Last week, you heard Pastor Ron preach on the creation story of Job. For four chapters, God responds to Job with this story of creation and the way in which God has ordered creation. Out of the whirlwind, God has finally responded to Job. Not with an answer to his question about why he is suffering. But about how God is a creator God. Who loves and nourishes creation each and every day. In the first part of our lesson today, God’s speech continues.
Last week you were introduced to one particularly dangerous and wild creature. In this portion of today’s reading, you will meet a second. Leviathan - that huge sea-being created by God.
God speaks out of the whirlwind.
“Can you pull in the sea beast, Leviathan, with a hook and tie his tongue with a rope?
Can you put a cord through his nose or snap his jaw with an anchor?
Will he beg you over and over for mercy, or flatter you with flowery speech?
Will he make a pact with you to run errands and serve you the rest of your life?
Will you play with him like a bird, or put a leash on him for your children?
Will you display him in the marketplace so that shoppers can haggle over his price?
Can you shoot him full of arrows or drive a fishing spear into his head?
Should you lay your hand on him, you would never remember the battle - won’t live to tell the story.
Any hope of controlling him would be delusional.
The sight of him makes one stumble.
If you can’t hold your own against this fierce creature, how can you stand before me?
Who can confront me and get away with it?
I am in charge of this - everything under heaven is mine. I run this universe!” --Job 41:1-8
If Job hasn’t been brought to his knees by the earlier part of God’s response, he can only fall to them now. “Who are you?” God asks him. “Who are you that you think you are in control of this world? The universe? The cosmos? Who are you?”
There is an ancient myth that this Leviathan represents chaos. Perhaps that’s an appropriate thought for the times we are in. But I wonder if, here, Leviathan isn’t better characterized by the Leviathan written about by Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century British philosopher. Hobbes challenges us to consider that the Leviathan - this great monster of chaos - is actually within us all. That when we begin to believe that we are in control of this universe, we have succumbed to it and to the chaos it brings with it. Perhaps, this is God’s purpose with these words. Not to condemn Job for his self-centeredness and his focus on his own suffering. Because isn’t that what suffering brings us to do - to curl in upon ourselves? To focus only on ourselves and our own pain? Perhaps God’s purpose with Job (and with us) is to break open his vision. To reframe his perspective. To say to him, “You think you know about the world and about my justice, but you don’t! You don’t!”
God is re-orienting Job to a new vision, a non-human centered vision of the world. Teaching him humility. To give him a new vision, a new perspective. To invite him to look around. To breathe. And to live.
How will Job respond? We hear his answer in chapter 42.
“I’m convinced. I know you can do anything; no plan of yours can be opposed successfully. You asked, “Who is this muddying the water, confusing the issue, second-guessing my purposes?’ I admit it. It was me. I have spoken about things I didn’t understand, wonders beyond my own comprehension. You said, ‘Listen and I will speak; Let me ask the questions and you give the answers.” I admit, my ears had heard about you, rumors of you. But now, my own eyes have seen you. Firsthand. Therefore, I relent. And find comfort on dust and ashes - in my own humanity.” --Job 42:1-6
At the beginning of the book of Job, Satan argued with God that God had created the world in such a way that the righteous were kept from all harm - that God had placed a fence around them to protect them. This was the same worldview that Job and his friends also held - that the world was ordered in such a way that the righteous are rewarded and the wicked are punished. It’s the picture we had of Job at the beginning - a “blameless and upright man who feared God and turned away from evil.” A man who made sacrifices for his children preemptively - just in case. His was a very ordered world, where one’s righteousness produced prosperity.
But that world was shattered and collapsed around him in ashes. And, eventually, Job reached a second and different conclusion about the order of the cosmos, accusing God of fencing him in. Of creating a protective hedge so tightly that it feels as though he is being suffocated.
These two conclusions - these two worldviews - are spoken by Satan and Job in the earlier chapters of the book. But, when God speaks, beginning in chapter 38 and continuing to this morning, both perspectives are called into question. The created order is not what any of them thought or imagined. The world is not a perfectly safe place for humanity. But, it is an ordered place and it is a place of profound beauty and freedom. And, within it, there is a place for humanity. Not for dominion, but for humility and wonder. God invites Job into this world and into God’s vision, to see the world in a new way. To reorient himself. To understand that he is not the center of the cosmos. To see the world from God’s point of view and to understand in a new way his place in that world.
Our reading continues in chapter 42.
After God had finished speaking to Job, he turned to Eliphaz the Temanite and said, “I’m angry at you and your two friends because you haven’t spoken about me correctly as did my servant Job. So now, take seven bulls and seven rams, go to my servant Job, and prepare an entirely burned offering for yourselves. Job my servant will pray for you, and I will act favorably by not making fools of you because you didn’t speak correctly, as did my servant Job.”
Eliphaz from Teman, Bildad from Shuah, and Zophar from naamah did what the Lord told them; and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.
After Job had interceded for his friends, God restored his fortune. And then doubled it! All his brothers and sisters and friends came to him and ate food with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him for all the trouble God had brought him. Each one of gave him a qesitah and a gold ring. Then the Lord blessed Job’s latter days more than his former ones. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand yoke of oxen, and one thousand female donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named one Jemimah (or Dove); a second, Keziah (or Cinnamon); and the third Keren-Happuch (or Darkeyes). No women in all the land were as beautiful as Job’s daughters; and their father gave an inheritance to them along with their brothers. After this, Job lived 140 years and saw four generations of his children. Then Job died, old and satisfied. --Job 42:7-17
Job gets it. And responds by praying for his friends. And by having more children, including three beautiful daughters to whom he gives names that reflect their beauty. And, then, in an act unheard of in ancient Israel, Job gives them an inheritance along with their brothers. We see a transformed Job. Transformed by his own suffering and led by God to open his eyes to the beauty and grace of the world around him. To have hope in it and in God’s ordering of it. To breathe. To live. And to give his children the same freedom that God gives all creation - freedom to be fully who they have been created to be.
At the beginning of our lectionary year, I wondered if Job was right for us this summer. Who could have known then what we know now? We are witness to the truth that the world is not perfectly safe for humanity.
Yet, we, like Job, are called to a new vision of our world. To open our eyes to the beauty and grace of the world that God has created. To view it and all that God has made from a place of humility and wonder. And to have hope in it and in God’s ordering of it. And, then, like Job to breathe. And to live into our humanity and the freedom given to us by God, won for us by Christ’s act on the cross. So that we might fully be the whole and gracious and loving people God has created us to be. And that we might live in a world that, even though sometimes doesn’t feel safe, trust that God orders it and is in control.
May this be our lesson and learning in this time from the book of Job. Amen.
Preached July 12, 2020, online at Grace & Glory Lutheran Church, Goshen, KY.
Pentecost 6
Readings: Psalm 150; Job 41:1-8; 42:1-17
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