A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — March 21, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Job 1:1-2:10 & Isaiah 55:1-13

So you’ll go out in joy, you’ll be led into a whole

and complete life. — Isaiah 55:12 (The Message)

God said to Satan, “Have you noticed my friend Job?

he can’t lose!”  — Job 1:8-10 (The Message)

Isaiah speaks of a joy that leads to “a whole and complete life”—the words Eugene Peterson uses in The Message to render the Hebrew word shalom.  You can’t get much different from the suffering of Job.  The joy in Isaiah’s invitation to abundant life is why I chose this prophetic vision for my first examples when I preached about what grace is like two weeks ago.  I said that grace is… like you’re thirsty unto death, and here is a cool, crystal spring.  …like you’re starving, and here’s food—the absolute best, most nutritious food.  And it’s all free.  It’s not junk food or empty calories, but a banquet of meats, cheese, artisan breads, organic produce, rich food and drink.  And grace is like that feast drawing in even the wicked, who all find pardon because the host doesn’t think or act vindictively like we do.  Grace is like rain falling to water the desert to make it bloom and bring forth crops.  Grace is like a parade for peace instead of war, with all of creation singing and clapping along.  Isaiah’s images are almost too wonderful for words.

 But if grace is like this—like such incredible joy—then what about the story of Job?  This good and upright man goes from fabulous wealth to extreme poverty.  He loses all he has—his property, his children, his health—and he ends up sitting in an ash heap scratching at himself with a piece of shattered pottery.  The story of Job’s suffering is so compelling to us, because there is hardly a one of us (at least among the adults) who has not experienced some deeply personal loss that seemed entirely arbitrary and totally undeserved.  It’s not too hard to discern grace in the high points of our lives—in the birth of a child, in a success achieved at great risk, in an unexpected reconciliation, or in a long-awaited homecoming.  But where are we to find grace in life’s low points, when tragedy strikes us or a loved one?

 

One problem we have in approaching this question lies in how we typically interpret such happenings.  Throughout history good times have been viewed as divine rewards and bad times as punishment.  Carrot and stick.  Do good, and joy and delight such as Isaiah promises will come to you.  But if you do or think what is evil, then expect consequences the likes of which will make Job’s suffering pale by comparison.  Put simply, we expect good things to happen to good people, and bad things to happen to bad people.  And we certainly don’t expect to find grace in bad times.

Now, this is a simplistic answer.  Yet despite all the counter examples of undeserved suffering… as well as undeserved blessing (which may well be an even greater puzzle)… this answer has a truly remarkable staying power.  Probably because it’s so useful.  It works!  Carrots and sticks work… for donkeys… and also for people—to get them to do what we want.  We use them to maintain law and order, we use them to raise our kids… we even use them on ourselves in order to do things we are reluctant to do (like diet or stop smoking or go to the dentist).  And all too often the church uses heaven and hell as the ultimate carrot and stick.  Yet as effective as this approach may be in manipulating this world, it is but a human tool for human purposes.  We forget we are dealing with a God who declares: “I don’t think the way you think.  The way you work isn’t the way I work.” [Is. 55:8].  We forget we are dealing with a God of love and of grace.

When we dig just a little deeper into both Isaiah and Job, we discover that they have little or nothing to do with the reasons for joy or suffering.  Remember that the writers of scripture were not writing in response to our questions.  Isaiah 55 isn’t addressed to me personally, and Job wasn’t written with our questions in mind, no matter how troubled we may be by suffering.  So we need to consider as best we can the intent of the original authors of scripture—what situations they were addressing, what questions they were seeking to answer.

Isaiah 55, for example, turns out to be as much about bad news as it is good news.  This portion of the Book of Isaiah was composed in Babylon near the end of the time of exile when Cyrus of Persia was about to conquer Babylon.  The prophet is urging the Hebrew people to return home to Jerusalem, and he wants to assure them that God will be with them in this journey.  At first glance what Isaiah has to say sounds like good news, but maybe not.  You see, most of these people probably had it pretty good in Babylon.  Many had responsible positions and some degree of authority in this capital city of an empire.  Certainly, the original exiles had deeply mourned being carted off to Babylon in the first place.  We find their words in Psalm 137:  “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion.”  But now it is more than fifty years later.  Two generations have been born in Babylon.  It’s home.  God has preserved them in this place and is with them there.  Why pick up and leave the center of what’s happening to go to the small, mostly destroyed town of Jerusalem off in the boondocks?

