“FROM DESPAIR TO HOPE”
FOUR-PART SERIES ON JOB
JOB, Part 3: "Oh stop whining!"
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, February 18, 2001
Text: Job XXXVIII: 39-41
Job XXXIX: 1 & 20
My text this morning is taken from Job XXXVIII Verses 39 to 41 and Job XXXIX Verses 1 and 2. There is, of course, the rest of the chapter, and I want t o finish with the last few verses from Chapter XXXVIII and the beginning of Chapter XXXIX. God addresses Job: Do you find food for lions to eat, and satisfy hungry young lions when they hide in their caves, or lie in wait in their dens? 1Who is it that feeds the ravens when they wander about hungry, when their young cry to me for food? XXXIX Do you know when mountain-goats are born? Have you watched wild deer give birth? Do you know how long they carry their young? Do you know the time for their birth? God asks Job for a response.
The spotlights had just come on and I walked up to the stage of the Convocation Hall at Mount Allison University with my guitar in hand. It was the final of the Inter Collegiate Folk Festival. I had been chosen to represent my university, Mount A, in this prestigious event. I was excited. In fact, I had heard that students from Mount Allison were more likely to win than many others, for that had been the tradition in the Maritimes. So I was exceedingly confident that the prize would be mine. Not only that, it's like winning the Stanley Cup on your own home ice, I thought. I will be the hero of campus when I am done. I thought very hard about what I should play from my repertoire. Should I play the songs that had got me to the final or should I, in fact, sing some more eclectic pieces that might be able to impress the judges? I decided on the latter, for I had made up my mind at that moment that I would save my really good songs for my encore. Everyone would applaud and they would want to hear me continue to play. I would save the best for last. I therefore sang three rather mundane pieces. There was a very light trickle of applause and I realized, right there in front of all those spotlights, that I was dying a death. Everyone was expecting my good stuff and I had saved it for an encore. When I realized that an encore was never going to happen I finally slunk off the stage and quietly went out to wait for the decision of the judges. I felt about an inch high. Two young men from St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish got up and played a song about smoking marijuana. The place was rocking by the time they had finished. They received a standing ovation and I realized that my day in the limelight had finally come to an end, all because of a song about marijuana. Finally the judges gave their decision. Of course the young men from St. Francis won; students from Dalhousie came second; students from, of all places, St. Mary's, came third; the representative from Acadia came fourth. There was an honourable mention for the fifth and final person, Andrew Stirling, from whom better things were expected!
I remember going out into the cold frosty night. The smell of the marsh was particularly poignant. The wind was blowing off it and I went back into my room. There, all my friends were ready. They had the champagne, they had the drinks, they had the party hats, because I was so convinced I was going to win and so were they. They didn't know what to do. I walked in and I sat down. It was the most muted university party anyone will ever have attended. Fifteen minutes of deafening silence later, they all decided that they should go to where the real party was, with the students from St. Francis Xavier. I sat in my room comfortless, furious with myself, realizing that, in fact, I had been the author of my own demise. My own arrogance in assuming that my encore would be the best piece really tells the whole tale. Never have I felt so alone as I did that night. In fact, I was interviewed by The Argosy, the magazine of Mount Allison University, the week later asking me what lessons I had learned from all of this. Can you imagine. The whole University was doing a post-mortem for a week. Why did Andrew blow it so badly? I remember answering by simply saying that I had really forgotten what had got me there in the first place: namely, that always and on every occasion, I had sung songs of faith. Now I had become so consumed by my own ability that I had forgotten that it was the songs and not me that had got me there. I felt a little bit like Job in our passage today.
Job had reached the point of the greatest arrogance. He, as we had learned in the last couple of weeks, had lost everything. He had listened to many different voices, but now, we read, his bones ache. He feels that there is a collar around his neck that is getting tighter and tighter. He feels like dirt, because for the first moment in the whole of the Book of Job, Job finally humbles himself and realizes before whom he ultimately must give account. Job then says to God: "Why don't you talk to me? I am suffering like this. Why don't you answer me?" And God surprises Job. He speaks from out of the storm. He speaks from hiddenness and he says to Job: "No, Job, you are not the one who should be questioning my wisdom; you are the one who should be answering me. Stand up like a man. Your words are ignorant; your cries are useless, Job; Job, you should now answer me, not the other way around."
