Tag Archives: Job

Praying the Psalms with Job

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“Inspired by the experience of his own innocence, Job bitterly criticized the theology of temporal retribution as maintained in his day and expounded by his friends.… But his challenge stopped halfway… What he should have done was to leap the fence set up around him by this sclerotic theology that is so dangerously close to idolatry, run free in the fields of God’s love, and breathe an unrestricted air like the animals described in God’s argument—animals that humans cannot domesticate. The world outside the fence is a world of gratuitousness; it is there that God dwells and there that God’s friends find a joyous welcome.
“The world of retribution—and not of temporal retribution only—is not where God dwells; at most God visits it.” (Gustavo Gutiérrez On Job p.88)

“Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” (Abbot H. John Chapman)

Many of the psalms call on G-d to give folk what the psalmist thinks they deserve, to visit—in Gutiérrez’ words—the world of retribution. If I think Gutiérrez is right, what do I do with them?

Chapman’s advice is probably a useful starting point. Sometimes (often?) my pain or my neighbor’s pain is such that I can only add my voice to the psalmist’s. Thwart the wicked, rescue the righteous, NOW! But sometimes there’s enough distance to experience some sympathy for G-d: it’s easy in prayer to play Saul to God’s David: “Here, bronze helmet, coat of mail, sword! Go for it!” (See 1 Samuel 17:38-39), when G-d would really rather do something else.

With a few exceptions the Psalter articulates only the human side of the conversation. The divine speeches in Job (chapters 38-41) with a nudge from Gutiérrez encourage us to notice the disconnects between the divine and human agendas, and to remember, with Isaiah, that the disconnects are finally very good news.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace…  (Isa. 55:8-12)

Job’s God, coming not to be served but to serve (22nd Sunday after Pentecost, 10/20/2024)

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Readings (Track 1)

A moment ago we heard Jesus saying “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you…” On the heels of the Lord’s speech in Job we might wonder if “lord it over them” and “tyrants over them” isn’t a pretty good description of the Lord’s conduct in our first reading. That’s the challenge (invitation?) these texts pose to our imaginations, our ways of making sense of what the whole biblical story comes to.

The Lord’s “Where were you…” in our first reading can be interpreted as browbeating. In this interpretation the Lord finally aligns with Job’s friends. Of them G. K. Chesterton writes “All that they really believe is not that God is good but that God is so strong that it is much more judicious to call Him good.”[1] But in the last chapter the Lord says to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has,” so that interpretation is a non-starter. Something else, something more interesting is going on, the Lord engaging Job in a serious conversation about just how the Lord is supposed to serve these unruly humans.

The God portrayed in Job—in the Old Testament, for that matter—can be interpreted in multiple ways. I believe that here—as elsewhere—Jesus guides our interpretation. In the Gospel of John we hear Jesus’ “The Father and I are one” (10:30), or, more pointedly, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9). As we heard two weeks ago, the Epistle to the Hebrews fleshes this out: “He [Jesus] is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Heb. 1:3). So if Jesus came “not to be served but to serve,” that’s probably what the Father has been about—even in dealing with Job. The alternative would be some cosmic version of Good Cop/Bad Cop, the Son playing Good Cop, the Father, Bad Cop.

So how do we read/interpret how God plays the divine role in our day-to-day? The combination of our Job and John readings invite us to give this some ongoing attention. And our psalm, Psalm 104, shows us what that might look like: God’s creation, not something stuck way back when, but an ongoing exercise in generosity, in service. If we’re fortunate this is the way we’re experiencing the world, and I’m preaching to the choir. But our culture’s winds push us in other directions: nature (not creation) as arbitrary, the god of the Christians as just another tyrant to be sidestepped or appeased. So for many of us it’s a conscious exercise in recovery, because most of the reinforcement of our mental models happens at the pre-conscious level.

So some form of Morning Prayer—and there are many possible forms—is a core part of our tradition, in which we’re reminded—daily—that how we experience the world also involves our choices.

All this is not to discount the abundant evil and pain in the world. It is to declare—to celebrate—that the evil and pain are not the baseline. Our God’s ongoing generosity and service as experienced also in creation: that’s the baseline. A near-contemporary celebration of this that regularly finds its way into my morning prayers is Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “God’s Grandeur,” with which I close.

God’s Grandeur[2]

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

And the neat thing: this remains true no matter what happens on November 5.

[1] From his “Introduction to the Book of Job” (https://www.chesterton.org/introduction-to-job/).

[2] From https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur.

