October 26, 2025 – Reformation Sunday
Job 31, selected verses
James 5.7-11
The Impatience of Job
Reformation Sunday
Before I begin, I want us to notice something about the book of Job, because later on I’m going to make an unusual claim about the book. Specifically I want us to pay attention to the beginning and the end of Job, the first two chapters and the last chapter, so let’s open our pew Bibles to page 445, hold your finger there, and then to page 478. Do you notice a difference between the format of chapters 1 and 2, and chapter 3? (The first two chapters are prose, the from the third chapter onward is all poetry.) Now let’s look at what happens between chapter 42 verse 6 and chapter 42 verse 7. (The same, only reversed – the poetry which has taken us all the way through the book of Job, changes back to prose.) The introduction and conclusion to the book of Job are of a notably different style than the rest of the book – while they are written in prose, everything in between in poetry. We’ll come back to this in a bit.
Earlier last summer, one of you sent me a music video featuring a song by Chris de Burgh titled “Spanish Train.” The song borrows an idea from the book of Job about God and the devil playing cards for the souls of the dead. One of the stanzas goes like this:
“Just then the Lord appeared in a blinding flash of light / and shouted at the Devil, Get thee hence to endless night / But the Devil just grinned and said I may have sinned / But there’s no need to push me around / I’ve got him first so you can do your worst / he’s going underground. / But I’ll give you one more chance / said the Devil with a smile… / Joker is the name, poker is the game. / We’ll play right here on this bed / And then we’ll bet for the biggest stakes yet / The immortal souls of the dead.”
There’s an article in this week’s New Yorker magazine about the search for some of the world’s most ancient texts. Not so much written texts, because the oldest stories were recounted by word of mouth for ages before they were even put to paper, or stone, or papyrus. Among them are the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad and The Odyssey, and the Book of Job. Job is a good example of the genre, because while its written form can be dated as recently as 550 years or so before the birth of Jesus, the tale itself is at least 1500 years older than that. One common feature shared by these ancient stories is that they were written to ponder some of humanity’s most fundamental questions. Gilgamesh asks, How did we get here? How was the world created? It is a forerunner of the Genesis creation story, and the two share many details. Homer’s Odyssey is about the human longing for home: what is home for us? Is it physical place, the idea of family, the feeling of belonging? The question the book of Job addresses is also a common one: why do bad things happen to good people? If God is a good god, why is there so much evil and suffering in the world?
You and I know the story of Job. Job was a righteous man who suffered much. His livestock, which were his livelihood, were either stolen from him or slaughtered. His children perished in a windstorm. His health took a sudden turn for the worse – sores and wounds covered his body from head to foot. Job was a mess.
So as any one of us would do if a friend of ours suffered such calamity, Job’s friends came to sit with him, to comfort him. And like so many well-meaning folks, they brought with them tried-and-true bromides that sounded good, but really aren’t very much help. You’ve heard them before I’m sure: God never gives you more than you can handle; there is a reason for everything; maybe you did something to bring this on yourself; time heals all wounds; it is always darkest before the dawn. You can probably name one or two more yourselves.
Job’s friends genuinely thought they were being helpful. To their credit, they sat with him for a while in silence, and this was indeed useful. You and I know from experience that when a friend is going through a difficult time, sometimes the best thing we can do is sit with them quietly – they aren’t looking for advice, or to rehash their troubles, they just need a friend. But as so often happens, silence can be uncomfortable, and Job’s friends attempted to fill the void with well-meaning words.
“Think Job, think: there’s got to be a reason for all of this. God is a good God, and would never do this without a reason. Maybe you offended God in some way; we aren’t not saying you did it deliberately, but maybe it was a slip of the tongue, or you forgot a high holy day, or you accidentally let a four-letter word slip, or you turned away from a needy person. God just does not do things capriciously, there has to be a reason!”
But there was no reason. Job was faithful to a fault, and he knew it. In one respect, he agreed with his friends, that if there were some fault in his life, an offense against God or against a sister or brother, then perhaps his suffering would make sense. We heard Job’s thought process a few minutes ago:
“If I have walked with falsehood, and my foot has hurried to deceit— let me be weighed in a just balance… if my step has turned aside from the way, and my heart has followed my eyes, and if any spot has clung to my hands; then… let what grows for me be rooted out. If I have withheld anything that the poor desired, or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail, or have eaten my morsel alone, and the orphan has not eaten from it – if I have seen anyone perish for lack of clothing, or a poor person without covering, whose loins have not blessed me, and who was not warmed with the fleece of my sheep; if I have raised my hand against the orphan, because I saw I had supporters at the gate; then let my shoulder blade fall from my shoulder, and let my arm be broken from its socket. If I have made gold my trust, or called fine gold my confidence… this also would be an iniquity to be punished by the judges, for I should have been false to God above. If I have rejoiced at the ruin of those who hated me, or exulted when evil overtook them; if I have concealed my transgressions as others do, by hiding my iniquity in my bosom, surely I would carry it on my shoulder; I would bind it on me like a crown.”
Job’s friends tried to comfort him by looking for a logical reason for his suffering; as Job knew, there was none.
