Lessons from the Book of Job (August 13, 2006 by James Montgomery Jackson)
I’m beginning to see a pattern emerging in my homilies: Tom asks me months in advance for my topic. I have a vague idea, attach a title and when it comes to putting thoughts to paper, I’m in a box and not necessarily the one I would currently choose.
Not that the Book of Job doesn’t offer lots of potential lessons. Harold Kushner, the author of Why Good Things Happen to Bad People notes that all Jewish rabbis dream of publishing their opus on the meaning of the Book of Job. In preparation for today I reread a college text I had on Job. It included sermons and essays by John Calvin, Soren Kirkegaard, William Blake, Goethe and others. The themes were varied: the meaning of Job’s famed patience, the nature of good versus evil, justice, the relationship between god and man, and so on. Plenty of issues to choose from and yet I was confronted with a single letter in my homily title.
S at the end of a noun usually implies plural. Lessons, plural, meant I had to provide not one, but at least two discussions.
So why do we need titles and labels anyway? In a word: expectations. We use labels in order to set our expectations. Think back to when you read the title of today’s message either in the This and That or today’s bulletin. What did you expect when you saw my name and “Lessons from the Book of Job?” Are you right now comparing your expectation and thinking – I’m not sure what it was, but this certainly isn’t it?
Labels are limiting by their very nature. When I say think of a “tree,” each of you may visualize a different tree, but you are unlikely to think of an antelope. When I say think of a “maple tree,” most of you will picture a maple tree and if I say “maple tree in bright autumn colors,” you will obediently paint your tree red, orange, yellow --- but no longer green.
Labels come with explicit and implicit meaning. Here are two phrases describing the same scene: “Nigger with a knife;” “Afro-American surgeon with a scalpel” Did you conjure the same image? Not likely.
Back to the Book of Job, which as currently recorded has forty-two chapters. The first two deal with God’s wager with Satan. That God and Satan are still talking to each other shows an antiquity in the way the author considers God: the time Rev. Gail Simmonds talked about in July when God walked with man on earth.
Job has been blessed with great wealth and a fine family. God takes pride in his “good man” Job. But Satan says, Heck, who wouldn’t praise you with all you’ve given him. Let me at him and we’ll see what praises his sings. God says, sure, but don’t touch Job.
Satan sends armies and bandits to steal all of Job’s possessions and a tornado to collapse a house and kill all of Job’s children and their families. Job and his wife are left with the ruins. Job responds “the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
God says see? Satan says, let me at his body. God gives the okay with a caveat: don’t kill him. Satan afflicts Job with painful boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.
Job’s wife suggests he give in: curse God’s name and die. Job refuses the easy route. He prostrates in the ashes. The next twenty-nine chapters are about his three friends who come over.
Think for a moment what in your mind the word “friend” encompasses. (Pause 10 seconds). Have your vision in mind? Let’s match it to what happens with Job and his friends.
What is their first reaction to Job’s plight? In true Semitic fashion of the time, they rend their clothes and sprinkle dust on their heads, and sit keeping Job company -- in silence. Not for two minutes. Not for an hour or two. Not even for a day or two. For seven days they support their friend Job by silently staying with him.
Job finally breaks the silence, keens his anguish and the friends feel release. They have to talk over what has happened. Find reasons. Assign blame. Label the thing.
Here is how the discussion progresses. Seven days of shared silence. In the first round of arguments, the three friends speculate about what Job might have done wrong to bring on this punishment. Job demurs; he did nothing wrong. In the second round of arguments, the friends are more direct: Job you must have done something wrong for all these bad things to happen to you. Maybe, you need to try harder to figure out why you are a sinner. And based on what happened, we’re not talking about something minor. In light of Job’s intransigence in accepting the label “sinner,” in round two the friends start to give specificity to their charges against Job. By round three the attacks are pure ad hominem, using Job’s protestations as proof of his guilt and there is not even a complete round – the talks break down.
In such a short time the three friends morph from unconditional support of Job in his grief to prosecutor, judge and jury.
Job is totally aggravated with his so-called-friends and sends them away. He challenges God to a debate. A young god, one who still came to the earth from time to time, responds in person to this challenge. From a whirlwind, he refuses to answer the charges against him, instead asking by what right Job has to even question God. How could someone as insignificant as Job understand issues that might concern God? How indeed?
Job acknowledges his humble position before God’s tirade.
This labeling, assigning blame is not confined to 5th century B.C. Some of you met Jan’s brother Jim Manning and his wife Mary Jane earlier this summer. Let me label Jim for you: staunch Republican, lives in Arkansas, Methodist, lover of “all the news that fits his views,” as Mary Jane says, defender of his positions and able to get Jan’s goat at the drop of a hat. I like him a lot. Sending my arguments into his searing flame helps temper them; make them stronger as heat does to steel. When their pastor is away he often fills in at the pulpit and has given his own sermons on the Book of Job.
