A sermon for Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation,
Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
14th June 2020
Listen to this sermon here: https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/2020-06-14a
Job 3.1-10; 4.1-9; 7.11-21
I was talking this week to the minister of a church in
Scotland,
who
expressed their feelings of intense frustration and powerlessness
at
not knowing what to say or do,
to help people in their congregation
who are suffering
from poor mental health, chronic isolation,
and
other negative psychological effects of lockdown.
Whilst for some people,
the adaptations
that the past few months have demanded
have
been an inconvenience;
for others,
particularly those
who
already had physical or mental health problems,
they have
been traumatic.
And the question of how to respond to those who are
suffering
is not easy
to answer.
What does it mean to be draw alongside those
whose
experience of life is both difficult and unfair?
Our readings today from the book of Job
take us
into the world of Job’s suffering,
which is both physical and psychological, and utterly
undeserved.
Through no
fault of his own
his life
and health have fallen apart.
Job is sitting in solitary desolation
when his
three friends come to visit.
Initially Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar don’t recognise their
old friend,
but when
they do, their first response is both helpful and appropriate:
they draw
alongside, sit with him, and weep with him.
The final verse of chapter 2,
just before
the first of our readings for today,
tells us that:
‘no one
spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.’
Sometimes sitting in silence and weeping with those who
suffer is enough,
and I
suspect it is always a good place to start.
But then, if the person starts to speak,
the next
task is to listen, and listen well;
which is where the friends start to get it wrong.
Job starts to speak at the beginning of chapter 3,
and we hear
his lament at his misfortune.
He begins by cursing the day of his birth,
by crying
out that he wishes he was dead,
that it
would have been better if he had never been born.
We can hear echoes of Job’s lament in the language often used
by those
who suffer from suicidal or self-destructive thoughts.
I don’t suppose either Patti Page or indeed Freddie Mercury
knew they were
quoting Job in their two most famous songs,
but nonetheless their lyrics capture so much of the anguish
felt by
those whose lives have left them full of regret and pain.
In 1960, the post-war singing sensation Patti Page sang,
(and if
you’re of a certain age you can sing along):
I wish I'd never been born
Don't like this life I'm living
My heart is shattered and torn
I wish I'd never been born
And then fifteen years later in 1975, Freddie Mercury and
Queen
sang
similar sentiments but in a very different musical style:
Carry on as if nothing really matters
Too late, my time has come
Sends shivers down my spine
Body's aching all the time
…I don't want to die
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all
Or, as Job put it:
Let the day perish in which I was born (3.2)
In the lament against his life which follows,
there are
conscious echoes of the creation story
from the
beginning of Genesis:
Where God said ‘let there be light’,
Job says
‘let there be darkness’ (3.4-5);
where God brings life into being,
Job wishes
he had been stillborn.
For him, in the depths of his pain,
he
concludes that this game called life
is simply
not worth playing.
He didn’t ask for it, and he wishes he could hand it back.
Suicide rates remain worryingly high in the UK,
with men in
mid-life the most likely to kill themselves.[1]
The impact of lockdown on the suicide rate has yet to be
fully seen,
but the
Zero Suicide Alliance have trained
an
additional half-a-million people in suicide prevention
in
anticipation of a growing mental health crisis.[2]
From a different perspective,
next month
I’m going to be attending the launch of a new book
which
addresses the controversial topic of assisted dying
for
those with terminal illness,
and the question of how to respond to those
who have
concluded that life is not a gift that they want to keep
is one of
the key pastoral questions of our time.
I’m not going to dwell on this aspect of things now,
but just to
note that I’ve written on this elsewhere
if you want
to know my thoughts.[3]
However, one thing we can be fairly certain about,
is that the
right way to respond to a person who is wishing they were dead,
is NOT to
do what Eliphaz does next.
He is one of Job’s friends,
and after a
positive start drawing near to Job and weeping with him,
things
start to go in a less helpful direction.
Job’s friends, sometimes called his ‘comforters’,
represent the
theology of retributive justice.
I said last week that the book of Job is a piece of
theological narrative,
exploring
through story form what it means to suffer before God.
It does this by pitting different approaches against each
other,
and in the
speeches from Job’s friends,
we find the
microscope turned forensically on the approach
which
says that Job must have done something
to
deserve this much suffering.
My grandfather was brought up as a Christian Scientist,
and was
taught that illness
is
a physical manifestation of a person’s inner sin:
in other
words, if you’re ill, you did something to deserve it;
and
to find healing, you must confess and stop your sin.
I have often thought it entirely understandable
that he
came out of this as a lifelong atheist;
and I’m sure all of us would reject any suggestion
that
suffering or illness comes as a result of our personal sin.
