Unitarian Universalist Meeting of
“Job and the Whirlwind:
A Message for Our Time?”
Rev. Kathy Duhon
Many weeks ago
I chose the subject of the suffering Job for this Sunday, but it seems
especially appropriate now – in our community many deaths have occurred this
week that have us all reeling – I’ve been to two funerals in the last three
days. And some of us met with the ACORN
staff person yesterday who verifies how horrible it is, still, in
I wonder how
many of you have read the Book of Job in the Bible. Surely, many among you have at least heard of
this man of suffering and his conversation/debate with his challenging friends,
and the drama arising between Job and God.
This is not history – it is myth and poetry and a moving story. You may have heard the expression about “the patience
of Job”, which comes from the Christian Scriptures, but isn’t a good
translation – it should be the “endurance, or the perseverance, of Job” – for
Job was not patient.
The Book of Job explores some of the
basic questions that continue to plague us.
Why do bad things happen to good people?
Is success deserved? Is religion only
a fair-weather phenomenon? How do we
approach those who are suffering? Do we
blame the victim, even in subtle ways? Are
we ashamed or defensive when we ourselves suffer? Is God responsible for suffering? Does God comfort the sufferer? Is God even relevant or real, given the
enormity of suffering that exists? What
can it possibly mean to be religious when you are deeply suffering? Does it really help the sufferer to believe
that there is a plan, or that the mystery of why things happen the way they do
is just beyond our comprehension? Is
there any help for the sufferer?
I remember quite well when I first
read The Book of Job. I was in college taking a world religion
seminar, called a “tutorial”. Every week
we read a book and wrote a 2 page response paper, then discussed the subject in
our small group. One week we read
Rudolph Otto’s book, The Idea of the Holy. Another week we read The Bhagavad Gita. For the week we read The Book of Job, the topic for our small paper was “Compare and
contrast the figure of Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita with the figure of
Job in the Hebrew Scriptures in light of Otto’s idea of the Holy”, a ponderous
topic indeed.
I have a rebellious streak – it
doesn’t show up too often, but when it does, watch out! I decided that the topic was awful and that I,
sufferer that I was as a college student, wanted to write a paper only on Job,
on suffering. I ignored the topic, wrote
my heart out, and got the worst grade I ever received. I was invited to re-write the paper, to actually
do the assignment, and I righteously refused. Why be scholarly when religion was calling me
to wade in the turbulent waters?
Now that I am older, I realize that
my college idea of suffering was very small, quite unworthy of the name – I
would have been better off being scholarly than falling into the same righteous
trap that is explored in the Book of Job.
It’s not that I didn’t suffer – we all suffer, and I have suffered since,
with a wider range of experience. The
older we are, the more we suffer, simply from the more time spent living. We suffer physical pain, emotional distress, spiritual affliction.
We suffer from what has been done hurtfully to us and what we have done
wrong, or not done right. We suffer because
of fear, loss, despair, anger, injustice, hatred.
But perhaps you, like I, realize
that a larger suffering exists which we are not privy to, which we do not begin
to understand. I may be wrong, of course
– some of you may very well understand the worst that life can bring you. Last summer, when Bill Schulz spoke to the
ministers about torture at our meeting before General Assembly, he said that we
ought to be mindful that, whatever we do in a religious service, it is still
worthy to someone listening, if that person had been tortured. He cautioned that we shouldn’t be “upsy daisy”, fluffy, lightweight liturgists.
I have not suffered in the worst
ways. I have not suffered by being tortured,
nor by torturing, nor by engaging in the horrors of
war with my own body. None of my beloved
have died by violence or by privation. I have not had to live with multiple losses
and sufferings all jammed together in a short space of time. I have not been dragged through the horror
and humiliation of a crime against my humanity.
I suspect that none of you here have suffered in the worst ways imaginable,
but I might be wrong. Suffering is so
hidden sometimes.
Not for Job. Suffering was unbearably public. Let me tell you his story. At the beginning, it starts in the heavenly
assembly, where Satan, who is only an adversary, not yet developed into the
demon of the Christian Scriptures, challenges God about Job. He basically says that Job is only a good,
righteous person who worships God because his life is so good. He is prosperous, has ten successful grown
children, and much to make him happy. By
the way, Job is from the
God agrees to the challenge, to
testing Job, as it were, and several calamities befall all of his livestock and
his children, one right after the other, until all are dead and destroyed. Job is in mourning, but still is blameless
and worships God. Satan returns to God
with the further challenge that Job himself should be afflicted. Then Job gets a skin disease that is both
excruciatingly painful and hideous to behold.
Job is suffering greatly.
