 | The New England Church PulpitNew England Congregational Church UCC |
"No Quid Pro Quo" | Job 42: 1-6; 10-17 | October 26, 2003 |
Let me remind us of the story in the book of Job which William Safire, the columnist, in his book The First Dissident, describes as a book that “delights the irreverent, satisfies the blasphemous, and offers at least some comfort to the heretical,” but also has left “readers for thousands of years uplifted, puzzled, comforted, dissatisfied, provoked, or scandalized.”
Job, we are told, was a prosperous man who did everything right. He was blameless and upright; he feared God and turned away from evil. He was also “the greatest of all the people of the east,” with a loving wife, ten children, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred pairs of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and enough servants to look after all his stuff.
The misfortune he suffers is through no fault of his. It seems that at one of God’s cabinet meetings, God gets into a conversation with Satan. Now in this story Satan, really ha Satan is not the devil of later stories. He is a heavenly being who serves as a kind of divine prosecutor–a kind of John Ashcroft type whose job is to bring people to trial when God said so.
At any rate, God brags to Satan about Job being such a good and faithful servant. “No wonder,” Satan replies. “Who wouldn’t be? He has it made. Take all his stuff away from him and he will curse you to your face.” Whether God was confident in Job or afraid that Satan might be right, God gives permission to Satan to test his premise and Job’s trial began. In short order Job’s oxen, donkeys and camels were stolen. His servants were killed defending them. His sheep were struck by lightning. His children died around the supper table when a big wind blew the house down on top of them.
Job’s response proved God right. There was no one on earth like Job. In a formal display of grief, Job tore his robe, shaved his head, and lay face down in the dirt. “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away,” he wept into the dirt. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Satan still is not ready to praise Job. “That is because we didn’t lay a hand on him,” the Accuser says to God. “Hurt him–hurt him physically–and he will curse you to your face.” God gives permission. Satan made itching sores erupt all over Job’s body. Job’s wife told him to curse God and die, but Job refuses to do it. He just picked up a piece of broken pottery to scratch himself with while he sat speechless on a dung heap. Three of his friends came and sat with him for a full week without saying a word. His suffering was so acute it made them speechless also.
Finally Job explodes. “Damn the day I was born!” yells Job (the NEB translation of ‘perish the day’ is too timid.) “”Why couldn’t I have died as they pulled me out of the dark? Why were there knees to hold me, breasts to keep me alive? If only I had strangled or drowned on my way to the bitter light.” (Translation by Stephen Mitchell)
For thirty-seven chapters Job fumes at the injustice of what has happened to him. What we see is not the patience of Job but the persistent protestations of Job. The King James translation of the verse that says “Yea though he slay me I will trust him.” It is better translated, “He may slay me, I’ll not quaver. I will defend my conduct to his face.” Interspersed with Job’s protests is a dialogue with his three friends. His friends who were full of compassion for Job when he could not say a word, become defensive when he starts railing at God. They tell him he must have done something to deserve it all, since God does not make mistakes. After all they remind him we all know that those who get good things are good people and if bad things happen then a person must have done something wrong. Instead of defending their friend against God, they defend God against their friend. “God is just,” they tell him. “Therefore you must be guilty.” Only Job knows he is not guilty. And Job is certain that God must know he is not guilty. “Why is this happening to me?” he wants to know. “I never did anything to deserve such heartache and pain” he insists. Job’s friends, who one writer describes as the world’s worst pastoral counselors, cope with Job’s pain and anger by coming up with pious theories to explain it. The more Job protests the more platitudes they dish up. Finally, Job yells at God with both fists in the air, “I have done everything you ever asked me to! Why is this happening to me? Answer me!” You can see why Soren Kierkegaard says that “Nowhere in the world has the passion of anguish found such expression.” D.H. Lawrence wrote, “If you want a story of your own soul, it is perfectly done in the book of Job . . .”