Now, Job goes into a moment of great self-defence and self-justification when God says this. Job says: "Now, just a minute. I have never lusted. I have never coveted my neighbour's wife. If I have coveted my neighbour's wife, then pray to God that my wife be cooking for another man and sleeping in another man's bed." He says: "I have never left orphans, to be on their own. I have not trampled on the poor. I have not used my power to rise above everybody else. Oh God, aren't you going to answer me, for what have I done wrong?" God says to Job: "No, Job. It is not on the basis of your own self-righteousness, it is not on the basis of your own self-justification that you come to me. Job, it is now your time no longer to be moaning and groaning and complaining and demanding things of me. It is now a time, Job, for you to listen."
So God speaks to Job, and the way in which God speaks to Job has three movements to it. They are some of the most powerful movements in the whole of the Bible. The more I've been reading them during the last few weeks, the more grasped I have become by them. In the first of these movements of God to Job, God tells him to stop whining, to stop whining. I mean, on the surface, it looks like Job has many good reasons to whine. After all, he has lost everything. His friends have given him bad advice and Elihu has just presented himself with some vacuous words. He wants to know why he is suffering. But the only way that God can answer Job is if Job first of all is silent and listens.
There is a wonderful story told, a true one, by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Delano Roosevelt, who was, of course, one of the great presidents of the United States of America, used to get tired of functions. When he was at these functions he got tired of people giving sort of vain comments and not listening to what he said. One day he hosted all the great diplomats in Washington. Whenever they greeted him, rather than just saying the normal pat phrases, he said: "I want you to know I killed my Grandmother last night." The first person who came up was from Argentina and so the diplomat from Argentina was greeted by him: "Hello! Welcome, I killed my Grandmother last night." "Oh very nice, Mr. President." And he walked on. The next one came from Brazil and the representative from Brazil shook his hand. He said: "I want you to know I killed my Grandmother last night." "Oh, how charming, Mr. President. You are doing a fine job." And he went through all the foreign diplomats saying I killed my Grandmother last night until finally he came to one diplomat. He came up to this diplomat and he said: "Oh, by the way, I killed my Grandmother last night." The diplomat smiled and said: "Well, Mr. President, she must have had it coming to her." Sometimes we really don't listen, do we? We hear all the words but we don't listen. And so it is with our own faith.
Henry Nouwen the great writer who was recently with the L'Arche community, wrote these wonderful words: "Somewhere we know that without silence, words lose their meaning; that without listening, speaking no longer heals; that without distance, closeness cannot cure." He is right. Sometimes without silence, words lose their meaning. Job, you see was in a run-along sentence. He never stopped to pause between words. He never stopped to pause between thoughts. He just kept spewing out from his soul to God all the things that were wrong in his life and he didn't take the time to listen. The paradox, of course, in all of this is, that God comes to Job and he actually says to him: "Listen." But then he says to him: "Now answer me. Where were you, Job, when these great things happened? Stand up like a man and answer the questions I ask you. Were you there when I made the world? If you know so much, Job, tell me about it." And so God, therefore, speaks to Job. He speaks to him powerfully, but he still wants Job to listen to such an extent that in the end, it is Job who is answering God and not the other way around.
