Words Without
Job 38:1-7, 34-41; Mark 10:35-45

October 19, 2003

We have danced around with Job for the past several weeks. Job is not a graceful dance partner.

The Book of Job is not a history and often a ponderous parable. Yet it is probably the most real story in the Bible for the most important question is asked - why do bad things happen to good people? Whoever solves the dilemma solves the problem of God: is there a God? Where has God gone? What is God like anyway?

Job does not and cannot answer adequately. He can only whisper and hint. What things he whispers about are usually too obscene to shout.

My congregation was deeply involved in refugee resettlement in the early 1980’s, particularly with Cambodian refugees from the horrendous takeover of that country by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970’s.

One of the young Cambodian men who was hired as a translator and case worker once told me his family story on the road to a meeting. His parents were university graduates and held high level jobs: the father was a government bureaucrat and his mother was a teacher. After the Khmer Rouge captured Pnomh Penh, they made an attempt to dispel rumours about their agenda. They made a widespread public announcement, inviting intellectuals to return to the abandoned capital so that they could rebuild the government, society, and economy.

Our friend Khat’s mother and father returned, and were ushered into an office and given a bunch of papers to translate and process. As soon as the Khmer Rouge leaders could ascertain that they were literate and could read and write, they shot them, right at the table.

Job wanted to know 3000 years ago, and modern Jobs want to know how there is a God in such a universe?

Job gets what he wanted – beware of getting what you ask for – an audience with God. It was a whirlwind affair, distracting to a mere human, but God did come to talk. God maintains unapologetically an infinite countenance. Yet, God is talking to Job. God may be the wholly other, but a human being is being visited by the Creator of all universes. A little Canadian axiom needs to be inserted here: the medium is the message.

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” Who gives a bad name to thinking by talking about something you know nothing about? Why do you talk without knowing what you're talking about? God goes on to assert the obvious, that there is a tremendous gap between the Creator of All Universes and one of the infinitesimally small units of one such creation.

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” God asks. “Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements – surely you know?” Well, uh, I wasn’t created yet, is all you and I and Job can whisper.

This is all important stuff to bring back to mind. I am not the centre of the universe. God is the one who encompasses all there is in the world, all goodness, all beauty, all natural laws. We are simply one part of that world. We can make a mess of most of the world if we assume we are the creators.

However, saying it in this way did not recruit me to the God Movement. I know it is true, and I try to maintain humility in how I live. Still, I need a little more encouragement that I can add something to the worth of creation and its love.

That’s why the next big news from out of the whirlwind is called the Gospel, the good news, because there is a way out of Job’s dilemma, a way for inadequate, infinitesimal people to have good things happen to them.

Mark’s Gospel does not talk generally about disciples, he names names – James and John. They want to order Jesus around. They know he has pull in the divine courts. They want to sit at his right and left hand when the kingdom of heaven is finally established. They want to have places of privilege beyond imagination, and with privilege naturally comes power. Did they want to be little gods? Probably not in those exact words, but in actual fact, yes.

“I am not sure you know how hard this will be,” responds Jesus. “Even I do not have the authority to make sure things like that happen. Are you able to drink my kind of cup and be baptized for the things I am baptized?” Oh yes, we are able, they answer eagerly.

When Albert Einstein came to Princeton in the 1940’s, he was given the best office on campus. It had a study, a parlour, even a small garden. The assignment placated, if not pleased, the other faculty members. After all, if anyone were to have the best office you couldn’t argue with Albert Einstein.

Then in 1955 Einstein died in his sleep. The announcement was made at a faculty meeting the next day. There was a quick gasp of shock and surprise. Then, a voice from the back of the room, crying in the wilderness, “So, who gets his office?”

The old old hymn, “Are Ye Able?” sings it out, but in a different tone.

“Are ye able,” said the Master,
“To be crucified with Me?”
“Yes,” the sturdy dreamers answered,
“To the death we follow Thee.”

Sturdy dreamers they were. I do not believe we are able to commit ourselves to crucifixion. Sure, there have been some unbelievably courageous souls who have been able to sacrifice themselves with full intention and forethought, and without the egocentricities that make their motives suspect. But so few that if humanity can only be saved this way, we are mostly in trouble.

We are asked to follow Jesus, drink his cup, to follow in his footsteps and who knows where that will lead you? Often there is great joy and liberation; sometimes pain and suffering, yet fulfillment. Just follow the best you can.

I was driving Phoumarin, the father of one of the Cambodian families our congregation had sponsored, to a medical appointment. I picked him up at his job and gave him a letter for him sent to our house. It was from a friend of his in the refugee camp in Thailand. He had finally been sponsored and brought over here to start his new life. There was one problem. His sponsors were a Vietnamese family and he was angry. Communist Vietnam had eventually driven Pol Pot out of Cambodia and had occupied the country. The Vietnamese were the last people he wanted to be sponsored by.

I asked Phoumarin, a convert to Christianity, did he know the parable of the Good Samaritan. No, so I told him the story. But I knew it would take a long time to sink in. The Good Samaritan does not make sense in our conflicted world. The Good Vietnamese does not sound like Good News.

What kind of God inspires people to do such a good deed when they know they will be criticized and hated for it? The God that Job met in that violent storm. Good News is usually shocking.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan