The Rev. Ann R. Lougee October 8, 2006 In Whose Hands? Job 1:1, 2:1-10, Psalm 26 The story of Job presents us with a very human-seeming God, who seems to be placed by Satan in a no-win situation. And Satan here is not the devil with horns and tail as we might envision but one of the heavenly court. He is the one whose duty is to be the Accuser, the Prosecutor, if you will. His is the job of oversight of people's behavior on earth. Satan challenges God with the idea that Job is devoted to God in his prosperity and happiness, but that if he were afflicted he would lose his devotion to God. So in what goes before today's reading, God tells Satan he can test Job as long as he doesn't hurt him physically. All of Job's possessions and even his children are then taken away from him. When Job stays faithful to God, Satan taunts God that if Job himself were physically suffering, he would desert his faith and devotion. So in today's reading Yahweh allows Satan to afflict Job with a terrible skin ailment. Poor Job. He's done nothing to deserve his suffering. It's not suffering as such that troubles us, really. It's undeserved suffering, isn't it? Almost all of us in our growing-up years have the experience of disobeying our parents and being punished for it. When that discipline was connected with our wrongdoing, it had a certain sense of justice to it, and we formed the idea that when we do wrong, we get punished. One of the surprises as we get older, however, is that we come to see that there is little real correlation between the amount of wrong we commit and the amount of pain we experience. Indeed, an even larger surprise is that often the opposite seems to be the case: we do right and get knocked down. We do the best we are capable of doing, and just as we are expecting a reward we're hit from the blind side and sent reeling. This is the suffering that bewilders and outrages us, the When Bad Things Happen to Good People kind of suffering. We constantly see instances of innocent suffering: the large-scale suffering in Pakistan where millions of people are still homeless from last year's massive earthquake to face the coming bitter cold of winter; the continuing, monstrous genocide in Darfur; the continuing violence in Iraq; the murder of schoolgirls in a peaceful Amish community; the death of Mel and Mary Hammer's son. All undeserved suffering! This is the kind of suffering that Job experienced. He was doing everything right, and seemed to have the world on a string, when suddenly everything went wrong. After being very prosperous with a large, happy family, he has now lost everything. This is just the beginning of the story, and we'll hear more of it next week. It's not only because Job suffered unjustly that he is important to us. It's because he suffered in the same ways that we suffer – in the vital areas of family, personal health, and our material possessions. Back in the day, as some folks say, there were those who said that obedience and faithfulness to God's precepts, that is, keeping the covenant spelled out in the Torah, or books of the Law, would bring prosperity, health, and safety. Disobedience would bring a curse. That's the idea that the author of Job's story is faced with, trying to explain Job's afflictions as the result of a heavenly wager. Some of us, even now, in the 21st century, "do the math," thinking that when disaster strikes it must have been caused by someone's guilt. For example, you probably remember the claims of those TV evangelists who blamed the Asian tsunami on various examples of what they considered sins and sinners. Again, when Katrina and Rita devastated our Gulf states, they were quick to place blame on the sins of the residents. As we will see next week, their attempts to explain suffering mirror the words of Job's friends who clumsily interpret religious tradition in trying to make some kind of sense of Job's sudden calamity. Today's introductory reading sets the stage for what comes later but also hints at the ending, in Job's response to his wife's urging to curse God and die. By the way, even as we focus on Job, let's remember that this woman, his wife, has lost, not just all the possessions that made her life workable and comfortable, but all of her children, too. She is a grief-stricken mother. But when she prompts Job to curse God, he asks the question: "Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" Job refuses to try to get rid of the problem by getting rid of God. He also refuses, however, to give instruction in how to live so as to avoid suffering. Suffering is a mystery, and Job comes to respect the mystery. Sitting in the ash heap, unclean, miserable, surrounded by loss and destruction, Job speaks of the mystery of life which holds countless, undeserved blessings but also immeasurable, indescribable loss. As he scrapes his itching, burning, oozing skin with a piece of broken pottery, Job suggests that in all these circumstances God is present. And that's one reason that this book moves us. Against the case pressed by Job's wife is his stubborn insistence to rest his case with God. It may remind us of stories about Jewish suffering where, in the face of death, the survivors recite the Kaddish. One who hasn't participated in it might think that this prayer is sorrowful and focused on death. But it is, instead, a beautiful song of praise, expressing the hope of God's reign coming in fullness on this earth. This is a very different way to respond to death and loss than blaming and speculating on causes. Many of our frenetic activities today, I suspect, are ways to avoid the larger questions of life by distracting ourselves with busy-ness. We don't want to think about it. I don't imagine that Job thought about it either, when he was healthy, prosperous, and surrounded by his children. We also hope, deep down, that our self-help programs, our insurance policies, and our safety procedures will somehow protect us. We hope we won't get caught off-guard, unprepared, or ill-equipped to handle what comes at us in life. We may even hope that entertainment and noise are ways to find security and protection from suffering. We might hope that earphones in our ears will insulate us from hearing about the suffering of others, or from having to deal with the questions that suffering prompts. But all the talk shows in the world can't provide the answers. We all sometimes find ourselves, like Job, standing, or sitting in the ashes, and silent with wonder. What, indeed, is there to say at a time of intense suffering and loss? Silence is an appropriate response, as a friend once told me at a very painful time. In the course of facing, questioning, and finally respecting suffering, Job finds himself in an even larger mystery – the mystery of God. Perhaps the greatest mystery in suffering is how it can bring a person into the presence of God in a state of worship, full of wonder, love and praise, to that peace that passes understanding.. Suffering doesn't inevitably do that, of course, but it does it far more often than we might expect. It did it for Job. It has for me at a hard time, and I've heard from some of you that it has for you, too. In his answer to his wife, Job speaks a dark and difficult kind of truth: "We take the good days from God – why not also the bad days?" Whatever happens to him, Job will acknowledge the presence of God. So the central theme, to me, is not that God uses misfortune to prove a point, as the author of the Book of Job posited, in order to explain how suffering can happen if God is both all loving and all powerful. The point is that God is always present in human life and can be known in the midst of what is happening to God's people. God does not inflict suffering on us, but accompanies us through it. The God of Job, while still beyond our understanding, is with us always, in good times and bad. We just have to be open to hear and see. Look around you. God is here, in this very room. Thanks be to God. Amen.