No Good Answers

Job 38:25-27, 41:1-8, 42:1-6

 “No Good Answer”

31 July 2016 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

We started off a few weeks ago with the phrase, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” Now we get to enjoy the last few moments of the story and hear the familiar “and they lived happily ever after.” Right?

To quote Lee Corso, “Not so fast my friend.”

For chapter after chapter, God speaks to Job in a whirlwind and addressed Job’s complaints. Job finally got the audience with the creator he desired the whole time. He gets the chance to make his case, to have all of his pressing questions answered.

But, like a skilled criminal defense attorney, God redirects our focus and avoids ever answering the key questions we ask when hearing Job’s tale of woe.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Why do people miss the cries of those who suffer?

Why does God allow suffering to continue even after people plea for help?

Not a single word about those questions. Just a bunch of poetry about who created the world. Or is it?

God never directly answers the pressing questions we have about Job’s story and that can be quite frustrating for our modern minds that want answers and reasons for everything. Much like the children we know and love who constantly ask why, we too want to know the why for any decision or event that impacts our lives. Answering why helps eliminate the unknown and can help us best process the circumstances in which we find ourselves. The answers help us to define the world on our terms

But, perhaps our understanding of the world isn’t the way in which God views the world. Perhaps we are looking at the world from the wrong perspective.

Based on his questions of Job, God views the world a bit differently than we tend to see the world and our place within it. We like to view ourselves as the center of, not just a part of, creation. So we seek order that fits our purposes and desires. We desire predictability and answers to our questions no matter the subject.

But, Job learns differently about creation. From inside the whirlwind, inside the chaos, God explains what is so fascinating about creation. In fact, its so fascinating that God describes the majesty of creatures humans deem insignificant or odd. God takes delight in all of creation and, because it is created by God, it is unpredictable.

 Humanity isn’t the best at dealing with unpredictability. If fact, unpredictability tends to make people nervous. So, why would God create and love an unpredictable world? Annie Dillard helps answer this question when she writes, “What is going on here? The point of the dragonfly’s terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork—for it doesn’t, not even inside the goldfish bowl—but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, fringed tangle.”

Much like the platypus, suffering doesn’t make much sense to us. Humanity is constantly looking for the theory of everything to order and explain all of creation. Suffering is disorder and disrupts our neatly ordered world.

Job never gets the answers to why such suffering entered his life. Nor was God ever going to provide easy answers to Job’s life or ours. We are never meant to understand God’s plan because as much as we hate to admit it, God is God and we are not. God is creator and we are created.

One of my Old Testament professors in Seminary, Ellen Davis translates Job 42:6 differently than what I read earlier. She reads it as, “therefore I recant and change my mind concerning dust and ashes.” And this is a key change of words. For Job isn’t repenting from asking hard questions of God. In fact, God appreciated him asking the questions, even if they were the wrong questions.

 God blesses Job for not following the bad theology of his friends and continuing to seek God in the midst of his suffering. God grants Job his audience and allows Job to see God through creation. Truly seeing creation changes Job and he allows himself to live into the unpredictability of creation. He starts to love with abandon, even breaking with cultural norms by the way he names his children as well as by honoring his daughters equally with his sons.

I can’t say why we suffer, I can’t explain why God doesn’t step in and stop it, nor can I fathom why God even allows it in the first place. God was there with Job in his suffering and his questions and he is there in ours as well. So, because of Job I know that God is there with me in my suffering. It may take a while for me to see through my pain and notice God beside me.

However, we can open our eyes to the bizarre wonder of creation all around us. So that, like Job, we finally are able to see the God of whom we have only heard for far too long.

Hope in Suffering

Job 14:7-15, 19:23-27

 “Hope in Suffering”

17 July 2016 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

Last week after the service I was talking with someone who said that he really liked Job. After sitting in lament to get ready for last week, I wasn’t so sure that I agreed with him. Yes, I love the range of emotions that Job models for us, but after sitting with lament and how to present that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the book of Job. But, that comment had me take a different look at Job.

Job draws people in, not just because of the raw emotions Job experiences and relates during his conversations with his friends and God. We experience a range of emotions coming forth from his lament because we have all cried out to God in pain and suffering wanting not just relief from our condition or situation but also in our search for answers.

His response is natural and how most people would react in similar circumstances. And I think that is why people connect with Job and want to read his story and learn from how he handles the tragic situation in which he finds himself. I can read Job, find myself, and hope that I would respond like him.

