(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on October 28, 2018, Proper 25)
Happily Ever After?
“And he lived happily ever
after.”
For many readers, that sums up
the folkloric ending to the tale of Job.
Job keeps faith in God. God
rewards Job. Given by God twice as
much as he had before, and another seven sons and three daughters to replace
the seven sons and three daughters he had lost in a deadly windstorm, Job lives
out the last of his days in the company of family and in the comfort of
fortune.
Our story paints the last years
of Job’s life in the broadest of strokes, drawing everything into one happy
summary. But is it really that
easy for Job? I notice that he
never says anything in this folkloric finale. I wonder what he’s thinking. If he still remembers his first seven sons and three
daughters. I wonder what he’s
feeling. If he still hurts from
his traumatic losses.
I think he does. The last recorded words of Job in the
story are these: “I had heard of you [God]…but now my eye sees you; therefore I
reject myself and I repent in dust and ashes” (42:5-6). These are not the words of a man who
happily forgets his loss and finds comfort in new family and new riches. These are the words of a man who has
caught a glimpse of God in the deepest tragedy of his life, and what he has
seen has left him at a loss.
Transmitting Pain or Transforming It
If you’ll remember with me,
earlier in the story Job had believed in a fair world. He had believed in a moral version of
Newton’s Third Law, where every deed had a proper consequence. Good deeds brought rewards, and bad
deeds brought punishment. But when
his life fell apart for no good reason, when he lost nearly everything he had
despite having lived a good life, his eyes were opened. When God finally responds to his cries
and rhapsodizes about a creation that is beautiful and glorious, but also
marked with chance and chaos, Job sees for the first time that the world is not
fair. Disease and disaster are not
part of a moral equation. They
simply are what they are: senseless suffering.
So when Job says, “Now my eye
sees you; therefore I reject myself,” what I think he’s really saying, is, “Now
I see a creation without equations, without a natural moral balance; therefore
I renounce my complaints, my bitterness.”
And when he continues on to say, “I repent in dust and ashes,” which is
a common ancient image for mourning a person’s death, I think what he’s really
saying is, “This new awareness is like dying.” Accepting the reality of suffering is not easy.
Franciscan friar Richard Rohr suggests
that our common response to suffering is either to play the victim or to make
new victims. In other words,
instead of transforming the pain we transmit it. We preserve it in our own lives or we push it onto others. In either us or others, it prevents the
gift of new life. But in Job, we
see something different. Accepting
the reality of suffering, he lets go of his bitterness and cynicism and
ultimately he receives new life.
Traditionally folks have
interpreted the new sons and daughters and riches that Job receives at the end
of the story as God’s reward for his faith. “Well done, Job.
Here you go.” But that
interpretation undermines everything that the story has been about. Job’s story suggests a world without
moral equations, a world that is not fair. For God to recompense Job for his faith, would suggest that
ultimately deeds do meet with their proper moral consequences.
What if, instead, Job’s new life
at the end of the story results from his acceptance of suffering and his faith
nonetheless in the gift of life?
Would Job have had ten more children if he had been living in bitterness? Would he have received the sympathy and
support and gifts of family and friends?
In our gospel scripture today, Jesus tells the blind man, “Your faith
has made you well.” Perhaps because
Job neither denies his wounds nor projects his wounds onto others, but instead
accepts them as his need for new life—perhaps because of his faith, he enters into new life.
“We’re All Hurting and We All Need Your Help”
A couple of Thursdays back, Lu
and I joined Rhonda Sneed for one of her food-and-clothing runs among the
homeless of our city. We have
several stories from that evening, but today I want to share one in
particular. One of the first men
we met, Jerry, had recently suffered from the senseless violence of a gang of
youth, who had smashed his head in with a bag of bricks. I don’t believe that Jerry is under any
illusion about the reality of suffering.
What touched me the deepest from our encounter was Jerry’s faith. I don’t mean Jerry’s religious
knowledge or identity, although he clearly hails from within the Christian
community. By faith, I mean a
deep, visceral trust in the gift of life, that wherever he is and whatever the
circumstance, God is giving him life.
When we were leaving, Jerry asked
if he could pray for us. We
gathered in a circle, holding hands, and Jerry cried out to God. “We’re all the same, Lord, we are all
hurting and we all need your help.
That’s the only way we can live.”
I don’t know what will happen to
Jerry in the long run. He recently
had a meeting with Commonwealth Catholic Charities to determine his eligibility
for housing in light of this recent attack and his newfound medical needs. What I do know is that whatever
happens, Jerry’s faith is keeping his hands open to the gift of new life. Rather than transmit his pain, he is
transforming it. Rather than deny
it or project it onto others, he accepts it as his need for help, his need for
new life. And he has faith that
new life is a gift that God is giving.
A Way Through
the Loss
As a book in the Bible, Job
sticks out like a sore thumb. It
sticks out like a wound that is not pretty to look at. Among biblical stories of promise and
hope, Job tells the story of loss and senseless suffering. We all live with wounds. Or as Jerry put it, “We’re all hurting,
and we all need [God’s] help.”
The question, then, is not
whether we can avoid loss. The
question is how to live with loss.
For many chapters, Job’s friends tried to rationalize Job’s loss, the same
way we sometimes address suffering today with platitudes; and in so doing they
deepen the wound, antagonizing and alienating Job. For many chapters, Job himself claims to be the victim of an
unjust judgment; and in so doing he keeps the wound open, living in bitterness
and cynicism. Both are responses
to loss that block new life.
But at the end of the book, we
see a different way, a way through
the loss. Job lets go of his bitterness and accepts the reality that the world
is not fair—not so that he can throw his hands up and say, “What’s the point in
even trying?” but so that instead of transmitting his pain in bitterness or
resentment, he might transform his pain through faith. What we see at the end of Job’s story
is neither a man who holds onto his loss and never really lives again, nor a
man who has forgets his loss and lives happily ever after. What we see is a man who lives with his
loss and finds a way through it, a man with a faith as deep as his scars, a man
who trusts that new life is a gift that God is always giving.
It’s very similar, I would
suggest, to what we see in Jerry and also in Jesus, who do not deny the loss of
the world, but live deeply in its midst in the faith that new life is a gift
that God is always giving—in the faith that through God’s love loss can be
redeemed.
Prayer
Holy God,
Who meets us in our loss,
Who stays with us
When “happily ever after”
shatters;
Inspire us with the faith of Job—
In which we see also the faith of
Christ—
So that we might not
Transmit our pain in bitterness
or denial
But transform it
In the faith
That your resurrection love
Is redeeming all things
With new
life. Amen.
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