Daring To Hope
Sermon
Daring To Hope
Sermons For Pentecost (Last Third)
Last time we checked in with Job, God had just dropped a bombshell. After all Job's pleading, demanding and waiting, God had finally spoken to him and what God said had stunned Job. "You are in no position to accuse me, to question me, or to make demands of me," God said. "I'm in charge of the world, and accountable only to myself. You don't know the time of day when it comes to how the world is supposed to be run." And while God's answer put Job in his place, it also reassured him a bit, because God reminded Job of all sorts of evidence that God does know what he is doing. Besides, Job finally found out without a doubt that God was there with him and was listening to him.
The story could have ended right there. The message of the book had been delivered, Job had seen the big picture, and Satan's question had been answered. Job didn't lose faith even when his faith didn't protect him from suffering.
But the story didn't end after last week's lesson. Today we read what Paul Harvey would call "the rest of the story." There's an epilogue, a resolution to the story, in which some loose ends get tied up, and in which some of the biggest surprises in the book are still waiting for us.
First, we read about Job's reaction to the tongue-lashing he got from God. He is appropriately humbled. "You're right God, and now I know it. I've been a fool, talking about things I didn't know anything about, thinking I understood mysteries way beyond me." Adam and Eve's first sin in the Garden of Eden, before they ever disobeyed God, was wanting to know what God knows, refusing to accept a dependent status. And Paul wrote in the New Testament that the first step in our salvation was for Jesus to give up his equality with God and be humbled, like the rest of us. Job's confession is our confession: We are not like God, and reaching for God-like understanding makes us fall.
But after Job confesses his sin, he confesses his faith. "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you." Now he knows that God is with him, because God has shown himself to Job. Before, he knew about God; now he knows God. Job didn't get the answers he wanted, but he got something much better. He got God himself.
You and I receive that same gift. Maybe God doesn't show himself to us visually like he did to Abraham and Moses and Job, but he shows himself to the world in Jesus. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father," Jesus said; and we see Jesus right now, in his body the church, in the bread and wine of the sacrament, in the word that we read and preach. God is present with us just as surely as he was with Job, and because of God-with-us we can be full of hope and assurance.
After Job's confession, though, the lesson goes on, and it takes a surprising twist. Job's claims have been canceled; Job has withdrawn his demand for a reversal and has accepted God's gracious presence as a better hope than mere relief from suffering; and then God gives everything back to Job! He gives him twice as much as before - wealth, health, land, sons and daughters, respect and long life.
Why in the world would he do that? It's taken 40 chapters for this book to ease us away from the expectation of worldly blessings. We've finally learned that God's presence is the object of our faith, not the good things we might want from God. Now God makes everything the way it was before. Doesn't that ruin the whole story?
Our first thought might be that the ending makes the story unrealistic. It's like a fairy tale, where the hero lives happily ever after. We like to read Cinderella and Jack-and-the-Beanstalk and dream about fairy-tale scenes in our own lives, but we know it won't ever happen to us. It's the same way with Job. All the things he learned about patient suffering and appreciating God's presence don't mean much anymore when he's rich and happy again, do they? And what's the message for those of us who get sick and don't get well, who lose the farm and don't get it back, who lose a child and don't get two more twice as precious? "Sure, Job submitted to God's will, and it turned out that God's will was for him to drown in happiness. What good does that do me?"
For one thing, Job didn't know God was going to restore his fortunes when he repented of his arrogance and confessed his faith in God's presence. It wasn't the hope that he would get everything back that made him secure, it was that God would be with him wherever his journey took him. I suppose that when Job's life began to turn around he was as surprised as we are when we read about it. His faith didn't depend on prosperity or rewards any more.
So, then, what does the big reversal tell us? It tells us that suffering isn't forever. God cares and delivers us from suffering, just as he finally relieved Job's suffering. But we have to remember that in Job's day people didn't know anything about life after death. Suffering that wasn't relieved by the time a person died simply wasn't relieved, they thought. So if Job was to see deliverance it had to be in this life, in some kind of reversal of fortunes.
You and I have more possibilities than that. Because we have been promised the resurrection that Jesus first experienced, we believe that even suffering that dogs us to the grave will be replaced by joy, and by life without pain. Only it might happen after suffering has done its worst to us in death.
This turn of the story also tells us that God's gifts are unexpected and undeserved. God didn't have to give Job back his health, his family and his goods after all that had happened between him and Job. Job didn't expect it or need it anymore. But that's exactly why he did it. God doesn't bless us because he owes it to us, or because we insist on it. What we expect him to do he doesn't, and then he does what we don't expect him to, just because he wants to.
