A Meditation on the Book of Job: "Why couldn't I have died," Job asks, "as they pulled me out of the dark? Why were there knees to hold me, breasts to keep me alive? My worst fears have happened; my nightmares have come to life."
There’s a picture in the Holocaust History Museum, on a hill in West Jerusalem, a picture taken in 1937 somewhere in Poland. It’s a wedding celebration, an extended family of friends gathered to bless a newly married Jewish couple. Sixty-four in all. Long arms are thrown around angled shoulders, smiles reveal deep joy and thanksgiving, generations delight in one another’s eccentricities. Sixty-four in all. And just beneath the picture is a note: Fifty-four of the sixty-four were murdered in concentration camps. Within a few years. At first glance, it’s a wedding celebration, a picture of exuberance and joy. At second glance, it’s a sharp kick to the stomach, a body blow from history. Fifty-four of sixty-four. Murdered.
Amazingly, the Hebrew Bible doesn’t dance from the brutal, wrenching realities of our lives. O maybe there are examples where priests promise good things to those who believe, children and riches and a long lineage of blessing. But then there’s Job – a man of integrity and grace, generosity and intense spiritual courage. And what does all of his faithfulness get him? What does his generosity earn? Nothing. Job gets pummeled.
Just briefly, I want you to note four things here, and let these things sit with you this week. First, terrible things happen, awful things, unfair things: and they happen sometimes to some of the world’s kindest, wisest, smartest souls. Cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, and huge jets slamming unannounced into skyscrapers. Awful things, unfair things. Depression and anguish strike down a generous man in the prime of his life. A drunk driver cuts short a childhood, a collegiate career, a marriage. This stuff happens indiscriminately.
Second, Job – this particular man of faith – curses his life and cries out to God for the injustice of it all. It takes him a while. But eventually, Job can’t stand it. “God damn the day I was born,” he howls. “Why couldn’t I have died as they pulled me out of the dark?” Here’s a tradition, a living, biblical tradition, of complaint and anger and anguish. Job lets God have it. And we can do the same. Speak your mind. Engage God. Let God have it.
Third, Job finds God in the deepest, darkest place of all. God is in his chaos. God is in his despair. God is in this whirlwind, Job’s whirlwind. This seems to me to be the most important thing about this poem. It begins with a bit of a tale about a manipulative God, a distant God, who conspires – somewhere out there – with a manipulative and distant angel. This God appreciates Job, from his far-flung station, but is willing to use Job like a chip in a wager with the dark side.
But notice what happens in the middle and toward the end of the poem: Job cries out and dives deep into his pain and anguish. It’s like a whirlwind, his anguish, and it whips him this way and that, it drives him into the wildest speech imaginable and the darkest despair a person can experience. A whirlwind! But it’s exactly THERE, in all that despair, in that same whirlwind, that God finally SPEAKS and ANSWERS. This God is no power-drunk gambler playing cards with the devil in outer space. This God, Job’s God, is Life itself, and Creativity, and Joy, and Mystery. And this God, Job’s God, is there in Job: in his soul, in his ear and in his deep, dark despair. The Life Force of the Universe is THERE – in Job’s heart, in his soul, in his very being.
Fourth, then, and lastly: You are just dust. I am just dust. And sometimes the dust fails us. And sometimes our flesh gets sick. And sometimes our little selves get tossed and thrown and battered by the world.
But within this dust, within your flesh, within our souls, there is ALSO the Life Force, the Spirit, the Passion of God. GOD! When our dust gets blown around, we can call on the passion of God. When our flesh gets tired and weary, we can call on the Life Force that lives inside us. And when our broken bodies break yet again, we can call on the Risen Spirit of the Risen Christ. We are not alone! We do not suffer alone! We do not break alone! This dust can dance.
Now Job raises more questions than he answers. But God bless him for that. He reminds us that in our questioning we make a connection with the sacred source of life. In our doubting we make a connection with the holy author of mystery. So, friends, all I ask today is this: take Job to heart. Take his example. Take his defiance. Take his courage to heart. Let God have it. And know that in good times and bad, in despair and delight, God pays attention to your life. Not from far off. But from within, from within your life. God listens to your aching. Not from some starry perch. But from within, from within your pain. And God marks the tracks of your tears like the wandering of God’s own spirit in the world. The tracks of your tears are God’s own steps, sacred steps upon the earth. Amen.