 When I find myself in the midst of a personal or community tragedy, it is easy to get stuck in the lament and crying out to God that is the natural response to those situations. Sometimes, it’s hard to see past the situation, even more so if you have friends such as Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophor offering you advice. They started off well in listening to Job for seven days. But, they soon tired of sitting with Job and his grief and lost sight of what was happening in the grieving process.

How I express grief and the questions I ask of God will be much different than the grief and questions asked by anyone else. Humans truly do grieve differently so we must sit with them for as long as they are in the grieving process. As people work through their grief in their own way and on their timeline, something beautiful starts to blossom.

These two passages from Job are glimpses into the beauty that can emerge in the midst of grief. For chapter after chapter of poetic discussion and questioning, a small seed was planted in Job and began to germinate. The seed was planted early on when Job refused to curse God, even after his wife encouraged him to just curse God, die, and get this whole thing over with. The seed of hope was planted with his refusal to give in and give up.

As his friends tried to convince him that he had done something wrong, his continual insistence that he has undergone a tragedy and refusal to ask forgiveness and seek repentance when none is needed germinated and watered that seed of hope. So much so that now the seedling is bursting through and the first shoots of life break through the soil. A sign of life in the desolate, desert landscape of grief has arrived.

Job expresses hope that he will have his audience with God, if not to answer his questions, at least he will have a fair audience to argue his case and ask the hard questions directly. The fact that he has found hope in the midst of such a tragedy itself speaks to the power of God. Because he found hope not through his friends, but through time with God in suffering.

The thing people tend to either forget or overlook when dealing with someone else’s difficult circumstances, beyond realizing they will grieve and heal on their own timeline, is that wise pithy words rarely help someone find hope in difficult times.

Trite phrases do as much good as Job’s friends did in his situation. The last thing someone wants to hear when they are awash with grief is, “I’m sure it’s all part of God’s plan,” “they’re in a better place now,” “just count all your blessings,” “they wouldn’t want you to be sad,” “buck up buttercup, turn that frown upside down” (or something more dignified, but that sounds the same to a person in grief), or “I know how you feel.”

If even in the midst of Job’s struggle, hope found a way into the conversation with God, perhaps if we just step back a bit from trying to quickly make everyone feel better and let God work, hope will blossom in any tragedy.

This past week I saw an article from the former dean of my seminary in which he described hope in a broken situation. “The virtue of hope enables us to face the brutal facts of our lives, of the world, and of brokenness and failures, which harm those entrusted to our care as well as ourselves. And yet we don't give into despair as pessimists or cynics, because our faith in God points us to the future that God has called us, and the whole Creation, to live towards."

As we take the time to sit with loved ones in the midst of grief, we are then able to experience the first signs of hope alongside them because we have experienced grief alongside as well. When we are with them in the depths, we can point to the signs of hope that we both see together.

When someone who has lost a loved one is able to finally look at a photo and lovingly reminisce rather than break down at the sight of their beloved. When a grieving parent who is facing raising children alone notices how their child(ren) remind them of why they fell in love with their partner to begin with. When a national tragedy sparks a real conversation in a family or community that would not otherwise have occurred.

Only by sitting with those in the midst of lament and allowing room for God to work will we have both the opportunity to witness and the credibility to point people to signs of hope in the midst of tragedy. And those signs do appear. Sometimes they arrive in full bloom and in full view of all around. Other times they are just glimpses of green in a desert of despair.

Our job in helping Job is not just to sit and wait, though that is a large part of our job. Our job is to be on the lookout for those shoots of hope and to point people to them. To water and feed that hope and let it germinate and fully grow on its own timescale.

Job gets there without any help from his friends, and as we read in the next chapter, his friends don’t recognize what happened and are set on proving to Job that he is not grieving properly.

What would it have looked like if his friends would have sat there and had the sight to see these glimpses of hope and point it out to Job? Maybe they won’t later be told by God, “I will accept Job’s prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right.”

Let us do right not only by the ones we love, but also by God in patiently sitting in grief and lament so that as hope springs forth from the ground, not only do we not miss the sapling’s first taste of sunlight but we tend that hope and point towards the hope that has sprung forth from tragedy.  

Voices of Lament

Job 3:1-10, 4:1-9, 7:1-11

 “Voices of Lament”

10 July 2016 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

“There’s somethin’ wrong with the world today/I don’t know what it is/Something’s wrong with our eyes/We’re seein’ things in a different way/And God knows it ain’t his/It shore ain’t no surprise…If you can judge a wise man/By the color of his skin/Then mister you’re a better man than I.”

