misreadings of the situation, and, their refusal to shut up and just be with him in his pain consistently made things worse….and in our reading this evening, Job reaches the end of his tether.

His friend Bildad has been eloquent about the ways in which the wicked can expect to come to a bad end and now, though popular myth presents Job as the embodiment of patience in the face of adversity, that’s definitely not the image he’s presenting to the world.

“How long will you torment me and crush me with words?”

he cries, taking over the initiative after being on the receiving end of torrents of misguided advice. Now it is Job’s turn to ennumerate all the ways in which he has been hurt, excluded,crushed at every turn….

It seems to him his friends are co-conspirators with God, intent on making things unbearable for him – and Job makes no attempt to conceal how badly he is suffering.

“Have pity on me, have pity on me, you my friends;for the hand of God has touched me. Why do you persecute me as God...”

With friends like these, who needs enemies? Job has repeatedly protested his innocence, maintained that there is nothing, NOTHING in his life that would justify the suffering he is experiencing – but his words seem to be falling on deaf ears as they continue to try to apply the law of cause and effect to his situation.

Will he die before he is vindicated?

Will he never achieve justice?

Lest the worst happens, Job longs to create a lasting record of his truth.

23“Oh that my words were now written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
24That with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!

Speech is lost in the moment, the written word more permanent, books treasured for longer still but for real immortality, words engraved on rock may endure for centuries. Job is buying time for his truth to out, his reputation restored.

But into this tumult of injured innocence drops suddenly a music of absolute, unshakeable tranquility

“I know that my redeemer liveth and that he shall stand on the latter day upon the earth”

As happens elsewhere in the Old Testament, the glorious music of Handel’s Messiah threatens to completely seduce us, so that we lose sight of the original intention here, the words subverted by a very different musical code. Though we cannot help but think “Jesus” when we hear the word “Redeemer”, Job’s appeal is to a different source of help. The Hebrew word he uses, “ga-al” means to redeem or to act as a kinsman-redeemer – a figure familiar in Jewish law and practice. Redemption here has to do with “release from legal obligation or deliverance from desperate circumstances, closely connected with a payment necessary to effect that release” It was this principle that was at work in the story of Boaz and Ruth, as Jewish law made provision to redeem family members in dire straits. Recognising himself at the end of all his resources, Job looks longingly for such a one to come to his aid.

In the history of his people, God had repeatedly taken on that role, saying to Moses, “I am Yahweh, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians…. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments” (Exodus 6:6) or later, during the Babylonian Exile, speaking through Isaiah, “Don’t be afraid, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name. You are mine”

Job seems to have perfect confidence that his redeemer IS at hand...though as he anticipates the destruction of his earthly body we’re left to wonder quite what he is looking towards. So to whom is he appealing? We honestly cannot know – but this is certainly not the calm declaration of unshakeable faith that Handel’s music suggests. Job has recognised God as his accuser – so it makes little sense if he turns to him for vindication. That seems to be nonsense, no matter how beautifully we set the words to music….though Job is expert at bridging the gap between reason and experience, saying earlier in his trials

“Though God slay me, I will trust him”

And perhaps that’s the answer.

The problem of suffering is real and intractible for those of us who claim God’s essential goodness….but it’s something we cannot ignore.

So what, if anything, does all of this have to say to you and me today? What does it say in a world where wild fires claim the lives of children on holiday with their parents, where a compassionate and able oncologist falls a victim to cancer himself, a much loved man active the service of others receives a terminal diagnosis out of a clear blue sky,where some families seem to be buffetted by disaster while others sail blithely on?

Don’t look in the book of Job for answers...but, if you look hard enough, you might just get a glimpse of how to live with the questions.

You see, I think Job teaches us that there is nothing whatever wrong with asking God “why”, or telling God exactly what we’re feeling when God offers no satisfactory answer. Wrestling for a blessing, as Jacob once did by the ford of Jabbock, forces us into God’s arms, even as we struggle. As the book of Job continues, God speaks to him out of the whirlwind, reminding him once again that his ways are not our ways, nor his thoughts ours.

We are limited, fallible, mortals...and in verse after verse we are reminded of this. God is always greater, always beyond our comprehension...We can and do protest, but a God who is small enough to fall in with our expectations would be no God at all…

Yes, dreadful things happen – and we rightly protest and lament but in the end, we come face to face with the reality of God and can either fall silent in prayer or turn away forever.

The Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel writes of the day when the rabbis put God on trial. Gathered in Auschwitz they debated through long hours as day turned to night, coming finally to the conclusion that God WAS guilty – that he had a debt to pay to humanity. Profound silence followed this verdict until one of the rabbis observed

“It’s time to worship God” - and they all went to pray.

To whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life