June 7, 2020
Job 1: 1-22
Trinity Sunday

We are going to journey with Job for the next few weeks.

Job’s is a story of suffering that we know well … at least by reputation. It’s a book about how suffering can alter relationships … especially the relationship with God.

Today’s passage sets the stage … the context … of what is to come.

We are introduced to one of the greatest people in all the East. We hear about how Job has prospered both as a businessman and as a family man in the land of Uz.

Job lives there with his wife, seven sons and three daughters. He and his family have been blessed with prosperity. Job’s holdings include: seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and a lot of servants to help take care of it all. 

And through it all, Job is grateful for the blessings he has received and worships faithfully, he makes sure there are regular offerings to God on behalf of his kids … because he is sure that they are sinning as they go through their week.

Job is doing everything right.

He is a man of unsurpassed piety … fearing God and rejecting evil each and every day. He is, from the book’s description, flawless.

Unbenownst to Job, a group of heavenly beings are meeting with God.

One of the heavenly beings is called Satan … so we automatically think of the contemporary image the word conjures up. But like Jesus’ rebuke of Peter in Matthew’s gospel, the word “Satan” here likely means something different.

Rather than think of it as a name, consider it more of a job title … or maybe a job description.

Satan, it appears, has done his homework on humans.

He tells God that he has walked the earth … travelling to and fro … observing the people and their behaviour. This appears to be his responsibility … to investigate humans, their activities and their relationships with one another. Some scholars have said that rather than “Satan,” an appropriate translation for the original Hebrew word is “accuser.” So, think of him as a type of heavenly prosecuting attorney.

So, after doing this for a while and living among the people, Satan believes he understands human nature and argues that all the blessings in Job’s life have made it easy for him to be righteous and pious.

This heavenly being believes that even the “most righteous man” will turn against God in the face of misfortune. And to prove his point, Satan wants Job to suffer some serious losses.

God accepts the challenge and turns over Job’s welfare to the accuser. There is one condition, Satan cannot rule over Job, himself, … “do not stretch out your hand against him!” is God’s instruction.

Little by little, Job loses his children, his servants and his possessions – and in some pretty arbitrary ways, at that. Some were captured and others killed by invading forces, some by fire and some in a building collapse.

The passage ends with Job shaving his head, tearing off his robe in anguish and worshipping God.

God doesn’t come out of this story too well.

In today’s passage, God seems to be boastful and careless. At best, he appears to be absent in Job’s life – at worst, he assists in a cruel experiment.

God risks a lot by allowing the accuser to strip down Job’s life. God’s relationship with Job and, by extension, with people in general, could be irreparably harmed by Job’s experiences.

If Job begins to curse God, that could mean that God is worshipped for the blessings he doles out and to stave off personal misfortune. It would mean that love is not part of the equation.

That God’s faith in Job … and in humanity … is misplaced.

Job … through his response … to the death of his children and loss of his herds … underscores that his love of God is anchored in something more permanent that the possessions of this world.

The world we live in is uncertain … God’s presence in our lives is not. This is something that becomes clearer as we move through the Book of Job during the coming weeks.

Satan … the accuser … for all he does to Job … does bring a number of important questions into focus: Do we love God for what we get from the relationship, or do we love God for who God is?

The Book of Job invites us to reflect on the nature of our piety and our service.

Is it truly anchored in the unconditional love, the grace, we have received or is there an element of getting something in return? Is there a self-serving element lurking somewhere in our worship practices or our life of faith?

And, just as importantly, the Book of Job brings the question … “Now what?” to the forefront.

The Book of Job runs 42 chapters long … it’s one of the longer books in the Bible. Yet, the tragic losses of children and property only occupy a small portion of the book – the majority of the space is devoted to the responses to these losses.

When we hear Job’s story, we can reflect on the “now what?” to the crisises that occur around us.

We can use Job’s story and his response to tragedy and suffering as a lens or as a frame as we reflect on our own actions in the face of the current pandemic … a situation that we cannot control … that we can only mitigate … flatten the curve is how the health-care professionals put it.

But it is still a situation where we can offer comfort or connection to those who have … like Job … suffered a loss or are at the risk of one. 

How does Job’s story fit our own story … even if we never … knock wood … suffer to the degree he and his wife did?

And does our faith crumble when we witness or face suffering?

Although Job’s story takes place centuries before Jesus arrived on the scene, Job does demonstrate how suffering informs faith.

Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we receive grace through the cross. And through this gift, we are called to ask the question “now what.”

What do we do with this gift … how can we serve … how can we fight hatred and oppression … how can we end suffering?

During our journey with Job … that last question should help frame our response or relationship to those who are suffering.

AMEN