October 4, 2009 - Proper 22, Year B (RCL)
Just over twenty years ago
I visited an island paradise, or so it seemed.
My mother had spent a year teaching
at a small private school on Upolu
the largest of the islands
that make up the nation of Samoa, and I went to visit her.
My mother was sharing a house with Peace Corps volunteers;
we did most of our shopping in the main market, a rainbow of fish, tropical fruits I’d never even heard of, and even
deep fried balls of dough that were something like donuts.
we would take day trips to see the sights -
a waterfall
where you could slide down the rocks,
the blue rock pool on the grounds of Piula Theological College
and the swaying palm trees
and crescent beaches of the south coast.
While my mother was teaching,
I travelled around the island
on old American school busses
with the windows removed
repainted in pink and orange and blue and green,
bought snacks from roadside stalls, unfamiliar sodas and plantain chips,
and wandered through the main town with a young woman I’d met at church there, and shared a bottle of coke with some Christian students from the local university, along with mangoes off a tree just down the road.
And on Sundays, as we drove to the expats church, we passed families walking to their churches, women dressed in white and men in colored lava lavas.
It wasn’t perfect: there was poverty; many people lived in traditional fales with just a rood and four pillars, and mats hung as walls for privacy; meat was scarce, if you didn’t like the turkey wings and tails that were flown in as part of American aid packages; the relative wealth of the palagis or white people
meant that sometimes relations between them and the locals could be strained.
But for the most part, it was as close to paradise
as you’re likely to get in this world.
Today
much of the island lies in ruins
hit
on Wednesday
by a tsunami caused by an earthquake
on the fault-line between the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates.
Most of the villages on the south shore,
the crescent beaches and white sand
and leaning palm trees
were destroyed, and along with them
the resorts that have been developed there in the last 20 years.
Over 160 people have died, in Samoa and American Samoa and Tonga,
and they are still searching
for bodies.
But bad as the tsunami was,
it has been pushed off the front pages
by more.
First there were the earthquakes in Sumatra,
seven hundred seventy confirmed dead
and many more missing,
probably thousands,
and the fear of more tremors to come.
Then yesterday
flash flooding in southern India
is reported to have left over one hundred seventy people dead,
and another typhoon has hit the Philippines,
just a week after the last big one,
which killed over four hundred people
there and in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos.
It’s at times like these
that we can’t help but wonder
why?
Why are their such natural disasters?
Why does God allow this sort of suffering?
Why doesn’t God do something about it?
Many people turn to the bible
to try to find an answer.
Some of them, as you might remember after Hurricane Katrina, claim
that events like these
are punishments
for sinfulness.
Others
say it points to a capricious God
who likes to play with human lives.
But for many of us, the bible just doesn’t answer
our questions.
Part of that is because the bible wasn’t written by people like us.
We, in the twenty-first century, have a particular way of looking at the world.
We tend to assume
that chaos
is bad; control
is good.
And we can control
most things.
Knowledge, science and technology,
all of them ensure
that we are rarely
out of control.
But when something happens
that we can’t control,
then it makes our whole world feel
uncertain.
And we demand to know why.
But back two thousand and more
years ago,
people thought differently.
They knew there were certain patterns
of weather,
of heat and cold, rain and dryness,
the seasons were well known.
But when water inundated in a flood
or the earth shook in a quake,
they had no way of knowing
that an El Nino weather pattern was dominating the ocean
or two tectonic plates
were rubbing up against each other.
It was just one of those things that happened. They could blame the gods
or in the case of the Israelites
pray to God
to keep them safe,
but in the end
there was a kind of fatalism.
Bad things happened.
That was life.
And so there’s a danger
when we try to read our questions
back into scripture.
Instead
what we need to do
is try to listen
to what the questions are
that scripture itself asks.
And so it’s with that in mind
that we come to our reading from Job today.
It’s a tragedy, the story of Job. There he is, an ordinary man, a little wealthier, a little more pious
than most, but ordinary all the same, a farmer with a wife, and the land subdivided to provide for his children and grandchildren. Job
is respected in the community
he’s known as upright and God-fearing. Life has been good to him,
and he has been good
in return.
