seeking the oracle's eyes
in the night with a sigh
The book of Job is full of surprises. But none of them bigger than this last one. And no, I don’t mean the way Job gets everything back, and in spades! And no, I don’t mean the way Job finally quits arguing with his friends and just prays for them. And no, I don’t mean the way Job gives up making preemptive sacrifices for his children and instead gives them all a share of the estate. Including his daughters, an unheard-of act at the time!
No, for as shocking as all that is, and it is shocking, none of it holds a candle to the throwaway line God makes when letting Job’s friends know they’ve tested the limits of divine patience. “…for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has,” says God.
Job? Job spoke rightly of God?!? Job?!? Are you kidding?!? Job said some pretty controversial things. Including accusing God of being nothing more than a tyrannically moral anarchist! YET, it’s Job, and Job alone, who’s said to have spoken rightly about God in the end!
A word on Hebrew grammar here, our translation reads that Job has spoken rightly about God. But it could just as well be translated that spoken rightly to God. Either way, though, the sentiment is the same! Job is the only one who addresses God! Addresses God as if God were actually an actor on the stage of life, perhaps even the main one.
Job’s friends all talk as if God were nothing more than a clockmaker who got the apparatus of existence up and running but then stepped away! Life operates according to divinely sanctioned system of cause and effect, reward and punishment, insist the friends. But that’s as far as it goes. Job, though, will have none of it! Either God is on the hook for it all, or none of it’s worth the trouble!
Watching Job twist in the wind, you realize this divinely approved insistence of his isn’t any calculated effort on his part. Job isn’t trying to be faithful. Or anything else, for that matter. Job’s just caught! He wants to be done with all the pious folderol. But he can’t quite jettison the faith, either! God may be Job’s solution. But God’s also Job’s problem! And nothing, so far as Job can see, can resolve that dilemma.
You ever been there? Caught in that crucible life can be? Caught between anguish and jubilation, between expectation and disappointment, between doubt and belief. Wanting so desperately to let go of the whole thing, and yet utterly unable to do so, too.
The truth is, this is a defining aspect of our contested existence on this side of the plane. We know Job’s plight because it’s ours. Afraid as we may be to admit it. Sure, all the forces of life rarely come crashing down on us at once. But sometimes they do, don’t they? And when they do, no amount of sanctimonious mollycoddling will do. In fact, more often than not, it only makes it that much worse.
It was right when all of Job’s old coping mechanism stopped working, though, that faith started working! And it started working in the last way you would expect. Job’s faith didn’t compel him to pretend everything was alright when it wasn’t. Job’s faith didn’t force him to use stained glass language when nothing about his life was particularly pretty. On the contrary, Job’s faith wouldn’t let him keep quiet about his pain! Job’s faith wouldn’t let him let God off the hook! And that refusal of Job was the frank address God considered speaking righty! Speaking rightly to God doesn’t sound good. It just sounds true. That’s all.
Job didn’t pull this off, though, because he was so strong. No, it happened because he was so weak! When we have nothing left of our own to go on, faith has everything it needs! Faith works best when nothing else does!
Faith happens in unexpected places, and it works in unexpected ways. Faith isn’t a little happy pill that makes everything alright in the sweet by-and-by. No, faith is the cry that refuses to be stuffed down. Faith is the protest that knows the complaint must be lodged with God or no one at all. Faith isn’t sanctimonious or more pious than Jesus. No, faith is a haggard clinging to Jesus! Faith is a raw howl to God.
And that’s Good News for the rest of us. Isn’t it? We’ve known weary knuckles from not being able to let go. We’ve known prayers we’re afraid to let others hear and yet unable to keep from God, too. Haven’t we? This being caught between can’t and can’t not is what we call faith! The truth is, you’ve been given faith! And it’s more active than you know! It just doesn’t look the way you think. As far as God’s concerned, though, it’s nothing less than speaking rightly to God!
Faith isn’t about doing it right! That’s God’s business! Faith is an utter inability to keep all those parts of life that are less than right away from God. Faith is a desperate accusation that if God’s not going to make right all that’s wrong, then none of it matters! And God, for God’s part, takes this anguished expectancy and hallows it. Blesses it! Makes it right. Makes it faith.
It’s faith that’s gotten you here this morning. It’s faith that clings to these words. It’s faith that dares to believe these words may be true for you—because they are. And it’s faith that longs to leave it all at the altar and let the chips fall where they may. Yes, that may not seem particularly pretty or sanctified. But life isn’t always pretty. Is it? And faith is simply life in reality. Because reality, with all its rough edges, is right where God meets us, right where God gets to work! And perhaps, in the end, that’s really the biggest surprise of them all…
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