Context of "Covid-19 Preaching" series: In the summer of 2020, while the world was still grappling with Covid lockdowns and the murder of George Floyd, as the as the calls for justice that arose from that, I was stranded in Kansas City, KS, trying to figure out "online ministry." Before Covid, every seminary student had the opportunity to spend a school year or a summer at a church, observing a pastoral mentor and their congregation. I had a congregation, Lordship Community Church, in Stratford, CT, but I had never set foot in the building, and was ministering to a congregation while halfway across the country. These sermons are the product of those strange, trying times. I have to believe there was some providence in the "Unraveled" summer series that the pastor had chosen. The series was picked before Covid-19 threw the world into chaos. What timing! This was the time and place to preach on faith and doubt, to travel with Peter and dive into Job's suffering. The world was unraveled, and we were picking up the strands.
The book of Job is a book of questions. Besides its beginning and end, which set up the conflict for the story and then offer a resolution, the majority of Job is dedicated to a dialogue between Job and his three friends – Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite – in which said friends try to discern what Job did to deserve the loss of his sons, daughters, livestock, wealth, and health. Rather than supporting or comforting Job, these friends take it upon themselves to determine Job’s sins so that he can have his life restored. Even though Job claims that he is innocent, that he has done nothing wrong, Job’s friends view his claims as a refusal to accept responsibility for sins.
Despite Job’s claims that he has done nothing wrong, Job’s friends assume the role of judges, rather than supporters. Even though they are unqualified to judge, Job’s friends view the positive direction of their own lives as divine support. According to their logic, since their lives are going well, they must be favored by God. By this same logic, Job must be below his friends and all others who are thriving, because it would not be possible for a Godly person to suffer. Unfortunately, as readers of Job, we know that this is not the case.
A reading of the Book of Job is an exercise in frustration. As readers, we know from the beginning that Job is innocent, that he is simply being tested by Satan. However, Job and his friends are not privy to this key bit of information. As readers, we can use this hidden knowledge to better understand Job’s suffering, to craft a meaning for his loss that prevents his trial from being a senseless bit of misfortune. However, this background information comes at a cost. If we read the entire Book of Job, we end up enduring thirty-five chapters of Job and his friends struggling to explain his situation, all the while knowing that they have no idea what they are talking about, although this is far from the only time that a group of men has rambled without saying anything of substance.
These four men, elders in their society who were admired and sought out as sources of wisdom, were completely baffled by a turn of events that defied their expectations and norms. Yet, this did not stop Job’s friends from trying to provide answers or using this moment of misfortune to speak for God, even though, as readers, we know these answers could not be further from the truth. Within these thirty-five chapters of questions and answers, Job’s friends overlook a time-tested key to wisdom, that wisdom is found in asking questions, rather than offering answers.
This discussion of wisdom and false lessons brings us to today’s lesson, in which Job answers his friend's questions with a question, asking, “But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?” In answer to his question, Job replies "God understands the way to it, and he knows its place…Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding." While Job's friends cloak their human answers as divine judgment, Job humbles himself by laying bare his inability to possess the wisdom of God. At this moment, it is revealed who the true sinners and fools are.
In their attempts to act as representatives of God, Job's friends committed the greatest sin of all, they deluded themselves into believing they could understand God, and in doing so, placed themselves in a position in which they were out of their depths. In most cases, this is where the story would end. An innocent man would be persecuted and judged, while his judges would return home, elevated to a new level of smugness and self-righteousness. However, Job’s story is far from usual. In the story of Job, God enters the ring.
After Job has been questioned and berated by his friends and a nearby youth, to the surprise of all, God shows up to answer Job's questions. However, instead of offering an answer, God enters with more questions. In four chapters, God delivers the most epic tongue lashing in the entirety of the Bible. It appears that God grew tired of having humans speak for God, of blaming God for their misfortune. In these four chapters of dialogue, God tears down the qualifications of any who would dare speak for God, revealing the insignificance of human accomplishments and wisdom when compared to the creator of all things, the source of wisdom itself. However, in a turn of expectations, even after ridiculing Job for his complaints and questions, God does not abandon Job. Instead, God turns on the very men who assumed God was on their side.
Even after berating Job for bemoaning his fate, God sides with Job because Job recognized that God does not use Earth to enact justice on humans. In this twist of fate, Job's friends are found lacking and are only saved from punishment because Job had prayed that they would not suffer for their foolishness. Once again, when God enters the ring, expectations are unraveled and the wise are revealed as fools. In the search for wisdom, those who offer answers are left wanting, while those who are open to the questions, to the unknown, are vindicated.