Lyrics from 23 years ago that come to mind when reflecting on what is happening back home this week. Crazy stuff going on back in the States. People turning violence into more violence. Our home country is crying out in lament asking many questions similar to those of Job.

“Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.” Job is speaking from a place of deep anguish and pain, lamenting what is happening in his life. And his friends aren’t listening.

Lament is sorrow and regret that also contains a great deal of mourning over something or someone. Lament is crying out to God and the world over an injustice or loss. Job is a long lament not just over the loss of his wealth and children, but also over the injustice of his being unjustly punished for something he didn’t do as well as lament at the poor advice of his so-called friends.

It seems that for far too long society has allowed the cries of lament to be drowned out by busyness, wealth, “reality TV,” careers, sports, and many other loud distractions. People with voices in society have at best acknowledged the lament they hear, at worst society has derided lament because the language is too raw and strong, too real for the sheen of perfection society attempts to paint over discord.

Over the last few decades songs of lament, because of the raw and strong language used, were deemed inappropriate in society leading to unheard cries of injustice. After the tragedies of Baton Rouge and Minnesota and Dallas unfolded over the last few days, I can’t help but think that the rap lyrics society fought against in the 80’s and 90’s have transformed themselves from lament to prophecy.

In the Bible, lament is usually expressed through poetry so there should be no surprise that we find expressions of lament today through song. If only we would listen to the words of songs of lament and sit with the reason those songs were written.

Play Glory

Glory won an Oscar, rightfully so, but has it’s lament been heard? What if we actually stopped and listened to lament and sought to transform the injustice that was being expressed instead of writing it off as petty complaint? Yet, just listening, while important isn’t the proper response to lament.

Neither is the model provided by Eliphaz in today’s readings. The major mistake made by Eliphaz in these readings is that he wanted to use his personal experience as the authoritative source for dealing with Job’s lament. When we make the bar of injustice our own experience rather than God’s definition of justice, we drown out the voices of the oppressed and equate their lament with complaint.

I’m not an African-American who is afraid to drive in America or has to have the talk with my children. Not about sex, but about how to stay safe when walking at night. Nor am I a police officer who walks into unknown situations wanting to go home safe at night to their own family or one who goes to a protest to protect those expressing their lament for the world to hear wondering if there is a sniper waiting for the right moment.

Both of those contexts are not mine, though by listening to the laments of people in both of those contexts over the last few years, especially in the last 96 hours, I am open to hear the lament and the injustice of which they cry out to God for relief.

It would be a mistake for me to inject personal experience into the conversation as authoritative in any way because, while I may listen to their lament, I am not living the situation from which the lament arises.

So what are we to do beyond just listening and praying to ease the lament of our brothers and sisters in Christ?

Talk with people to determine the root cause of the lament. What is the specific injustice that prompts the lament? Then ask what can I do to correct the root cause? Maybe it’s too big for one individual. Who do I know that has the expertise or resources to address this injustice? Find groups that are addressing the injustice and actually attend meetings and get to know people who are working tirelessly to help eliminate the need for lament.

What if the church sought to stamp out the fear of the other? What if the church were a place that showed the world violence isn’t the answer to violence? Martin Luther King once quipped that the whole eye for an eye thing eventually leaves everyone blind.

What if the church was the place where all felt welcomed and able to express their feelings openly and honestly? What if the church was the place to model equal treatment and love for all, instead of one of the most segregated places we go?

What if the church gave voice to the voiceless? What if the church used its power to confront the powers and principalities that perpetuate, turn a blind eye, or stagnate in the face of injustice? What if Christians ran to the problem areas of the world rather than sit on the sidelines waiting for someone else? What if the church realized Christ’s plan is to use the church to answer the prayers and lament from those suffering?

Did Christ teach how to lay low and ignore the cry of lament all around? Of course not, Christ taught how to shine with the light of the Good News of Christ, and thus the world redeemed. The church is called, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to be the example and instrument of redeeming the world.

James Howell, the newly appointed Methodist Bishop for Western North Carolina summed up our call in the face of lament well, “We can be different. We can be the people God uses to be the answer to our own prayers. That is, if we come to the end of our prayers and do courageous things.”

So let us listen for the lament that surrounds us, pray for guidance in that listening as to how we can address lament and tackle injustice and then go out and be the church as Christ envisioned so that justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Losing It All

Job 1:1-22

 “Losing it All”

03 July 2016 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            Imagine one day you wake up and Twitter and Facebook are blowing up with the news that Warren Buffet has lost it all. Everything. From over 60 Billion dollars of wealth to nothing.

