Reading Job 42
 Image, A detail from The Other Room (late 1930s), Vanessa Bell.
 
What does it mean to come out from the depths? To live beyond crisis? What is it to find oneself in a new chapter after life-defining loss or suffering? How does one live, always with, but now, somehow, somewhat, after rupture?
 
In the two weeks before our combined service we explored the book of Job as a poetic response to crisis, a fable on humans responses to suffering and evil beyond comprehension and control. Here, we reach the end of the book, which follows the dramatic appearance of God in the whirlwind, and moves us out of the immediacy of Job’s suffering and grievances, toward restoration and new beginning. With this, the question shift. No longer is it how we live before God and with one another when sitting in dust and ashes, but what does it mean to live when the dust is washed, clothes are mended, and table’s once more set for a feast?
 
The dramatic reversal at the end of Job often cops some flak. The kind of peaches and cream reversal of Job’s fortunes where all that was lost is replaced seems to run into an issue when it comes to his children. Because it is not that his children are resurrected, he simply has new ones to replace those lost. Once again, I stress the story of Job is a fable, and so, like the little disclaimer at the end of a movie’s credits, I can assure you that no real, living children were harmed in the making of this story. And yet, even if the broader (theological) point is taken, that God has remained faithful to Job, and that the one with the power to take, also gives, we might still feel the ending comes up short, particularly compared to the philosophical sophistication of the earlier chapters. Kind of like the unsatisfactory feeling we get when a good, suspenseful story is revealed to all be a dream. What’s the point of all of this, if, at the end, nothing has changed?
 
But perhaps, when we read closely, we discover that more has changed than first appears. Perhaps the question is less how is Job’s life is returned to him, but in what manner does Job return to his life?
 
The first thing he has to deal with is his friends. Those who showed up to sat with him silently in the dust, before they all started to speak… speech, we here learn from God “was not right.” Their varying efforts to account for Job’s suffering by insisting on his wickedness or God’s majesty now stand condemned. To atone for such folly they must bring an offering to Job and ask him to intercede on their behalf.
 
There is an interesting parallel here. We might remember that at the beginning of our story, Job would wake early on the days his children were to feast together to offer sacrifices in the off-chance that they might have unknowingly cursed God in their hearts. Now, instead, Job offers his prayers for those who insisted time and again that he had cursed God in his heart. 
 
How do we live with those who have walked with us in our grief, who have sought to offer words of comfort and consolation, those who showed us great patience and care, or perhaps failed to do so, those who never really understood what we were going through, what pain we were feeling, what we really wanted or needed in this season of grief. Sometimes these moments of high intensity forge unbreakable bonds, other times they open uncrossable gulfs. As we pick up the pieces of our lives we might find the very people closest to us become either the only ones who understand, or a difficult reminder of what we endured. Just last night I read this line in Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, “Sometimes you need people to be perfect and they can’t be and you hate them forever for not being even though even though it isn’t their fault and it’s not your either. You just needed something they didn’t have in them to give you.” (p. 369)
 
God hands the fates of these friends over to Job. But despite the fact his friends failed him in his hour of need, he will not fail them in theirs. There is something of a transformation here in the character of Job. Where Job has argued and defended himself against his friends, his encounter with the whirlwind of God and his admission that he too spoke of what he did not understand, allow him a power and grace to extend forgiveness and intercession for his friends. In a manner that might remind us of Jesus’ intercession on the cross, Job prays for forgiveness for his friends for they did not know what they were doing. They too crumbled under the pressure of suffering too bewildering to comprehend, they too had their worlds ruptured, and they too should not be abandoned or condemned. Job might have been found blameless, but that doesn’t mean those bearing blame should be forgotten.
 
A disclaimer: Job’s actions might be exemplary, but they are not prescriptive. This is not a sermon about how you must respond to those who walked with you in times of grief (especially if they did so poorly). Such complex relations cannot be approached with a one-size-fits-all blanket. Nonetheless, we might be stirred by Job. He captures a vital truth of our faith: Christ did not cut from the vine those who denied and dispersed, but established a movement in his name of those who pray both that we might be forgiven our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. 
 
