by Kate Lore, Director of Social Justice

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

This morning I want to share a story with you that is about 5,000 years old.  It is, in fact, one of the oldest and most commonly told stories of all time and involves a good man to whom bad things happen.  Perhaps you’ve heard of him; his name is Job.

Now when most folks think of Job, their minds instantly recall those familiar words: “the patience of Job.”  But did you know that that phrase isn’t even in the book of Job?  It’s in the book of James and it’s one particular individual’s understanding of what the Job story tells us.

I believe that there is a great deal more wisdom to this story than simply the merits of patience.  In fact, upon closer examination, I discovered that there were parts of this story that seemed downright Buddhist and Hindu in orientation and that paint a picture of a God very unlike that which is typically found in the Bible.  So today I’m going to ask you to set aside your “sound bite” understandings of Job and come with me as we take a fresh view of the story.  

Let me start by saying that I hope that none of you ever have an experience quite as trying as Job—and we’ll get to the details of his story in a moment.  But I want to acknowledge that all of us here have experienced Job moments:  those times in our lives when we feel utterly desperate and alone in our suffering.  Perhaps it was due to the death of a loved one, a broken relationship, a lost job, an illness or an act of betrayal from someone you’ve trusted.   Or perhaps you are having a “Job moment” right now, as I am, over the war and occupation of Iraq. 

Yes, there are many of us suffering right now over the situation in Iraq: our troops and their families, the citizens of Iraq, our allies, and Americans of all types of political persuasions.  There are those of us who live in constant fear of another terrorist attack on our soil.  There are those who support this war but who worry that we we’ve gone about it in such a way that we’ll never regain our reputation as a great country.  Or who worry that everything is such a mess now that there can be no good and just resolution.  And then there are those like myself who mourn the fact that we went to war in the first place and who believe that we could have prevented all this death and chaos had we chosen a more diplomatic path.  In this way, there is no partisan position: we’re all in some sort of agony over Iraq.  

Perhaps you know that our Peace Action Group has been keeping track of all those who have died in this war, American and Iraqi alike.  Have you seen their signs downstairs, in which the numbers of those killed or wounded are updated each week?    It’s hard watching those numbers climbing relentlessly and yet it keeps us present to the situation.  People are dying with each passing week. 

I know that many of you here share my sorrow over all these deaths, and so before continuing with the Job story, I’m going to take a moment and ask something a little different of you today.  I believe that when we mark our grief as a community, it helps brings a type of comfort that cannot be attained alone.  Therefore, I am going to invite all who are willing and able to please stand up right now as we take a moment of silence to lovingly honor those who have died in this war.

(After brief silence, Paul Pitkin plays Taps on the oboe)

Thank you, everyone and thank you, Paul.  Please be seated.

It does help to grieve together, as it lessens our sense of being alone in our suffering.  Nonetheless, I still find myself shaking my fist at God at times, just like Job, imploring God to please do something to make things better and to alleviate all this suffering.  However, just as with Job, God does nothing.  But now I am getting ahead of myself; let’s get back to the Job story.

Job is a very good and humble man who is held in the highest regard by all who know him, including God. God seems to smile upon Job and Job’s life comes together in perfect order. He is rich and healthy. He loves and respects his wife and children and they love and respect him. Job is happy; he loves his God and is grateful for his many blessings. 

Then one day, unbeknownst to Job, this character named Satan has a conversation with God about him.  Satan doubts Job’s righteousness, you see, and believes that the only reason why Job is so good and faithful is because God has blessed him so richly. God, however, scoffs at this accusation.  God has so much confidence in Job’s loyalty, in fact, that he gives Satan permission to put Job to a test: to inflict extreme suffering upon Job to see if this undermines his faith in God. 

Now I need to tell you that I don’t actually believe in Satan—many of us here don’t.  But, I appreciate this Satan metaphor.   In my own mind I replace the word “Satan” with the word “consumerism” or “individualism” or anything, really, that has the power to lead us astray.  I invite you to into your own translation of the word “Satan,” and for that matter, for the word “God,” too.  The point is not to let the words keep you from the underlying message.

So back to the story—Satan takes God up on the challenge and starts unleashing one horrible problem after another upon Job.  After a while Satan has destroyed everything that really matters to him:  all 10 of his children, his livestock, which was the source of his wealth, Job’s health, and finally his reputation. You see, people who have known Job all their lives have noticed that his life is falling apart.  So they start asking him, “What have you done, Job, to invoke the wrath of God?  Surely, no one who is pleasing to God would have to endure so much suffering.”  Job responds by telling them that he has done nothing wrong, absolutely nothing that would deserve such punishment.  Alas, his friends aren’t convinced.

Job’s losses continue to mount and finally his wife—the only immediate family member who is still alive—gets so frustrated that she tells Job to curse his God and die. 

Poor Job.  He knows he is innocent of wrongdoing. We know it. The narrator tells us in the story, and even God says that Job is upright and blameless.  So why, then, doesn’t God put an end to this silly test and show some mercy on his faithful servant?   What kind of God would just sit back and passively watch Job suffer? 

I imagine most of us here have raised similar questions when faced with our own unexplained suffering. “What did I do to deserve this?” We ask.  “Why is God allowing these horrible things to happen to me?  I must be doing something wrong.”   

But let us take a moment to explore the logic underlying this notion of a God that intervenes to help good, faithful people when they are suffering.  If such a God did indeed exist, wouldn’t that imply, then, that the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people are those most favored by God?  That God has blessed them because of their extraordinary piety?  Well, if this were true, wouldn’t it then also suggest that all the poor, suffering people in the world are somehow not in God’s favor? That God is punishing them by not intervening in their lives?