Serving God–and each other–“for nothing” (20th Sunday after Pentecost, 10/6/2024)

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Readings

Among the courses in seminary that today I most regret not taking: juggling. Here’s why. Our Old Testament readings take us through Job and Ruth. The Epistle readings, again starting today, take us through the Epistle to the Hebrews. And in the Gospel readings in Mark, Jesus continues his march towards Jerusalem, accompanied by the apostles who continue to argue over whose name will be in the biggest lights on the marquee. So in a now venerable tradition of TV story-telling, we’ll all juggle multiple story lines together, and listen for what our gracious and subtle Lord might be saying to us.

Job

Today’s reading introduces Job and sets up the problem: if God doesn’t protect us –more broadly, if there are no concrete benefits—is God worth serving? That is a question no one wants to be the position of having to answer. But most of the rest of the Old Testament, and, in particular the Book of Proverbs, with its continual emphasis on the correlation between good behavior and good results, forces the question. Do we only serve God because/when it pays? Does God have to buy our love?

In setting the question, the book eliminates two of the three classic responses to the problem of evil: God’s power is unquestioned (Satan has to ask permission to do anything) and God’s knowledge is intact. What we are left to wonder about –and what Job will wonder about very loudly in the coming chapters—is whether God is good, or simply very big. Tune in next week.

Hebrews

Hebrews is one of the least accessible books in the New Testament. It was usually ascribed to Paul, who was almost certainly not its author. It seems to assume that its audience is in danger of abandoning faith in Jesus for some other form of Judaism. In any case, the bulk of the book is devoted to Jesus’ superiority. In the process, it offers perspectives that Christians throughout the centuries have found illuminating and encouraging.

For instance, in the second half of the 20th Century, Christians in many countries sought –as they have in every time and place—for ways of speaking of Jesus that resonated with their hearts. One of these: Jesus our Brother. Not: our God, our Lord, our Master –all true enough—but Jesus our Brother. And it was in this prickly epistle that we found the richest resources to develop this image: the one who “is not ashamed to call [us] brothers and sisters,” the one who shared our flesh and blood. Jesus is our Brother, who can help us when we suffer and are tested, because he suffered and was tested too; one of the few human beings worthy to be Job’s brother.

Shared our flesh and blood, “so that –listen carefully—through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death.” The New Testament is united in confessing that we are saved through Jesus’ death. But there is no unanimity regarding how Jesus’ death saves us, simply a wealth of different images and metaphors. This image, Jesus’ death effecting the defeat of the devil and our liberation, was perhaps the most frequently image Christians used in the early Centuries of the church’s life.

Chrysostom used to say: “the devil [is like] a creditor, who cast into prison those who are in debt to him; but now he imprisons one who owes him nothing. He has exceeded his rights, and he is deprived of his dominion.” Augustine used to say: “the devil found Christ innocent, but none the less smote Him; he shed innocent blood, and took what he had no right to take. Therefore it is fitting that he should be dethroned and forced to give up those who were under his power.” (Aulén in both cases: Christus Victor 51).

Matthew

One of the jokes about my people, the Scots, is that if there are three of us, there’ll be four political parties. This could have been said of the Jews of Jesus’ day, as illustrated by today’s reading. Moses permitted divorce; on what grounds could a man seek divorce? The School of Shammai said: only for unchastity; the School of Hillel said: for practically anything, including burning the roast. The Pharisees wanted to know what Jesus thought.

Jesus asks what Moses commanded; they reply citing the provision for a certificate of divorce. Jesus interprets that as a concession to their hardness of heart, and returns to the creation story: “‘the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

That certainly sounds as though Jesus is taking a position to the right of Shammai: there are no grounds on which a man could seek a divorce.

So that’s all we need to say about that? Hardly. Matthew tells the same story as Mark, but in his story Jesus says “whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery.” So in Matthew, Rabbi Jesus aligns with Rabbi Shammai. Paul takes up marriage in his first letter to the Corinthians, and permits divorce and remarriage in the case of a Christian whose non-Christian spouse wants out.

So how do we respond to the NT as a whole? Over time the Greek-speaking Eastern Church and the Latin-speaking Western Church came to give quite different answers. The Western Church understood Jesus words as transmitted by Mark as canon law: no divorce. Unfortunately, what that often ended up meaning was that if you were well-connected (money helped), you could get an annulment, and if you weren’t, then you could either divorce & remarry or continue to receive Holy Communion, but not both. The Eastern Church read the same texts and concluded that marriages could die, and so divorce and remarriage were permitted as tragic concessions to our continuing hardness of heart. The history of the Western Church has been a history of gradually approaching the Eastern Church’s position; although some parts –most notably the Roman Catholics—continue to prohibit divorce.

