by Rev. Emily Joye Reynolds
Job 2:11-13
Job 8:2-6
I've been preaching at FCC long enough now that I'm not sure
which stories I've already told in my sermons. If some of you have already
heard this one, my apologies, however it's such an important one, both for me,
personally, and in terms of instructing spiritual companionship that I'm going
to offer it again.
When my father got sick in 1994, I was 13 years old. I don't know how many of you remember being 13, but what I remember is the tectonic change. The bridge between later childhood and adolescence is a journey fraught with all kinds of physical and emotional swings. Puberty makes your body get all sensationally different. Social arrangements built on the hierarchies of athleticism and beauty and heteronormativity began to emerge. I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror. I didn't like the friends I'd grown up with. School felt like an exercise in torture. My parents were exhaustingly embarrassing. And then my dad got sick. And he got sick fast. When I look back it feels like his early symptoms, diagnosis, descent into a coma and final death took place in the blink of an eye. But in reality it took about a year and a half for all that to happen. Like I said, my world was already on tilt. So throw a parent dying into the equation and you've got massive destabilization.
My parents had this friend from church named Maureen. She was a white, middle aged lesbian. Quiet. Nose down, work hard type. Medium stature with salt and pepper hair. Tender in her speech and tragic in her loneliness. I'd gotten used to her over years of dinner parties at the house, coffee in courtyard after church rendezvous. She was part of my parent's inner circle. And so in the final weeks of my father's life, she was around quite a bit. Three days before my dad died a nurse had let us know that his time was winding down. We knew the end was near. Everyone had feelings about that except for me. I felt entirely numb. I walked out of the bedroom into the back porch and just sat there. Maureen followed me. With a deck of cards. "Wanna play?" she asked holding up the deck. I nodded. I was good at speed. It'd take my mind off things. It was 8 oclock in the morning when we started our first round. When I came to, we'd probably played more than fifty games of speed. It was mid-afternoon. We hadn't said a word other than the occasional "wanna shuffle?" or "hold on; I gotta go to the bathroom."
When she got up to leave, I had this immense sadness at the thought of her departure. In fact, I felt terrified of her leaving. It was the only thing I could concretely feel. Here my dad was, down the hall dying, which I couldn't feel anything about. And this "friend of the family" gets up to leave the house and I'm a mess? That all makes sense to me in retrospect. She was the one person who knew how to take care of me back then. She offered nothing but presence. No words. No justification. No silly platitudes. Just presence. Everything in my life was changing. Some of that change was "normal" but a lot of it was change that I wouldn't choose. Her steady, staying body represented exactly what I needed. Something to remain. Something that would draw near and stay close without shifting.
One morning and afternoon. Round after round of cards. Maureen taught me more about spiritual care than any book I've read, class I've taken or experience I've had since. I have no idea what happened to Maureen. Our family's lost touch after some years. I don't even remember her last name, but I can tell you that day is probably the single, biggest influence on the way I do pastoral care. She taught me the lesson that I believe the authors of Job are trying to teach us.
After the attack on Job's health in Chapter 2, Job's wife tells him to "Curse God and die" which we will get to in the next couple of weeks. Immediately after this, Job's friends come to town. It tells us that "they met together to console and comfort him." They enact rituals of grief and mourning. And then "they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great."
Job had the audacity to open his mouth. The friends do so very
very well until Job starts expressing his pain, his anguish, his rage and
bewilderment. If they'd just stayed with him on the ashes, lingering in silence
and presence, it would have been fine. But no. The next, like 20 chapters of
this book, are a big ole back and forth between Job and his friends. Reading it
is like being face palmed over and over. It's painful. I mean, Job's situation
is painful enough, but then the friends make it worse.
But what's so queerly interesting to me about this section of
the book is what the authors of the book are up to. Let me be specific. Those
of us reading the story know that the friends are wrong. What they're wrong
about I'll get to in a minute. But they are so very very convinced that they
are right. And we know that they are wrong. So the authors have tipped us off
to a dynamic the friends are unaware of, which is Job's innocence. Job knows
he's innocent. God knows Job is innocent. We the readers know that Job is
innocent. But the friends don't. They are so sure, so certain, so unwaveringly
committed to the notion that Job deserves what he got, that they simply cannot
let him go on about his lot without challenging him at every opportunity. They
are more convinced with preserving the "seeming" integrity of God
than hearing their friend's experience. And because of this they represent
orthodoxy.