However, I don’t think we can entirely dismiss Eliphaz,
because his
speech reflects a human tendency that we are all prey to:
that of
trying to fix things when they’re broken.
His beguiling logic captures the cause-and-effect that we
all instinctively seek
in order to
offset problems and resolve situations.
He says:
‘Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?..
As I have seen, those who plow
iniquity and sow trouble reap the same’
He sets himself up as the one
whose job
is to save the situation,
to work out
what’s really going on,
and then to voice that
to try and
make things better.
Eliphaz is the person who, full of well-meaning concern,
tells someone
in pain and suffering
that
‘these things happen for a reason’;
he’s the person who tells someone in grief and loss
that ‘God
takes first those he loves the most’.
And whilst I wouldn’t want to deny
that for
some people there can be a genuine comfort in such sayings,
I think the book of Job is challenging their ability
to offer an
ultimately meaningful approach to suffering.
Job is a story that is intentionally subversive of this way of
thinking,
and as the
friends’ speeches develop,
their attempts to seek meaning in, and reason for, Job’s
suffering
repeatedly
founder on the rocks of Job’s righteousness
and his
unwillingness to play the game
of
reason-seeking or blame-sharing.
And I find myself wondering how do we respond, how do I
respond,
to those
whose lives I do not share,
but whose
suffering I get to witness.
In the light of the Black Lives Matter campaign,
I have to
ask how do I, as a white person,
respond to those whose lives are deeply affected
by their
experience of both personal and systemic racism.
If you, like me, share this concern,
then we
need to heed the warning of Eliphaz.
The temptation is to keep talking
when we
should really be keeping quiet and listening.
The temptation is to demand that the person who is suffering
does the
hard work of explaining their pain to those watching on.
The temptation is to try and fix the situation,
not by
doing our own hard work
on our
unacknowledged biases and prejudices,
but by explaining to our black and minority ethnic friends
that the
situation isn’t really the same
as they say
it is from their experience.
Perhaps it is time to listen to the one suffering again?
Our readings pick up the story in chapter 7,
where Job
makes a significant move.
He stops speaking to himself, and starts speaking to God.
This is one
of the turning points of the book.
In chapter 3 where we left him,
he was
cursing the day of his birth.
But by chapter 7 he is holding his complaint before God.
His words begin as a shriek of suffering directed at God:
16 I loathe my life; I would not live forever.
Let me alone, for my
days are a breath.
But then we get an echo of one of the Psalms of David
as Job
drags theology kicking and screaming into his complaint:
17 What are human
beings,
that you make so much
of them,
that you set your mind
on them,
18 visit them every
morning, test them every moment?
Job cannot fathom why God would even be bothered
to test him
in this way,
if that is
indeed what is going on.
After all, in Psalm 8 those exact same words
follow one
of the great scriptural affirmations
of the awesome
majesty of God (Psalm 8.1, 3-4)[4]
Job’s question is profound: if God is so great,
why would
God bother test humans to destruction?
And so Job rejects Eliphaz’s suggestion
that there
is divinely ordained meaning in his suffering.
He similarly goes on to deny the suggestion
that his suffering
is punishment for sin.
Addressing Eliphaz’s version of God-the-punisher, he says,
20 If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity?
Why have you made me
your target?
Why have I become a
burden to you?
21 Why do you not
pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity?
The book of Job invites its readers to reject a view of God
who causes
suffering for some inscrutable reason that we cannot fathom,
and to reject a view of God
who causes
suffering as punishment for sin.
These do not stand in the light of Job’s righteousness.
And they do not stand in the light of the cross either,
as God’s
son faces undeserved suffering and death.
An understanding of Job helps us understand the cross of
Christ, where Jesus suffers
neither
because God ordains it for some unfathomable reason,
nor because
God is seeking to punish Jesus for sin.
Rather, Jesus suffers because we suffer.
This is
what it means to be human,
and Jesus
is God entering into the depths of humanity.
And so we leave Job, for this week, facing his suffering
alone.
He concludes his speech:
‘For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not
be.’
Eliphaz’s attempt to fix Job have failed.
His suffering cannot be explained,
and it
cannot be explained away.
But neither can it be minimised.
And Job concludes by handing the responsibility
for his
continued existence back to God,
not asking God to undo his misery,
or to fix
it, or even to explain it.
He simply acknowledges God’s presence in the midst of his
pain,
as he moves
into a place of utter honesty with God
from the
depths of his suffering.
And here again we see an echo of the cross,
as God is
present with us in the midst of our pain,
inviting us to a place of honesty before God
from the
depths of our humanity.
[4] O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your
name in all the earth!
You
have set your glory above the heavens.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your
fingers,
the
moon and the stars that you have established;
what are
human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals
that you care for them?
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