With his friends sorted, Job’s fortunes are restored. Not only property and livestock but seven sons and three daughters (the same number as before). What is important to notice is that, unlike last time (and in an uncharacteristic fashion) his new daughters are named: Jemimah, Keziah, Keren-happuch. Details such as these should not be ignored. Biblical authors aren’t like Mark Twain, padding the pages because they are paid by the word. But what’s more than simply being named, Ellen Davis has noted that these are unusually sensuous names: “Dove,” “Spice-girl,” “Horn of Eyeshadow.” These names, with the detail that Job gave them inheritances and lived to see his children’s children, swirl together to present Job now as exuberant in affection, determined to enjoy the fullness of his days.
 
This feels like a marked change. Before, while his children would go to each other’s houses feasting, Job would rise early, alone, to pray for them. Now, he is with them, delighting in their lives and the pleasures of feasting together. The blessings he has received are not to be protectively worried over, but celebrated with others. Once more we are led to a deep truth of our faith, where the kingdom of God is likened so often to a banquet. The earth is the Lord’s and the earth is good, and it is a faithful celebration of our God to delight and take pleasure in what lies before us in the company of others. We are called to be a joyful people, which is in no way incompatible with being a people who mourn, rage, and struggle. The book of Job, again, doesn’t prescribe, but offers a way of living after the ravages of suffering and cataclysm, which is to celebrate new life, to give thanks for birdsong and spice, to delight in the beautiful, and linger in the company of the beloved.
 
The book of Job is about human responses when faced with suffering beyond our comprehension and control. And through these three sermons we have seen a range of responses: rage, confrontation, righteous anger, speechless grief, misguided philosophising. Now, on the other side of it all, we see another kind of response. Which is that, when possible, we do not let suffering and woe obliterate the fullness of our days. Job is transformed by the whirlwind in such a way as he is able to lay aside his grievance with God, his animosity with his friends, and take new delight in his life. He who once cursed the day he was born now celebrates all that has since been birthed. None of this happened quickly or easily. Job sat and stewed, raged with his friends and called God to account until, in a moment where eternity broke in before him, he allowed something new and surprising to occur both within and about him. And to this he brought the hard-won knowledge gained by suffering: grace to forgive and freedom to delight.
 
None of this can be simply applied one-to-one to our lives and suffering. For the losses we have known are not parables or poems; but all too literal. And the reversals of fortune we might know are unlikely to be as mathematically satisfactory as Job’s. Too many in the world have never had (let alone had twice) the kind of material and familial blessing Job enjoys, nor his world-transforming encounter with the Living God. And yet, as those who have heard the gospel message, who proclaim the new creation won through Christ’s death and resurrection, we are nonetheless a people who confess that somehow, in some way and at some point, new life breaks through, new tables are set, new delights emerge, new relations form, if not in this life, then at that kingdom banquet. In the meantime, we return to that opening question: what does it look like to come out from the depths and live beyond crisis? Job gives us something of a picture, and where possible we are encouraged to take heed of his example of grace, delight, and freedom, which allows the obliterating pain of one season not to be the sole author of our lives. It also encourages us to look to those suffering around us today. We might not be able to enact the kind of miraculous, poetic reversal that belongs to God, but we might yet be able to pull up a chair, weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice, rage with those who rage and answer the problem of suffering with lives of love.

Reading, Job 38:1-11, 34-41, 40:1-9 
Image, John Ross, The morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. (1960)

 
Last week, Job, stricken by calamity, demands God answer his complaint. This week, God answers Job out of the whirlwind. In between the story of Job is broken into a series of speeches. Job’s friends make cases for why misery has befallen Job. Most work along a logic that since the wicked always receive just punishment at the hand of God, Job must actually be wicked. To which Job counters with two points: 1) defending his blamelessness, and 2) reminding them that by and large the wicked receive no punishment, no justice in this life: They spend their days in prosperity and in peace they go down to Sheol. They say to God, ‘Leave us alone! We do not desire to know your ways.’ So, Job contends not only am I not wicked, but even if I were that would not be enough to establish that this is why I suffer, since it doesn’t seem like God has much interest in bringing justice upon the wicked.
 