In an earlier sermon I said that Job was looking for justice from God, when he should have been asking for mercy. Justice is getting what you deserve, mercy is getting what you don't deserve, and what Job experiences here is a huge sample of God's mercy.
There is one surprise left in the story, and it might be the biggest one of all: Job starts his life over. He settles back down with his wife, has more children, takes up farming again. After all the pain he has felt, all the loss he has suffered, all the grief he has borne, he does it all over again, even though he risks suffering again.
Gregory of Nyssa, an early Christian theologian and monk, recommended the monastic life not because being celibate and removed from the world was any holier than being married and raising a family, but because it saved a person from the terrible pain of having loved ones and then losing them. Job knew the pain like few others have ever known it, and given a second chance he didn't choose to avoid the risk. He plunged back into family and friends and farming, knowing that he could lose it all again.
Archibald MacLeish wrote a play based on the story of Job a few years after World War II, called J.B. Two theater workers pretend that they're playing the roles of God and Satan on stage while they watch and comment on the story of Job. At the end, when Mr. Zuss, the God-character, tells Nickles, the Satan-character, that Job gets his life back and lives it over again, Nickles blows his stack:
Live his life again?
Not even the most ignorant, obstinate,
Stupid or degraded man
This filthy planet ever farrowed,
Offered the opportunity to live
His bodily life twice over, would accept it -
Least of all Job, ...
It can't be borne twice over! Can't be!
To which Mr. Zuss answers,
It is though. Time and again it is -
Every blessed generation.6
I think MacLeish was trying to say that the world could start life over again in the ashes of the War, in the nuclear age and the Cold War; that every generation makes a fresh start even though the pain and the suffering never go away.
What is it that allows "every blessed generation" to live with war and pain and disease and death and suffering? What is it that allows any of us to go on living when we've known loss, or sickness, or fear? It's the same thing that made Job dare to start over; it's hope.
Hope that bad things won't happen to us? No. Hope that we'll always get well when we're sick? No. Hope that we'll never have to spend a day hungry? No, though God may bless us in those ways, too. But Job's hope was that wherever his life led him he would be carried along by God's mercy.
We bring our children into the church through baptism when they're small and helpless. Every blessed generation does it. What makes parents think they haven't just brought another poor, suffering soul into a world of misery, that they haven't simply multiplied the world's heartache and their own? It's hope - hope that whatever joys or sorrows lie ahead for each child of God, we can depend on God to be faithful, to see us through. Without that hope, none of us could go on; daring to hope is everything.
The story could have ended right there. The message of the book had been delivered, Job had seen the big picture, and Satan's question had been answered. Job didn't lose faith even when his faith didn't protect him from suffering.
But the story didn't end after last week's lesson. Today we read what Paul Harvey would call "the rest of the story." There's an epilogue, a resolution to the story, in which some loose ends get tied up, and in which some of the biggest surprises in the book are still waiting for us.
First, we read about Job's reaction to the tongue-lashing he got from God. He is appropriately humbled. "You're right God, and now I know it. I've been a fool, talking about things I didn't know anything about, thinking I understood mysteries way beyond me." Adam and Eve's first sin in the Garden of Eden, before they ever disobeyed God, was wanting to know what God knows, refusing to accept a dependent status. And Paul wrote in the New Testament that the first step in our salvation was for Jesus to give up his equality with God and be humbled, like the rest of us. Job's confession is our confession: We are not like God, and reaching for God-like understanding makes us fall.
But after Job confesses his sin, he confesses his faith. "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you." Now he knows that God is with him, because God has shown himself to Job. Before, he knew about God; now he knows God. Job didn't get the answers he wanted, but he got something much better. He got God himself.
You and I receive that same gift. Maybe God doesn't show himself to us visually like he did to Abraham and Moses and Job, but he shows himself to the world in Jesus. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father," Jesus said; and we see Jesus right now, in his body the church, in the bread and wine of the sacrament, in the word that we read and preach. God is present with us just as surely as he was with Job, and because of God-with-us we can be full of hope and assurance.
After Job's confession, though, the lesson goes on, and it takes a surprising twist. Job's claims have been canceled; Job has withdrawn his demand for a reversal and has accepted God's gracious presence as a better hope than mere relief from suffering; and then God gives everything back to Job! He gives him twice as much as before - wealth, health, land, sons and daughters, respect and long life.