And then
along comes God.
And he looks around, and sees Job, and thinks,
what a great guy.
And he points him out
to the other beings in heaven,
angels and archangels and the like, points him out with pride in his voice.
“See that guy over there, Job? Isn’t he great? He’s a good man: he worships me, he lives a good life, he’s good to others. He’s exactly what I’d hoped for
when I created
humankind.”
“Hmmm,” thinks one of the heavenly beings. “I wonder. It only took a piece of fruit
to lure Adam and Eve
away from their garden of Eden, away from their God. I wonder how much it would take
for Job?”
And so he says to God,
“You’re right, you know, Job is a good man. Or at least, he seems to be. But are you sure
he really is? Are you sure
that it’s not just
because he’s had
an easy life?”
“I’m sure,” says God. “I’m sure.”
“So, prove it,” says the heavenly being, who by now we know as Satan. “Prove that Job’s goodness
isn’t just skin deep. Let me at him,
and see if after a bit of suffering
he won’t just give up his goodness
and curse you.”
“Okay, I guess. Just don’t hurt Job himself.” says God.
And so the heavenly being
goes for Job. He arranges it
so that some marauding tribesmen come
attack Job’s farms and steal the livestock and kill the servants. And then a tornado hits the house where Job’s children are gathered for a feast
and all Job’s children are killed.
And what does Job do? Well, like any father, he is devastated. But he continues to trust in God.
“See,” says God. “Job is a good man.”
“But,” says the heavenly being, “but, you know, this has all been at a distance. None of this has really affected Job directly. But threaten him directly, and I’ll bet that he’ll soon change his tune.”
“Well, okay,” says God. “But I still think you’re wrong. Job is a good man. He won’t turn against me.”
And so the heavenly being sneaks down, and covers Job with sores and boils all over his body. It hurts even to move. And it itches, it itches so bad. And because of the rules of his faith, Job isn’t allowed to go to worship any more. His skin disease
makes him unclean. And he can’t live in town any more either. No one wants him near them. Even his wife
will only shout at him
from a distance.
And as far as she’s concerned, it’s over. She’s lost her livelihood, her children, and now her husband is as good as dead.
“What’s with this goodness, you silly old fool? Be done with it. Put us all out of your misery. Curse God
and die.”
But Job refuses to curse God. He refuses to abandon the faith
that has been at the core of his life. Life was good. Life is not so good now. But God, he trusts, will always be good.
He continues as he has always been,
a faithful and righteous man,
even now
that he is living
in the dump.
It’s a pretty nasty story, these first couple of chapters of the book of Job. And God doesn’t come off
smelling too sweet.
He’s betrayed Job, it seems,
for the sake of a bet.
Except...except when you read the first line of the story, the first line of the book of Job
you realize
that this isn’t history.
“There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.”
Uz
isn’t a place.
This is like saying,
“Once upon a time in a land far away...”
When we hear those words
we all know what to expect. A fairy tale,
with a moral lesson and a happy ending.
That’s what Job is,
a fairy tale
with a moral lesson, and
we’ll discover in a couple of weeks, a happy ending.
And the point of it, the point of it
is not to tell us about God
but to tell us about ourselves.
The point of the story
is to show us what faith looks like
even at
the worst of times.
It forces us to take the question from the abstract and the general - why does God let bad things happen to us - to the immediate and the local -
how do we respond when disaster strikes?
What does faith look like?
As I’ve been watching the coverage of the tsunami in Samoa,
I’ve been struck by the responses of many of the people.
They have lost their homes.
They have lost their livelihoods.
Many have lost the ones they loved.
And yet time and time again I heard people say,
It’s okay, I’m alive. Thank you God. I’m alive.”
There is a prayer in the Australian prayer book, written for funerals
but appropriate at any time:
“In darkness and in light,
In trouble and in joy,
Help us, O God, to trust your love,
To seek your purpose,
And to praise your name;
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Or, in the words of those faithful Samoans.
“Thank you, God,
I’m alive.”
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2009