Time and again Job’s friends offer accounts for what has happened (accounts, we shall come to see, will be condemned by God as false speech) and time and again Job rebuffs their words and demands God answers him directly. Again, this is a testament to that fierce, determined faith Job exemplifies (which we discussed last week) one which is unwavering in its belief in God’s sovereign power and in his own right to demand God front up.
 
And so, eventually, God appears. This is the first time we have seen God in the narrative since the two early wagers with Satan, and the first time that Job has beheld God since all this began. It is important to remind ourselves that the story of Job is not history or journalism, but a poem, a fable, a parable. A story constructed in order to address the reality of human suffering, of the incomprehensibility of evil and woe. So how does God’s answer from the whirlwind do that?
 
One of my favourite contemporary novelists, Garth Greenwell, opens his new book, Small Rain, this way: They asked me to describe the pain but the pain defied description, on a scale from one to ten it demanded a different scale.
This is kind of like what God introduces into the story, a different scale. Instead of arriving to tell Job, look, here’s what happened… all the angels and I were hanging out, and then Satan came in, and well, one thing led to another... Or, coming and saying, look, Job, your friends are right, you sinned in your heart on April 16, 4062, and thus everything that has befallen you has been justified… Or, coming to say, look Job, I know you’re upset, but this is the reason bad things happen to good people… instead, God appears in a whirlwind and says,
Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
 
Talk about a different scale? Job has been asking God to give account and God shows up and says, I’m the one asking the questions here: Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Not the most pastoral approach, indeed, rather accusatory. It is almost like if your new fridge was faulty and you called to get it returned and when you said, listen, everything at the back is freezing, the person on the helpline said, I’m sorry, were you there when I invented ice?!?
 
This moment was brought vividly to life in Terrance Malick’s film, Tree of Life. Early in the film a mother learns of the death of her son, and she utters, in desperate grief, Lord, did you know… where were you… what are we to you… answer me… and at this request the film goes back to the beginning of all things. In a near fifteen minute sequence it works its way slowly through the creation of the cosmos, the first creatures to populate the seas, the emergence and collapse of dinosaurs, only then it returns to the family. What this says is the only way to approach the questions born of this personal loss is to tell the whole story of creation. We are but part of this story, the story of all things which unfolded at the hand of God. Where were you, the mother asks, to which God responds, everywhere.
 
Many have deemed this is an unsatisfactory response. That God’s assertion of an eternal knowledge which trumps all temporal concerns is insufficient in the face of immediate, personal, unjust suffering. Job, it appears, does not find it wanting. He remarks at the end of God’s address, I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know… Therefore I recant and reconsider concerning dust and ashes. Job is sufficiently awed, his grievances transformed and any right to further speech given up.
 
But even if we don’t share Job’s position (nor his eventual reversal of fortune), we might still consider the whirlwind. Because maybe there is no satisfactory response to the problem of incomprehensible suffering to be found anywhere else? Perhaps the point is to change the scale, and thus change the perspective. Because whether or not we have or may grasp a reason, suffering occurs, catastrophes happen, loss and grief are inevitable. As we say in the funeral prayers:
Give us grace in the face of the mystery of life.
Give us the wisdom that says:
‘Even if our questions were answered,
even if we did know why,
the pain would be no less,
the loneliness would remain,
and our hearts would still be aching’.
 
