The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Job 1:1, 2:1-10
Job is a very strange book of the bible. It’s been one of the very hardest books to interpret. No one knows when, or by whom it was written, but it seems to be set a very long time ago, around the time of Abraham and Sarah. None of the characters are Israelites, and it is assumed that this story was likely shared among many of the peoples of the ancient Near East. The passage for today is the introduction of the book, and it takes the form of a drama, a five-scene play that switches back and forth between earth and the heavenly realm.
In the first scene, we meet the main character, a man from Uz named Job. And Job is as perfect as perfect can be. He is blameless and upright, a faultless servant of God. He has a wonderful family, with exactly the right number of children. He has all kinds of great possessions: sheep, camels, oxen, donkeys, servants. In fact, he’s the wealthiest person in his entire country, which would be a sure sign to many that he was blessed by God. But he’s not uppity about being God’s favorite. When his children throw a party, he offers a special sacrifice for each one of them, just in case they might have gotten a little tipsy and had a passing evil thought. He’s perfect, absolutely, perfect. And that’s the end of scene one.
Now the setting shifts and we enter heaven. God is imagined with the most readily available metaphor: an ancient Middle Eastern king holding court. And, as would be the custom for any such king, on the appropriate day, God’s officials, the heavenly beings, present themselves before God to pay their respects, give reports of their work, and counsel God on future action. And along with all of the other heavenly beings, Satan also presents himself before God.
Now, in order to understand what’s going on, we need to adjust some of our perceptions. The Book of Job is written long before the concept of “the devil” had even been imagined. The Satan that we’re talking about here is not the prince of darkness, not the father of lies, not some guy with red skin, horns, and a forked tail. No, this is a much different, much older conception of Satan. The Hebrew word ha-satan literally means The Accuser, The Adversary. And so Satan is not some divine being who is opposed to God, Satan is actually part of God’s court, one of the heavenly beings. And Satan has a very specific job: to test God’s servants and make sure that they are remaining loyal, that they are following the rules. Think of Satan as God’s chief prosecutor, God’s Attorney General, the Chief Inspector of the Heavenly Bureau of Investigations.
And so when Satan appears before God, God asks, “Where have you been?” And Satan answers as expected, “I’ve been traveling all over the earth, investigating things, just as you asked.”
But before Satan can give his full report, God interrupts and asks, “Have you considered my servant Job?” And God continues, “There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.” God seems to be rather proud of Job. In fact, this is the most unqualified divine praise given to anyone in the Bible, except Jesus. God considers Job to be perfect, better than Noah, or Abraham, or Moses, or David. And God wants to show off just how faithful Job is.
But Satan is a better investigator than that. He knows that Job has been handed everything on a silver platter his whole life. Of course he’s faithful to God; God has always given him everything. He has had no reason ever to question God. And Satan responds, “God, you’ve had the wool pulled over your eyes. The only reason Job is so faithful is because you’ve given him everything. If you took those things away, Job would be just as faithless as all of the rest of those humans. Test it out for yourself. Take away all of his possessions and special privileges. You’ll see, he’ll turn away from you in no time.”
So God agrees to allow the test. It’s a controlled, scientific experiment. Can human faith stand up to hardship? Can even the most faithful person maintain faith in the face of suffering.
Scene three. Back on earth, Job is tested. And boy is he tested. It all happens at once. First, Arab nomads attack and steal his oxen and donkeys and kill his servants. Then fire comes out of the sky and burns up all of his sheep and shepherds. Third, the Chaldeans decide to march a huge army a thousand miles away from their home so that they can steal his camels and kill his camelherds. And finally, a windstorm comes sweeping through and knocks the house down killing all of Job’s children. It’s a bit ridiculous, really, completely over the top. Image that the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Helene, the Bootleg Fire, and, I don’t know, the Civil War, all happened at the same moment to the same person. That’s the level of misfortune that seems to come to Job, all at once.
I don’t know about you, but I think that I’d have a hard time remaining faithful in that kind of a situation. I’ve had a hard enough time with situations that were much less severe. I’ve never suffered that level of tragedy, but there have been a few times when I’ve cursed God. If I had been Job, I might have proved Satan right. And I suspect that it’s not all that different for most of us. Despite our best intensions, it seems nearly inevitable that we will at times fall out of faith.
But while Job is certainly greatly grieved at this series of unfortunate events, the narrator goes to great pains to tell us that in all of this, Job did not sin or accuse God of wrongdoing. Job mourns—he tears his clothes, shaves his head, sits in ashes—but he does not blame God.
So God is proved to have been correct, and Satan wrong. Job did remain faithful even though he faced great hardship. But that isn’t the end of it. Satan is not yet convinced of Job’s loyalty to God. He tells God that even though Job was able to face some suffering, he would not stand up to the test if he were faced with true illness. Sure, he can live without possessions, even without family, but he could not live with disease.
And so the experiment continues. Job is afflicted with boils and sores that cover his entire body. Surely now he would turn on God; surely now he would desert his faith. But Job doesn’t lose his faith. He doesn’t sin against God. He doesn’t blaspheme. He continues to grieve and to mourn, and he feels the full weight of all that has befallen him, but he does not turn away from God.
When we are faced with tragedy, we often find ourselves asking why. Why do things like this happen? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Why?
And Job does not offer us many answers on that count. We are assured that Job is not being punished for doing something wrong, but that is about all the answer we get. We are not meant to believe that suffering is just the whim of a capricious God, that every time someone suffers it is because they are being tested. Ultimately, Job’s answer to why suffering happens is: no one knows. It just happens.
God does not wish suffering upon us. And I am convinced that God does not use suffering as a way to test us. And yet, there is something about a faith that has experienced suffering.
Perhaps you have met someone with faith like Job. Someone who has suffered much, been through many things, and yet their faith in God is absolute. It’s not that they are unaffected, or that they don’t grieve. They experience the pain, but they continue to trust in God.
I have met people like that. I’ve seen that kind of faith in the eyes of the sick, the bereaved, the dying. And I’ve detected that kind of faith from those who have suffered natural disaster, war, and oppression. I’ll bet many of you have seen them too. Maybe you’ve even had that experience in your own life.
When I really start to think about it, it seems that, out of all the people of faith that I’ve encountered, the ones with the strongest, most fruitful faith, seem to be people who have endured suffering. It’s not the rich or privileged who seem to have unbreakable faith, it’s the poor, the afflicted, and the sick.
And it makes me wonder—we often think that faith is easier when everything is going well. And that probably has some truth to it. It can be hard to maintain faith when we experience suffering. But on the other hand, if we have endured suffering, if we have been tested to the limits, and if our faith remains, then we know that we really have something worthwhile, a trust in God that has the power to weather all storms.
It’s not that you can’t have real faith until you’ve suffered. It’s not that you should go out looking for suffering so that you can have a stronger faith. That we be a perversion of faith. It’s not even that God sends us suffering in order to make us stronger. None of that.
But what does seem to be the case is that when suffering comes, it has the potential to be transformed into something good. Weakness can, with God’s help, be turned into strength. Evil can, through God’s action, be redeemed. And when it does, that is when the true power of faith can be revealed.
Like I said, it doesn’t mean that we don’t experience pain. Job experiences pain. It’s not that we never question God. Job questions God. But there is something about a fire-tested faith. Once we have endured something, something traumatic enough to shake our faith, and yet it does not destroy our faith, once we have endured, we have greater confidence that the next time trouble comes, God will bring us through. Once we have passed through one valley with God’s help, we know that when the next comes, God will still be there. Thanks be to God, who has the power to take something bad and bring out of it something good.