Job 38:1-11; Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32; Mark 4:35-41
Simply put, the Book of Job is about tragedy and how people respond to it. Since it has probably been a while since you looked at it, let me give you a brief synopsis.
The book has prologue which sets the scene. Job is depicted as “honest inside and out, a man of his word, who was totally devoted to God, and hated evil with a passion,” in the words of The Message version of the book. He has seven sons and three daughters, and owns seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred pairs of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a vast number of servants. To whom today could we compare him? Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, some sheik in Dubai? Perhaps.
One day the divine beings (angels) report to God. God points out Job to one of the divine beings, the Adversary, hassatan in Hebrew, from which we get the word “Satan.” God says, “There is no one like him” (Job1:8). The Adversary says that God has pampered him and protected him. If God were to take it all away, Job “will certainly curse you to your face” (1:11). God accepted the challenge with the proviso that the Adversary not hurt Job himself.
All manner of disasters strike: armies kill his servants and steal the livestock and a tornado tears through the house where the sons and daughters were gathered, killing them all. “In all this, Job didn’t sin or blame God” (Job 1:22).
The Adversary didn’t give up. “If you take away his health, he’ll break.” God said, “Okay, just preserve his life.” Job is best with terrible physical afflictions – sores and ulcers from head to toe. He responds to his personal and physical tragedies with great complaints, but maintains his spiritual integrity (2:10).
Three friends come along a try to pass the time with him, consoling him, counseling him, urging him to find some small sin in his past that is the cause for all his woes. Their empty platitudes are of no help and only intensify the agony Job is living through. They mock him and ultimately become hostile to him, accusing him of hiding his sin. Back and forth they bicker, Job all the while maintaining his righteousness, which becomes more and more self-centered.
A fourth individual had been listening to this banter and jumped in when the three gave up. He was angry with Job because he perceived that Job thought himself more righteous than God. He was also angry at the other three interlocutors because they hadn’t come up with an answer or proved Job wrong.
As the discussion gets more heated, Job wishes he could converse directly with God and get the answers to his questions and tell God a thing or two. The final unhelpful comment given to Job is that God simply is, so don’t ask questions.
Finally God breaks into the conversation out of a whirlwind. God’s comments start with today’s reading.
So for the first 37 chapters we see that tragedies happen and that people respond in a variety of ways: with ignorance, with platitudes, with recriminations and guilt-tripping, with arrogance, with anger, and with lament.
Soong-Chan Rah has been studying the necessity of lament in American society. Friday he wrote on the Sojourners magazine blog that lament is difficult for Americans because we tend towards triumphalism and exceptionalism.
“Triumphalism means that when we are confronted with suffering, we opt for quick fix-it solutions. Triumphalism means that we avoid the topic of race because it makes us uncomfortable and we want to resume our pursuit of the American dream uninterrupted by an awareness of systemic injustice that allows for the perpetuation of that dream. Exceptionalism allows us to claim that there is no such thing as implicit bias. After all, in an exceptional nation, we are all equal and we all have equal opportunity in an exceptional economic and political system.” (1)
He goes on to says that “Under the narrative of triumphalism and exceptionalism, we continue to weave a web of lies that creates a society where a terrorist act in Charleston, SC, can be just another news item. Lament interrupts the narrative of triumphalism and exceptionalism.”
There is an aura of triumphalism and exceptionalism in the discourse that Job is finally driven to in demanding that God be accountable to him for what has happened. If Job laments, it is because God has not supplied an adequate explanation. And certainly his so-called comforters have given him nothing other than salt for his wounds to his way of thinking.
Soong-Chan Rah points out that the opening two chapters of the book of Lamentations is “a funeral dirge in response to an unspeakable tragedy.” God’s chosen people have experienced an unspeakable tragedy of being invaded, overpowered, subjugated, killed off and exiled. The only people that remain are those who were already at the margins of society: widows, orphans, toddlers, senior citizens, the infirm and disabled. There is no hope, as is usually the case in the psalms of lament. In the Lamentation funeral dirge there is a dead body — of a nation, of an ideal, of a dream — and it is front and center. It cannot be avoided.
Soong-Chan Rah continues:
“When we lament alongside the grieving in South Carolina, we have to acknowledge that our nation’s history is littered with dead bodies. Dead bodies on slave ships of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Dead bodies on the Trail of Tears as civilizations and people were wiped out. Dead bodies of four little girls and young black men. And now nine dead bodies in a church. We must deal with the dead bodies in the room with a funeral dirge.”
Lament is not a passive act. It is subversive, it is an act of protest. It is subversive because when the self-righteous call out for punishment and the death penalty, the family members of the nine people killed in the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston offer forgiveness in Christ, much as the Amish community in Lancaster County, PA, did several years ago when an individual sprayed a school room with gunfire killing a number of children.