Marriages can die. This certainly rings true. But does it really take Jesus’ words as recorded in Mark seriously? Well, yes, for I think what Jesus is doing here is like what he does in the Sermon on the Mount: “if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment;” “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Does this mean we adjust our laws accordingly? No. Jesus is, I think, making two points: we must not fall into the trap of equating obeying the law with goodness, because anyone with half a brain can figure out how to satisfy the law and still do evil. Second, if we tightened up the law to eliminate this problem, all of us would be locked up.

Marriages can die. The challenge Jesus’ words pose: how do we as a parish support the marriages in our midst and nourish virtues such as honesty, humility, and patience, without which no marriage will flourish?

And this is the point –I do see the light at the end of the tunnel—at which the worlds of our three lessons do converge, with whose convergence we can wrap this up.

In the first conversation between God and the Satan (“the accuser”), the Satan asks “Does Job fear God for nothing?” It’s one of the questions that drives the whole book, and it bleeds over into the rest of Scripture. Recall the ending of our Hebrews reading: “Because he himself [Jesus] was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” Did Jesus fear God for nothing? Precisely because the answer is yes, “he is able to help those who are being tested.” And the question lies just under the surface of our Gospel reading, for what often—not always—drives divorce is one of the partner’s decisions not to stay in the marriage “for nothing.” But that’s what the vows promise, right? “For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health” (BCP 427). Whether it’s our relationship with God, with our spouses, maybe even with any serious friendship, “for nothing” isn’t the whole story, but sometimes necessary to keep the story moving forward.

It’s popular to criticize Job’s wife for her “‘Curse God, and die.’” But notice: when Job’s friends start laying into him in chapters 3-37 –that’s right, chapters 3-37—she stays out of it, and she’s still around for Job’s restoration. Their marriage flourishes at the beginning and ending of the story, with a very rough patch in between. O, to be known as a parish that nourished such marriages!

Returning to Paul, he’s clear that both the single and married states are vocations, callings in which we can reflect God’s holiness. So, at a marriage, we’re asked “Will all of you witnessing these promises do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage?” And we respond: “We will.” And we’re reminded of this obligation to mutual support as we celebrate marriage anniversaries. Sadly, there are no liturgical affirmations of this obligation to uphold those whose vocation is the single life. (Perhaps the folk thinking about Prayer Book revision could think about that!) But the obligation’s there, the obligation to uphold each other in either state, married or single. Perhaps today’s texts can encourage us to take this obligation more seriously, particularly when someone’s needle is hovering at “for nothing,” and do better than Job’s friends, who, hovering just offstage, can’t wait to tell Job what he’s done wrong.

The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost: A Sermon

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Lessons (Track 1)

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” asked the accuser, the satan. (‘satan’ is simply the Hebrew word for ‘accuser’.) (The accuser could with equal justice have asked it about James and John, and we’ll get to that later.) God permitted the accuser to find out, and Job lost nearly everything. That was in the first two chapters.

Since then, Job has been demanding action from God, and Job’s friends –I use the term advisedly—have been demanding that Job confess whatever sins have brought on his suffering. The arguments of Job’s friends don’t change much, aside from becoming increasingly vitriolic. God rules justly; if Job is suffering, he must be justly suffering, and the only puzzle is why Job is being so stubborn. What is unnerving is how often we hear these arguments today, how often we either use them or find ourselves tempted to use them. At least part of each of us, I suspect, wishes that Job’s friends were right: a completely just God insuring that each person received exactly what he or she deserved now. Some people believe in reincarnation, and one of the attractions of reincarnation is that it allows one to believe in a universe that is completely just at every moment: I am receiving precisely the mixture of weal and woe that my previous lives merit.

And even within the Old Testament, there are plenty of passages in the law that promise weal for obedience and woe for disobedience, plenty of passages in the prophets that interpret disasters as God’s punishment, plenty of passages in Proverbs that connect righteousness and prosperity, wickedness and ruin. And only a fool would deny the truth in these. But is this the whole truth? Is it the whole truth for Job? Obviously not, despite Job’s friends’ eloquent arguments.

Job’s complaints and demands for divine action do change through the course of the book. Job’s initial speech sounds like a demand that God retroactively snuff him out of existence: better never to have been born than to experience this. But as Job continues to reflect on his suffering, he recognizes that he is one of many who suffer, and his demand for God’s action correspondingly shifts: too many innocents are getting crushed.