Every character in the book of Job represents a certain strand of the biblical or theological tradition of the Israelites. The friends represent orthodoxy. What does orthodoxy mean? Ortho = right Doxy = doctrine. We talked last week about Job being a "poly phonic" text meaning a book of many voices. Orthodoxy would seek to silence those voices in favor of one voice, one truth, one notion, one way of thinking, one way of believing, one way of understanding. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar represent the orthodoxy in the tradition of the Israelites. And orthodoxy is positioned in this story in response to suffering.
I want to tell you a bit about the content of biblical orthodoxy in order for this to make sense. Throughout a lot of the Hebrew Bible there's this doctrine known as "temporal retribution." It's in the book of Deuteronomy. It's in the canon of history portrayed in books such as 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings. Its completely apparent in the "Wisdom" literature such as Proverbs and Psalms. Temporal retribution is a fancy term for divine influenced cause and effect. You do good, God rewards. You do bad, God punishes. It's very very simple, actually. The notion is that all things are set up, by God and for God, so that every thing, large and small, is a matter of cause and effect. If bad things are happening, it's because something caused punishment. If good things are happening, it's because something caused reward. If the crops are abundant, it's because God has caused it to rain as reward for good behavior. If the land is dry, it's because God has caused a drought to punish bad behavior. It all happens under a cosmic law that God has set up and perpetually enforces. Temporal retribution. Divine cause and effect.
We see modern day versions of this all the time. When natural disasters happen, there are a bunch of theologians who are willing to step forward and claim that a particular kind of social wickedness caused that Tsunami or Earthquake. When someone we love gets a good job or gets pregnant after trying for a long time, we quickly turn to the language of blessing. We claim that their faithfulness in this life has set them up to deserve such a blessing. If they're a really really "good" person, we emphasize how much they 'deserve' to have good things happen to them.
To put myself on blast here, for a second, whenever I hear that someone has gotten a cancer diagnosis one of my very first thoughts is: what kind of unconscious toxin has gotten lodged in that person's body? Is it unresolved trauma from childhood? Is it an environmental thing, like a bad marriage or an abusive boss? I still to this day will often claim that certain repressive tendencies in my father are what caused tumors to spread throughout his gut. You see, I try to seek to identify and name the cause of the material effect.
The problem here though is what we are implying with this kind of thinking. It usually puts all the responsibility and all the blame on whoever is in question without taking larger realities, including God, into question. Which is what Job refuses to do.
We are in "temporal retribution" kinds of thinking when we assume that someone has done something to bring about their current situation. We are in "temporal retribution" kind of thinking when we secretly or explicitly say things like "well, if she'd been a better wife, maybe he wouldn't have had an affair" or "everybody knows she's hard to work with; that's why she got fired" or "if young black men stopped breaking the law, the police wouldn't be shooting them at higher rates."
Job's friends represent this kind of thinking. They essentially tell Job that none of that calamity would have fallen on him unless he did something to deserve it because God has set the world up that way. Eliphaz, in chapter 8 says to Job "Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert the right?" These are rhetorical questions, of course. He goes on to say "If your children sinned against him, he delivered them into the power of their transgression." So let's stop right there. Eliphaz is literally claiming that all of Job's kids have died because they sinned against God. But we the reader know this isn't true. Job's kids are dead because God gave Satan the power to take their lives. In fact, we know that Job took extra precaution, according to the biblical law, to protect his children. Chapter 1 verse 5 tells us that Job would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings in accordance with the number of children he had, just IN CASE one of them had sinned. We know Eliphaz is wrong. We know Job's children are innocent and dead, that Job is innocent and barely alive. But Eliphaz is positive he's right.
What are we to make of this?
Here's my hunch. It's too easy to make the friends of this story the villains. I mean, they are. But. We know they're wrong and that they don't know they're wrong. At the end of the story, in chapter 42, God appears and speaks to Eliphaz saying "My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has." I mean it's too obvious. It's too blatant. I'm not trying to let them off the hook. They clearly victimize Job. But what if they are victims too? Stay with me...
Remember how I said that Maureen's way of being with me was lifesaving and is probably the single, biggest influence on the way I do pastoral care? Remember how she was able, by quiet presence alone, to make me feel in the midst of oblivion and grief? Maureen touched the soul of a 13 year old girl in such a way that that 13 year old girl turned adult woman pastor would then go on to touch many other souls in a similar way. I can only pray that I've been half the loving presence to all others that she was to me that day.
Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar don't get to be, don't get to do, don't get to give in the way that Maureen did. Because while their so busy preserving orthodoxy, the possibility for incarnating God's love is lost. While they're busy trying to preserve the reputation of God, busy trying to persuade Job about the traditional understanding of God, the felt presence of God goes undetected, which makes them impossible to actually listen to and believe. You can say words about God and do words about God and be words about God all day long, but if the presence of your personhood doesn't match those words it means nothing.
It says in 1 Cor 13: "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." Never a truer word. People preserving orthodoxy lose because they're more concerned with doctrine than they are with love. Job's friends cared more about tradition than experience. Because people like that are so devastatingly annoying, because they wreck sacred moments with their need to be right, I think we forget that their own humanity is lost in those moments. They are victims in the midst of their victimizing.
And I wanna push us further. I think we are them. Often. More than we'd like to admit. We get into cause and effect thinking with people we love and we do it to ourselves too. Think about when something hard, bad, painful or grief-worthy has happened to you. Have you not sought out the reasons why, and wondered if something you'd done had caused it? Or maybe you're one of those who wonders if you're just inherently bad and so anything hard that happens to you is deserved.
My point beloved is that we are Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. And this text is lovingly inviting us to consider what that means. Remember, they knew what to do at first. They knew to share in Job's pain, to make supplication through ritual, to sit quietly with him on the ash heap. But they also messed up and got all argumentative when they should have shut up and remained present. This text puts both of those tendencies in front of us and reminds us that one is better than the other in response to suffering. This text is inviting us to be the wise version of those three that showed up to be with Job in rituals of grief and in solidarity filled silence. The version of them that knew how to be present in body and spirit without having to defend or respond.
Sometimes it's sitting together, quietly, in the ashes. Sometimes it’s bringing over a deck of cards. Sometimes it's eating ice cream and watching funny movies. Sometimes it’s holding someone while they shed tears for hours. Sometimes it’s showing up at the front door with a filled crock-pot. Sometimes it’s sitting in the discomfort of not having the answers but offering the most loving eye contact you can possibly muster.
It's loving presence. Offered freely. For as long as it takes.
Every character in the book of Job represents a certain strand of the biblical or theological tradition of the Israelites. The friends represent orthodoxy. What does orthodoxy mean? Ortho = right Doxy = doctrine. We talked last week about Job being a "poly phonic" text meaning a book of many voices. Orthodoxy would seek to silence those voices in favor of one voice, one truth, one notion, one way of thinking, one way of believing, one way of understanding. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar represent the orthodoxy in the tradition of the Israelites. And orthodoxy is positioned in this story in response to suffering.
I want to tell you a bit about the content of biblical orthodoxy in order for this to make sense. Throughout a lot of the Hebrew Bible there's this doctrine known as "temporal retribution." It's in the book of Deuteronomy. It's in the canon of history portrayed in books such as 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings. Its completely apparent in the "Wisdom" literature such as Proverbs and Psalms. Temporal retribution is a fancy term for divine influenced cause and effect. You do good, God rewards. You do bad, God punishes. It's very very simple, actually. The notion is that all things are set up, by God and for God, so that every thing, large and small, is a matter of cause and effect. If bad things are happening, it's because something caused punishment. If good things are happening, it's because something caused reward. If the crops are abundant, it's because God has caused it to rain as reward for good behavior. If the land is dry, it's because God has caused a drought to punish bad behavior. It all happens under a cosmic law that God has set up and perpetually enforces. Temporal retribution. Divine cause and effect.
We see modern day versions of this all the time. When natural disasters happen, there are a bunch of theologians who are willing to step forward and claim that a particular kind of social wickedness caused that Tsunami or Earthquake. When someone we love gets a good job or gets pregnant after trying for a long time, we quickly turn to the language of blessing. We claim that their faithfulness in this life has set them up to deserve such a blessing. If they're a really really "good" person, we emphasize how much they 'deserve' to have good things happen to them.
To put myself on blast here, for a second, whenever I hear that someone has gotten a cancer diagnosis one of my very first thoughts is: what kind of unconscious toxin has gotten lodged in that person's body? Is it unresolved trauma from childhood? Is it an environmental thing, like a bad marriage or an abusive boss? I still to this day will often claim that certain repressive tendencies in my father are what caused tumors to spread throughout his gut. You see, I try to seek to identify and name the cause of the material effect.
