Friends
Peace be with you.
As I was praying over this week’s readings, I couldn’t help but think of a lesson that I took away from the movie U-571. It tells the fictional story of the American capture of the German enigma coding machine. In the story, Lieutenant Andrew Tyler, played by Matthew McConaughey, finds himself unexpectedly in charge of a German submarine in World War II. Earlier in the film, he is told by his commanding officer that one of the reasons he’s continually been passed up for promotion is that he’s too close and too good of friends with the sailors under his command. At the high point of the movie, Lieutenant Tyler has to order one of his more doe-faced sailors, whose nickname is "Trigger", to sacrifice his life in order to save the sinking sub. The movie isn’t great but this question from it haunts me as a pastor: am I willing to demand an employee do something difficult, something that I probably wouldn’t want to do. I’m not talking about murder or anything illegal or immoral. But, if there was a job that needed to be done and I knew no one would want to do it, would I be willing to demand a staff member or a dedicated employee to do it or would I just do it myself? I don’t know.
Today we hear from one of the hardest books of the Bible to read, the book of Job. It is, like Jonah from last week, most likely more of a parable than a real life story but I wasn’t there so I don’t know for sure that it didn’t actually happen. Having worked in ministry for as long as I have, I’ve seen enough similar things to what is described in this book happen to people that I kind of believe it’s more useful as a cautionary tale than as literal history.
Job starts off the book very prosperous with a loving wife, many children, great farmland, and a huge variety of livestock. Job is the type of guy who not only honors the sabbath but he offers up sacrifices each week for his kids in case they have done anything to offend God. He knows he’s blessed and he thanks God for that often.
Then, we hear about a gathering happening in heaven with all the angels, including one referred to in Hebrew as “The prosecutor” or “The Adversary”, which is where we get the word Satan. Satan comes and says he’s been surveying the land. God says Satan surely must have seen Job and he brags up Job’s fidelity. He says, “There is no one on earth like him, blameless and upright, fearing God and avoiding evil.” You know, all those things the devil hates. So the devil says that it’s easy to love God when you have all the Job has. He says, “But now put forth your hand and touch all that he has, and surely he will curse you to your face.” In other words, if you take everything away from him, he isn’t going to seem so great.
So, God does this very thing. Job’s wife and children all die. His crops all burn up with his livestock. He loses virtually everything but his life. Then, three friends come over and try to “console and comfort him”. Our first reading comes after the first friend, who has the unfortunate name of Eliphaz the Temanite. Eliphaz says that, since God is all good, clearly Job did something to deserve what has happened. If Job apologizes for the sin he has committed, God will have mercy and take pity on Job.
Part of Job’s response to Eliphaz makes up our first reading for today. He sounds like a person who has watched his entire family die and lost all his property. I’m guessing, if we were honest, we’ve all felt like Job at one point. We’re good people. We come to church. We pray. Why did this have to happen to us? Or maybe it’s someone we know or even someone close to us. Have you ever questioned how God would let someone who never smoked get lung cancer and die at age 50 while someone who smokes a pack every day and never exercises lives to age 95 and dies in their bed of natural causes? It just doesn’t seem right, does it?
The answer to these types of questions comes two-fold. First, the answer God provided to us through Job is that sometimes the plan of God is bigger than our understanding. God’s response to Job is, basically, did you make the world and all it holds and put together a plan to keep it running efficiently? No? Then let me do my job and you do yours. With all due respect to the writer, that just seems kind of anemic. I feel like the Book of Job only makes sense in the light of the cross. You see, when God came to earth, he didn’t come to a rich family in a powerful, prosperous part of the world but to a poor family in a war-torn impoverished part of the world. He didn’t have an easy life with a nice cushy job. He came as an evangelist wondering where his next meal would come from. He didn’t get to have a family and watch his children’s children grow and be prosperous but remained celibate and died an ignominious death on the cross. As Christians, this is the model of holiness for us.
Suffering is not, by its nature, a good thing. That would be a form of masochism not Christianity. But, suffering for a purpose, suffering to ease someone else’s suffering, can be a good thing. And, feeling called by God to take on this type of suffering doesn’t indicate that God hates you or is punishing you for your sin, but that God trusts you so much that he knows you will do this for him. In u-571, when Lieutenant Tyler orders Trigger to fix the sub even though he knows it will likely lead to his death, he doesn’t hate Trigger. He trusts that he is the only one who can save his fellow sailors. Or when a mother is in labor, God trusts that she will endure the pain of childbirth in order to give life to another person. Suffering of itself may not be good but we can see the good that can come out of it when we look at the cross and find the meaning in our suffering there.