And so perhaps, this swirling reminder of the majesty of God’s eternal presence, power, and provision give comfort. The gap between us and God, the finite and infinite, the created and Creator offers a new scale. The speech of God offers us a reality where there is something over, under, and around all of history’s inscrutable, scattered moments. But not just a random something, for when we take the testimony of the whole of Scripture, then we see that the something (or better someone) over, under, and around all the things that we can and cannot see and comprehend is the God who is love. The one who heard the morning stars sing is also the one who hears the cries of the oppressed and acts with a mighty hand. The one who knows when the mountain goat gives birth is the one who found the slave girl Hagar and her child in the wilderness and helped her survive. The one who numbers the clouds is the one who stood between the accused woman and those bearing stones and numbering sins. The one who can draw the Leviathan out of deepest ocean is the one who descended unto death in order to triumph over the grave and lead us to newness of life.
 
Not a flap of a wing nor a blink of an eye has occurred without God. And while this does not diminish the pain of loss, the grief of suffering, or our rage against evil, it does offer us something. A different scale, another way of thinking about the pain of the world. So much that might feel without reason, might appear without logic, might defy comprehension, might instead occur within the world and history God creates, sustains, and redeems. These moments are thus not, ultimately, without meaning, not ultimately random, not ultimately finished… each takes place within a bigger meaning, a bigger story, one which has always and will ever continue to unfold within the sphere of God’s interest and love.
 
This, as I have said from the start, does not solve everything (perhaps, for some, it solves nothing). But the story of Job is not set out, I believe, to do that. The whirlwind offers a picture of reality in which God is present. It offers a way of living where history’s many moments of violence and catastrophe are not the final, unaccountable word, but remain open to the redemptive and restorative activity of God. This doesn’t mean we must accept all things as they are – we, like Job, can bring our charges before God, and we must act upon the earth to seek justice, peace, and restoration. But the whirlwind offers us a foundation on which our faith and activity might rest: that while much lies beyond us, nothing lies beyond God, and in this there is hope, because God is love, and love never ends: it makes all things new.

Reading, Job 1 and 2.
Image, Job, Antonio de Pereda
 
“There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.” So begins one of the more immense, provocative, and mysterious stories in Scripture. Job provides the Bible’s most detailed study on the question of suffering and evil. A question we will not satisfactorily solve in one (or even a handful) of sermons. Nonetheless, where might this story take us?
 
Well, in the first instance, it takes us to the land of fables. There was once a man in the land... This is the Hebrew Bible equivalent of “Once Upon a Time.” Indeed, it is the very phrase that the prophet Nathaniel employs in his fable or parable of the man who steals a lamb told to condemn King David.
 
This helps our reading (and perhaps our sanity). We do not have to reckon with this picture of God making wagers with Satan as a literal representation of what God is like, nor as a picture of what’s going on in the heavenly realms. Similarly, we don’t have to worry about the literal lives of these children of Job crushed to death. The elements of the story are not a journalistic account of happenings, they exist to provoke and illustrate, leading the reader to consider the deeper questions and crises of human existence.
 
This last point is important. The book of Job (especially in its early chapters) is far less interested with the character of God than with how humans respond to suffering beyond our comprehension and control. To say it another way, the scene with God and Satan is not there to furnace our doctrine of God, rather it poetically intensifies one of the book’s main theses: woe to the one presuming to know the mystery of God, or link external suffering to state of another’s heart. With this established, what can we learn from Job?
 
First, despite his prosperity, Job seems to live under a cloud of potential calamity due to the unbeknownst sin of others. We read that on the days his children were to feast he would rise early to offer burnt offerings just in case his children had cursed God in their hearts. While this detail may be there to heighten the exaggerated virtuousness of Job it also suggests a life defined by the insecurity of blessing. Of course, ironically, none of this actually helps. For it is not any human cursing that brings ruin, it is Job’s very blamelessness and uprightness that provokes God’s boasting and the Adversary’s challenge. Job’s unimpeachable record, far from preserving him and his children, becomes the cause of all that goes wrong.
 
