Sermon: When Life Is Unfair
A few years ago I attended a memorial service for a teenage sister of one of my parishioners. This frail child had suffered from the effects of several genetic aberrations. She had been devoid of hearing from birth. She lived long enough to attend the state high school for the deaf in Morganton. Reverend Tom Summey, our United Methodist pastor for the deaf in North Carolina, conducted the memorial service. This was an unforgettable experience in worship for me. Even though few within this unique congregation could hear the music, a young soloist rendered, “He’s got the whole world in his hands.” The person signing for the soloist made sweeping arm movements to interpret this simple song. At the end of each stanza, a large smile beamed from his face. By the time Rev. Summey had pronounced the benediction, I was convinced that the Lord held in his hands not only the existence of this tortured child but also the whole created order.
Occasionally it appears to us, however, that the creator has dropped the globe into some stark, dark abyss. Like an Atlanta Braves outfielder, God’s hands appear careless. Starving Haitians have been fumbled like a hard line-drive that no one wants to catch. Rwanda refugees, likewise, must wonder if God has remembered that they are card-carrying members of the human family. A teenage diary from Sarajevo recently raised the question of God’s whereabouts.
In recent days we have been rivetted by the video evidence of a Palestinian father trying to protect the fragile body of his child as an Israeli soldier takes aim. Does God hold in Gods hands the people who reside in the land euphemistically called holy?
Massive populations of children around the globe are born into a milieu of poverty, disease, and destitution. Surely it is easier for us to trust in the compassion of God when we are lavished with so many material blessings. The hardest task is to believe in a God of mercy, love, and compassion when all of life’s fortunes have been reversed.
This was the plight of the exiled Hebrews. The ancient theology of Deuteronomy, taking its original form during the security of Israel’s monarchy, relied upon a simple formula: if you live righteously, you will be rewarded; if you neglect the covenant, you will suffer. This general equation was indeed historically verifiable. The kingdoms of both Israel and Judah had witnessed the transgressions of a long line of idolatrous monarchs. Defeat by Assyria and Chaldaea had been predicted by the feisty prophets of Yahweh. Suffering, even slavery, became the plight of the Hebrews. But those who had endured the humiliation of slavery during the seventy years of Babylonian exile began to question the deuteronomic axiom. Their parents, not they, had bowed before Baal. Their predecessors, not they, had turned a deaf ear toward the righteous prophets. But they were being punished. They built synagogues in Babylon. They prayed, fasted, and sang the songs of Zion. Unlike their ancestors, they rejected the Baals of Babylon. Still, they suffered catastrophic consequences. Life was not fair. Many devout Hebrew theologians of the exile rightly questioned the assumption that suffering automatically results from sin. They observed that the innocent, as well as the guilty, suffer. With despicable regularity, evil people prosper at the expense of the innocent.
The Book of Job is the product of this new skeptical theology. This so called “wisdom” writing sought to offer a needed correction to the excesses of the deuteronomic formula. The message of Job was not written to solve the problem of innocent suffering. Nor did it attempt, in the words of John Milton, to “assert eternal Providence,/ And justify the ways of God to men.”1/ The book of Job merely observes that life is grossly unfair for many. If you become religious or righteous merely in order to receive your just rewards, you will inevitably be disappointed. After all, Job was a good person. Even if Sixty Minutes had sent Mike Wallace to perform an exposé on this man form the land of Uz, he would have failed to discover a single flaw. Job lived a fastidious life. His name meant in the Hebrew language, object of enmity and persecution . This little book features a universal, symbolic character. The biblical Job is male; but the character transcends gender. Job resides in this congregation, many times over. Job is devout, upright, and God-fearing. He or she is always fair in dealing with us. We can trust his or her word.
When the writer of this book speaks of God, he uses the Hebrew word Elohim . Pious Hebrews reserved this word for a general reference to the deity. The author of the book refrained from the use of Yahweh -- the national name for the Hebrew God. Job was an international figure, a respected Arab -- “the greatest of all the people of the east.”2/
The God of Job ( Elohim ) became convinced by Satan (a shady character in the heavenly court) that Job’s goodness was spurious. Job was good only because he was blessed. Job believed that righteousness was always rewarded. Remove Job’s blessings, the Adversary argued, and Job will no longer be obedient or righteous.
