Against the Cosmos
A Reading from Job:
Then Job answered:
“Today also my complaint is bitter; his hand is heavy despite my groaning. Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me. Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me.
“There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge. If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him. God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me; If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face!”
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Homily:
Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Sometimes you don’t know why. You don’t know how you got to where you’re at, and you don’t know how long you’re going to be there. Maybe you lost your job and are looking for a new one. Maybe you have an extended illness or hospital stay. Maybe a relationship has ended, or your kids have grown and gone, and you’re just not sure what comes next, or who you even are. In such cases—such liminal spaces—it’s the waiting around that kills you. The uncertainty. The lack of answers.
Last week we introduced the Book of Job, the bête noire of biblical wisdom literature. Whereas other books in this genre tend to be sensible treatises about living a decent life—assuring us that virtue reaps reward and vice just punishments—or perhaps overly optimistic rhapsodies regarding the beauty and wonder of life and of love, Job instead dares to point out that bad things do indeed happen to good people. And it isn’t just, or fair, or reasonable. It simply sucks.
This was a somewhat late addition to the Hebrew Scriptures, yet due to the beauty of its poetry, the Book of Job found rapid and universal acceptance. Whatever else it was, it was true, and thus good, and thus beautiful. It isn’t a history, remember. It’s not to be taken literally. Job is not one specific person, any more than King Arthur, I suppose. But he is every good person who has had to face the sort of tragedy, the sort of adversity, that seems to us to make no sense.
Job is all of us, and none of us. He says the things we barely dare to think.
Now, this evening’s passage from Job is taken from the twenty-third chapter, so clearly we’ve made quite the leap, from Chapter 2 last week to Chapter 23 tonight. So what’s happened in the meantime? What did we skip? Well, in Chapter 3, Job laments his birth. If he hadn’t been born, he says, he’d never have had to endure such pains. And that might seem melodramatic until we recall that he has indeed lost everything: children, livestock, home, health, and wealth. His despair is total. Only righteousness prevents him from ending it all, taking his life.
In Chapters 4 through 14, then, Job’s “friends” show up, and I think we can put that in sarcastic quotes. Each of Job’s three friends is committed, in his own way, to a mechanistic view of the universe: not Newtonian, mind you, but moral. If you do good, if you are good, then only good things ought to happen to you, yes? Only good things happen to good people, and bad things only happen to bad people.
Those are the rules, the accepted wisdom. If you’re upset at the output, the flaw lies in your input—but not in the machine, not in the moral workings of the universe. That just wouldn’t make sense. There is method behind the madness, after all. Reason dictates that the fault must lie in Job. It’s one man weighed against the cosmos.
But it’s okay, isn’t it? Because God is gracious and merciful, full of compassion and slow to anger. If Job were but to confess how he’s sinned, admit to his mistakes, well, then, all would be forgiven. Repent, Job! Repent and be restored, they tell him.
But Job knows—Job is absolutely sure—that whatever he’s done wrong, it cannot merit all of this. The punishment is far and away excessive to the crime. I mean, what did he do, step on a bug? Look sideways at his son-in-law? For this his house should collapse? No, the input was fine; ergo, the flaw must lie within the machine. Something’s wrong with the workings of the universe, and Job insists upon his right to file claim with the manufacturer.
See, he holds to the same mechanistic view of the moral universe that his friends do—that we all do, if we’re honest, on one level or another. God wrote the rules. And if the rules aren’t working as they ought to be, then one must take it up with God. All well and good. But how exactly does one go about accomplishing this? Where is God’s complaint department? Yahweh, to Job, appears nowhere to be found.
It’s almost a reversal of Psalm 139, in which the Psalmist sings that he cannot escape the Lord. Whether he flies all the way up to heaven, or falls all the way down to hell, God is always already there. But Job says just the opposite: “He is not there … I cannot perceive Him … I cannot behold Him … I cannot see Him.” The great I AM is both everywhere and nowhere, in the Bible. Thus Job ends his complaint in the passage for this evening:
Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to His dwelling! I would lay my case before Him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what He would answer me, and understand what He would say to me. Would He contend with me in the greatness of His power? No; but He would give heed to me.
And there endeth the reading; at least for tonight. Has anything been resolved? No, not yet. Are we left with any new or brilliant theological insights? None whatsoever. There’s just Job’s frustration and anxiety around his desire to plead his case before his Creator, coupled with his apparent inability to do so.
Thus we are left in a liminal space: not sure how we got here; not sure where we’re going; not sure when, if ever, we’ll manage to claw our way out. At best we have the model of Job’s bumbling companions, demonstrating how not to interact with someone struggling in despair. But maybe that’s okay for now.
Maybe Job can teach us how to live in liminal spaces; how it’s okay to admit that we’re stuck in one for now; and how to be honest that the universe, for all our sin, does not work the way that it should, that it is in some sense fallen, some sense broken. In the meantime, we cling to the right as we are given grace to see it, while we await our opportunity to make our case to God—in full expectation that He will fix it all.
In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Credit where credit is due: This homily draws heavily, in
some cases word for word, from Henry
T.C. Sun’s commentary on this text.
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