At first Job rages in pain and roars out protests, but eventually he becomes silent in awestruck faith before God, who speaks out of a storm – a veritable whirlwind of deity. The point is that real faith cannot be reduced to spiritual bromides and merchandised in success stories. Real faith is refined in the fires and storms and pains of real life. The book of Job does not reject answers as such. What it rejects is facile answers severed from the reality of the living God, the Mystery of existence that both batters and heals us.
We church-goers tend to be nice, compassionate people. In our compassion, we don't like to see people suffer, so our instincts prompt us to try to prevent and alleviate suffering. But if we really want to reach out to people who are suffering, we need to be careful not to be like Job's friends, not to do our "helping" with the presumption that we can fix things, get rid of them, or make them "better."

We may look at suffering people and imagine how they could have better marriages, better-behaved children, better mental or emotional health. But before we rush in to fix them, we need to keep several things in mind.

First, no matter how insightful we may be, we don't and can't really understand the full nature of our friends' problems. Second, our friends may not want our advice.

Third, and maybe hardest to understand, before we're tempted to spout any spiritual platitudes, we need to face the ironic fact of the matter that, more often than not, people don't suffer less when they're committed to God, but more. Look at Jesus, look at the holy men and women of history, look at Gandhi, look at Martin Luther King, look at Mother Teresa.

When people like this suffer, their lives are often transformed, deepened, marked with beauty and holiness, in remarkable ways that could never have been imagined before the suffering.

So instead of focusing on preventing suffering – at which we simply won't succeed anyway – I suggest that we should begin entering into the sufferings of others as we are able – entering the mystery of suffering and looking around for God. Perhaps we need to quit feeling sorry for people who suffer and simply join them in protest and prayer. Pity can be condescending and short-sighted, but shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing.

This bit of wisdom is timely for us. Mel and Mary Hammer who have lost their son slipped in this morning to hear the anthem that Mary requested, but then they slipped back out because they're not ready yet to be with a lot of people. They are suffering acutely right now, in grief.

We wish we could alleviate their pain. Realistically, we can't. What we can do is accompany them in and through their pain; letting them know with notes and cards that they're being thought of and cared about; spending time listening, not fixing; praying with them and for them.

The book of Job can help us with that, I think. In it, we face the reality that God is Mystery, known in the enormous wonders of the galaxies and the unfathomable universe around us, as well as in the little things we take for granted and the universe inside us. So we gain hope, not from the darkness of suffering, not from pat answers in books, but from the God who is with us in our suffering as well as our good times.

Reading Job prayerfully and meditatively can help us to face the questions that arise when life doesn't turn out as we expected. First, as we read we hear all the stock answers. Then we ask the questions again, with variations – and we hear the answers again, with variations. Over and over and over.

Every time we let Job give voice to our questions, our suffering gains in dignity and we are brought a step closer to the threshold of the voice and Mystery of God. Every time we persist with Job in rejecting the quick-fix counsel of people who see us and hear us but do not understand us, we deepen our availability and openness to the revelation that comes only out of the storm.


So we find that our own suffering repeats and confirms Job's experience. The Mystery of God eclipses the darkness and the struggle, when we realize that we live within that Mystery, that we are never apart from it, though we can never understand its enormity. God is always present with us, and we are always in God.

That's the message that I think the author of the book of Job wrote to convey. It's the reality that Jesus lived and the message that he taught, too. It's the Good News! Amen.

(Parts of this sermon are taken either directly or in paraphrase from The Message, the Bible in contemporary language by Eugene Peterson.)