Here is the great turning point in the Book of Job, for it brings us to the second thing, namely, that God speaks to Job through his hiddenness. If you look at the friends of Job; Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, they all had a nice little formula that they used to talk to Job. They said: "Job, you must have done something wrong, or you wouldn't be suffering. God always smiles on the righteous. God always judges the unrighteous. If you, therefore, have done something wrong, you are going to suffer." And all the way through the Book of Job, there is this continual formula that is being used. The only problem is, however, that the formula is actually, in Job's case, completely and absolutely wrong. All Job's friends have done is to take God, the great, the awesome creator, and bring him down to a formula, to an idea. It is the ultimate in reductio ad absurdum. Here is God, The Omnipotent, The Omniscient, reduced to a simple clause that these people feel they can repeat and, in so doing, define God. That is one of the reasons why God comes to Job in a storm. He comes to Job in a storm, not because he wants to give Job a formula, but because he wants Job to hear him and understand that there is still more of God that he might eventually understand and know.
If you look, for example, in the Book of Lamentations that Jeremiah wrote when the people of Israel were at their most decimated, when they were fleeing from their country, when injustice had swept their land, in this great Book of Lamentations, the writer asks: "Oh God, where are you? Why do you hide your face from me that I cannot see you clearly?" In the Book of Psalms, particularly Psalm 104, there is this sense that God hides his face from the psalmist who is experiencing the most terrible pain and agony. In other words, God reveals himself, but at the same time reveals his hiddenness. There is a sense in which God does not wish to be reduced to a formula. God cannot simply be put in a box and marketed.
That, I think, is an example for all of us whenever we are talking to one another. When we are providing pastoral counsel, when we are giving support to people in need, we must be careful that we do not reduce God to simply a series, or a level of arguments, or formulae, or theories, that we then just espouse in every situation. We must at all times be open to the fullness of God which is also hidden.
The great Church Fathers used to call this the Deus Abscondicus, the sense of God that is remote, that is not always present. There is a good reason for that. It really, in a sense, maintains God's freedom. The Book of Job is about the freedom of God. It is making sure that we do not confine God to images and ideas with which we are happy. It makes sure that we do not tame God It makes sure that we are humble before a great and a glorious God that we cannot simply define with our language and our words. The book of Job is about the sovereignty and the freedom of God. Job's friends wanted to narrow God down and when they did, they were wrong. Job wanted to tie God down, to give him a formula that would understand his suffering. But God would not be tied down by Job. Job, listen to me - not the other way round; Answer me - not the other way round. Job, who made all this world in which we live? Not you, but I.
There is a wonderful passage in Robert Frost's The Masque of Reason, where Job and his wife are on a desert island. The Lord appears to Job and his wife and the wife immediately runs up and says: "Hello, Lord. I recognize you from Blake's pictures." In other words, Job and Job's wife think that they can see God. They think that they can fully understand God, and know God. Frost is telling us in this poem: No, there is a mystery to God and there is a hiddenness to God. The reason why God hides his face from us at times is in order that we do not drag God down to the level of our own comprehension or our ability to make a formula or a theory.
There is a third thing. This is the most majestic movement of all, and in many ways, this is the central core of the Book of Job. It is simply this: that God is God, not Job. Let me repeat this. God is God, not Job. You see Job did not know the beginning of the story. Job had no idea what was going on with him. Job did not know why he had lost things. Job could not understand why it appeared that evil was prospering and that the good was being punished. Job could not understand how a man of his moral and spiritual integrity and faith could be suffering the way that he was. The reason why Job did not know that is that Job was not God. Job did not understand the clash between good and evil. Job did not understand that God allowed this to happen in the knowledge in fact that God actually believed in Job, to some extent; that God believed that Job's faith in the end would be vindicated and Job would be able to withstand the arrows that The Tempter was bringing his way. But Job did not know that, and he was confused. The reason Job was confused, and what the Book of Job brings him to eventually, is the point that he will only really understand what he is going through, he will only understand the life that he is living, if first of all he gives God the glory.
I love the words of this great poem of Chapter XXXVIII. There is a sense in which God challenges Job, and he says: "Who are you to question my wisdom with your ignorant and empty words? What holds the pillars that support the earth, Job? Who made the cornerstone of the world? In the dawn of that day, the stars sang together and the heavenly beings shouted for joy. Who closed the gates to hold back the sea when it burst from the womb of the earth? It was I, Job, who covered the sea with clouds and wrapped it in darkness. I marked a boundary for the sea and kept it behind bolted gates. I told it so far and no further. Here your powerful waves must stop. Job, have you ever in all your life commanded a day to dawn?" This was the great argument, then, from Creation. Job had been challenging God, but he had forgotten that his very being, his very existence, was due to the presence and the power of God who made him; that the cosmos, that the stars in the heavens that were made, were made by God, not by Job. And so, if God was so great that he made all this, how much more would he care for Job?