Three friends, Eliphaz,
Zophar, and Bildad, who are
professional wise men, come from far away.
They also are not Hebrew, which means that this story is supposed to
represent a universal truth for all humanity.
They begin by weeping and sitting with Job silently for seven days and
nights, in witness to his suffering. A
point is made here about comforting the sufferer – sometimes it is good to just
be present, not to have the perfect words, but to come from away and be with
the person who is in pain, sharing their suffering with tears, with silence,
with accompaniment.
Job speaks first, cursing the day he
was born and asking “Why” many times.
This introduces much of the main part of the book, when the three
friends and Job take turns talking about his situation, debating it, trying to
understand and explain what is happening, and what needs to happen. A fourth person jumps in toward the end, Elihu, although that seems to be a later addition to the
text.
Eliphaz
speaks first. He is older, gentle, and
truly cares for Job, beginning by complimenting him. He moves on to question whether anyone can be
righteous, noticing that trouble is very common. He then tells Job what many of us have been
told, or told ourselves – suffering will make you stronger and everything will
be good again. Subtly, Eliphaz says that Job must have done something wrong and
needs to be disciplined by God, a path which will lead him back to the good
life.
Whether you believe in God or not,
as Unitarian Universalists, as liberal religious people, we have completely
rejected the idea of divine retributive justice, where the evil are punished
with bad things happening, and the good are rewarded with prosperity. It doesn’t make sense to us – that’s not how
the world works. The Book of Job is an
attempt to refute that theological stance, but it was still around in Jesus’
day when he tried to refute it again, and it is still around today. Disasters such as happened on September 11th
or continue to be ongoing in
When Job answers, he complains and
wishes that God would just crush him, and calls his friends “treacherous”, who
give him only “proverbs of ashes” and are “afraid” of his calamity. The fear part is very perceptive. It is the suffering we fear that we try to
box up and explain away, often blaming the
victim. We may not drag God into it, but
we are at times not above talking about how someone’s life decisions and those
of their parents (the old Biblical “sins of the fathers”?) made this horrible
calamity happen to them, whether it is cancer or an accident or even violence.
We are meant to see ourselves in the
figures of the friends. They are sometimes
solicitous, but they also become critical, sarcastic, judgmental, righteous,
and definitely think they know the solution, which they are anxious to tell to Job. They have the advice that he needs – do you know
anyone who has brought you the advice they were sure you needed when all you
really needed was for them to hold your hand?
Job says that he is innocent and
that God is targeting him for no reason – he challenges God to show him what he
has done wrong. Job is both sticking to his integrity, demanding respect for the
truth of his innocence, and also falling down a rabbit hole. Now his righteousness blinds him to another
truth – he believes the theology too – he thinks that he is being punished
falsely, so God is unjust. He believes
that God owes him prosperity because he’s been good. Job says that he is innocent, but his
theology means that God must be guilty.
Any challenge to God just makes
those friends see red and hunker down even further into their beliefs, so
instead of being there for Job’s comfort or even his redemption, they slip into
justifying their own understanding of the world, another trap.
Job goes through many of the
experiences of a sufferer – he thinks maybe he can forget and put on a happy
face; he wonders if he could have done something wrong, but keeps coming back
to his innocence. He wants to be left
alone and then he wants to fight. He is
angry, sad, complaining, clear-spoken, and feels lost in the dark and
chaos. Job hates being a laughingstock,
losing his power, being abandoned and despised, but he also begins to notice
the suffering of others, and how unfair it is for them as well.
Job wants to take his case to God;
his friends say he is making trouble and that he does not understand. At one point, Job calls them “miserable
comforters” and wonders why they keep talking, but also realizes that if he
were in their place, he might say some of the same things. Job is changing over the course of his
speeches. But he also keeps sinking into
thoughts about the comfort of death, feeling hopeless.
The friends become less and less
friendly, not even addressing Job so much as making speeches about
wickedness. Job says the wicked often
prosper – he is beginning to see the way of the world more clearly, while his
friends sink ever deeper into theological morass, saying that mortals are
really of no use to God, even the righteous, but that God is certainly just.
Job says that sometimes he cannot
perceive God. Bill Schulz, the previous
director of Amnesty International, is a Humanist who says he has recently
become more comfortable using the word God.
But he said that God is absent in the torture cell. And that is not just his belief – no one he
has spoken to can find God in their deepest suffering, other than as
absent. God is sometimes absent for Job
and he feels dread. And sometimes Job
believes God is cruel, to himself and to the needy.
