October 11, 2009 - Proper 23, Year B (RCL)
The story of Job
is one of the great stories of the Bible.
We’ve began it last week in our Old Testament reading;
we’ve got a couple more weeks to go.
And so this week
we’re right in the middle of it all.
It’s chapter 23 of the book of Job,
and Job is complaining.
Life is bad,
and he can see no good ahead of him. Everything looks black
and he has pretty much run out of hope.
“If only,” he says, “If only I could just see God
and put my case to him, if only I could find him
and hear his side of things.
Then at least I would know,
then at least I would understand.
Then at least
I could have hope.
But no matter where I look,
he is not there, no matter how much I search,
I can’t find him.
I am alone, I am afraid,
I wish I were dead.”
They are devastating words,
words full of grief and pain,
words
that some of us might have heard, might even have spoken,
at some time in our lives.
I still remember the day
I felt something like Job. I had heard that morning
some bad news, news that looked set
to change the course of my life,
to shatter my dreams, to tear away
my future.
I remember the utter blackness. I remember not being sure I wanted to live. I remember
being afraid to get into the car, full of terrible imaginings
of turning the steering wheel
into a tree.
That night
I stayed with friends,
friends who raged with me and cried with me,
and sat as close as they could
beside me in the darkness.
It was a very dark place,
and a very dark place that Job was too.
For me
the darkness came in the middle
of lost dreams,
and shattered hopes.
For Job,
it was the darkness of utter disaster
to everything that was important to him.
Job was a good man; no one ever had a bad word for him. And Job was a successful man. He had a large family, and great holdings of sheep and camels and cattle and donkeys,
and many servants to look after them all. He was not just a good man; he was a great man. And he was faithful to God.
But then it happened.
First of all it was raiding tribesmen, stealing cattle and donkeys and camels, and massacring servants who looked after them.
Then a lightening fire
hitting the sheep.
And a tornado
swirling around the house
so that it collapsed
on his children.
And Job
was left
with nothing.
But still
he was faithful to God.
But it got worse. Job discovered a skin disease,
sores erupting
from the top of his head
to the soles of his feet.
He itched all over, and scabs formed, and no one wanted anything to do with him.
But still
Job was faithful to God.
His wife came to him. “Job,” she said, “get real.
Be done with all this, curse God, and die.
At least you’ll be out of your misery.”
But still
Job was faithful to God.
And his three friends came. “Job,” they said,
“thing looks bad. Are you sure you haven’t done something wrong? There must be a reason for all this.”
And they said it again. And again. And again.
And Job? Job began to feel alone, very, very alone. All his life,
he had been faithful to God. All his life
he had trusted God,
all his life,
he had known God to be there.
But now, now of all times, now, when he needed him most,
God
was silent.
And being faithful
just didn’t seem
to cut it
any more.
And so Job burst out,
“Where is God? Why can’t I find him? Why won’t he answer me? Has he abandoned me? If only
I were dead.”
It was a place of abandonment, that Job found himself in, a place of desolation. No matter what he believed, at that moment
it felt like
God was gone,
and Job was all alone.
I imagine it was much the same
for Jesus, hanging on the cross.
Three long hours
in the darkness of excruciating pain,
until finally he rasps out,
“My God, my God,
why have you
forsaken
me?”
It’s the sort of pain
we hope to never feel,
the sort of pain
you wouldn’t wish
on anyone.
Not just physical,
but pain that encompasses the whole of your being, that becomes what defines you
so that you can no longer think, no longer pray, no longer hope.
A. J. Rowling describes it well, in the Harry Potter books, when she describes the feeling of being kissed by a Dementor — when all happiness is sucked out of you,
that feeling that you
could never
be happy again.
It feels like a betrayal
to smile at a passer by
or laugh
with a child.
Like somehow
all that is good, all that gives us life,
has been blotted out.
Sometimes the feeling is more acute;
sometimes is lasts a long time.
Sometimes it’s the result of a particular event,
sometimes a chemical imbalance in the brain.
Sometimes, the darkness will pass with time, sometimes,
with the love and support of our family and community. Sometimes,
it will take medical intervention.
But always, always, we are left with the question,
where is God in this? Has God forgotten us?
Has God gone missing?
Because regardless of why it happens, regardless of how it all ends,
we live
in the middle of it. And in the middle, you have no perspective. All you have, most often, is the present, and the darkness, and the struggle.
So, as people of faith, as people called by the name of the one we follow, Jesus Christ, what should we do? What does it mean to be faithful
when you have all but lost your faith?
There are some who will tell you
that you just have to get over it.
That God has been there all the time, and you just have to look harder.
That if you have faith, or if you repent,
everything will be better.
But none of that
does justice to the darkness,
none of that
takes account of the terror
of despair.
And I find it hard to think of anywhere in scripture
that tells people in pain
to just “get over it!”
Instead, there is a strong tradition in our Scripture
of lament.
Of crying out to God
with all of the pain,
all of the hopelessness,
all of the darkness,
and calling God to account.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Jesus on the cross, Job in the ashes,
they cry to God demanding to be heard,
expecting
only silence.
To God they turn,
and in the readings we have today
there is no answer.
Because we are in the middle; the end is still to come.
And to jump straight there, to say, it will all be okay in the end,
is to be in danger
of minimizing the awfulness of the pain.
It doesn’t mean
that there is no hope;
what it means, is that sometimes
what we need
is the freedom
to cry out to God. To shout, to scream,
to be angry, to despair.
To be honest
with the one who made us.
We have a tendency, sometimes, to act as if God is somehow fragile,
like a porcelain egg,
something we have to hold gently in case it will break.
But God is not fragile. God has survived until now, with all the horrors the world has thrown. God will not break
under our words of pain
And we can be honest
with God.
Because God knows us. God knows what we are feeling. And if this is to be any sort of relationship at all, this relationship we have with God, then it has to be a place where we can be honest, a place where we can come to God
with our pain and despair
as well as our hope and our thanks. Because God loves us, loves us more than we can imagine, and nothing
can get between us
and the love of God.
If you need to know
the story ends well. God answers Job, eventually,
and life does return to something like normal.
Just as Jesus’s cry of desolation from the cross
is eventually answered, and after three days
in a cold stone tomb
he is raised to life
in God.
That’s the promise.
And it’s a promise to us too. There is hope.
But sometimes
there is not enough light to see that hope,
sometimes
we are stuck in the middle of the story, and it will take some time
to see the end.
And in these times
it is enough
to cry out to God,
to shout, to scream,
to despair,
not knowing
but praying
that all the while
we are somehow held
in the arms of God.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2009