Skin for Skin

Job 2:1-13

July 10, 2016 • Mount Pleasant UMC

The Holey Artisan Bakery began life two years ago, born from a wife's longing for “real bread” and a husband who made it happen. Their prices were not cheap, but after all, the bakery was in an affluent neighborhood and those who lived there didn’t mind the prices. Its walled garden offered a beautiful view and it quickly became a popular destination for people from many different countries. That is, until 9 p.m. local time on July 1 when a group of gunmen burst into the cafe. At the time, this Bangladeshi hot spot was full of employees and many foreign visitors. By the time the siege was over, twenty foreign visitors were dead, including Americans, Italians and Japanese. ISIS had claimed responsibility, despite the protestations of the Bangladeshi government.

Just three weeks before that, early on a Sunday morning, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old American security guard, burst into Pulse, an Orlando, Florida gay nightclub, killing 49 people and wounding 53 others before he himself was shot and killed by Orlando police. Varying reports have listed the incident as a possible “hate crime” or even an act of domestic terrorism. This much everyone agrees on: it was the worst shooting on American soil and the deadliest attack since September 11, 2001.

It seems impossible to think that it was ten years ago when gunman Charles Roberts entered an Amish school in West Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, shooting eight girls between ages 6-13, before killing himself. What’s remembered most about that incident, however, is the response of the Amish people, and their emphasis on forgiveness toward the shooter and his family. The nation and the world were shocked that the Amish could so quickly forgive and that they even set out to help Roberts’ family.

These are just three examples of what has become our world. My children do not remember a time when terrorism was not in the news or included in the normal, everyday conversation. Christopher was in five years old when September 11 happened; Rachel was only 1 when suddenly terrorism became something that happened here, and not just “over there somewhere.” We live in a world where we’ve become used to constant threats and fears. We’ve become used to words like “cancer” and “disease” and “suicide.” Whether those things actually happen more now or we just hear about them more frequently today is a matter for debate. The question for us as people of faith, however, is this: what do we do when those things happen? How do we respond? Or how should we respond? What do we say when a child is diagnosed with leukemia before the age of 2? How do we respond when a family is devastated by the act of suicide? My college roommate left his family behind in the wake of a lot of bad choices he had made, choices that backed him into the corner where he could see only one way out. I’ve walked with his family over the last several years as they’ve tried to recover from that one moment, and I’ve often felt inadequate in the things I say or do. How should we respond in the face of struggle, difficulty, and suffering? How do we respond when the innocent suffer?

That’s the question we want to tackle today as we continue our series on “Questions in the Dark,” and this topic today is again one that theologians, philosophers and people a lot smarter than me have discussed, prayed about and thought through for centuries. Today, we’re going to get into matters of God’s will, suffering and some of those “why” questions, but we may not settle the matter in your mind in the next thirty minutes or so. I hope this morning what I have to say can be a springboard for discussion and prayerful reflection on Scripture. I don’t have all the answers, but I can share with you where I’ve come out on these matters and how I, through the work of the Holy Spirit, have found peace in the midst of the struggle. That’s my goal today, because whether we want to or not, we will face the continued challenge of why people who seem to have simply ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time end up suffering. And to begin to get a vantage point on that question, we’re going to start with the story of Job.

The book of Job is, in some ways, a mystery. For one, there’s ongoing debate among scholars as to whether the book is meant as a factual account or a parable. Did it really happen or is it a story the Hebrews told to teach a lesson? Either way, we often miss the point of the story, factual or otherwise. Some folks like to say that the book of Job is about why the innocent suffer, but that’s not really the point of the book at all. If we go looking for an answer to that question here, we’ll have difficulty finding a definitive one. That’s one reason it’s always unwise to base our whole understanding of how God works on just one passage or one book in the Bible (cf. Goldingay, Job for Everyone, pg. 21). In fact, the book of Job isn’t ultimately about Job at all; it’s about God. The book is what, in theological circles, in called a “theodicy,” which comes from the Greek words for God and for justice (Hamilton, Why?, Kindle Loc 56). This is ultimately not about Job, or his wife, or his children or friends. It’s about God and, much like Abram’s story that we looked at last week, whether or not God can be trusted, even in face of suffering.