Before I entered Seminary, my childhood pastor passed on a piece of wisdom that has kept me grounded. He told me that the most critical thing a pastor can do is be willing to admit, “I do not know.” He warned me that, in the years to come, when I encounter lives turned upside down, it will be tempting to say things like “everything happens for a reason," this was all part of God’s plan,” “God needed another angel,” or any other line of comfort that places blame with God. He told me that, even as a leader of faith, it is not my place to speak for God, that I am not going to have all the answers. In this bit of wisdom, I remember again that the hardest part of being human, being a person of faith, is being left with only questions, without the comfort of answers. However, it is in the pain of our questions, of the common experience that we are brought together.
When bad things happen, it is tempting to seek answers. As beings reliant on thought and will power, it can feel unnatural to face tragedy without looking for a deeper meaning. When we rely on everything making sense or being connected, anything that defies explanation can rear up in direct opposition to faith and belief. I am sure I am not the only one that has yelled “why?” into the abyss. The same “why” that has left the lips of parents holding children gone too soon, of refugees reeling from the loss of homes, of those diagnosed with terminal illnesses, arises from every generation that wants to know why suffering exists. We want it to make sense, to know what we have to do to avoid tragedy or pain.
In our attempt to avoid the chaos and uncertainty that arises from misfortune and suffering that strikes indiscriminately, we create laws, codes of living, morality, narratives of good and bad. We paint a black and white picture where the good people win in every story, where fame, fortune, and success are all deserved and earned because of hard work and being good people. If only it were that simple. However, it is not. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people. Sometimes the protagonist does not get a Disney ending. Sometimes villains thrive without facing justice, while the innocent face persecution or rot away in a prison for a crime they did not commit. There are days when darkness seems to win, days when systemic racism seems unbreakable, where the rich seem to inherit the kingdom only for the poor to be left outside. Sometimes the haze of oppression, hate, fear, and distrust is too thick to remember what love, peace, and goodwill look like. In these dark days, we find solace within the story of Job, because we find ourselves bound in moments with the greatest potential for faith-breaking or faith-making.
"Good things happen to good people," is a mantra of naïve human optimism, but it is not a basis of faith. Faith is more than good moments that make it appear that God is on someone's side. Faith is the entire experience of existence, both ups, and downs. Maybe that is why faith is so hard. Depending on your perspective, or your interpretation, the story of Job breaks or makes one's faith. For those who have fallen on hard times, the story of Job is a reassurance that the state of one’s circumstances are not an indication of God’s wrath. For those in good times, especially those in power, the story of Job is hard to stomach, because it goes against all notions of divine sanctions, of ideas of Manifest Destiny, of God backing wars, of God being on the side of the rich and powerful. In this story, where Job’s friends represent these rich and powerful, those who lack wisdom but are quick to offer answers and shame a man at his lowest, those who believe to have God on their side, we see humans fail in their role of faith.
In this story, Job’s friends neglect their role as humans and friends by failing to listen and support someone who is already in the worst of his days.
At his lowest, Job does not need to know what he has done wrong, or to be condemned; he needs friends, a support network to help him carry through when it seems his life is at its end. However, a condemnation of Job’s friends does not end with three individuals, it extends to any who claim to speak for God yet use their place of privilege and power to add undue punishments and burdens on the downtrodden. As humans, it is not our place to decide who is good or bad, who does or does not have God’s favor. In our precarious state of existence, we are called to come together as a community so that, even on someone’s worst day, they might still have a friend, neighbor, or family member who offers a hand and shoulder to lean on.
As Christians, we answer a difficult call that bids us come and die, to give up our vanity, greed, and divisions, so that we may be humble enough to live in a community that is more than homeowner codes, laws of conduct, and an envious arms race to keep up with the Joneses. In this vulnerable community of Christ, we give up the false security of answers, so that we may lean into questions and accept the insight of others. Through this death of the self, we transcend the weakness of the individual, a weakness tied into a loose mixture of primal urges and instincts that are only overcome through common sacrifice and care. When we accept our susceptibility and staggering vulnerability, we become open to care for neighbors without reservation and finally offer compassion and love without exception. When we achieve this, we finally understand that it is not our place to ask the impoverished why they are poor, or to judge what has led to someone’s ill health. As people who wax and wane between doubt and faith, we accept that it is not our place to render judgment or discern who has God on their side. All that we can do, the best that we can do is to endure together so that even the worst of days might be okay, even if we are not okay.
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