            Then the next day, tragedy again befalls and his family all die in a freak accident. The once wealthiest man in America is now penniless and without his beloved children. Because of this stunning reversal of fortune, the press descend upon him in his fragile state wanting to know what happened. Why did you lose everything? Didn’t you have some money stored away for a rainy day? Aren’t you the best at this investing thing, why weren’t you fully diversified? Why is this happening to you? What did you do to bring on all of this suffering?

            Instead of responding to the unrelenting questions, he goes away with his closest friends and advisors to grieve and figure how what in the world to do. He never lays the blame on anyone or anything no matter how hard people press him to bring out the accusations.

            No one wants tragedy to befall anyone, especially when it is of such a magnitude as what Job suffers. I only used the Oracle of Omaha to illustrate the sheer wealth of Job described at the beginning of this passage. The fact he had seven sons and three daughters along with 7,000 sheep and 3,000 camels indicates that his life was complete. I’m going to translate the Hebrew word tam as complete, which based on the specific details regarding Job’s wealth and family size is a better reflection of the story than blameless, perfect, or honest.

            He was such a good person that not only did he offer his own sacrifices to God, he offered sacrifices to God on behalf of his children, for they may have sinned in their hearts. Job wanted his whole family to be right with God just as he was.

Job’s life does seem complete. He has a large family that seems to get along as evidenced by the sons holding a rotating feast at each other’s home and always inviting their sisters to join. His livestock herd is enormous. Plus, he just seems content and caring for those he loves. It’s like he’s the one guy that has fully realized the “American Dream.”

Then it all comes crashing down. In rapid succession his donkeys and oxen were carried off with all but one servant killed followed by a second servant rushing in to disrupt a fine meal describing his harrowing escape from a fiery death that devoured his sheep and the servants tending to them.

As if that wasn’t enough, just after the second servant finished relating his tale a third appeared. The sole survivor from yet another act of piracy in which all of the camels were stolen and those servants murdered. Job has lost all of his wealth in a matter of moments. The evaporation of his wealth was so fast, Job would have rather had his money in the New York Stock Exchange on October 29, 1929 what we now know as Black Tuesday.

After having time to digest the horrible news and probably quietly think, “at least I still have my family,” another servant appears with his head hung low. He can’t even look Job in the eyes so he stares at his feet and breaks the news to Job that all of his children were having dinner when the house fell in and no one survived.

From completeness to seeming nothingness in an instant.

Job just gets up, tears his robe and shaves his head which was the universal sign of mourning back then and then worships and blesses the Lord. I don’t know how I’d react, but I highly doubt blessing the Lord would be at the top of the list. God and I would have a chat, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be saying many nice things at first.

What makes this story even more difficult, is the part that we get let in on as we overhear the tale retold. It was all a bet.

Not a bet for money, for no amount of money could compare to the stakes at play in God’s poker game that is playing out in the hand being dealt Job right now. This really sounds like a bunch of heavenly Public Affairs Officers getting hit by the good idea fairy.

“You know God, people aren’t following you for the right reasons. They’ve missed the strategic messaging. They’re getting this all wrong. People believe that it’s easy to be faithful to you when they have everything and their lives are complete. We don’t think there is anyone on earth who truly is faithful to you.”

God responds, “but look at my man Job. There is no one like him. I know he is faithful to me through and through, no question.”

Then his trusted advisor responds, “Prove it! Let me rock his world a bit and see how his faith holds up.” And in a crazy plot twist, “Challenge accepted. Just don’t kill him.”

So we are just pawns in some weird cosmic game among heavenly creatures?

Maybe not. This is a story about a man who wasn’t an Israelite, but still followed God. A man living outside the promised land without a common Israelite name. Describing him as complete and blameless or without sin definitely makes him fictional because no one is blameless.

Job most likely is an ancient morality play. It’s the Israelite version of Haw Par Villa showing the worst possible outcomes to prove a gentler point. In fact, the story starts out with an intro that sounds vaguely familiar. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Why do bad things happen to good people? Can I endure something like Job? Who can I turn to for solid advice in a time of need? Is God some mean deity that will mess with me to satisfy a bet? What are the limits of my faith? Will God give up on me if I don’t have enough faith? Is it ok to argue with God? Is suffering a form of punishment for prior sin?

Job is a story that provokes a great number of questions and answers relatively few. As we embark on this journey together over the next few weeks, make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position. Make sure your seat belt is securely fastened and all carry-on luggage is stowed underneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead bins.