So we talked Job and his friends. Mary Jane piped in with the story of a former pastor and his wife who lost their young child to leukemia. At a gathering of the church women shortly after the child’s death, with the mother present but ignored, a discussion ensued about how the parents might have prevented their child’s death if they had lived better lives. That dreadful experience almost caused the pastor to leave the ministry.
How awful. To my mind, this is religious fanaticism at its worst. Of course that is my label for it.
I need to be careful about what stones I choose to pick up and throw at their house. I spent thirty years as a retirement consultant. For a number of years I was on a taskforce that performed internal audits of our work. In the minds of some we were looking for errors. And those are always easy to find with the hindsight time provides. The process was not much fun for the audited or auditors.
Over some beers after a national practice meeting we figured out a better way. Instead of looking for problems, why not take our largest clients and invest time looking at how to expand the relationship. The “auditors” now referred to as “peer review consultants” would read two years of correspondence, reports, etc. and after that preparation, the client team would make a presentation of the issues facing the client and our relationship with them. Issues would be discussed, ideas batted about. Often the peer review consultants would suggest other people within the organization who had tackled similar issues. Everyone thought the process was extremely useful and looked forward to one of their clients being picked. Oh yes, we still found errors as we were going through the review, but since they were a “side” issue they were handled privately with no memos to the bosses.
Job’s three friends had labeled god “all powerful and just.” That left only one possible reason for Job’s afflictions: they must be the result of some nefarious act on Job’s part – the selfsame Job who everyone thought was a really, really, good man. And to help Job, they knew they must uncover his errors. Enquiring minds want to know what the secrets are and back then the National Enquirer was not available at the checkout line. After seven days of silence they could last no longer.
Job agreed God was all-powerful, but was unconvinced his tribulations were just and challenged God to justify his actions.
God wasn’t willing to buy into the label of all-powerful. He wasn’t about to enter into arbitration with Job and fell back on a parent’s last argument: How could you possibly understand? What experience do you have compared to me? Because I said so.
Job followed the path most children take and bowed before the larger power. Not convinced, just cowed. Were the friend’s actions justified by their beliefs? Were they just trying to help Job recover? Not in my mind.
Holly Near has some wonderful lyrics in her song I’m Not Afraid. They go:
I’m not afraid of your Yahweh;
I’m not afraid of your Allah;
I’m not afraid of your Jesus;
I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your god.
Now perhaps one or two of you have noticed that I am not perfect. Imagine that. Yet, what is one of my first reactions when someone asks for help on a problem. You’ve got it: what went wrong? And by looking at the problem after it has already developed, I can offer a variety of suggestions along the line of “maybe if you had done…” After all, what are friends for? Job might suggest in many cases the answer is to share the suffering in silence. Or when the healing process has progressed to the right point, a collaborative effort led by the sufferer might be useful.
Is this casting about to find the sins of others the purpose of a religious community? Some I suppose. Fortunately, not here. The label we attach to ourselves is “Unitarian Universalists.” Before the Unitarians and Universalists combined in 1961 there were no such creatures. Mike Gorski has produced some lovely silver pennants that celebrate our two rivers merging. The Universalist side of us has a long history on this issue of blame. A central tenet is that unlike the other protestant religions who emphasized original sin and that only the select could be saved (somehow they never came to much agreement on who the select were), the Universalists believed it was all or nothing. We were in this together: all or none.
From conversations I’ve had with some of you and through adult forums, I know we bring many roots and many beliefs to our faith community. So how can we be a religious community if we do not share religious beliefs? For me, it is all about shared right action. Humanist, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan, whatever. They all share a core set of actions. Some with more emphasis here, others there. The core may be found in our seven principles.
After reading our seven principles, Jim Manning said it was hard to disagree with any of them. The devil is in the details, as they say.
We have our work cut out for us. In just a few days we will close on our new home. Change is often scary and it’s a time we rely on our friendships to help us. I remember when I bought my first house in Harrington Park, New Jersey. The house cost $55,500 and I was making $17,000. As I was about to sign the papers, a fear crossed my mind – in my entire life I had not earned $55,500 and here I was committing to pay that much just for a home.
My second home purchase was much easier – just show me where to sign. Yet the stresses of moving have always plagued me. There are times when I need friends to consult with and who will offer me good advice. There are other times, like when I am packing the car, that once everything is in the garage ready to be packed, I need to be left alone. I mean I NEED to be left alone.
Good friends are there in the seven days of silence, ready for a hug or a held hand and though burning with curiosity and the desire to get to the truth, keep their mouths closed. These friends know the wail, “what did I do wrong?” is rhetorical and does not require chapter and verse with footnote documentation.
So here what I propose: Let us be good friends. Let us treat each other as we wish to be treated as we walk these changes in our great religious community together. Let us choose our helpful words carefully and know silence is often the most comforting action we can take. Let’s continue our journey by standing as you are able and singing hymn #311 Let it be a Dance.