I remember a gospel song from my childhood, the chorus of which goes like
this:
It pays to serve Jesus, it pays ev'ry day,
It pays every step of the way;
Tho' the pathway to glory may sometimes be drear,
You'll be happy each step of the way.
--Frank C. Huston
We like our Christian gatherings to be uplifting and positive--and to a great
degree they should be. But "happy each step of the way"? Job will
have none of it.
Last week we heard Job's friends become very uncomfortable with the ragged
edges of his suffering. It's really the main reason the friends failed in
their mission to comfort Job. They were so ill at ease with his pain that
they attempted to answer it, explain it, and fit it into some religious category
so it could be dealt with. And too often we are like them in our approach
to suffering people, especially when they turn their bitterness toward God.
We just can't stand it, so we try to cajole and even shame them into happiness!
Having grown up singing "happy each step of the way," you can imagine
my horror when I realized that a major part of the Bible is given to lament.
As I read Job or the Psalms or in many other places, there it is--bold-faced,
raw, negative emotion. And it's directed at God!
Job says to his friends, "I can't stand my life--I hate it! I'm putting
it all out on the table, all the bitterness of my life--I'm holding back nothing"
(10:1, TM). This is the pained heart of a broken man crying out in confusion
to a God that he trusts but doesn't understand. Of course, Job doesn't know
what we know. He doesn't know about the conversation between God and Satan.
He doesn't know what God said to Satan about how faithful and trustworthy
Job is. He doesn't know that all that has happened to him isn't happening
because God is angry with him or because he did something wrong. So he's left
in his suffering to wonder what in the world is happening to him.
In this chapter, Job expresses four protests to God:
1. If I've done something wrong to deserve this treatment, then make it clear
to me.
2. How does this fit into what I believe about You--that You're on the side
of good?
3. Is my life, created by You, so meaningless and insignificant that You would
smash it to pieces?
4. What's my purpose in life, and how does this fit into it?
Someone has said that lament is faith with nerve. But here's the amazing thing.
Job's friends spend most of this book (about 35 chapters' worth) trying to
save God's reputation. They give the safe, religious answers. Job obviously
does not. But in the end when God finally speaks and begins to bring some
order into this chaos, it's Job's lament that God receives as true faith--not
the pious platitudes of his friends.
When we love, trust, and serve God and yet our lives fall apart, how do we
handle the powerful emotions of that experience? Most people, if honest, know
the pain of being frustrated and even angry with God. But are we to keep those
feelings to ourselves? Shouldn't we somehow pull ourselves together before
God so we don't disrespect Him with our attitudes? These are the troubling
questions that suffering brings into the lives of God's children.
Job, in contrast to his friends, teaches us how to keep an honest faith in
the midst of bitter lament. God receives Job's complaint precisely because
it is honest. This wasn't the selfish temper tantrum that we sometimes throw
with God. It wasn't about Job saying to God, "I want my way, and You
aren't cooperating." This was a faithful man saying to a God that he
trusted with his life, "This hurts, this doesn't make sense, I don't
understand this. I want You to answer me and help me figure this out."
Perhaps the best-known statement of Job is when he says in the midst of his
lament, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him" (13:15).
Job teaches us that when suffering comes into our lives, we can be painfully
honest about the bitter feelings and hard questions that come. We can indeed
"talk back to God." But like Job, we can "talk back" out
of faith. Sometimes faith looks pious. Sometimes faith looks like dying. Sometimes
faith looks like doubt. Faith can even look like despair.
All of those deep emotions are faithful when they are expressed honestly to
a friend called Jesus, whom we trust with our very lives. It's really not
about answers. It's about living a covenant relationship with God that is
so deep and so secure that it can handle any doubt, any feeling, and come
out on the other side where Job did--at secure faith.
(For a complete manuscript of this sermon, go to www.preachersmagazine.org.)
For folks who were reared in Christian community or who have been around the
church a long time, there will be a major "congregational block"
here. Namely, "You just don't talk back to God." I was taught by
my parents never to talk back to my elders no matter how wrong they might
be. How then could Job (and how could I) ever get away with talking to God
like this? That block needs to be addressed head-on. The preacher should guide
the minds and hearts of the people through thinking about how reticent we
are to say or even think anything negative about how God is treating us. We
almost have to give our people intellectual permission to think in these categories.
Once the dilemma has been raised and is troubling the hearts of our hearers,
we can then move to the narrative of how Job approached this dilemma in his
own life. It is helpful to contrast Job's approach to God with the approach
of his friends, especially when we go to the end of the book and hear God's
evaluation of Job's faith in contrast to the method of his friends.
The desired outcome of this sermon is to help people be honest with the questions
and even doubts that lurk in their minds. They need to know that they can
admit these hard questions in a faithful way. Some people in your congregation
are dealing with a disappointment, a hurt, some anger that they haven't honestly
shared with God because they are afraid it wouldn't be acceptable. We can
encourage and help them by sharing the story of how God accepted Job's bitter
lament because it was honest and faithful.