Why in the world would he do that? It's taken 40 chapters for this book to ease us away from the expectation of worldly blessings. We've finally learned that God's presence is the object of our faith, not the good things we might want from God. Now God makes everything the way it was before. Doesn't that ruin the whole story?
Our first thought might be that the ending makes the story unrealistic. It's like a fairy tale, where the hero lives happily ever after. We like to read Cinderella and Jack-and-the-Beanstalk and dream about fairy-tale scenes in our own lives, but we know it won't ever happen to us. It's the same way with Job. All the things he learned about patient suffering and appreciating God's presence don't mean much anymore when he's rich and happy again, do they? And what's the message for those of us who get sick and don't get well, who lose the farm and don't get it back, who lose a child and don't get two more twice as precious? "Sure, Job submitted to God's will, and it turned out that God's will was for him to drown in happiness. What good does that do me?"
For one thing, Job didn't know God was going to restore his fortunes when he repented of his arrogance and confessed his faith in God's presence. It wasn't the hope that he would get everything back that made him secure, it was that God would be with him wherever his journey took him. I suppose that when Job's life began to turn around he was as surprised as we are when we read about it. His faith didn't depend on prosperity or rewards any more.
So, then, what does the big reversal tell us? It tells us that suffering isn't forever. God cares and delivers us from suffering, just as he finally relieved Job's suffering. But we have to remember that in Job's day people didn't know anything about life after death. Suffering that wasn't relieved by the time a person died simply wasn't relieved, they thought. So if Job was to see deliverance it had to be in this life, in some kind of reversal of fortunes.
You and I have more possibilities than that. Because we have been promised the resurrection that Jesus first experienced, we believe that even suffering that dogs us to the grave will be replaced by joy, and by life without pain. Only it might happen after suffering has done its worst to us in death.
This turn of the story also tells us that God's gifts are unexpected and undeserved. God didn't have to give Job back his health, his family and his goods after all that had happened between him and Job. Job didn't expect it or need it anymore. But that's exactly why he did it. God doesn't bless us because he owes it to us, or because we insist on it. What we expect him to do he doesn't, and then he does what we don't expect him to, just because he wants to.
In an earlier sermon I said that Job was looking for justice from God, when he should have been asking for mercy. Justice is getting what you deserve, mercy is getting what you don't deserve, and what Job experiences here is a huge sample of God's mercy.
There is one surprise left in the story, and it might be the biggest one of all: Job starts his life over. He settles back down with his wife, has more children, takes up farming again. After all the pain he has felt, all the loss he has suffered, all the grief he has borne, he does it all over again, even though he risks suffering again.
Gregory of Nyssa, an early Christian theologian and monk, recommended the monastic life not because being celibate and removed from the world was any holier than being married and raising a family, but because it saved a person from the terrible pain of having loved ones and then losing them. Job knew the pain like few others have ever known it, and given a second chance he didn't choose to avoid the risk. He plunged back into family and friends and farming, knowing that he could lose it all again.
Archibald MacLeish wrote a play based on the story of Job a few years after World War II, called J.B. Two theater workers pretend that they're playing the roles of God and Satan on stage while they watch and comment on the story of Job. At the end, when Mr. Zuss, the God-character, tells Nickles, the Satan-character, that Job gets his life back and lives it over again, Nickles blows his stack:
Live his life again?
Not even the most ignorant, obstinate,
Stupid or degraded man
This filthy planet ever farrowed,
Offered the opportunity to live
His bodily life twice over, would accept it -
Least of all Job, ...
It can't be borne twice over! Can't be!
To which Mr. Zuss answers,
It is though. Time and again it is -
Every blessed generation.6
I think MacLeish was trying to say that the world could start life over again in the ashes of the War, in the nuclear age and the Cold War; that every generation makes a fresh start even though the pain and the suffering never go away.
What is it that allows "every blessed generation" to live with war and pain and disease and death and suffering? What is it that allows any of us to go on living when we've known loss, or sickness, or fear? It's the same thing that made Job dare to start over; it's hope.
Hope that bad things won't happen to us? No. Hope that we'll always get well when we're sick? No. Hope that we'll never have to spend a day hungry? No, though God may bless us in those ways, too. But Job's hope was that wherever his life led him he would be carried along by God's mercy.
We bring our children into the church through baptism when they're small and helpless. Every blessed generation does it. What makes parents think they haven't just brought another poor, suffering soul into a world of misery, that they haven't simply multiplied the world's heartache and their own? It's hope - hope that whatever joys or sorrows lie ahead for each child of God, we can depend on God to be faithful, to see us through. Without that hope, none of us could go on; daring to hope is everything.