Many of us probably know the story, but in case you don’t, let me give you a quick overview—42 chapters in just a couple of minutes! The story begins in heaven, at a meeting of what might pass for a heavenly Executive Council. God is meeting with angels to get reports of some sort, and the amazing part of the story is that Satan, the Accuser as he is called here, is there. He’s included in the Council meeting—apparently as a regular. Now, one of several things that bothers me about the way this story is told is that God sets Job up. He puts Job up as a model believer. God is sort of taunting Satan when he says, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (1:8). And Satan takes the bait. He says Job will curse God if all of Job’s blessings are taken away, a test for which God then gives permission. So Satan steals Job’s family, his crops, his wealth—everything he has—and Job still praises God. Job has passed the test—the first one. Then we come to chapter 2, which we read this morning, where Satan comes again to the heavenly Council, and he tells God that the only way to really test Job is to let Satan hurt Job himself. Satan seems to think Job doesn’t really care about all the rest; only when he’s personally hurting will he really begin to turn his back on God. “Skin for skin,” Satan says, which was an ancient proverb that meant a person would sacrifice anyone else, including their children, if they themselves were still safe (Goldingay 19; cf. McKenna, Communicator’s Commentary: Job, pg. 43). So this time, God gives Satan permission to hurt Job, and once again, Job refuses to curse God. For the next many chapters, then, Job engages in a debate with several friends about the nature of God, why suffering happens and what Job must have done to deserve this pain. In the last few chapters, God shows up and asks Job a series of questions about his place in the universe, a confrontation that pretty much puts an end to the discussion. When God shows up, the questions are over.

We see Job’s attitude come to the surface most clearly in the confrontation he has with his wife—a woman who, by the way, has also lost all of her children and everything she has trusted in as well. She’s not as confident as Job, and she responds the way a lot of people probably would. She comes to Job as he sits on an ash heap (which was an ancient way of showing grief), and she says to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” (2:9). After calling her a “foolish woman” (which I’m sure did wonders for their marriage going forward), Job asks her what is, to me, the most poignant question in the book: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” (2:10). That is the heart of theodicy—are we willing to live through trouble with the same confidence in God that we have in the good times?

When we think about Job’s story and the more current stories, including the places where innocent suffering has touched our own lives, we need to own up to and deal with a couple of assumptions we often make—about God, about the Bible and about our faith. The first assumption we make is that when we become believers, as we try to live out our faith or even just as we try to be a “good person,” we assume nothing bad will happen to us because God will “bless” us. This assumption is widespread, proclaimed by a lot of media preachers, and held onto tightly even in the face of evidence to the contrary. I’ll never forget where I was when I first got the notice that a little girl in our congregation had been diagnosed with a rare disease. She was only five years old, and the prognosis was not good. She and her family had been very involved in the church and her little smile was just one aspect of the joy she spread wherever she went. Her family and her friends believed wholeheartedly that nothing bad would happen, and that she would be healed. And we prayed for healing; many, many people prayed for healing. There were hopeful signs along the way, but not enough of them. I was in Arizona on a mission trip when the call came that she had died. She had fought bravely, but her willpower combined with the best modern medicine had to offer could not beat the disease. Her family was never the same; because they could not reconcile their assumptions about the way God was supposed to work with what had actually happened, they buried themselves in other things and dropped away from their faith. A friend of theirs, who had prayed for the little girl’s healing, continued to say that nothing bad had ever happened to her, and I have to assume she meant personally because the death of a child is one of the hardest thing friends and family ever have to face.

You see, the problem with this assumption is that the Bible never says we won’t face trouble. Jesus, in fact, said just the opposite: “In this world, you will have trouble” (John 16:33). Not “you might.” You will. The Bible is not the story of people who never had any troubles. It’s largely the story of people who refused to let go of their faith in the face of suffering (Hamilton, loc 82). Joseph, Moses, Daniel, the prophets, Job, Paul, even Jesus. If there was ever anyone who should have been able to escape trouble, it would be Jesus, and yet he who never sinned was nailed to a Roman cross. The crucifixion is the ultimate example of innocent suffering. The Scriptures do not teach that nothing bad will ever happen to believers; just the opposite. “In this world, you will have trouble.” Count on it.

A second assumption, and one that may be even more common in my experience, is a phrase we often say as an attempt to comfort someone else. The phrase is this: “everything happens for a reason” (Hamilton, loc. 94). It sounds pious, and it sounds like we’re giving God due credit, but we rarely think through all of the implications found in such a phrase. Usually what we mean by that phrase is that somehow, this awful thing that happened is part of God’s will. But here’s what we don’t say: if God willed it, then God caused it to happen. God is directly responsible, then, for the child who died, the murdering rampage, the epidemic. We need to realize the full implications of this assumption, this phrase we say far too casually. Ask yourself: what kind of God causes a man to enter a nightclub or a cafe or a movie theater and begin shooting people? What kind of a God gives a toddler an incurable disease? What kind of a God causes someone to kill themselves? What kind of a God do we worship if this assumption is really what is true?