But perhaps it is his acceptance of the provisionally of all good things, that allows Job to make his famous confessions when confronted with news of devastation. Messenger after messenger, hot on the heels of each other, lay increasingly exaggerated reports of ill-fortune at Job’s feet. Upon hearing this, Job says, Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken may the Lord’s name be blessed. Even with the rug pulled so swiftly out from under him, Job does not curse God, but recognises the freedom of his sovereign who brings sunshine and rain upon us all.
 
But again, ironically, his faithfulness is the cause of calamity. For when God draws attention to Job remaining unmoored, the Adversary heightens the wager, insisting Job will succumb if his body becomes the site of pain. Yet even covered with sores Job refuses to curse God. His wife, perhaps out of pity for his sufferings, grief for her own loss, or resignation that blessing or cursing, innocence or guilt, make no difference, appeals he let go, but Job retorts: Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?     
 
Job remains unwavering in his vision of the world as being under the sovereign power of God, while remaining in the dark as to why any of this is happening. God gives and so God must be allowed to take, such is the freedom of the Creator and the plight of the creation. And yet, we would do a disservice to Job if we took this as a sign that he is not determined to hold God to account. When Job’s friends insist on defending the validity of God’s justice and insist upon the secret sin Job must have committed to deserve this treatment, Job defends his faithfulness and cries aloud: Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me!
 
Job, while accepting the right of God to give and take, rejects his friends “account” of the situation, and insists that God front up and give testimony. There is a kind of ferocious determination in Job’s response. Through grief and gritted teeth, he will not allow calamity to prevail over his faith in God, while at the very same time, will not allow God to slip by without giving account. God is free to do this, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
 
The author Zvi Kolitz wrote a story about a fictional Jewish resistance fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto. The fighter, writes a testimony in 1943, speaking directly to God:
Here, then, are my last words to You, my angry God: None of this will avail You in the least! You have done everything to make me lose my faith in You, to make me cease to believe in You. But I die exactly as I have lived, an unshakable believer in You… Sh’ma Yisroel! Hear, Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. Into your hands I commend my soul.*
 
Such is the ground Job stands upon. Nothing will prevail over his belief in God, and nothing will stop him charging God with the ills that have befallen him. The world is God’s so God needs to account for what has happened in the world. Job will not abandon the foundation of his faith, nor his very righteousness, rather these are what drives his charge: Oh, that I knew where to find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments.
 
I think of those immortal words of comfort Jesus offers his disciples: In my father’s house there are many dwelling places… I go and prepare a place for you. Read in conversation with Job, we see that there is more than one mood with which to enter the household of God. And one of them, very legitimately, is to come before the Most High with a litany of griefs and injustices. Those who have known senseless suffering, who have seen cataclysm and misery ruin lives, who have tasted the bitterness of grief, these are not things we must quietly bear for the sake of our deep faith in God or God’s reputation on the earth. No, we see with Job (no less than with Christ upon the cross) that it is from the deep well of our faith that we may lay the most emphatic charges at the feet of God and demand an answer to a question as profound as Job’s: why did you bring me forth from the womb?
 
The question of suffering is posed to all of us. The reality of evil and senselessness of loss cannot be skirted even for the upright and blameless. These early chapters of Job rest on such a premise, insisting that though we will know calamity, its causes often lie beyond our vision. What shall we do in this moment? How do we respond when everything falls apart? Job gives us one way with this strange dichotomy of blessing and charge, of confession and accusation. Job models what it might look like to hold on believing almost to spite the reasons for unbelief; to remain among the faithful in order to enter the dwelling of God and have it out face to face. I think there is good news here, that faith can look like this (it doesn’t have to, but it can). There’s good news in realising that this too is a Christian response to calamity and woe. We do not curse God when we challenge God. We do not abandon our faith when we rage against what has befallen us or our world. Paradoxically, as those called daily to take up our cross, is it not a fitting posture to pin ourselves to the wood to join voice with the world’s saviour crying, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me! Because perhaps, for more than just Job, this is the only way through to Sunday.

*Zvi Kolitz, Yosl Rakover Talks to God, translated Carol Janeway, 1999. 24-25.