“Job’s Questions — and Ours”
A Meditation Preached at the Stoughton Community Service of Remembrance
Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of September 11
Sunday, September 11, 2011
“There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.
That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.”
~ Job 1:1
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
~ Matthew 5:4, 9-10
Job is our contemporary in a way few other biblical characters can be. He is one of the most compelling figures in all of scripture, and it is his unexplainable, unjustified, innocent suffering that does it.
Job “was blameless and upright, and he feared God and turned away from evil.” He was a good and faithful man with a loving wife, ten children, and much property. But then, Job’s world collapses. His house falls down, killing all his children as they eat dinner together around the table. His servants are slaughtered by enemies, his sheep all killed by lightning. And sores erupt all over Job’s body, from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. And finally, when Job is left to scratching his sores with broken pieces of pottery, this once-faithful man erupts, saying “God curse the day that I was born! Why didn’t I die at birth! Why am I suffering? I am innocent!!”
“It’s not fair!” Job cries, raising with his words perhaps the biggest, deepest questions any of us ask. If God is good, and loving and all-powerful, why is there innocent suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why did almost 3,000 people die 10 years ago today?
When things go well with us and in the world around us, it is not hard to believe in a loving, just and powerful God. But when we experience tragic suffering in our own lives and see it in the world, we begin to have doubts and question our beliefs. We want a world that is orderly and balanced and fair, a world that has a kind of moral arithmetic in which the guilty are punished and the good are spared. But life doesn’t work that way. And when, like Job, the bottom falls out of our world -- torn apart by pain or illness or death or devastating tragedy, we – like Job -- cry out to God, “Why?” In scripture, Job wants to hear from God; he wants an explanation for his suffering straight from the Source. And finally, God answers Job.
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” God asks Job. “Have you commanded the morning since your days began? Do you give the horse its might? Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars?” God goes on for four chapters, God’s voice rising like a magnificent symphony of questions.
But God’s response doesn’t answer Job’s questions, nor ours.
Why is there suffering in the world? Why the debilitating disease, the tragic accident, the death of a young person whose life is just beginning? And on this tender anniversary, how could God allow something like 9-11 to happen, allow almost 3,000 innocent people to die? The questions are endless.
And the answer? I could stand here and talk about the frailty of our mortal lives, or the fragility of the order of creation, or the blessing and the curse of God’s gift of free will, or the consequences of human irresponsibility -- and perhaps we would be able to come up with some partial explanations. But in the final analysis, the answer is: we just do not know.
I think, in the end, if there is any response to the problem of innocent suffering, then it is this: for most of us, the worst thing that can happen is not to suffer without reason, but to suffer without God, to suffer without the hope or consolation or promise of new life that God offers.
In his Sermon on the Mount, in the poetic verses called the Beatitudes, Jesus says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" [Matthew 5:4]. The literal meaning of the word translated into English as “comforted” [parakalao] is “to be called to the side of.” When we are in mourning and in pain, we are called to the side of God. It is not just in our times of unwavering faith or spiritual devotion, but perhaps even more in our times of doubt and questioning, our times of confusion and suffering, that God is at our side. Blessed are those who mourn, for in our sorrow, sadness, and grief, God is right there next to us.
Where was God on September 11, 2001?
God was there in New York City, and at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania;
God was on the airplanes, and in the towers, and on the ground.
God was working through the first responders and the rescue workers and every human heart that reached out in love and compassion.
What the story of Job shows us — especially today as we commemorate September 11 — is that God does not abandon us. Even though we may want answers to our questions, what we really need is God. And God will always be where God has always been – loving, sustaining, holding and caring for God’s own. Amen.