“You took something very precious from me, but I forgive you,” Ethel Lance’s daughter said through tears. “It hurts me. You hurt a lot of people, but may God forgive you.” Speaking of her son Tywanza Sanders, who was killed trying to shield his great aunt from gunfire, Felicia Sanders said to the suspect: “We welcomed you Wednesday night in our Bible study with open arms. You have killed some of the most beautifullest people that I know. Every fiber in my body hurts. I will never be the same.” Alanna Simmons, the granddaughter of 74-year-old retired pastor Daniel Simmons, declared, “Although my grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate, this is proof that they lived and loved. Hate won’t win.”(2)
Lament is an act of protest because the marginalized need to be heard. The voiceless speak through lament. They cry out that things aren’t right, aren’t the way things are supposed to be. Lament voices the prayers of the suffering and therefore serves as an act of protest against the principalities and powers that have individuals and their social orders – spiritual, political, economic – in a headlock.
This obviously is not the sermon I had planned to write on the Job reading. Yet the Spirit has a way of knowing what is needed. It surely is a God-activity that the gospel reading is about the storm. We are living in stormy times. In the midst of gun violence, racism, and the widening economic gap between the many with the least and the few with the most, we are in a perfect storm. The boat of life is being tossed every which way. It feels like it about to be swamped, and we are afraid. Afraid for our lives, afraid for our nation, afraid for the world, afraid even for God.
God doesn’t promise us life without storms. God promises to go through the storms with us so we may come out the other side. In the words of Haruki Murakami, “When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person that walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.” Life in Christ is about changing who we are into who God means for us to be.
Like Job we demand answers. And God reminds us that our knowledge is so minuscule compared to God’s that our arrogance is but a puff of smoke, a blade of grass that sprouts in the morning and withers by sunset. May we, with the least of Christ’s sisters and brothers, truly lament the evil that surrounds us and bow before our God who seeks nothing but good things for all people. May we bear our nation’s pain. May we come through the storm as God’s transformed people.
In closing, I want to read a prayer for today by Jill Duffield, editor of The Presbyterian Outlook. Let us pray.
“Almighty God, our gathering together for worship and prayer is, this day, both an offering of praise and a show of courage. We come to this sanctuary mindful that even sacred spaces are not necessarily safe spaces. We bow our heads remembering our brothers and sisters in Christ whose last earthly act was prayer. We give thanks for the lives of your faithful servants: Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lee Lance, Susie Jackson, Daniel Simmons and Depayne Middleton Doctor. Comfort their families and friends and strengthen them in the difficult days that are ahead. We pray, too, because Christ commands us to, for Dylan Roof and his family. Bring peace, transform hearts, show us again your resurrection power in places we cannot imagine it can come.
“You tell us, Lord God, that perfect love casts out fear and the families of the victims of Mother Church and the people of Charleston have shown us what loving fearlessness looks like. Forgiveness has been extended, hands have been held, hymns have been sung, prayers have been lifted, unity has been demonstrated. The Goliath of hate and racism has not and will not win.
“People of faith and prayer, slain after extending Christ’s welcome in God’s house, have left a legacy that cannot be gunned down. Their lives of love and grace have begat love and grace. The gifts of the Spirit that you gave them – gifts of love, joy, peace, gentleness and goodness – appeared defeated on Wednesday night, but on Thursday when people came together and sang, “We Shall Overcome,” and on Friday when words of forgiveness were spoken and a vigil packed a coliseum, and on Saturday when crowds gathered in solidarity to say that symbols have consequences, and today as we and countless others pray for peace and commit to being peacemakers, we recognize the gifts you gave those nine are unstoppable, exponential, inevitable and victorious.
“God of justice and compassion, you sent your Son for the sake of the world you love. He was murdered, his last words a prayer for forgiveness. Three days later he rose from the dead, his first words ones of reassurance, telling us not to be afraid because even death had been defeated.
“Today we remember and proclaim: Violence and hate do not have the last word. The love of God made known to us through Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, always has the last word. The Spirit’s crop of goodness and love and joy and peace and gentleness will not stop growing. Now is the time for us – people of faith, brothers and sisters of every race and background – to recognize these unshakable truths and in the midst of the storm, trust the power of the One in the boat with us.
“We yield ourselves to you, Triune God, knowing you bring redemption, reconciliation and resurrection. Make us your witnesses. May your perfect love in us and shown through us, cast out fear and help transform the world.
“Amen.” (3)
(1) Soong-Chan Rah, http://www.sojo.net/blogs/2015/06/19/call-national-lament.
(3) http://pres-outlook.org/2015/06/prayer-for-sunday-worship-in-the-wake-of-the-charleston-massacre/.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright © 2015 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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