This morning’s Old Testament scripture lesson comes from the climax of the story of Job. Job was someone who had had it all. The Bible calls him a blameless and upright man who honored God and had integrity, so we know he had a good relationship with God, himself and others. Moreover he was a wealthy person in good health with a loving family around him. Who could ask for anything more? Then one day, all his businesses collapsed at once, and even the building where his children had gathered for a birthday party collapsed, killing them all. After that Job lost his health; Job himself got sick and then his wife got sick of hearing him complain. Three friends showed up to comfort Job and they sat with him in silence for seven days out of respect for his suffering. At last even they got tired of hearing him complain about the way God was treating him and they urged him to confess whatever it was he’d done to bring God’s wrath down upon him this way.
According to some people’s theology, then and now, Job surely must have offended God to have all those bad things happen to him. I call this “bargain theology” because it believes we have a bargain with God that goes like this: “I keep your commandments; you keep me safe, if not happy.” While there are many covenants in scripture – the most cogent of which is “I shall be your God and you shall be my people” [1] – there are no bargains.[2] This was Job’s theology as well. He didn’t have any problem with the way his friends were thinking; he just couldn’t square it with what he knew to be true of his own life. In fact, he was so convinced his theology and his life were right that he thought something was wrong with God. So for most of the book, Job is shouting at God, “You have a lot to answer for. Come down here and face me like a man!”
After thirty-five chapters of this, even God got fed up with the way Job carried on. You’ve heard of someone having the patience of Job? That’s not really accurate: it was everybody around Job who showed great patience and restraint. When God finally spoke to Job out of the tornado, were there any real answers to Job’s “why” questions? Questions like…
- God why are you picking on my?
- God, why won’t you answer me?
- God, why did I ever pick people as wife and friends who love to argue so much?
No, God did not answer these or any other of Job’s questions. Instead, God just piled on more questions like, “Who are you?”
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
2‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3Gird up your loins like a man, [great irony]
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
and “Where were you?”
4‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
5Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
6On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
7when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings* shouted for joy?
The questions continue along the lines of “What can you do?”
Who’s in charge of the weather, Job?
Who makes people wise?
Who makes sure there’s enough game for the birds and wild animals?
Thomas Edward Frank, in Feasting on the Word, asks us to consider another question, “What if God really did show up at the invocation in church on a Sunday morning?” Had you ever thought about that? Further, what if God decided to answer us out of the whirlwind for every complaint we’ve ever flung against heaven? And what if we got an answer a lot like Job’s? Would we be tempted to just get up and leave? Would we shout back at God? “I don’t need this! I get enough stress at work!” Would we flee and never come back?
Thomas Frank goes on to say, “God takes an enormous risk that Job will never want anything to do with God again, by responding, not about Job’s “why” but about the grandeur, beauty, and order of the creation. If asking why is some feeble human attempt to get control of life and bring it to sense and better management, God’s response gives humanity even less sense of control than before. In fact, human concerns are completely peripheral in God’s queries. God has a universe to run, and human beings are only one among many species to be tended.”[3]
You see, what Job forgot – and what we often forget – is that it’s not all about us. Part of the human predicament is that each of us has an individual point of view that encourages us to think of ourselves as the center of the universe when in actuality we are not. So when things start falling to pieces in our lives as they did for Job, we tend to take it personally. God’s response, in pointing Job to “the grandeur, beauty, and order of the creation,” should encourage us to get beyond that narrow perspective and realize that it’s not all about us, either as individuals or as a species; should encourage us to realize that something bigger than humanity is going on. Of course, if it’s not all about us, we want to know what it is all about. Maybe our second scripture for the morning can give us a hint to the answer.
That passage comes from the most systematically theological of the Apostle Paul’s letters, his letter to the Christians in Rome. At the beginning of chapter 8, he finishes describing the two principles at war within believers: the perspective of life in Christ and the actuality of an ego-centric predicament. Paul calls these two principles “spirit” and “flesh.” They correspond roughly to freedom and determinism: the freedom of choice we experience as self-conscious (and, even more, as Christ-conscious) beings and the determinism of matter, subject as it is to the laws of physics. The apostle’s interest, however, is not philosophical, but theological: the big picture is grounded in God. So, having explained that there is a struggle between “spirit” and “flesh,” Paul brings it back to what for him is always the main point: the resurrection of Christ and what that means for us.
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:18-23)
The redemption of our bodies refers to the Christian hope of a bodily resurrection in which the matter that makes us up is transformed into something more appropriate to eternity, to divine time and space, when God recreates us beyond all time and death. And yet the power of resurrection is already present in us by faith through the resurrection of Christ. This is what I preach during Easter. We have the promise of resurrection beyond time, but we have the power of resurrection now.
As Paul wrote in Philippians 3:10-12,
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 1213
So when Paul writes, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us, he’s writing about the power and promise of resurrection. The truth here about suffering – both the suffering of Christ on the cross and our own suffering which often feels like the suffering of Job – is that it is ultimately redemptive for us, though remember: it’s not all about us. So the very next words read, for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; all creation longs for its fulfillment in resurrection. It’s not all about us; it’s about creation participating in the power of resurrection as we participate in its sufferings and longing for resurrection.
For the creation was subjected to futility … in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. You and I are star-matter. Every atom in our bodies was forged in the heart of a star where hydrogen fusion makes all the heavier elements that occur in nature. We are star-stuff, and this star-stuff first became life, then consciousness, then self-consciousness, and finally Christ-consciousness which is the power of resurrection now. Creation could not attain this; it could not find such power and awareness within itself, which is why Paul says it was subjected to futility.[4] Creation does not contain its own fulfillment. Therefore, the Creator entered creation in Jesus as the Christ to bring that fulfillment to birth; or to use Paul’s metaphor of a pregnant woman, to induce the labor that will produce the birth of that fulfillment.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; Job cried out for someone to explain to him the reason for his suffering, the reason he was born if suffering was to be his lot in life. God’s response to him out of the whirlwind was to look beyond himself at the suffering of all creation and to realize, “It’s not all about you, Job.” All of creation is suffering until it reaches its fulfillment in the once and future resurrection. Our suffering is just one small part of the labor pains of creation as the universe gives birth to its fulfillment in the power and promise of resurrection.
[1] Jeremiah 31:33
[2] With the possible exception of Genesis 17:23-33
[3] Thomas Edward Frank, “Pastoral Perspective for Job 38:1-7 (34-41),” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Volume 4 (Louisville, KY: WJK, 2009), 170-172.
[4] Robert W. Nicoll, Expositor’s Greek Testament, Vol. 2 (Romans 8:20) – mataiths was used in LXX to translate the Hebrew word hebel, found in the wisdom literature, most famously in Ecclesiastes. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Viz. 1:2; 2:1; passim. The word means looking for what one does not find, hence futility, vanity, etc.
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