Leslie Weatherhead had been a missionary to India and then became  a Methodist pastor in England. He is best known for his ministry at City Temple in London during World War II. It was in the midst of that terrible time in human history that he preached a series of sermons which later became a book called The Will of God. Dr. Weatherhead’s words are as relevant to us today as they were to his congregation then, especially one story from his own life that stuck in my mind as I read his book a month or so ago. It happened while he was in India, and he had gone to the home of a man who had lost his son to cholera. Weatherhead tried to comfort the grieving father, but after some stumbling words, the father said what he had probably heard others say, what some well-meaning people had probably told him: “Well, it is the will of God. That’s all there is to it. It’s the will of God.” Weatherhead, because he knew the father so well, was able to say to him, “Supposing someone crept up the steps onto the veranda tonight, while you all slept, and deliberately put a wad of cotton soaked in cholera germ culture over your little girl’s mouth as she lay in that cot there on the veranda, what would you think about that?” The father was shocked. He said, “Nobody would do such a…thing. If he attempted it and I caught him, I would kill him with as little compunction as I would a snake, and throw him over the veranda. What do you mean by suggesting such a thing?” Weatherhead gently said to the father, “Isn’t that just what you have accused God of doing when you said it was his will? Call your little boy’s death the result of mass ignorance, call it mass folly, call it mass sin if you like, call it bad drains or communal carelessness, but don’t call it the will of God” (Weatherhead, The Will of God, pgs. 3-5).

Here’s the simple, shocking truth: not everything that happens in this world is the will of God. Jesus himself said as much in Matthew 18, when he reminded his listeners that it was not God’s will that any “little ones” should perish (Matthew 18:14). Peter said God’s will was that no one would die without salvation (2 Peter 3:9). Nowhere in the Bible does it say that children being murdered, spouses being abused, gunmen shooting innocents, babies dying of malnutrition or planes flying into buildings is God’s will. When we claim that it is, whether intentionally or unintentionally, those who are outside the faith find they want nothing to do with a God who is that cruel and unjust, a God who wills and causes evil and suffering in the world.

Thankfully, that’s not the God we serve and worship. The Bible’s message is actually this: we live in a fallen and broken world. Ever since Genesis 3, we live in a world that is not perfect, that is in rebellion against God, where things happen that do not always please God. Could God step in and cause everything to happen according to what he wants? Yes, absolutely, but the fact that he does not is a gift of love to us. The fact that God gave us freedom and the ability to choose good or evil is a good gift to us, even when it does not seem like it, even though it sometimes results in the suffering of innocents. Without the ability to choose, without freedom, we could not really love God, or anyone else. The capacity to love comes with the possibility to do evil as well. Sadly, we can’t have one without the other.

God’s plan for us is that we will choose to do good, to live the way Jesus would have us live, and that we will help one another along the way. We’re not so good at that these days. We’ve gotten very good at pointing fingers, demanding policies and expecting someone else to do something about “it” (whatever “it” happens to be that day). Or, on a more personal level, we might show up at the house of someone grieving within the first few hours, but then we forget about the grief within a week or so. Not because we don't care, but because life goes on and we get distracted by other things happening. But God calls us to be the ones who care for those who are suffering, and that’s the main way God fulfills the word Paul wrote to the Romans: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (8:28). That verse and the passage around it does not say everything that happens is good, or that it all happens for a reason. What Paul says is that God can use everything and God can bring good out of it. God doesn’t cause humanity to act in inhuman ways, but he can use even the worst of situations to bring a blessing.

That truth, however, is not an excuse for us to begin quoting that verse in the face of tragedy, as we sometimes do. There really are two ways Christians tend to respond in the face of innocent suffering, one which is helpful and one which is not. The “not helpful” category is when we say things without thinking, things like, “Everything happens for a reason,” or “God must have needed another angel.” It is not helpful for us to share platitudes with those who are suffering, with those who are grieving, with those who are struggling to understand. At the extreme end of this kind of reaction are those media preachers who stand up as soon as a crisis hits and blame this group or that. For instance, those who said the Orlando shooting was “God’s punishment” on the gay men who were there, or the many who said similar things about the 9/11 attack. I, for one, don’t think it’s my place or that I have the authority to announce God’s blessing or God’s punishment; that’s God’s business. And beyond that, God does not call us to judge or to pronounce in those situations. God calls us to roll up our sleeves and get busy. Take action.