Job is clear throughout that his problem is God: “When disaster brings sudden death, / he mocks at the calamity of the innocent. / The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; / he covers the eyes of its judges— /if it is not he, who then is it?” [9.23-24] And here, despite the rough edges, Job is speaking rightly about God. We try to protect God, buffer God from evil. Does God get joy from the suffering of the innocent? Is that his will? No. But does God continue to give breath and strength to the wicked, to keep the nerve endings working as the torturer does his work? Yes. “If it is not he, who then is it?”

We do not suffer unless God consents to our suffering. The New Testament assumes this, although notice that Paul adds “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”

And Job pushes the limits of language, logic, and faith by appealing to God against God. “For I know that my Redeemer lives, / and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; / and after my skin has been thus destroyed, / then in my flesh I shall see God, / whom I shall see on my side, / and my eyes shall behold, / and not another.” [19:25-27]

Jesus on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The problem is not Judas, not the Jewish leaders, not Pilate: it’s God. And precisely in knowing that God’s the problem, Jesus appeals…to God. And so may we. So must we.

Well, that brings us up to the beginning of God’s response to Job in today’s lesson. Read it during the week if you can: Job 38-41. God responds to Job’s questions with God’s own questions, pointing Job to the ostrich, the war stallion, Behemoth, Leviathan, and to the challenge of mounting any useful response to the wicked.

What all that comes to we’ll wonder about next week. What I’ve focused on today is, I think, the necessary prequel to all that: Job’s insistence that God is the issue, and that only from God will come Job’s salvation, that, confronted with suffering, what we want is not explanation, but action.

This last point is, by the way, two-edged, as captured in a dialogue between two characters in a cartoon a few years back.
–Sometimes I’d like to ask God why he allows poverty, famine and injustice when he could do something about it.
–What’s stopping you?
–I’m afraid God might ask me the same question.

Our prayers for God’s intervention need to be matched by the interventions that are within our power. So, for example, as you work through your Christmas gift list, look at the Episcopal Relief and Development Christmas Catalogue. For that person who’s hard to buy gifts for or pretty much has what they need, you could give—in their name—a mosquito net, a goat, or even a cow.

Perhaps the next time through our lectionary cycle I’ll be able to give more attention to Hebrews. For the moment, simply notice that Hebrews’ portrait of Jesus looks surprisingly like Job: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death.” This Jesus is clearly one with whom we can be honest about our struggles.

So we turn to the Gospel—and yes, I remember that the Packers-Bears game is one of the early games. I don’t think I need to belabor our solidarity with James and John. At least from the pre-school playground all of us have been honing our skills at claiming and defending turf. It may be large, it may be small, but it’s ours and it’s for a Good Cause. And it is so easy to assume that when we are baptized, initiated into the Great Cause, the Kingdom of God, that the business of claiming and defending turf don’t change.

So Jesus has to keep reminding us: “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”

The other James, Jesus’ brother and author of the letter, got it right: there are two kingdoms: this world, a zero-sum game in which claiming and defending turf is the only game in town, and the Kingdom of God, in which God’s generosity means that I can relax and serve.

But the text doesn’t end there, but with this final curious verse: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

We choose which kingdom we live in, and that’s true. But that’s not the whole truth. Something closer to the whole truth is that we start out enslaved to the kingdom of this world, the habits of claiming and defending turf embedded deep in us. But Jesus gave his life a ransom for many, for James and John, who on the road to Jerusalem still didn’t get it, for the Roman soldiers awaiting him in Jerusalem, for you and for me. Because Jesus has ransomed us we can choose. The gates are open; we can leave the darkness for the light.

Learning to live in the Kingdom of God is something that takes a lifetime, particularly this business of lording it over others verses serving others. And we learn it –if we learn it—in the midst of our conflicts. So think of the people –family members, colleagues, neighbors—with whom you’ve disagreed in the past and will probably disagree in the future. God can use these relationships to teach us stuff we can’t learn any other way. And here Job and Jesus do not have a monopoly on “prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears.”

Does Job serve God for nothing? Do James and John serve God for nothing, for that matter, or serve only when it helps them to claim and defend their turf? Do we? In God’s severe mercy we don’t have to answer that in the abstract, but as we find ourselves in conflict. In the words of the collect: “Preserve the works of your mercy, that your Church throughout the world may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of your Name.”