 

There’s nothing really like this return from exile today.  Perhaps you might imagine you are some well-paid, middle-aged executive, born in the U.S.A. and now living in New York City.  But your grandparents were refugees from the Armenian genocide during WWI.  Now someone comes up to you and says, “God wants you to go home, back to the now independent Republic of Armenia to reclaim your ancestral farm and start your life over there.”  His words better emphasize joy and blessing over hardship and suffering, because what you are most likely to say is response is, “Are you crazy?”

Many of the Hebrew people said exactly that and refused to go.  They were not doomed or punished.  They remained as a large, vibrant Jewish community Babylon and prospered for centuries, eventually producing what is known as the Babylonian Talmud.  But Isaiah’s words were treasured and preserved by those who left Babylon for Jerusalem and the struggles and hardships of rebuilding that city.  They knew that Isaiah’s message was far more than a simple promise of rewards for good behavior.  There was a deeper truth to ponder here—how even the best things in life bring with them changes, even regrets, what some writers have called “little deaths” for which we must grieve.  The birth of a child is a wonder almost beyond words… but certainly life for the mother and father will never be the same again.  When I headed off to seminary in 1988, I was filled with hope and enthusiasm… yet I also knew I was leaving behind many friends as well as an established career in science that would quickly become impossible to take up again.  The real good news in Isaiah 55 is that the Lord God accompanies us through the jumbled up mix of good and bad, all high points and regrets that make up real life.

Turning to the book of Job and reading the first two chapters closely and carefully, we discover the author of Job is just not as interested as we are in the question of why people—especially good people—suffer.  Rather, the author lays out a far deeper, question when the Satan (“the “Designated Accuser”) asks God, “So you think Job does all that out of the sheer goodness of his heart?”  In essence, the Accuser is asking whether Job would love God if there were no carrot or stick involved—no promises of rewards, no threats of punishment.  Note that this is a question that God cannot answer.  Only Job can provide that answer in how he responds and what he does throughout the course of the story.

Now I need to digress here and once again emphasize the necessity of reading scripture in a way that acknowledges the intent and framework of the author.  The book of Job is not a literal history.  It’s not an eyewitness report.  Job is a “long ago and far away” story that takes place “once upon a time” in the unknown land of Uz.  It’s an artistic creation—perhaps first told orally, perhaps not—in which the storyteller wants to say something vital about the relationship between God and humanity.  The story poses certain basic questions about the human condition for the audience to consider.  Hence, the plot details are not to be taken literally.  The story is not about whether Satan actually exists or not.  Nor is it about whether God allows Satan to inflict evil on people just to see what they’ll do.  Such details are plot devices to advance the story and bring the author’s question to the fore.  It’s a little like those jokes we’ve all heard about someone dying and coming before St. Peter at the pearly gates.  The point of the joke is in the punch line, not in whether or not the gates are really made of pearl and St. Peter is really there to meet us.  End of digression.

So we pay attention to the storyteller’s central question—Can human beings be good and love God apart from self-interest?  And we pay attention to the answer that Job offers.  Job could interpret his suffering as something he deserves as punishment for his sins—which is exactly what his three so-called friends tell him for the next 30 or so chapters.  Or he could “curse God and die,” as his wife suggests.  Either choice would reveal that it was all about “carrots and sticks”—that Job’s love of God was for a price, his goodness a way of manipulating God for his own benefit all along.  But instead, what Job does do is persist in his own integrity by loving God faithfully as an end in itself.  And ultimately Job experiences and knows the presence of the Living God.  The Designated Accuser knows what we already know—that loving God comes easy when all is going well.  What the story of Job maintains is that we can indeed continue to love God even when things go horribly wrong, and through it all God is present.  This is not an easy answer.  Go home and read the rest of Job this afternoon and see just how hard such love can be—how full of questions and doubts and even despair.  Yet it is possible.

Here is where grace is to be sought in the midst of hard times and suffering—not in the simple working of reward and punishment, of carrot and stick, but somewhere in the mysterious (and complicated!) workings of faith—in loving God wholeheartedly, trusting God, and seeking signs of God’s presence.  The writer of the Letter to the Ephesians says that we are saved by grace through faith, but this faith is not our own doing.  It is not something we can boast about, but rather is itself the gift of God [Ephesians 2:8-9].  God’s gracious love encompasses and transforms all of life, all of creation, making everything whole and complete.  “You’ll go out in joy; you’ll be led into a whole and complete life,” says Isaiah.  And the gift of faith will sustain us all in good times and bad, even as it sustained Job.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.