After much talk, and at the point
when everything seems irreconcilable, God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind,
which is a typical way for God to appear in the Hebrew Scriptures. At this point, you’d think God would own up
to this being a test and Job being innocent, or would at least explain that
neither good behavior is rewarded with material benefit, nor bad behavior
punished with calamity. You’d think that
God would offer comfort at least. We heard
the beginning of God’s speech, a number of cosmic questions, like, “Have you
comprehended the expanse of the earth?”, “Is it by your wisdom that the hawk
soars?” Some who study the Bible say
these are playful questions; others say they are hard; most notice that they
re-direct the way to perceive the issue.
Divine retributive justice isn’t
even worth being discussed. Nor is any
kind of a case against God, whether God is just or unjust in dealing with the
world. The questions are never answered,
although most feel that they point to the strength and mystery of God and the
universe. I’m intrigued that they are
only ever questions, as though there is not an answer, or at least not a rational
one, for the meaning of suffering.
Whether a theist or a non-theist,
the larger point is clear here. There is
no good answer for suffering – the world is a world of questions and
relationships, and bad things happen.
There is a long discussion about the silly ostrich who leaves its eggs
on the ground to be trampled – if they are, it’s not evil, it just is. The questions center on the natural world and
the way the world is, and suffering is only one part of the world, along with
the wonders.
After many, many questions, Job
mumbles something about being small and not talking anymore. He is speechless. One commentator thinks that Job is still not
satisfied, and is essentially defiantly not answering the “no” that would be
expected – ‘no I wasn’t at the beginning of the world’, but implying, “If
you’re going to be like that, God, I have nothing more to say.”
God tries again, with a strong next
speech and a challenge for Job. What if
Job were in charge of it all? God says I
made Behemoth, which is the symbol of chaos and evil, “just as I made
you”. Behemoth can seem like a loveable
monster, but then there is Leviathan, another symbol of chaos and evil, described
in terrifying detail, with the question, “Who can confront it and be
safe?” Again, the awful stuff in the
world, evil, chaos, is just a part of the world, and
not something that can always be controlled, even if we think we can be in
charge of it all. Job cannot control his
lot by the power of his moral innocence – there are more forces to contend with
that are beyond Job’s or anyone’s ability to handle.
Job is not to be condemned for his
suffering, nor is God, nor the universe.
Suffering is inherent in the way things are – that is the final message
of the Book of Job. You’d think that would
really leave Job depressed, but somehow it is enough, just as it is enough for
some who suffer today to realize that there is no blame, no why – it simply is
what it is. The text says that Job
repents, which seems surprising, since he didn’t do anything wrong, but Job
repents of dust and ashes, which means he repents of the signs of repentance –
he casts aside the religious teaching and actions of his day to embrace the
truth which is revealed to him about the world.
The final part of the book has Job
saying that I really understand, where I didn’t before, and that God is strong
and purposeful and also a big mystery that I don’t understand, either. Job has a change of mind and heart and he
gains humility. Then, God finishes up by
really letting the three friends have it for not speaking the right way to Job
– they have to apologize and make it right with Job, whose prayer for them will
be important. How did they mess up so
badly, those religious three? By being
so certain that they knew the way of God and the way of the world that they did
not leave room for the Mystery, for Truth, for Compassion. It is only after Job prays for his
friend-enemies that he is restored his fortunes and then some, and even gets 10
more children and lives another 140 years.
The book ends, “And Job died, old and full of days.”
God speaks out of the whirlwind, out
of the turbulent places, but not to give an answer, to ask questions – that is
a real Unitarian Universalist-style God.
And yet the truth is revealed, that prospering and suffering are not
signs of either goodness nor badness, that you shouldn’t just accept the
religious or usual understanding if it does not ring true to you, that you
should contend when you are concerned and express your despair, anger, doubt,
truth, suffering, and that you should be compassionate and not judgmental to
those who are suffering. The God who
speaks is as concerned, as confrontational, as distressed as Job, and also a
God who accompanies, who is compassionate, who honors
the Truth.
Suffering is about you and it’s not
about you. There is no answer to
suffering, no way to understand it except to go through it fully with others,
and with the force that is greater than the self or the others – the force of
truth, love, faith, some say the power of God.
Before
I conclude this whirlwind of a sermon about Job, you may be wondering why I
read from Martin Luther King, Jr. earlier.
This week I heard a recording of that talk of his about
Although we accept the place of
natural suffering in the universe, we do not accept the injustice of humanity
causing needless suffering. With King, we
ask for “a maturity of
Out of the whirlwind of life and suffering, may we always question, while still remembering to be amazed at the wonders of this world, and may we seek the Truth, Justice, Peace, while accompanying others, bringing blessing for all. Amen.