Job 42
1 November 2009
All Saints’ Day
“Job, the Enlightened One”
This is the last of a sermon
series of four on the book of Job. Two
Sundays ago, I wasn’t able to make it to church, due to an aching back. I believe it was the following night, while lying
in bed, that I was pondering the fact that movement in any direction was
painful. It was then that I realized, “I
really don’t know what I’m talking about!”
I had been presuming to speak about Job and his turmoil, and here I was,
lamenting a backache. There does seem to
be, if not always welcome, a sense of humor built into the fabric of the
universe!
Having said that, let’s have
a quick review!
A month ago, on World
Communion Sunday, we looked at chapters 1 and 2. That’s where we’re introduced to Job, who is
described as “blameless and upright” (1:1).
This is the same guy who’s the object of attention when God says to
Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job?” (1:8). Maybe it’s just me, but that’s some
consideration that would make me nervous!
Of course, what follows is the loss of Job’s livestock, the death of his
children, and eventually, the loss of his health.
In one of those scenes that
would be funny if it weren’t so tragic, no sooner does one messenger show up
than another arrives—while the first guy is still talking. It’s as if to
say, “You call that bad news? Listen to this!”
The week after that, in
chapter 23, we got a snippet of the dialogue between Job and his friends. Believing, as they do, that all this disaster
is somehow Job’s fault, they urge him to confess his guilt. Only then can he have some kind of hope of
reconciliation with God.
And last Sunday (after my
backache-induced hiatus), we noted how God finally answers Job. God’s response to Job is very unsatisfying if
we’re looking for answers to questions like:
why does Job suffer? Why does evil exist? People often get irritated at God’s so-called
“answer,” which consists of questions about the creation that Job can’t
possibly grasp. It seems as though it’s
but a way of putting Job, and us, in our places. As I said last week, with the questions God
asks Job, it seems like the Lord is just being evasive!
I’m not suggesting that
there’s any one single way to
resolve this. (I’ll say more about that
in a few moments.) But as I pointed out
last week, God’s revelation to Job about his place in the vast creation is a healing revelation. To limit it to reward and punishment puts
Job, and us, into artificial constraints.
And so, here we are at
chapter 42, the end of the book. The
long section of poetry is wrapped up.
We’re back to the ancient story of the suffering, but innocent,
man. It very much has the feel of: “and they lived happily ever after.”
The Lord lets Eliphaz,
Bildad, and Zophar know that they didn’t get it right; they need to ask Job to
pray for them. And as for Job, he’s
blessed with double the amount of
livestock he lost, but with the same
number of children—seven sons and three daughters. There’s an unspoken commentary on the value
of human life. It shouldn’t be regarded
the same way we do wealth.
(Unfortunately, that’s very often not the case!)
There’s something else to
notice about the text. It tells us
something about the daughters that
it doesn’t about the sons. It lets us know their names! Considering the culture in biblical times,
that’s no small thing. And they are
given an inheritance along with their brothers.
It looks like Job truly becomes an enlightened man!
Right
now, I want us to focus on a single verse.
It has a number of different nuances, and in some ways, it affects how
we understand the entire book of Job.
It’s verse 6, which contains the final words we hear spoken by Job. This comes right after he admits his
ignorance. As I said last week, God has
shown him scenes throughout creation and asked him the “hows” and “whys.” All Job can say is this: “I don’t know.” (Which, to me, is the beginning of wisdom!)
In
verse 5, he says that he’s known God by means of hearsay, so to speak. “I’ve heard about you, but now, I have seen you!” Something has happened. Job is now aware of direct experience of
God. As I suggested last week, he has
caught a vision.
After
Job—after any of us—has had an experience like that, nothing is the same. We are forever changed. In Christian terminology, we recognize
ourselves as a new creation. The old,
tired, dead rules of how we imagine the future are erased. We are liberated. But as I said, such an experience, if it is
genuine, means that business as usual no longer works. Something has happened, therefore…and here’s
verse 6.
