Job 7:1-4, 6-7 + Psalm 147:1-2, 3-4, 5-6 + 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23 + Mark 1:29-39
Delivered at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Mustang, OK by Deacon Paul Lewis
I think all of us, lector included, had a particularly
challenging job today.
Those closing lines of that first
reading from Job…My days happiness again.
The Word of the Lord.
And our response…Thanks be to God!
One could rightfully ask…After hearing that, what am I
thankful for?
Is that really “The Word of the
Lord”? ...are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle; they come to an end without hope. Remember that my life is like the
wind; I shall not see We don’t hear from Job much in our
Sunday readings.
In fact, I researched it...over the normal three year
rotation…twice.
Job is one of the most interesting books of the Bible. It begins by describing Job as an
upright man who fears the Lord. Job is a man of many riches. He has seven sons and three daughters… He has seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, a thousand oxen, five hundred donkeys and enough servants
to take care of all of this.
There is a dialogue between God and
Satan. God says, "Have you seen Job?
There is nobody like him. He possesses fear of Lord, is a
good and upright man,
and he avoids evil." Satan's response... "Well yeah! Of course he is!
Look at all of his riches. Take his riches away, and he'll
curse you.
God puts his faith in Job and gives Satan the ability to
inflict misery on Job's life.
Job's children, his possessions, his servants, and eventually his good health, is taken from him.
This dialogue in Job, between God
and Satan, has been interpreted as evidence of a divinity who is cruel and permits the torture of
creation. This fails to see the deep issues
of the text that the author wants us to see. This dialogue is simply a technique
to lead us to some of the deepest questions of
the Bible... Do humans serve God for themselves
and their own profit? Can God create one who truly
worships freely?
In Old Testament times, wealth and success are seen as
evidence of one's faithfulness to God. Poverty, disease, and calamity were
seen as evidence of God's justice. Those that suffer must have
offended God. We see evidence of this in the
Gospels. When the man born blind is
presented to Jesus, the question is asked, "Who sinned, this man or his
parents, that he was born blind?"
Retributive justice is what we
might call it.
We must always remember...God's
ways are not our ways.
When I worked in the hospital I would hear family members
referring to their sick loved ones as having “the
patience of Job.” It puzzled me, because patience is not a virtue that I would ever associate with Job. Read Job sometime. He complains throughout. And who can blame him. He's lost everything. There is no such evidence that Job
possessed any patience. It wasn’t until later, when it was
pointed out to me that the King James version of the Letter of James, Chapter 5, verse 11, speaks of the “patience of Job.” The original
Greek word is hypomonē. A better translation is
steadfastness, perseverance, or endurance.
Job’s steadfastness, perseverance
or endurance is without question. His patience…that’s questionable.
Despite his complaining, he holds steadfast to his love of
God. When his friends try to convince
him that God is punishing him for some wrong, when his wife tries to get Job to
curse God for his misfortune, Job is persistent. "No! I may not understand all
of this, but I know that this misery is not
punishment, and I will not curse God."
Job's faithfulness, and our
faithfulness, ultimately lead to God's good
works,
whether that be in this life, or
the next.
Job is a figure
for the good and innocent sufferer. When evil people
suffer we may reason, with that attitude
of retributive justice, they are getting
their just desserts. But when the
innocent suffer we can’t come up
with a reason to justify their pain. Job can find no
rationale for what happened to him. He is overwhelmed
by his loss, physical pain and mental anguish. What was worse was
his confusion about how God
seemed to be treating him. He voices his
complaints to God, but he doesn’t
give up on God. He won’t break his
relationship with God. In fact, by the
end of the book his relationship
with God deepens and grows stronger. Like Job our faith
is tested by unreasonable suffering. How can we justify
it? Where is God when
we are at our lowest points? Is God with us or
against us? Is our suffering a
sign that we have displeased God and are being punished?
G.K. Chesterton
writes: “Hope is the power
of being cheerful in circumstances
which we know to
be desperate. … Exactly at the
instant when hope ceases to be reasonable, it begins to be useful.”
It's interesting to note that Jesus wants to travel from town to town
to preach.
Casting out demons, healing
miracles, point to what is to come... life in the heavenly kingdom. With a profound faith, with a relationship with Jesus, all will eventually know healing.
The
cross is something we will all bear, and it is the
reminder that this life is not an end in itself, but a path to
heaven. While there will
be the joy of Christmas at many times in our life, the sorrow of the
cross follows. Hope is the gift
which allows us to enjoy the goods of life without depending
on them, and endure the
challenges in life without being consumed by them.
Despite what we might consider a
gloomy passage, Job points us to hope, hope that we now know to be the
person of Jesus. May Job's prayer be ours... Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
-Deacon Paul Lewis
