Job 42: 1-6

Years ago, back before Alexa or your phone would wake you up, we had an alarm clock radio. So, we would wake up to random news headlines. When you’re not fully awake you have to ask yourself if you really heard what you think you just heard. 

“Navigation systems lead drivers astray.”   

Is that right? Turns out it was. 

According to the person reading the news, when a German man’s car navigation system told him to, ‘turn right, now,’ he did as he heard (even though he hadn’t yet reached the corner) and proceeded to crash into a toilet stall. In a separate incident, a driver encountered a “closed for construction” sign, but chose to believe his car’s navigation system which showed the road was open. Fortunately, no one was injured when he crashed into a large pile of sand. Sometimes hearing what to do, or what to believe, is no replacement for the actual experience of faith and getting to know God for yourself. 

This was part of Job’s problem. All these terrible things had happened to him for no good reason. We know they were for no good reason because back at the beginning of the book where we hear God talking the matter over with the heavenly court God says as much.   

Look at Job, he says, “he persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him for no good reason.”  Then for the vast majority of the book we hear Job’s friends try to talk him out of the despair he feels over what God has let happen to him.   

“It must be God’s will, Job.”  

“God is surely punishing you for some hidden fault, Job, better repent before it’s too late.”   

“You’ve just got to think more positive, Job. You just don’t have enough faith is all.”   

It’s all pretty standard advice, not much different from what you might hear from well-meaning religious-minded folk in emergency rooms or funeral homes; or wherever tragedy strikes unexpectedly. Job’s problem is not that any of what they have to say comes as a revelation, but quite the opposite. He’s all too familiar with the advice his friends send his way. After all, we were told that Job was a righteous man who feared God. Job knows all the right religious things to say when it comes to a situation like his.   

The only problem is that when the disaster in question happens to be our own, all those textbook answers ring hollow.   

It’s a little like the childless psychologist who had quite a few ideas about how to raise well-rounded children, and wasn’t shy about sharing them. Whenever he saw one of his neighbors scolding their children for doing something wrong, he would say, “You should love your boys, not punish them.”  

Well, one hot summer afternoon this same psychologist was doing some repair work on a concrete driveway leading to his garage. Tired out after several hours of work, he laid down the trowel, wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and started toward his house.  

Just then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a mischievous little boy putting his foot into the fresh cement. He rushed over, grabbed him, and began shaking him in anger.  

When a neighbor caught sight of him, she called out, “Hey!  What are you doing?  You’re supposed to ‘love’ the child, remember?”  At this he yelled back furiously, “I do love him in the abstract- but not in the concrete!” 

You see everything that Job knew about God, and all the pious things that his friends had to say in the face of Job’s distress, were ultimately nothing more than faith in the abstract. They were simply repeating the party line, repeating what they had heard about God from their parents, or their religious leaders, or from the rest of their community.  It isn’t that they were bad friends. They sat with him on that ash heap  

for seven days and nights in silence before they ever opened their mouths. It was when they broke the silence that the trouble began, because all they had to offer was some version of what they had heard somewhere else. Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Faith begins with the hearing of God’s Word. It begins when we first hear the promises of God; what Christians call ‘good news’. In the tenth chapter of his letter to Rome, Paul asks how anyone can call on one in whom they have not believed, and further inquires how are they to believe in one of whom they have not heard?  This is how faith is passed along, how it has always been passed along: when one person tells another person what they have come to know about the presence and promise of the living God. It’s like one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.  

The word ‘Shema’ in Hebrew means “to hear”. It is also the name of Israel’s oldest creed, from the sixth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words… Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.” Hearing is fundamental to how we come to learn about God.  But it is not usually how we come to love God with all our heart and soul and might; because love can’t be commanded.   

Faith may begin with the hearing of the Word, but that cannot be where it ends. If it is, then what we worship becomes an idol, built of words and ideas; an idol that is ultimately hollow. It is hollow because it is a faith built upon the abstract, and not the concrete experience of knowing and loving the One who made us, the One who desires to dwell in and among us. None of his friends’ well-meant words can save Job. None of the bumper sticker clichés we’re so quick to toss around or the religious formulations he might have known can save Job.  

I have no doubt that navigational systems have been and are of great help to those who use them, but like the religious instruction that we receive from preachers and Sunday school teachers and parents, they are no more than a tool for getting around in the larger reality that surrounds us, helping us along the way to where (or to whom) we are going. And if we listen only to what we have heard, or been taught- to the exclusion of what there is to see and experience for ourselves – then we run the very real risk of running off the road and colliding with a reality we are failing to fully engage. 

When his life fell apart, Job raised his voice in anguish, and questioned the legitimacy of all that he had been taught. The faith that he had heard and come to know, promising prosperity to those who were aligned with God and disaster to those who weren’t, didn’t match the reality of his situation.  He had honored God, and followed the instruction of his faith and he still ended up in the ash heap. So, Job cried out to God, demanding to know why it didn’t match up.  Only Job didn’t get any answers. Job didn’t get the answer to his question because the last thing Job needed on the ash heap was more information. No, what Job got instead was the presence of the Almighty God. 

I feel like I should come clean with you Today’s reading is supposed to include the last seven verses of this chapter, in addition to the ones I just read. In them you would have heard about the Lord restoring the fortunes of Job. The truth is that the bulk of this book of the bible is in the form of poetic verse: Job’s lament, his friends’ replies, God’s voice that comes to him out of the whirlwind. However, the ending is phrased more like straight prose. Most scholarship suggests that the final verses are tacked on. It’s one of those Hollywood endings for people who can’t stand the ambiguity of Job’s concluding resolution to repent in dust and ashes. As if all the livestock and children and wealth in the world could make up for what Job had lost.  

The truth is that Job lost more than his children, his livelihood, and his health. Job lost a childish faith built on his own comfort and success. What he gained in the process was far more valuable than the fortune that may, or may not have been restored to him. Job gained an understanding of God forged out of the darkness that comes upon us all at one time or another.  

Too often we make what is the most soul-killing of all bargains. We agree not to feel too good if it means we don’t have to feel too bad. We’d rather follow the rules we’ve heard and get along, than risk an encounter with the God of Life.  

Like blind Bartimaeus along the side of the road Job went from being a beggar who had heard about the promises of God to one whose darkness was broken by the voice of the one who suggests, that true faith comes in asking for God instead of easy answers.  

The voice of God made known to us in Jesus, invites us to come and see for ourselves what we may have only heard. Come and see Jesus, God’s Word that meets us in the flesh, face to face, opening our eyes to see for ourselves and join him on the way.  Alleluia, amen.