As Barbara Brown Taylor writes “you can read about Moses splitting the Red Sea or Deborah routing the Canaanites and never once think about your own life, but once Job climbs on his dung heap and starts cursing the day he was born, it is hard not to empathize.” (Home By Another Way)
God answers Job. But not how we expect. He doesn’t say, “This was just a test.” or give any explanation. Out of a whirl wind God asks Job who he thinks he is to challenge God’s ways. And then God gives Job a quick tour of the wonders of the world, a kind of display of power which goes on for four whole chapters but never does answer Job’s question about justice. After this whirlwind tour of the majestic wonders of the world Job, in effect, caves in and says something like “Oh. Never mind. I repent in dust and ashes.” Is this just to point out that the only answer we get about why things happen the way they do is “God only knows.” And none of us is God. According to Taylor, “It was as if a flea had insisted that the lion upon which it was riding stop–stop right now–and explain why the ride was so bumpy and hot. The flea roared and roared as loud as it could, never expecting to be heard, much less answered, until one day the lion turned around and roared right back, so that the flea saw itself reflected in both golden eyes at once. Never mind what the lion said. The lion turned around. The lion roared back. And that is enough for anyone to live on the rest of his life.” One way to see this is that if there is an answer to the problem of unjustified suffering in Job, then, it is this: the worst thing that can happen is not to suffer without reason but to suffer without God–without any hope of consolation. Like Job, we may not get answers, but we get the divine presence.
Not everyone is satisfied with this part of the story. Elie Wiesel, the concentration-camp survivor who serves as a conscience-haunting witness to the Holocaust, taught a course on the Book of Job on French television. He doesn’t like this part of the book. He says “Much as I admired Job’s passionate rebellion, I am deeply troubled by his hasty abdication. I prefer to think that the book’s true ending was lost. That Job died without having repented, without having humiliated himself . . . . I was offended by his surrender in the text. . . . He should have said to God: ‘Very well, I forgive you . . .but what about my dead children, do they forgive you?
At least God rebukes Job’s friends. God says that they did not speak truth. God further says that Job did and that God will ask Job to pray for them. God prefers Job’s outrage to the piety of Job’s friends. When we are in pain we are allowed to yell as loud as we can. But as William Safire says, the response is like the man who says, “Ask me about business.” And when his friend asks “How’s business?” The man sighs “Don’t ask.” If we have a God-given nature to ask the questions, why are there not answers? Now you see why I am not fond of today’s lectionary selection.
Then comes what many think was an ending added later by a “Happy Ending Freak.” Job gets all his property back and then some and he has more children. We are even told the names of the daughters (who against tradition are given a share in the inheritance): Jemima (a dove), Keziah (cinnamon), and Keren-Happuch (horn of eye shadow, makeup-box).
Houston Hodges, a Presbyterian writer and preacher was asked to give a stewardship sermon when this text was the lectionary for the day. He titled his sermon “It’s not about the money.” He then says that the last paragraph of Job makes it sound like it is about the money and animals and family, as if family were a possession. So he thinks a later scribe who really agreed with Job’s friends thought that things should turn out well for one who was faithful to God. In effect, the later addition says, “It’s about money.” Faith is a Quid pro quo, this for that, tit for tat, put in your offering and get your reward, kind of enterprise according to the happy ending scribe. But not so says Hodges, and I agree. “This” he writes, “may have been the simplest, hardest part of the Reformation to sell: Salvation is by Grace Alone, not by our works, including our pledge card. What stewardship is about is giving from one’s center. It’s giving from the middle of your deepest needs and your deepest desires. At your center you are a child of God, grateful and loving; you have heard the [good news in this church] and you’re better for it. You want to improve the world, want to care for your family, you want to save for old age, want to be generous and gracious; you want to serve some ginger snaps with the ice cream, to serve salsa with the scrambled eggs, you count your blessings, know the joy of life, . . . and you want to respond; you’ll give like that, from your deepest heart, not like it’s about money.”
I like that. Here at NECC we ask each other to consider our stewardship not in a quid pro quo way. Not asking “what’s in it for us?” but giving because we know that stewardship is the right thing to do.
If faith and integrity before God is not a quid pro quo then you see why I don’t like this passage with the ‘they lived happily ever after’ words.
In J. B., Archibald MacLeish’s play about Job, two characters stand apart from the drama and comment on it. Near the end of the play, the sardonic Nickles asks what happens to Job in the end, and Mr. Zuss tells him that Job gets his wife back..
Nickles says “Wife Back!. . .He wouldn’t take her with a glove. . . . After life like his . . . to take
The seed up of a sad creation
Planting the hopeful world again
He can’t . . . He won’t. . . He wouldn’t touch her!
And Zuss replies: “He does though.”
Perhaps, the “happy ending” to this story begins to look more like an extraordinary act of faith. For Job to resume his life as it was before is to risk losing it all again. To embrace the wife who advised him to curse God and die is to embrace life, in spite of unanswered questions. To go on with no answers or assurances can be, and often is, a profound expression of trust.
You know people with that kind of trust. You have met many of them in this community of faith. We, like Job, may want answers and explanations. But, also like Job, we may find that the presence of God is enough. Amen
Joe Dunham
| Copyright © 2003 by Joe Dunham. All rights reserved. |