Job 38:1-7, 22-30
18 October 2009 (preached on 25 Oct)
“Magnificent Irrelevance”
Having been forced to stay at home last Sunday with an aching back, my sermon title seems to have taken on new meaning. Not that I’m claiming for myself the adjective “magnificent”—maybe the “irrelevance” part is more to the point!
Two weeks ago, for our installation service (after arriving in April!), we were visited by some friends from Jamestown. We were there for nine years. But before that, we spent three years in Nebraska.
One thing living in Nebraska helped me understand was how anthropocentric (that is, “human centered”) my perception of the physical world is. That’s a fancy way of saying that I’ve tended to be more oriented to things made by us, like streets and buildings and national boundaries, as opposed to things like rivers and hills and canyons.
For example, I’m accustomed to seeing a field as something that lies next to a road, rather than a road as something that cuts across a field. I got the impression from some of the ranchers, especially some older ones, that paved roads represent an intrusion, something out of place. Visits to my mom in Tennessee help me to better appreciate that outlook. I notice shopping malls and housing developments in places I remember as field and forest.
These are some thoughts about a world that functions quite well in the absence of humans. It’s a world that gives much better than it gets from species Homo sapiens. These thoughts may seem to have nothing to do with the book of Job, at least not as the story is often told.
That is, as the story of the innocent man, personified as Job, who suffers all kinds of disaster. When his friends hear of his misfortune, they offer the only kind of consolation they know. They urge their friend to repent, since he must have done something wrong. I believe they’re sincerely concerned about him, because everyone knows that bad things happen for a reason. Maybe they just need to help him figure out what it is.
The innocent man, however, is convinced of his innocence, and he even challenges God to prove that he’s not. (Remember last time when I pointed out how Job wants his day in court?) He agonizes because he’s unable to meet God face to face and state his case. This is followed by an interlude—which many believe was added later to the story—an interlude in which a young man named Elihu who’s been listening decides to throw in his two cents’ worth.
Finally, God breaks the silence and answers the innocent man, though not as he’d expected. God has been challenged, and now God is ready to answer that challenge. The wisdom of the innocent man is questioned, since after all, he’s only a mortal, with limited understanding.
It’s here in chapter 38, the beginning of the divine response, that people in recent years have seen openings to new ways of understanding God’s message to Job. A more traditional take on God’s reply, to quote Marvin Pope, is that it’s a “magnificent irrelevance.” I like that: “magnificent irrelevance.” It ignores questions of guilt and innocence, since, as he says, “virtually all the arguments the human mind can muster [have] already been thrashed out in the Dialogue” between Job and his friends.[1]
Job gets hit with a bunch of questions like, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” and “What is the way to the place where the light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?” (vv. 4, 24). I can just imagine Job—or maybe myself: “Umm....could you repeat that last question?” More than a bit of humor can be seen in these apparently absurd inquiries from God.
Job questions the morality of what has happened to him. Remember, this is a man who has lost all his possessions. He’s lost his health…and, of course, he’s lost all of his children. All his friends can offer are rigid statements of traditional thinking that show how little they really understand what they’re witnessing. Above all, he’s mad at God—and God has some explaining to do!
What Job gets in response is example after example of scenes in creation—scenes of which he has little conception and even less control. It does seem that God disregards Job’s concerns, as if trying to understand the ways of God is like trying to enter “the storehouses of the snow” (v. 22).
But as I indicated a moment ago, not everyone sees God as being evasive or dismissive. Getting back to my early comments about seeing the world apart from human activity, Walter Gulick points out that “it is helpful to notice that God answers Job out of a whirlwind.”[2] (The Good News Bible says “storm.”) A whirlwind is a good symbol for God’s voice, because it turns things around. But it also says something about Job himself.
“In turning away from the voice of his friends to the vision of the whirlwind,” Gulick continues, “Job becomes a visionary, one who sees and understands…He imaginatively tours the creation and recognizes that it displays a logic beyond that of good and evil or reward and punishment.”[3]
If you recall, Satan’s claim was that Job only served God because he had been so richly rewarded. “Just think about it. He does what you want him to because he knows there’s something in it for him—blessings beyond measure! Now, here’s what I say. Take that away from him, and he’ll say, ‘Hasta la vista, baby!’”
