|
|
"First Lines"
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
October 4, 2009
The Rev. Elizabeth Molitors
“There was once a man in the land of Uz whose
name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared
God and turned away from evil.” -- Job 1:1
A few weeks ago, I heard an interview on NPR with the writer
E.L. Doctorow, who was talking about his latest novel. The interviewer
remarked on the book’s opening, and Doctorow described
the importance of first lines. First lines, he said, are “a
way of breaking into the story. They give you the voice of the
story and imply the kind of texture the text will have. You
can find the entire book in those first lines.”
This morning, we had the chance to hear the opening lines
from a book of scripture: “There was once a man in the
land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright,
one who feared God and turned away from evil.”
For me, that one verse from the book of Job does, as Doctorow
said, provide a way to break into and give voice to the story.
I’m not sure though, that in it we find the entire story.
But we’ll get back to that in a little bit.
So, what do we know from these opening lines? We know the
story’s main character – Job – and we know
where Job is from – Uz – and we know something about
his character: he’s described as blameless and upright
and God-fearing. Now, we don’t know whether Uz was a real
place, a find-it-on-the-map kind of place – and we don’t
know for sure whether Job was a true, historical person –
scholars are divided on this. This piece of scripture, though,
is not intended to be part of the historical narrative laid
out in the Old Testament as are some other books, like Exodus
or Kings or Samuel. The book of Job is, instead, part of the
Wisdom tradition, those writings which aim to offer guidance
or tell a story that’s true not just for one historical
person at one point in time, but for ‘everyman’
and ‘everywoman’ at every time and in every place.
The story of Job has a timeless quality to it; it rings true
for many. Perhaps you know someone who has had a life like Job’s.
Here is a man who ‘has it all’ – great wealth,
many possessions, a big family, and a huge household; on top
of that, he is also a good guy. He makes sacrifices to God,
and offers his prayers and praise. He treats his family well,
and does all that is expected of him and more. And then, through
no apparent fault of his own, disaster befalls him. He loses
his land, his daughters and sons, his servants, his animals,
his health. After suffering these horrible and devastating losses,
the picture of Job we’re presented with shows him sitting,
desolate and ruined, atop an ash heap, scraping at the boils
on his skin with a piece of broken pottery.
The contrast between these two images is so stark: the strong
and healthy Job surrounded by everything a man could want –
and the diminished Job, poor and bereft, plucking at his sores.
Stranger still is that while Job’s circumstances may have
changed, his attitude toward God did not. Much to Job’s
wife’s disappointment, Job did not curse God for his misfortune.
Which may lead you to one of two conclusions: if this is how
God treats a blameless and upright man, then what’s the
point in being pious? On the other hand, perhaps we’re
not getting the whole story and maybe Job isn’t quite
as good and blameless as he seems.
As readers of this story, we are privy to what actually happened;
we know the source of Job’s troubles. We overhear a conversation
between God and someone called Satan. This isn’t Satan,
the devil; rather Satan is a member of God’s heavenly
court. The Satan, in Hebrew, means ‘the accuser’
- the one who presents an opposing view, the one who casts doubt
on the prevailing wisdom. Tired of hearing God boast about Job’s
great righteousness, the Satan alleges that Job is righteous
and God-fearing merely because God has given him all this ‘stuff.’
Take away the ‘stuff’ Satan says, take away his
health, and suddenly Job won’t be so full of praise or
so ready to turn from evil.
As it turns out, Satan under-estimated Job; with or without
his material possessions and health, Job remained the upright
and blameless man of Uz.
From those first lines and throughout most of the rest of
the book of Job, we’re drawn into thinking that this is
a story about how a righteous man deals with suffering. It seems
to be – to borrow the title from a best-seller of years
ago – it seems to be about “When Bad Things Happen
to Good People.”
But while Doctorow’s aphorisms about first lines may
be true of his own novels, the opening lines of the book of
Job do not, in fact, contain the entire story. Job is blameless
and upright, yes. Chapter after chapter, Job is subjected to
questioning – badgering – by his friends who insist
– kindly, at first – “but Job, you must have
done something!” Job defends himself, maintains his innocence,
and insists that the opening lines of the story are still true:
he is, despite a popular theology that equates ill fortune with
wrongdoing, a blameless and upright man. Job eventually gets
so frustrated that he speaks out against God, railing against
God’s unfairness and injustice and then he demands an
audience with God so he can get this suffering and righteousness
question satisfied, once and for all.
Be careful what you ask for. Job poses his either/or questions
about righteousness and fairness – are you with me, God,
or are you against me? Am I righteous, or not? And if I’m
not, what have I done? God answers Job, but enigmatically, with
a question of God’s own: speaking out of a whirlwind,
God asks, “Where were you when I laid the foundations
of the earth?” Job’s righteousness is a lovely and
admirable thing, but it is, in reality, so insignificant in
the face of the creative, redeeming and sustaining power of
God in the universe.
Where did Job go wrong? It seems that Job, who represents
you and who represents me, has fallen into the trap, the human
failing, the sin that we all fall into from time to time: that
presumption or arrogance that we know exactly who God is and
what God wants and how God works in our lives. It’s the
failing described by Mark Twain when he said that, “It
isn’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble;
it’s what you know for sure that just isn’t so.”
When we presume to know the who and what and how of God –
for instance thinking, like Job, that the central focus of our
life is managing our own righteousness – we wind up making
God very small and then we relegate Him to the periphery. In
an act of perhaps unintended idolatry, we then fill that space
left in the center with ourselves and our own concerns.
What is it for me? – what is it for you? – that
pushes God to the margins and takes over the space at the center
of our lives? What particular ‘hardness of heart,’
as Jesus put it in today’s gospel, do I? – do you?
– harbor that keeps us from softening and opening ourselves
to the awesome and wondrous creative power of God? What attitudes
and expectations about how God is ‘supposed to’
work in the world do I? – do you? – need to abandon
in order to see what God is actually doing? What “first
lines” about our relationship with God do we hang on to,
convinced that we know how the rest of the story unfolds?
I’ve heard it said that the opposite of faith isn’t
doubt, it’s certainty. Are we ready to give up the idolatry
of our certainty about the where and why and how God works,
and open ourselves, in faith, to a sense of wonder and awe?
To trust that the God who laid the foundations of the earth
is still at work in us, and in the world, in ways and for reasons
that we may never fathom.
Amen.
|