I make this point, you see, because this is such a commonly held understanding of God and it leads so many of us into blaming the poor and oppressed for their problems.   This, in turn, can and does lead to some really bad policy-making.  Take, for example, our current Administration.  President Bush believes in a personal, intervening God who is on his side, helping him rid the world of terrorism, helping him bring Christianity into the workings of government.  He has said all this in public.  Is it any surprise then that this same president has created the Faith-Based Initiative?  This initiative is founded on the premise that poor, addicted and/or homeless people will be best served by religious programs—not by professionals.  As if their problems are due to some religious deficit instead of being the result of systemic inequity and oppression.  

This understanding of God also leads some people to believe that the AIDS epidemic is simply God’s mode of punishing really bad people.  Translation: people who happen to be gay or promiscuous or are intravenous drug users. 

But there’s another reason why I fret over this image of the Divine as one who intervenes in the lives of God’s favored people: it leads a inordinate number of people to lose faith in God when tragedy strikes and God doesn’t come to their rescue, doesn’t save the life of their child, or stop the suicide bombers or whatever the tragedy might be.   In seminary I’ve learned about the great numbers of Jews who renounced their belief in God when God didn’t intervene to stop the horrors of the Holocaust.  The Bible had told them, after all, that Jews were God’s chosen people.  God had helped them during the Exodus.  Where was God during the Holocaust? 

But before we totally give up on the notion of a higher power, perhaps we need to consider the option that we’ve never fully grasped the real nature of the Divine.  

As I see it, the world is full of pain and a lot of it is not fair.  Yes, we respond with rage and despair, helplessness and cynicism.   We pound our fists and demand an explanation yet no answer comes.  So what kind of God are we dealing with here?

Now we’re getting to the good part of Job’s story, which happens near the end.  At this point we find Job ranting and raving to God about all that he has had to endure.   He is shocked into silence, however, when, in response, God suddenly appears before him, addressing him out of wild and chaotic whirlwind. It is an intimidating site.

God tells Job: “I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand."

With these words, God is asking Job what does he know about the rigors of creation or the inevitability of suffering?  Just like the Buddha, you see, God is telling Job that suffering is simply a part of life.  It strikes us all.  None of us are spared no matter how good and faithful we are.  

God goes on to describe to Job the cosmic structures of the universe, the stars and the phenomena of the weather, the cycles of nature, the earth and sea and all the creatures, each one with its own ecological niche.  God clearly loves the earth he has created and this part of the story reads some grand creation hymn. 

God’s dramatic conversation with Job shakes him to his core as his understanding of the world suddenly cracks wide open and he realizes that God is both creator and destroyer in this universe, dancing a wondrous dance of energy.   This is the part that sounds rather Hindu to me. It is as if Job finally comprehends the Kali aspect of the Divine.  Kali, the bloodthirsty goddess who is the divine destroyer and consort to Shiva.

This new understanding of the full power and glory of God puts Job at awe and he begins to understand his own very small place in the scheme of things.  The universe was not created to make humans comfortable. That was Job’s basic misperception, and a commonly held one at that.  We humans tend to see ourselves as the center for which the Universe exists.  And as much as we’d like to believe this, it simply is not true. 

Yes, God has created a magnificent, complicated, chaotic world that is beyond human comprehension.  Yet this doesn’t mean that God has set us here to fend for ourselves.  In every desolate corner of the world, every being, no matter how forlorn, receives God’s love and care.  God is with each one of us at all times.  No one—not Job, not us—is ever godforsaken.  But we will encounter suffering.  Suffering is simply part of the world; it is built in by necessity. If you step off a cliff, you will be smashed at the bottom—by the same gravity that makes life possible in the first place.  It is how God created it. 

Our lives—with all of our gains and losses—are part of a larger mystery of living that we may not fully comprehend, but with which we still keep faith. And luckily, we have each other to help maintain that faith.  

Those of us who are a part of this church are very fortunate: there is a power here that resides in the loving community we have created together.  We support each other through life’s difficulties.  Sure, sometimes we are like Job’s friends and we say the wrong things to each other out of nervousness and uncertainty.  But most of the time we do it right: we listen to each other, we are present to each other’s pain and we offer our loving support over time. 

We are also lucky enough to have access to an amazing array of classes that can help widen our understanding of the Divine—since God doesn’t make a regular habit of appearing before humans!  We have Covenant Groups, support groups and classes on meditation, Hinduism, Buddhism, yoga—you name it.  Together, we learn and we grow; together we heal when suffering comes our way.

So when you invariably encounter heartbreakingly difficult times, don’t listen to your friends when they try to assess what you might have done to deserve this agony.  Don’t listen to yourself, either, if you lapse into one of those bouts of “what did I do to deserve this?”  Rather, remember Job’s story: that as we struggle with our problems, we are never utterly alone, that there is care and kindness all around us.  If you have a relationship with God, talk to him or her—pray, yell, and scream, whatever you need to do.  Then do the same with us, your people with whom you share this spiritual home.  Or call one of our beloved lay ministers.  Or do a combination of these efforts, whatever feels right!  The point of the matter is that you need to communicate with someone, to let your spirit cry out in its fullness among kindred spirits.  Then, once you’ve done this, be prepared to have your understanding and perspective cracked wide open.  Tragedy has a tendency to interrupt our daily routines and our long-held assumptions.  Tragedy forces us to look at our lives in whole new ways.  We become more open, we try new ways, we take more risks, we gain new levels of clarity, and a greater sense of reality.  In the end, we become wiser like Job and this, in itself, is a gift. May you find this gift in this community and may you, in turn, help others find it as well.  Amen.