And as a
metaphor, what better way is there to describe what Job has gone through than
the symbol of the whirlwind? He who has
felt the full ferocity of the storm encounters God deep in its heart. Here we are back to the theme of conversion I
mentioned in the previous two sermons.
That
image of storm reminds me of the movie The
Shawshank Redemption. I can honestly
say that, without fear of exaggeration, it has to be one of the best movies
ever made. For those who have still never seen it: it’s about a quiet, reflective banker named
Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins, who is unjustly convicted of double
murder and given a life sentence.
So we
have something of a Job-like figure, in that an innocent man has had to endure
the suffering that goes along with incarceration. The film co-stars Morgan Freeman, who plays
Red, who has spent almost all of his adult life in prison because of a murder he
committed as a young man.
Late in
the movie, Andy is talking to Red, and he’s reflecting on the course of events
that have unfolded in his life. “Bad
luck, I guess,” Andy concludes. “It
floats around. It’s got to land on
somebody. It was my turn, that’s
all. I was in the path of the
tornado. I just didn’t expect the storm
would last as long as it has.”
The word
“Redemption” in the story’s title is really portrayed in the unforgettable scene
in which Andy, having escaped Shawshank Prison, lifts his hands up to the
sky. In the midst of a driving rain, he
seems reborn, washed clean, baptized.
The image of storm is used for both suffering and salvation.
We’ve all heard the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?” How about this: does it have any meaning? We’re back to the world of nature as having value, without the presence of humans. That’s at least part of God’s message to Job.
Here’s one of those “magnificently irrelevant” questions: “Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no one lives, on the desert, which is empty of human life?” (vv. 25-26).
Still, while the affirmation of the natural world is important, its placement in the book of Job has a different function than say, the History Channel show Life after People! (Though if you’ve ever watched that show, you may see a bit of overlap in meaning!)
Philosopher David Strong says that the voice in the wind that Job hears is meant for his healing. So maybe God isn’t being so irrelevant after all; maybe God is giving Job the most relevant thing possible—something he needs, in light of the disasters he’s suffered.
According to Strong, “[T]he fresh vision of things in their created wildness, in their being what they are, quite apart from [either] being for us or being assisted by us, is what heals Job.”[4] Another way of putting it is that, by getting this glimpse of things as they are, without any human involvement, Job is able to see his problems in a whole new way. It may sound callous, but the truth is: the world keeps on turning. We sometimes say when faced with a problem, “I guess it’s not the end of the world!” Well, it’s true. Life goes on.
There’s something therapeutic in knowing that the world doesn’t stand or fall because of what happens to us. It tends to lift the horrible burden of self-importance we often carry around! Sometimes things just happen. It’s not always a matter of reward or punishment. As Jesus says in Matthew 5, God makes the “sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (v. 45).
That may sound like that we’re alone with our problems. The moon keeps revolving around the earth, worker ants continue to serve their queen, leaves fall from the trees. But there’s a life force present throughout all of creation, a force that raised Jesus from the dead, the one who in our gospel reading opens the eyes of the blind (Mk 10:46-52).
God turns Job loose in the midst of this life. God shows Job what really is all around him. And it’s nothing less than the very life of God—the loving, caring, self-sacrificing life that is with us at every moment.
The dialogue between God and Job shows, in a strangely intimate way, how our relationship with God can’t be boxed in with clichés, such as “what goes around comes around” or “God will not give you any more than you can bear” (that’s actually a reference to temptation, 1 Co 10:13). Our relationship with God is a mystery, but in that mystery, the assurance of “I will never leave you nor forsake you” remains constant.
[1] Marvin H. Pope, Job (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1973), lxxxi.
[2] Walter B. Gulick, “The Bible and Ecological Spirituality,” Theology Today 48:2 (July 1991): 189.
[3] Gulick, 190.
[4] David Strong, “The Promise of Technology Versus God's Promise in Job,” Theology Today 48:2 (July 1991): 174.