But we understand the urge to find the reason for suffering and disaster and pain. Job’s friends were not alone. History itself seeks the same. We are not satisfied with the reason that says there is no reason. Neither were the earliest readers of the book of Job. The meat of the story – chapters 3 through the middle of 42 – the long epic poem that tells the tale – left people still searching for a reason where there was none, they wanted an explanation of what sometimes cannot be explained. So later story-tellers and writers took matters into their own hands and invented a backstory, which is what we find in the prose section at the beginning and end of Job. That imagined backstory is what gave Chris de Burgh his song. Satan, or the accuser, proposed a bet with God. The accuser wagered that the only reason Job was blameless and upright, as the opening verse tells us, is that his life has been cushy. God has favored Job, Job was a wealthy man with herds of livestock, a family fitting a man of means, he enjoyed good health and life was good. If all of this were taken away from Job, the accuser wagered, he would turn away from God, he would curse God and renounce his fate. God, the prologue tells us, took the bet. God wagered Job’s family, health and livelihood with the devil. This, finally, is the reason history has been searching for. Tell me, does this make any sense to you? That Job was the ante in a celestial poker game between God and the accuser? Albert Einstein once wrote, “God does not play dice with the universe,” and I would add God does not play poker with human souls. We are not the house money. But as a way of smoothing the rest of the story out, when the poem ends unsatisfactorily with Job still wrestling with his fate, lo and behold, those same later writers or editors changed things around and gave us a happy ending! Suddenly, as if by magic, Job’s fortunes are restored. “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.” And they all lived happily ever after.
To which I say: nonsense. The late addition of the introduction and conclusion, the prose that both opens and closes the book, not only do not belong to the story, they contradict the entire theme of the book of Job. God bet the house, inflicted Job with pain and suffering and unimaginable loss, won the game and then gave it all back to Job. Nonsense. I don’t say this just because it doesn’t jibe with my own personal idea of God, I also say this because the prose sections of the beginning and end simply do not fit the rest of the story. And this is not the only time someone took an editor’s pen to a story in the Bible they didn’t like. As we have seen at Easter, the gospel of Mark does not include any resurrection appearance of Jesus, it ends abruptly with the empty tomb, which led later editors to add not one, but two extra endings to Mark that give the story a happy ending with Jesus being reunited with the disciples, and everyone lives happily ever after, just like in Job.
But if we take that part of the story of Job away, what are we left with? If we are left to wrestle with a difficult ending for Job, as Job himself is wrestling, what is the book trying to tell us?
There are days I wake up in the morning, read the news, and think about crawling back into bed. I think to myself that the world, or at least our corner of the world, has lost its mind. You don’t need me to rehearse and rehash what we’ve seen going on all around us. If you think today’s news is outrageous, it seems to be telling us, just wait ’til tomorrow’s, ’cause you ain’t seen nothing yet! Just what do you think you’re doing God? People are dying, livelihoods are crumbling, our health safeguards are disappearing, and it seems as though somebody out there is gambling with our collective future. Where are you, God?
Job was not afraid to confront God in the face of injustice. Multiple times he went to the Almighty and demanded answers. At first those answers appear high and lofty, as though God were challenging Job’s temerity even to ask the question: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together, and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” It’s like God is giving Job a lesson in creation. In fact it echoes something Kristen Provost Switzer shared with all of you two weeks ago in her Affirmations for Radical Acceptance – I reprinted them for you in my blog on Friday. One of them, one of the simplest, I think, is this: God is God, and I am not. Hmmm; God is God and I am not. The sooner we can accept this, the sooner we can get on with being fully human. This is part of God’s answer to Job.
But there is something richer, deeper, here. God is taking the time to sit with Job, to listen to his questions, to share with him the mysteries of the universe, from the majesty of the heavens to the ways of the lowly locust and so much in between. God is saying, “Job, you matter to me.” And as the great epic poem comes to an end, we marvel that God bends low and listens to Job’s complaint, places Job’s singular life in the context of all of creation, and reveals that all the love and power and majesty and tender care for creation includes the same for this one single human being. “You are a beloved and vital part of my vast creation,” God is telling Job, “you are sacredly and wondrously made.” And Job understands that God has been at his side thought it all, through the suffering and loss and pain, and will continue to be there to guide and sustain him through whatever it is that comes next. This is the happy ending, even if the later editors did not recognize it when they slapped their easy-to-read version on at the end.
This is what makes Job such an epic poem. He is compelled to wrestle with the meaning of his life in the context of God’s creation, he grapples with some of life’s most difficult questions – why is this happening to me? And he finds his answer in the grappling and wrestling itself. He finds his answer in the grappling and wrestling itself. That God is there. That God cares so much for him, as God does for all of creation, that God takes the time to listen and reminds Job that he too is part of the splendor.
When we wrestle with our own humanity, when we seek answers to life’s perplexing questions, sometimes the answer is not in the answer, but rather in the questioning itself. Twentieth century Swiss theologian Karl Barth wrote something I have always remembered, I have shared it with you before, and I think it is a fitting conclusion to how we understand ourselves in light of Job’s story. Barth wrote, “If the congregation brings to church the great question of human life and seeks an answer for it – If the congregation brings to church the great question of human life and seeks an answer for it – the Bible contrariwise brings an answer, and seeks the question corresponding to this answer.” I think this is what God did for Job, God gave Job the answer and invited him to seek in his own life the corresponding question to it. The good news is that the same avenue is there for you and me to find the questions to life’s perplexing answers.