Year B, Lectionary 12 (June 24, 2012)

·         Job 38:1-11

·         Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32 (29)

·         2 Corinthians 6:1-13

·         Mark 4:35-41

It's too bad that there is only so much time for reading in the service, because it would really be worthwhile to read not just Job 38:1-11, but God's entire speech to Job, which is chapters 38 through 41. And then Job answered the Lord:

"I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?'

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

'Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you declare to me.'

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;

Therefore I recant,
and change my mind about humanity.

(Job 42:1-6) And after Job has said this, the Lord is pleased with him, chews out his annoying friends, and restores his fortunes.

On second thought, maybe you'd have to read the whole book. In fact, you'd have to read it several times, because it's rather intricate. Luckily other people have read it and summarised it for us, so I'll summarise the summaries for you.

Once upon a time, there was Job, a righteous man. He had seven sons, three daughters, 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 donkeys, and very many servants. And he was very righteous. So one day, the being called [SQG] "Satan", that is, the Accuser, tells God "yeah, Job is righteous, but he's only righteous because everything always goes his way. I bet you if I make his life suck, he'll stop being righteous." And God takes the bet.

So the Accuser kills all Job's children, has enemies kill or steal his livestock, and sends him loathsome sores. Job goes to sit on the ash heap, scraping his sore with a broken piece of pottery, and cries, but does not curse God.

Job's friends come to comfort him. First they sit with him for a week while he cries, which is pretty decent of them. Finally after seven days, Job stops crying and curses the day of his birth. So his friend Eliphaz gives him a long speech to the effect that "well, you did mostly good, but you must have been doing seriously wrong, or else you wouldn't be in this bind." Job starts answering Eliphaz, saying "no, I didn't do anything", and then he addresses God directly. And I like this prayer of Job's:

"Am I the Sea, or the Dragon,
that you set a guard over me?

When I say, 'My bed will comfort me,
my couch will ease my complaint,'

then you scare me with dreams
and terrify me with visions,

so that I would choose strangling
and death rather than this body.

I loathe my life; I would not live forever.
Let me alone, for my days are a breath.

What are human beings, that you make so much of them,
that you set your mind on them,

visit them every morning,
test them every moment?

Will you not look away from me for a while,
let me alone until I swallow my spittle?

If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity?
Why have you made me your target?
Why have I become a burden to you?

Why do you not pardon my transgression
and take away my iniquity?

For now I shall lie in the earth;
you will seek me, but I shall not be."

(Job 7:12-21) In a sense that's a wonderful prayer for us Christians to look at, because Christ is the very answer to this lament of Job's. Christ is God's sign that he pardons our transgressions and takes away our iniquity, and that when we lie in the earth, still God will know us.

After this, Job's friend Bildad gives him another long speech about how surely he must have done all kinds of evil, and then Zophar says much the same, and Job continues to say, no, I'm innocent, but how can I defend myself before God? So this argument between Job and his friends goes on for 34 chapters, and in all this Job talks to God quite a lot. Finally God answers him out of the whirlwind, starting with our first reading and on through the four chapters.

And what God has to say to Job is more or less that "you know what, I don't watch you all the time, I have things to do other than worry about you. I'm busy watching my Creation doing what it does, because it's cool. It's not always about you." Now that may seem somewhat like an evasion of Job's question, but it's not. Job asked "why do you keep watching me so you can persecute me for my sins?" God answers "I don't watch you particularly much and I don't persecute you for your sins. Life just happens."

So the parallel with our Gospel reading is interesting. The disciples are freaking out because there is a storm at sea and Yeshua is sleeping right through it. So they wake him up and say "do you not care that we are perishing?" Well, not really. First of all they weren't actually perishing, they were catastrophising. But no, Yeshua isn't obsessing over what's happening to them. And then once he's awake, he says to the waves, "peace! Be still!" and so it is. And the disciples say "who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" That sentence is like an echo of what God said to Job:

Who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb? –

when I made the clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band,

and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors,

and said, "Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped"?

(Job 38:8-11) If you don't read all of Job, or if you don't read Job at all and take just these little bits of the Gospel where Yeshua uses the power of God's word to do [SQG] "miracles", then you get the impression that you can harass God whenever you've got troubles and he'll fix it miraculously for you. But if you read the two texts together, that's not what you hear. Yeshua isn't saying "please, feel free to wake me up every time you've got issues, I'll take care of it for you." No, what Yeshua says is "if you had faith, you'd leave me alone and deal with it yourselves." Why? Because we should know by now what God explained to Job. That Creation is his and runs to his delight, and if that doesn't always suit us, well, so what? It's not always about us.

Praise be to God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.