Out from the Depths (Oct 27)

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.