Job 42:1-6, 10-17
What do we say when things go wrong? When, despite all the fervent prayers, the diagnosis is cancer, your son does not come home, the baby doesn’t make it?
“God works out everything for good,” some say. Really? Try telling that to the folks in Ukraine or Gaza, or that entire family wiped out just before their wedding by Hurricane Milton.
“God always answers, but sometimes the answer is ‘wait’,” we’re told. Hmmph. Cold comfort when you’ve prayed for healing, and now you’re planning a funeral. Personally, I feel like kicking anyone who comes up with that platitude. I expect Job did too.
‘If you ask for anything in my name, I will do it’, we read, but reality is that we don’t get all we ask for. “You must not have asked in Jesus’ name, then,” our Job’s comforters tell us. Great, now I’m a rubbish Christian as well as mourning my loss.
When someone’s in a deep pit of anguish, easy answers simply don’t cut it. If the problem were that easy to solve, they’d already have solved it. Trite answers are worse than useless, heaping insult and injury on already hurting people. “Would you like some salt for that wound?”
Sometimes (often) the best thing you can do for someone in a pit is to shut up, get into the pit with them and hold their hand in the silence. Chocolate biscuits also help.
Because the honest truth is that God does not answer every prayer. The Bible never says that he does. He’s God, for goodness’ sake, not a slot-machine. God didn’t answer Job’s prayers. None of them.
God does always hear. But God does not always answer. Sometimes there is stony silence. Job had 30-odd chapters of nothing. Well, nothing from God. He had plenty of noise from his well-meaning but completely cack-handed friends.
Then finally, in chapter 38, God speaks. And God does not even mention all the complaints that Job voiced: “Let God weigh me in honest scales and he will know that I am blameless”, “Let the Almighty answer me; let my accuser put his indictment in writing”. (ch 31) Nope, not one word.
Instead, God reminds Job of their relationship, which Job had lamented as gone: “Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God’s intimate friendship blessed my house, when the Almighty was still with me …” (ch 29) For Job, it felt like God was not there, but that is one thing the Bible does say – “never will I leave you, never will I forsake you” – in reality, God had always been there.
So God takes Job on a walk through creation, a walk as one friend showing another around his garden. God is not crushing Job with a thundering “How Dare You?”, but readjusting Job’s gaze.
I’m not for one instant suggesting that Job losing his home, his family, his heath, his livelihood, was anything other than an unimaginable disaster, an appalling tragedy, as heart-wringing as anything we see on the news. But in the life walked with God we can know that such terrible disasters do not have the last word. They need not be all-consuming. There is life beyond.
In one of the most beautiful sentences in the whole of scripture, Job glimpses this life beyond. He is still bereft. He is still mourning. He is still at the very bottom of his pit of despair. But his eyes are lifted from the mud. “My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.” (42:5)
And that is enough. Job never finds out why. He never gets an explanation. But it is enough.
Being a Christian does not make problems disappear. The pain does not go away. Lost loved ones do not spring back to life. The cancer does not miraculously vanish. But there is life beyond. God comes to be with you in the pit. And God has enough sense to sit quietly and hold your hand in the silence.
Liturgy Resources for Proper 25
Job 42:1-6, 10-17, Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22), Psalm 126
Confession and Absolution
Let us confess our sins to Almighty God,
safe in the assurance of his mercy.
I sought the Lord, and he answered me
and delivered me from all my fears.
Let the humble hear and be glad.
This poor soul cried to the Lord
and was saved from every trouble.
Let the humble hear and be glad.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
but the LORD rescues them from them all.
Let the humble hear and be glad.
The Lord, who is rich in mercy,
pardon and deliver you from all your sins.
The Lord redeems the life of his servants;
none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.
Let the humble hear and be glad.
Blessing and Dismissal
May your mouth be filled with laughter
and your tongue with shouts of joy;
May the Lord do great things for you,
and so may you rejoice.
And the blessing …
Go out, bearing seed for sowing,
and return with shouts of joy.
Amen.
The Reflectionary 