In the
NRSV and the NIV, the verse reads, “therefore I despise myself, and repent in
dust and ashes.” The King James Version
says, “I abhor myself.” This is strong
language! It at least suggests a deep
sense of contrition, of remorse, maybe even to the point of self-loathing.
The
Good News Bible takes a slightly different slant: “I am ashamed of all I have said and repent in dust and
ashes.” The New Jerusalem Bible follows
a similar line when it says, “I retract what I have said, and repent in dust
and ashes.” The focus here isn’t so much
on Job himself, but on what he considers to be his foolish talk.
The Revised English Bible takes an
apparently softer tone. It still
finishes the verse with “repenting in dust and ashes,” but it begins with Job
simply saying, “I yield.” I give up.
Whichever of these we go with, it
still seems to contradict the claim that Job is innocent, that he doesn’t
deserve the horrors that have happened to him.
In fact, we read in the very next verse how God says to Eliphaz, “I am
angry with you and your two friends, because you did not speak the truth about
me, the way my servant Job did.”
Two Hebrew words are the guilty
parties in the confusion over this verse.
The first one, sa'm; (ma’as), means “reject”
or “despise,” but it can also mean “melt away” or “dissipate.” The second one, !j'n; (nacham), means “repent,” but it can also
mean “to comfort.”
Earlier, when referring to God’s
message to Job—when he’s asked all those magnificently irrelevant questions—I
said I wasn’t suggesting
that there’s any one single way to resolve this. Well, the same thing is true here. Does Job repent? If so, of what does he repent?
In his
book On Job, Gustavo Gutiérrez,
looking at those Hebrew words, sees the verse this way: “therefore I repudiate and repent of dust and
ashes. The phrase ‘dust and ashes’ is an
image of groaning and lamentation.”[1] So by repenting of “dust and ashes,” Job is turning
away—he is changing his mind—about his whole attitude of
complaining about his fate. He figures
he’s grumbled long enough.
But beyond that, Gutiérrez says, “Job realizes that he has been
speaking of God in a way that implied that God was a prisoner of a particular
way of understanding justice.”[2] That is, an idea of justice that is
hopelessly tied to reward and punishment.
Even while debating with his friends, Job uses that terminology. “I’m being punished, even though I know I
haven’t done anything wrong.” It’s only
after God steps in—only after God intervenes with the storm—that Job is
liberated, that he is able to see beyond all of that.
It’s been noted elsewhere that “the text deliberately leaves open what
exactly Job meant with his reaction to God’s speeches out of the whirlwind.”[3] It wasn’t necessary for our author to use
those exact words. It could have been
phrased differently, a little more clearly.
Come on, no fooling around. Job,
what lesson did you learn from all of this?
What lesson are we to learn from this?
There’s this element of uncertainty that, depending upon one’s
personality, makes the book of Job completely maddening—or very cool!
Earlier, I referred to Job as “enlightened.” Many people would assume that that means he has the answers. One thing the book of Job lets us know is that its namesake has very few answers! Still, by repenting, by turning, from “dust and ashes,” Job declares that he is in a new relationship with God. Job doesn’t need to have the answers.
During this sermon series I have suggested seeing the book of Job as
one of conversion. Despite the claims
that God is being irrelevant or evasive in the response
to Job, I have suggested that God gives Job a new vision—a vision that heals
him. By acknowledging that the
past is gone and by looking forward to a new way of being with God, Job invites
us to do the same.
It seems like so much of what we do in the church is to play with our own “dust and ashes,” so to speak. We keep looking backward, thinking we can save the dust and ashes, but we can’t. That stuff doesn’t make a very good foundation for building anything! Understand, I’m not speaking of denying the reality of suffering. Rather, I’m talking about a refusal to accept new vision from God.
Notice the quote by Henri Nouwen in our worship bulletin.[4] “Often it seems harder to believe in the
Church than to believe in God. [I can’t
imagine why!] But whenever we separate
our belief in God from our belief in the Church, we become unbelievers. God has given us the Church as the place
where God becomes God-with-us.”
This is a call for continual repentance from dust and ashes. This is a call to be the change Christ would
have us be. It’s a call to accept
ourselves as a new creation; otherwise, we’re like those friends of Job!