The problem here though is what we are implying with this kind of thinking. It usually puts all the responsibility and all the blame on whoever is in question without taking larger realities, including God, into question. Which is what Job refuses to do.
We are in "temporal retribution" kinds of thinking when we assume that someone has done something to bring about their current situation. We are in "temporal retribution" kind of thinking when we secretly or explicitly say things like "well, if she'd been a better wife, maybe he wouldn't have had an affair" or "everybody knows she's hard to work with; that's why she got fired" or "if young black men stopped breaking the law, the police wouldn't be shooting them at higher rates."
Job's friends represent this kind of thinking. They essentially tell Job that none of that calamity would have fallen on him unless he did something to deserve it because God has set the world up that way. Eliphaz, in chapter 8 says to Job "Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert the right?" These are rhetorical questions, of course. He goes on to say "If your children sinned against him, he delivered them into the power of their transgression." So let's stop right there. Eliphaz is literally claiming that all of Job's kids have died because they sinned against God. But we the reader know this isn't true. Job's kids are dead because God gave Satan the power to take their lives. In fact, we know that Job took extra precaution, according to the biblical law, to protect his children. Chapter 1 verse 5 tells us that Job would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings in accordance with the number of children he had, just IN CASE one of them had sinned. We know Eliphaz is wrong. We know Job's children are innocent and dead, that Job is innocent and barely alive. But Eliphaz is positive he's right.
What are we to make of this?
Here's my hunch. It's too easy to make the friends of this story the villains. I mean, they are. But. We know they're wrong and that they don't know they're wrong. At the end of the story, in chapter 42, God appears and speaks to Eliphaz saying "My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has." I mean it's too obvious. It's too blatant. I'm not trying to let them off the hook. They clearly victimize Job. But what if they are victims too? Stay with me...
Remember how I said that Maureen's way of being with me was lifesaving and is probably the single, biggest influence on the way I do pastoral care? Remember how she was able, by quiet presence alone, to make me feel in the midst of oblivion and grief? Maureen touched the soul of a 13 year old girl in such a way that that 13 year old girl turned adult woman pastor would then go on to touch many other souls in a similar way. I can only pray that I've been half the loving presence to all others that she was to me that day.
Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar don't get to be, don't get to do, don't get to give in the way that Maureen did. Because while their so busy preserving orthodoxy, the possibility for incarnating God's love is lost. While they're busy trying to preserve the reputation of God, busy trying to persuade Job about the traditional understanding of God, the felt presence of God goes undetected, which makes them impossible to actually listen to and believe. You can say words about God and do words about God and be words about God all day long, but if the presence of your personhood doesn't match those words it means nothing.
It says in 1 Cor 13: "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." Never a truer word. People preserving orthodoxy lose because they're more concerned with doctrine than they are with love. Job's friends cared more about tradition than experience. Because people like that are so devastatingly annoying, because they wreck sacred moments with their need to be right, I think we forget that their own humanity is lost in those moments. They are victims in the midst of their victimizing.
And I wanna push us further. I think we are them. Often. More than we'd like to admit. We get into cause and effect thinking with people we love and we do it to ourselves too. Think about when something hard, bad, painful or grief-worthy has happened to you. Have you not sought out the reasons why, and wondered if something you'd done had caused it? Or maybe you're one of those who wonders if you're just inherently bad and so anything hard that happens to you is deserved.
My point beloved is that we are Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. And this text is lovingly inviting us to consider what that means. Remember, they knew what to do at first. They knew to share in Job's pain, to make supplication through ritual, to sit quietly with him on the ash heap. But they also messed up and got all argumentative when they should have shut up and remained present. This text puts both of those tendencies in front of us and reminds us that one is better than the other in response to suffering. This text is inviting us to be the wise version of those three that showed up to be with Job in rituals of grief and in solidarity filled silence. The version of them that knew how to be present in body and spirit without having to defend or respond.
Sometimes it's sitting together, quietly, in the ashes. Sometimes it’s bringing over a deck of cards. Sometimes it's eating ice cream and watching funny movies. Sometimes it’s holding someone while they shed tears for hours. Sometimes it’s showing up at the front door with a filled crock-pot. Sometimes it’s sitting in the discomfort of not having the answers but offering the most loving eye contact you can possibly muster.
It's loving presence. Offered freely. For as long as it takes.
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