Readings from Job for Year B,
All Sundays in October
I offer preachers who will wrestle with Job this month my heartfelt sympathies. You will wrestle, as generations of preachers have wrestled, to wring messages from the texts that the lectionary has already wrenched out of context.
Scholars mostly agree that the story of Job is fiction. Some call it the first novel. It isn’t a fable. We can’t coax morals out of each episode. We can point to Job’s infamous non-comforters and say, “Don’t be like Bildad the Shuhite! Be kind, and listen to those who suffer.” Sound advice. Short sermon. We can point out the deficiencies in Eliphaz’s Temanite theology, and end up preaching against at least half of the whole Old Testament. We can make Job a hero and Zophar the Naamathite a villain. The villain of the tale is actually God, who makes a bet at Job’s expense and rains suffering down on an innocent man to make a point. Point made, God becomes the real hero! Job’s nobody. Rich again, but not very important.
In its time, when the whole idea of Hebrew scripture was in its infancy, the faithful people who first told Job’s story were engaged in a theological battle. In the Old Testament that we know it’s clear neither side won, but both proclaimed victory. The authors of Job put the popular theology of their day in the mouths of Job’s friends. But the whole tale is an argument against any idea that God can be contained in ritual, controlled by the obedience of the faithful, and commanded to bless those who prove their worthiness through their wealth.
God is bigger than anyone can ever dare imagine. God’s ways with the universe, and with little beings like Job, are beyond comprehension or prediction. Living a good life is good in itself, but it has no bearing on a soul’s fate. In the end, Job’s redemption—if we can call it that—is by grace. Is he a better man than he was? Richer, yes. His enlightened attitude to the place of women in his family suggests he has learned something. Neither wealth nor enlightenment reaches beyond death, though they may last 140 years.
In the end, all there is, is trust: submission to the will of a God who can only be good, even when we can’t believe it. We heirs of John Calvin agree with that, don’t we? Our Muslim neighbours certainly do. The Arabic word islam sums it up.
We Christians never speak of grace apart from words about Jesus. The Book of Job is all about grace. We might say it’s the dark side, or the hard edge of grace. Frederick Buechner wrote that grace means, “There is nothing you have to do. There is nothing you have to do. There is nothing you have to do.” We can say “amen” to that when we reflect on our ultimate fate. We can say “amen” when we’re feeling good, lucky, blessed. God must be smiling on us! What about those times when we’re close to cursing God and wishing we were dead? Even those moments when we feel bad, unlucky, and sinned against? Can we trust when we can’t find any grace? When we feel closer to Job than to Jesus?
Job’s story asks “what if?” It calls us to explore the limitlessness of God’s sovereignty and freedom. To imagine what God’s absolute claim on us might just mean. Job’s story represents one Hebrew voice in the early days of a conversation that continues. Job’s story tells us something we dare not forget. It doesn’t tell us everything about God’s ways with the world, or with you and me.
Have fun with Job’s story. It drips with irony. There are twists and jokes throughout.