Which brings us to the helpful response, a response I find in the story of Job. When we read past the encounter with his wife, we come to the point in the story where three friends come to see Job, to check on him. Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, we’re told, heard about all the troubles that came upon Job, and so they stopped whatever they were doing and they came to see him. They came to sit with him. They joined him in the ash heap, and the author of Job tells us that for seven days and seven nights they just sat there with him. No one said anything, not a single word. No excuses, no platitudes, no condemnation. They just sat with him, and friends, I’m convinced that’s the best model for Christian caregiving you will find anywhere in the Bible. In the next chapter, they open their mouths and then everything goes downhill as they try to both defend God and blame Job (and in the end, ironically enough, God tells them that they are wrong about him and Job was right!). But for a whole week they just sat with him in the ashes. They bore his burdens. His suffering became theirs. The best model for caring for someone else, someone who is suffering, is to just come alongside and sit with them. Why do you think the word in the New Testament for the Holy Spirit is paraklete, one who comes alongside? It’s because that’s what the Spirit does. In times of sadness, in times of loss, in times of grief, the Spirit comes alongside and comforts us. Paul says he is the “God of all comfort,” and that he “comforts us in all our troubles”—now don’t miss this next part—he comforts us in all our troubles “so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

The Spirit is always present, but sometimes we need someone “with skin on.” I’ll never forget when my grandmother died. I was in high school, and she had always lived near us. In my early years, she lived just down the street, two blocks over (which in Sedalia was not that far), and later when I was in middle school and early high school, she lived in Rossville, about four blocks from my school. My brother and I spent a lot of time there. When she died, it was hard on all of us, but I tried to remain strong all through the service. Oldest child and all of that. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember much of the service itself. The only moment I really remember from that day is getting ready to leave her grave in the Geetingsville Cemetery, and as we turned to go, a family friend, Gary, came up to me, as if directed by the Spirit, and he gave me a hug. And I just lost it, right there as he hugged me. There were no words; he couldn’t say anything to make it all better. But he just stood there, for as long as I needed him to stay there, and comforted me. I bet you have people like that in your life—perhaps folks in your LifeGroup or Sunday School class. Life-long friends or family members. People who will just be there when you’re going through hard times. They don’t have to say anything; they’re just there, like Job’s friends. The best thing we can do when people are suffering, when there is hurt we can’t explain, is to “show up and shut up.” Please, please, please, please, please don’t say any platitudes. It’s better to say nothing at all. If you feel you need to respond in some way, then offer to bring a meal or mow their grass or take care of details. The best thing you can do, though, is to be there. In the end, that’s what will be most remembered.

I had read through the book of Job many times and heard the story even more before I realized one day that Job never learns why all of this suffering happens to him (cf. Goldingay 21). We, as the reader, know, because it’s all in the prologue. But all throughout the discussion with his friends, Job argues and rants and demands an audience with God, and when God shows up in chapter 38, rather than giving Job an explanation or apologizing to him for allowing Satan to do all this, God instead gives Job a tour of the universe and basically says to Job, “When you can create and sustain all of this, then you can question my motives.” And Job, who has angrily demanded a chance to prove his innocence before God, instead says, “You’re right, I was mistaken. I’ll be quiet now.” (Or, at least that’s the Dennis Ticen translation of what he says.) Job never learns why all of this happens, which makes me wonder if he could have borne it any better had he known. Would it have made a difference if he had known the “why”? Does it make any difference in our level of suffering if we somehow figure out why such and such happened? Does it somehow strengthen our faith? I’ve known people who to try to explain tragedy. My youth leader at my home church died rather young in life, and when I went to his funeral, the pastor spent a lot of time trying to explain why, in the grand scheme of things, Dave had died, and he did the “everything happens for a reason” message. But even at that young age, that rang hollow. I wanted to stand up and say what most of us were thinking: Dave died because someone made a mistake at the hospital. That was the tragic truth. Coming up with any other explanation for Davie’s death was not going to give us Dave back or bring us lasting comfort. What did help is knowing God would and could bring good out of the situation, and that God was still present with all of us. By the end of the book, Job is content to know that God is still on his throne and that the world is still under his care, even when the innocent suffer.

Because, along the way, Job learned an important truth, and it’s this affirmation that I want to close with this morning. It’s an affirmation that you probably know well; it’s one that is sung every Christmas in any performance of Handel’s Messiah, though a whole lot of folks don’t know where the verse comes from. It’s from Job 19, and it’s an amazing verse when you consider the reality that Job didn’t really have a concept of life after death, where all would be made right. For the people of Job’s time, justice was a “here-and-now” matter; God had to be proven righteous here, on this earth, or not at all. And yet, Job, with wisdom beyond his time, in the midst of his suffering, makes this affirmation. It’ll be on the screen; why don’t you read it with me? “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God” (Job 19:25-26). That’s the good news in the face of innocent suffering. Thanks be to God!