A sermon for Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation,
Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
28th June 2020
Listen to this sermon here: https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/god-in-the-dock
Job 31.35-37; 38.1-11, 25-27
I suspect that that many of us, during the last few months
of lockdown,
have
watched more TV than normal….
One of the most popular types of series are known as
courtroom dramas,
where the
action plays out before a judge,
with the
prosecution and defence mounting their cases.
And one of the ways of thinking about the book of Job
is to read
it as a courtroom drama,
with various witnesses offering their perspectives,
inviting
judgment on the central question
of who is
to blame for Job’s suffering.
In our first reading for this morning, from Job chapter 31,
we find
ourselves in the middle of Job’s final speech in the book.
This is his ‘summing up’ of his defence.
But what
is not entirely clear, however, is who is ‘in the dock’?
Ostensibly, within the world of the narrative, it is Job who
is on trial.
He has
been mounting his defence against a slew of accusations
that he has in some way acted to bring about his own downfall:
either through some sin, or unfaithfulness, or by angering God.
And he
protests his innocence on all charges.
But, and here’s the turn: if Job is innocent,
then maybe
it’s actually God who is guilty?
If humans cannot ultimately be held to account for their own
suffering,
maybe they
should instead blame God?
This is the wider concern that the book of Job addresses.
In his final speech, if we had time to read it all,
we would
see that Job talks through is past life,
and how good it was (ch. 29),
and then
goes on to outline what has happened
to him in his downfall (ch.30).
As we join him in chapter 31,
we find
him taking a long oath proclaiming his integrity and his innocence,
and in the verses we read this morning
we heard
him calling on God to answer him.
Then we get to hear God’s answer a few chapters later,
when God
shows up in a voice heard from the howling of the wind.
God’s response is to take Job on a ‘whirlwind’ tour of
creation,
with the
point being that nature has
an integrity, a majesty, an awesomeness all of its own,
quite
apart from any characteristics that humanity might ascribe to it.
In essence, God is here warning Job
against
what we might call the tendency to anthropomorphism.
If you don’t know this word,
it comes
from the bringing together of two ancient Greek words:
ἄνθρωπος (ánthrōpos) meaning ‘man’ or ‘human being’;
and μορφή (morphḗ) meaning ‘form’ or ‘shape,
and it describes the process of attributing human characteristics
to
something non-human.
At an everyday level, many of us do this.
From the
child who treats their teddy bear as if it had feelings,
to the
person who finds more meaning
in their pet’s behaviour than is logically sustainable,
to the
person who describes the tsunami or earthquake or virus as ‘evil’.
And the book of Job invites us to consider
whether an
anthropomorphic explanation of suffering is adequate.
Is it legitimate to say that a person’s experience of pain
or loss
is
objectively a bad thing?
Clearly, from the perspective of the sufferer, it is.
But Job
questions whether a personal perspective
is a
sufficient basis for passing judgment on the universe.
The reality, of course, as Job comes to realise,
is that
sometimes stuff just happens.
Death and suffering are as much a part of nature
as life
and pleasure.
Maybe there is no explaining it all?
But there is another aspect to anthropomorphism
that the
Job story raises for its readers,
and that is the process of attributing human characteristics
to God.
The point of the creation stories in the Hebrew Bible
is the
assertion that humans are made in God’s image,
and the corollary of this
is that
humans therefore do not get to make God in their image.
And this is where we
begin to get our answer
to the
question of who is really on trial
in the
courtroom drama of the book of Job.
Sure, Job may be innocent on all charges,
but does
that necessarily mean
that someone or something else is
correspondingly guilty?
If we cannot blame Job for his suffering,
can we
blame God instead?
Many have tried, and many do;
but God’s
response to Job gives the lie to this approach.
It is no more meaningful to put God in the dock for human
suffering,
than it is
to try and declare nature itself guilty.
God is not like us,
and to
treat God as if God were a culpable human
is to commit both the error of anthropomorphism,
and the
sin or idolatry,
because it is making God in our image.
A few years ago I saw the Reduced Shakespeare Company
perform
their show, ‘The Complete Word of God: Abridged’,
which
covers the entire Bible in an evening.
When they came to the Book of Job,
they
summed up God’s response to Job
using a
paraphrased quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
‘There are more things in heaven and earth, O Job,
than are
dreamt of in your philosophy. So shut up!’
In other words,
‘Look, you
know nothing, I made everything,
so stop
your moaning and take it like a man.’
And here, in a nutshell, is the problem.
If we judge God by our criteria,
if we
ascribe to God characteristics that are human in origin,
if we make God in our image,
then we
can only conclude that God is cruel and capricious,
toying with us like a child torturing an insect.
Famously, the great eighteenth century revivalist preacher
Jonathan Edwards
used
exactly this perspective on God to try and terrify people into repentance,
in his notorious sermon, ‘Sinners in the
hands of an angry God’.
An anthropomorphised God becomes an all-powerful control
freak,
who throws
tantrums when he doesn’t get his own way.
And so the Book of Job, once again, invites us
to reject a false perspective on God.
We, like Job, are invited
to take a
step outside of our own situations.
For so much of our lives, our realities are defined
by our own
experiences of suffering or joy, pain or pleasure;
and if that is all there is,
then life
is ultimately random and meaningless.
However, God’s speech to Job, if read from the perspective
of humans
being made in the image of God,
rather than of God in the image of humans,
offers a
re-framing of life.
God’s words can be heard
as
offering an understanding of life defined not by suffering,
but rather
by the expansive care that God has for the whole of creation.
Job, and we too, are invited to realise that the only
perspective
from which
we can ask our questions of the meaning or futility of life,
is one grounded and founded
on God’s
prior mercy and care for all that exists.
To put it simply, if we take a breath to complain against
God,
we can
only do so because God has already gifted us the air to breathe.
It’s an invitation to an alternative perspective on life and
suffering,
but it is
not an answer to the question of who is to blame for them.
Job never gets to find out who is to blame,
because
that is the wrong question to have been asking.
Instead, he is gifted the presence of God
in the
midst of his suffering,
and in that experience of God-with-him,
he finds
the strength to live on.
And so we find ourselves once again at the cross of Christ,
the ultimate
moment of God-with-us in suffering.
The cross does not answer the question of who is to blame
for human anguish;
it simply
and powerfully witnesses to God-with-us in the midst of it.
So when, in our lives, we like Job experience trauma and
grief, sickness and loss;
and when
we cast around for who to blame,
the book of Job subverts any attempt to blame ourselves,
and denies
any attempt to blame God.
Rather, it invites us to listen for God’s voice
in the
tumult of the whirlwind;
and to hear God speaking to us of a different perspective on
life,
founded
not on guilt and blame,
but on
loving embrace,
as God enters into our world, our lives,
to participate
in our suffering;
and to draw us through to the newness of life
that
forever beckons us onward.
x
No comments:
Post a Comment