Many cultures of the ancient world preserved a Job-like story. The semi-nomadic Edomites possessed such stories in their great heritage of folklore. The Egyptians maintained the haunting tales of complaint by the so-called Eloquent Peasant. Job is that figure from the ancient world who transcends time and culture. He is the voice of everyone who has ever cried out, “Life is not fair!” The man of Uz personified innocent suffering on an exaggerated scale. His children were dramatically and suddenly killed. His financial fortune was taken away. He was flushed onto a dung-heap with painful sores upon his raw flesh.
The book of Job wisely avoids the choice made by the contemporary Rabbi Harold Kushner. When given the choice between a powerful God (Elohim ) who remains indifferent to human suffering and an impotent deity who is powerless to restrain the evil, Kushner prefers to believe in a powerless God. The book of Job, to the contrary, assumes that God is all-powerful. In this biblical story, God allows bad things to happen to a good man. Job cannot comprehend the ways of God. He waits ever so impatiently for God to make things plain.
No one has to convince us that we live in an unfair world. A few days ago Providence Road became a parking lot in front of our church. Drivers walked over to purchase pumpkins at our pumpkin patch. Only hours later did the city learn that a beloved professor at UNC-Charlotte had become the victim of a careless driver. Both were slain in a senseless moment.
This week Alice White will represent our congregation on a medical mission team in Haiti. Brent Matthews will perform surgery there next month. There they will witness hunger and physical deprivation that defies justice and threatens the notion of God’s mercy.
On a medical mission team in Bolivia I witnessed the assembly of hundreds of peasant children from the Bethel ghetto of Cochabamba waiting to see their first dentist. I do not need the wisdom literature of ancient Israel in order to be convinced that life can be very unfair.
We will read in vain if we expect this book of dialogue and drama to justify the ways of God to humanity. No. We do not learn from the narrative why Job suffers. But we can be enlightened by the God whom we meet in this book, as was Job. Job was left in ignorance, even at the end of the story. The lesson Job learns is that he must trust God, even if he does not understand the reason for God’s actions! This is precisely what constitutes the imperishable value of this book and its universal significance. Job remains ignorant, yet trustful.
This narrative prepares us for a more fulfilling encounter with God. Our theology of hope runs out of gas when we read only from the book of Job. Yet, this story prepares us for the good news of the incarnation. The God of power has taken the form of a powerless servant. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a reversal of fortune has come to Job. Because of what God has done in Christ, the meek (personified in the Hebrew scriptures by Job) shall inherit the earth. Through Christ, God has given substance to our hope. For a little while, Jesus was made lower than the angels -- lower than Satan, the Adversary. But now the risen Christ is “crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”3/
God has sent Jesus into this unfair world. God was in Christ; thus, we are confronted with this mysterious paradox: Christ has delivered Job from despair by becoming Job himself. Christ, the righteous one, has victoriously overcome evil, by becoming an innocent victim himself. Christ has secured the ultimate triumph of righteousness by taking the plunge into our plight. Through the holy unfairness of Jesus’ crucifixion, all the unfairness of this world is being transformed.
Julian of Norwich, a saintly woman, was on her death bed almost six hundred years ago. She reported the experience of receiving a series of visits from her crucified Lord. Christ stood at the foot of her be and consoled her by saying, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”4/
Innocent people suffer. Some in our midst are among those who suffer so unfairly. But each of us can say this day that come hell or high water; come affliction or hardship, come nakedness, peril or even the sword; nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Do we have proof of this? We have only the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God’s answer to the plight of Job.
Footnotes:
1. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, ll, 25-26.
2. Job 1:3 RSV
3. Hebrews 2:9 NRSV
4. Julian of Norwich, Showings, translated by James Walsh, S. J., Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1978).