BProp22

Job 1:1, 2:1-10; Psalm 26; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-2-16

October 4, 2009

 

The book of Job – an ancient folk tale that deals with the problem of

why bad things happen to good people;

and then even more importantly, how we are supposed to handle it

in our dealings with God.

 

The presenting question in Job is this:

Will mortals be religious, or be people of faith,

apart from rewards and punishments?

 

It is easy to be faithful when everything is going well.

And we can lose our faith when everything is going down the tubes

or spend our energy trying to do things to please God

so that God will turn our situation around.

 

We’ll come back around to these questions.

First, let me explain Satan as he appears here before we go into the story of Job

The concept of Satan develops in history just as our understanding of God unfolds.

 

Early on, it was that Yahweh creates and manages both good and evil.

In fact, this is how Job sees things.

The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

 

Later on in our understanding,

‘Satan’ is in the picture and is understood as a transcendent being

who acts independently of God and works against God’s will.

Kind of a Luke Skywalker/Darth Veder battle of good and evil.

When this goes too far, we speak as though Satan and God

are adversaries dangerously equal in power.

 

Here in our setting, Satan has an intermediate position.

While creating mischief for humans,

he is obviously less than Yahweh and dependent upon Yahweh-

much like th serpent in the garden who tempted Eve.

The Hebrew word here ‘ha-satan’ means the Accuser or adversary.

Like an independent prosecutor in a heavenly courtroom.

The term ha-satan became the proper name ‘Satan’ later

as our concept of evil became personified.

So, in this tale we will call him the Accuser.

 

So, one day, while the heavenly court is assembled before God,

God notices that the Accuser has shown up with them.

‘Where did you come from?’ God asks when he spots him.

Kind of like: “Oh no, look who just walked into the room.”

“Oh,” responds the Accuser, “I’ve been wandering over the earth,

to and fro, walking up and down it, checking everything out.”

 

“And did you see my servant Job in your wanderings?

Never has there been on the whole earth

a more innocent and good man who trusts me and loves me!”

 

And the Accusor asks the key question:

Does Job love you for nothing?

Or does Job love you because everything has gone in his favor?

(And he wants it to continue that way.)

He’s got everything for God’s sake!

Land, house, family.

You bless everything he touches and he continues to prosper.

But, what if all this blessing turns to curse?

Then you really think, O Lord God, he will trust you and love you?

 

God says to the Accuser

“Very well, go on and create your mischief and do your harm.

Only I forbid you to lay a hand on Job himself!”

 

And so, the Accuser gets permission from God

to knock away the supporting foundations of Job’s happiness:

Things begin to happen.

All the livestock – oxen, donkeys, sheep, camels –

and also the servants who tended them – are all killed by enemies and fires.

Job’s own sons and daughters are eating and drinking in their elder brother’s house,

and a great wind comes across the desert, collapses the house, killing them all.

And, Job continues to trust and love and bless the Lord.

 

Again, the heavenly beings come to present themselves before the Lord

and the Accusor comes in with them again

and God asks him, knowing very well how things have gone with Job,

“How goes it with my servant Job?

Have you ever seen a more innocent and good man

Who trusts me and loves me – and blesses me?”

Even though you have done everything to shake his faith,

he has remained firm in it.”

 

The Accuser’s veins bulge in his neck and he almost hisses, like that serpent:

“Skin for skin! People will give up anything to save their own lives.”

Let his flesh and bone be broken

and he will curse, O Lord God, you to your face.”

In other words, Job will surely perceive God based on how God ‘treats’ him.

We do this all the time…

God is a good God, a vengeful God, a tender God, a wrathful God.

 

God again gives power to the Accuser,

“Very well, go ahead and do your harm,

but spare his life.”

 

And, as the tale goes,

the Accuser again does his dirty deeds.

Job is afflicted with horrible sores

and has to go off by himself, in great agony,

isolated, quarantined to sit on an ash heap

and scrape his wounds.

And yet, still, Job does not blame God,

But trusts and loves and blesses the Lord.

 

His faith not swayed either by rewards or punishments.

The question enlarges to all who hear the tale:

Will mortals be religious apart from rewards and punishments?

What does faith do if it is not either pleasing or appeasing God?

Are we capable of loving God for nothing?

Nothing to gain? Nothing to save? No cause? No reward?

 

We do get caught up in a cause and effect notion of God.

If we can’t keep our house out of foreclosure,

we didn’t have enough faith when we prayed.

If we are not healed from a disease,

our friends didn’t have enough faith when they prayed for us.

Or, we are all caught up in this big plan God has going on/set in motion,

And we can’t know why bad things happen to good people.

(or why in the world good things happen to bad people!)

Because the whole scheme is just too vast

for us to understand our little parts in it.

But somehow, God is in the midst of it all,

pulling the puppet strings and keeping some kind of cosmic track of it all.

 

Does our faith have any determination in our fate?

Sometimes it seems so – and sometimes it surely does not.

 

St. Francis, whose feast day is today,

And I share with you one of 28 Admonitions that he gave to his community –

the point of being alive, the highest call we can respond to

is to ‘adore and behold the Lord God living and true with a pure heart and soul.’

 

Francis, Job, with the innocent children who Jesus embraced

they all wanted more than anything else this world

to know God, to love God,

and like those children, to climb into God’s embrace.

 

Tragedies will come. Loved ones will die. Failure will pull us down.

We simply do not know why bad things happen to good people.

We possess no such knowledge that will enable us to

make sense of what we’ve long referred to as

heavenly rewards and punishments, blessings and curses.

But we can know and love a very present and living God,

Just as Job and Francis and ultimately Jesus have shown us.

 

I think that when we are alive to know and love and bless God

it is not the enemies or the curses themselves or God’s mind that get transformed,

but it is we who get transformed.

 

And the only true cause and effect I can come to

is that our knowledge and love of God is a cause

that effects a transformation in us.

 

We can’t totally control what we experience as evil in this life.

We can’t even make any sense of it.

But we can ‘adore and behold the Lord God,

living and true, with pure hearts and souls’

as blessings and curses come and go.

And somehow we live in a life larger than our own story

that holds us and knows us and suffers with us and loves us through.