Job, Caught in the Whirlwind

            Job asks a universal question, “Why?” Why is this suffering happening to me? “Where is God?” Is seemed appropriate that Job should come up in the lectionary schedule this month, as recent events in our schools and around the world have left me asking the same questions. Not that I haven’t asked them before, many times, but the senseless violence in Platte Canyon and the Amish school in Pennsylvania and the Principal shot in northern New York hit me particularly hard. People have been asking these questions for as long as people have asked religious questions. Job is one of the oldest books in the Bible. Esther has been reading for her history of philosophy the debates between Luther and Erasmus about free will and God’s will and the source of evil. Erasmus thought that people have the free will to make choices, and that is the source of evil in the world. Luther attributed all power to God and said that nothing was outside of God’s will, even evil. He was against the idea of free will. Why is there is evil and suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? This week I went back to Job looking for answers.

            Job is a good man, without blame, and God points him out to the angels as a good example. But the angel who is a satan, an angel who acts as an obstacle to people on earth says that if Job loses his comfort and prosperity, he will not be so faithful to God. So God agrees to let this angel, this satan put obstacles in Job’s path and test Job. So Job loses everything: his businesses, his animals, his children, is wife and eventually even his health. He is left utterly miserable, scraping his sores with a potsherd. His friends gather around him and speculate about why this suffering is happening to him. A common belief among ancient Israelites was that suffering is earned, everyone gets what they deserved. So some of Job’s friends wonder aloud what Job must have done to earn such horrible suffering? So the friends debate, “how is Job guilty?”, “How did his sin?”, “Should he repent?”, “Does he deserve this punishment?” Job, on the other hand, mostly asks why he is so alone. “Where is God in this time of need?” “Why is he isolated?”

            Finally, while Job is still in the midst of his suffering, God does come and speaks to Job out of the whirlwind. He tells Job that there are mysteries beyond his understanding. He reminds Job that Job is human and God is God. “Did Job raise up the mountains or fill the sea?” There are some answers that Job is not going to know in this life. For Job, what matters is that God did come! The climax of the book comes when Job says to God, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you, therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” He humbles himself before God and reaffirms his faith that has never left him, but is now stronger than ever, now that he has seen God. At the end of the book, Job’s fortunes are restored and he lives happily ever after with new children, flocks and barns.

            God comes to Job, in the midst of his pain, God comes. This is enough for Job, but the rest of us prick up our ears. What does God have to offer Job in the way of hope and explanation? I imagine generations of Hebrews around their fires at night saying, “We are in pain, we are suffering, and tell the story of Job again.” When the storyteller tells of God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind, the people lean forward and listen, hoping to hear something that will get them through. So do us. But I wish God were clearer. I wish God would tell us if everything is in God’s plan, or whether we have free will, and if the children are out of pain and now with God in a beautiful garden. But God is silent on these points. God just reminds Job that Job is not God and it isn’t for us to know all these things. The answers are beyond us, for we are not God. Sorry Job, you are just a human and God will be God. Job, the world is unfolding as it should and God is in control, not you, so let go and trust God. Job’s friends are taken to the carpet by God for their endless arguments and speculation. So Job says he is sorry that he questioned God and humbles himself before God in ashes and sackcloth. Then, in the end, Job is rewarded for his faithfulness and gets all his stuff back.

            Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t like that ending. That’s a fairy tale ending. It’s  like the storyteller around the fire got to this point in his  story and looked around at the sad, confused faces of his listeners and saw their pain, how they were living in the whirlwind of life and felt sorry for them and added this happy ending with Job prospering and everything going back the way it was. The folks around the fire brightened and went to bed feeling better. But that not the way life is, is it? The folks in Platte Canyon don’t get a perfect little town back, and Amish families tear down the old school and live with their memories forever. We all have to keep living in the whirlwind.

            I’d rather have the story end with Job still keeping the faith with no proof. God answers him out of the whirlwind and told him to be strong and trust, and he does. Job prays and repents and waits holds on despite everything. No fairy tale ending. I like that ending because it is truer to our lives.

            The book of Job ends up about where Martin Luther ended up in his debates with Erasmus. We can’t know God. We can’t expect to have our questions answered in this life. Yet in the midst of our suffering, and our joy, God is with us. God comes to us out of the whirlwind. Jesus’ message was just that, “God with us”, Immanuel. We don’t get to know how God works, but we can trust that God is with us, whatever happens to us or whatever crosses we have to bear. In this whirlwind of life, this sometimes insane, dangerous world, we can keep the faith, and trust God’s presence and love.

            I end with Paul of Tarsus’s word at the end of his life, written to his friend and younger colleague, Timothy. Not words of a fairy tale ending, or a man who has everything figured out, or understands why there is suffering, or whether we have free will or not. They are words of a man who is still trusting God despite all he has been through. An old man, having taken many journeys and seen many miraculous things. Known God’s blessings and been an agent himself of God’s miracles. But also a man who saw much persecution of Christians. Paul saw many of his fellow Christian leaders executed. He himself was waiting in prison to be executed, perhaps very soon after he wrote these words. He wrote, "As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."