And then there is a great moment of humour in the Book, a twist, a magnificent twist. A little bit of sarcasm from God: "Job, do you know where the light comes from, or what the source of darkness is? Can you show me how far to go, or send them back again? I am sure you can, because you are so old and were there when the world was made, Job. You were so old, weren't you, Job? In other words, you have the wisdom of the ages, Job, don't you? No, you don't. I was there when the world was made, not you, Job." It is a salient reminder, a wake up call, that very often when we question the events that take place in our lives, we do so as if somehow, we are our own maker, and not the other way around.
My friends, this has huge implications for our daily lives. It is a wake up call to the way in which we treat the environment that is around us. Sometimes we treat it with such reckless abandon that we do not understand how finely made it is and with everything that we take out of the environment, the effect that it has eventually, even on ourselves. It is the same with daily events.
A few nights ago, I went to hear the Toronto Symphony Orchestra play a rendition of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. Sitting there, listening to that majestic movement, I must admit, in a sense, the story came back to me again. You know that at the end of the story, Juliet thinks that Romeo is dead and so she takes her own life. It is a tragedy, just like Job, that is based on the assumption that we always know the ending. And that because we know the ending by what we see, we determine what we are going to do.
It seems to me that the great tragedy in the Latimer case, of which I have written in the Church News, is that Latimer did not allow God to be God. He thought he understood what the end would be, even for his daughter; but, unlike God, he did not and does not.
So often, my friends, we are like Job. We say answer me rather than listen and allow God to be God.
There is a magnificent passage in Frederick Buechner's book, The Long Journey Home, where he tells the story of Father Zossima and the brothers in The Brothers Karamazov. Father Zossima comes home from war, and he is in a very bad mood. When he gets back home, the first thing that he does is slap his manservant, Afanasy, on the face. The next night, Father Zossima goes to bed. He sits there on his bed, and he tosses and he turns all night. He can't understand why he is sleepless until he gets up in the morning. He pulls back the drapes and stares out into a beautiful, sunny day. The trees are green, the sky is blue, the birds are singing, and Father Zossima, this young corporal who had been fighting for the Czar realizes what he had done wrong. What he had done wrong in slapping his manservant was actually to deny God. The next day, he had to get up again. This time, he was entering into a duel. It was a duel with a man who had slept with his wife when he had been away fighting. When he saw the man, they went so many meters apart. They picked up their guns and Father Zossima allowed the man to shoot first. The man shot first and grazed his cheek. Then Father Zossima picked up his gun and pointed it towards the adulterous man. When he did, he remembered how he had felt the day before, when he had looked out on to the beautiful sky, and the green trees, and the birds singing, and the awesome power of God. He realized then that he could not shoot. He threw his gun away and he let the adulterer live.
The story of Father Zossima is the story of a man who came face to face with the glory of God and when he did so, realized that he could not be God. For Father Zossima, this was the beginning of his life and his ministry.
I think back to that dark night at Mount Allison University, and recall that room when I was left all alone by my friends, and my humiliation before everybody else, and I think it was one of the greatest days of my life. It was one of the greatest days in my life because, unbeknownst to me that night, there was a representative from a recording company. The representative had decided that whoever was going to win the Inter Collegiate Folk Festival would be recorded, would be signed to a professional career in music. Those two young men from Saint Francis Xavier did. They went on and they did quite well. Had I won that night, who knows where my path would have led. Probably to a life of music; maybe to singing songs about Marijuana. Who knows? But that night, I learned the greatest lesson of my life: that I am not God, God is.
That is what Job had to learn. So must we. Amen
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.