One of today’s readings comes from the Book of Job. In it, Job is lamenting:
My face is red with weeping, and deep darkness is on my eyelids, though there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure.
O earth, do not cover my blood; let my outcry find no resting-place.
Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high.
My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God, that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God, as one does for a neighbor. For when a few years have come, I shall go the way from which I shall not return.
My spirit is broken, my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me. If I look for Sheol as my house, if I spread my couch in darkness, if I say to the Pit, “You are my father”, and to the worm, “My mother”, or “My sister”, where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?
The Book of Job, which is, to say the least, a very troubling and puzzling book. It seems to raise more questions than it answers, and the answers it offers seem to be less than satisfactory. The book raises the question of God’s moral providence in the light of evil which is directed to Job, who, as it turns out, is absolutely innocent. Some of the key questions raised by the book include whether people will be religious, fear and honor God, apart from rewards and punishment; and it raises questions about God’s brand of justice.
The book opens with a question, God asks Satan, the accuser, or prosecutor, if you will, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.” Satan, the prosecutor, responds, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side?” Then God let’s the accuser lose, and evil after evil befalls Job.
Job starts to complain about his plight, and rest assured, Job’s three buddies, in an attempt to console him, wind up having answers as to why all this is happening to him. Bildad takes the traditional view of the day and tells Job that God doesn’t distort justice, Job’s children must have done something to offend God, otherwise this stuff wouldn’t happen. Zophar takes the position that Job himself must be guilty of something, and God is punishing him because after all, God rewards good and punishes evil.
The problem of evil is always with us, but the answer is in the miracle of the Incarnation.
God is the God of creation. As Bishop Tom Wright says, “the doctrine of creation is indeed the foundation of all biblical answers to questions about who God is and what He’s doing.” So what is God doing?
My face is red with weeping, and deep darkness is on my eyelids, though there is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure.
O earth, do not cover my blood; let my outcry find no resting-place.
Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high.
My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God, that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God, as one does for a neighbor. For when a few years have come, I shall go the way from which I shall not return.
My spirit is broken, my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me. If I look for Sheol as my house, if I spread my couch in darkness, if I say to the Pit, “You are my father”, and to the worm, “My mother”, or “My sister”, where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?
The Book of Job, which is, to say the least, a very troubling and puzzling book. It seems to raise more questions than it answers, and the answers it offers seem to be less than satisfactory. The book raises the question of God’s moral providence in the light of evil which is directed to Job, who, as it turns out, is absolutely innocent. Some of the key questions raised by the book include whether people will be religious, fear and honor God, apart from rewards and punishment; and it raises questions about God’s brand of justice.
The book opens with a question, God asks Satan, the accuser, or prosecutor, if you will, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.” Satan, the prosecutor, responds, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side?” Then God let’s the accuser lose, and evil after evil befalls Job.
Job starts to complain about his plight, and rest assured, Job’s three buddies, in an attempt to console him, wind up having answers as to why all this is happening to him. Bildad takes the traditional view of the day and tells Job that God doesn’t distort justice, Job’s children must have done something to offend God, otherwise this stuff wouldn’t happen. Zophar takes the position that Job himself must be guilty of something, and God is punishing him because after all, God rewards good and punishes evil.
The problem of evil is always with us, but the answer is in the miracle of the Incarnation.
God is the God of creation. As Bishop Tom Wright says, “the doctrine of creation is indeed the foundation of all biblical answers to questions about who God is and what He’s doing.” So what is God doing?
John starts out his Gospel account: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. . . . And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” Unlike Job’s friends who offer clean, black and white explanations for why things happen, the miracle of the Incarnation is at once mind boggling and anything but easy and clean. It is a bit messy. The Word, the perfect expression of who God is, pitches his tent among us. The creator becomes the creature who is present to us and for us. He too was totally innocent, but He took on evil at its worst.
The Incarnate Word who dwells among us does not promise us that we will have lives shielded from pain and anxiety. Nor does he promise us that we will never suffer the loss of a loved one, or endure personal set backs. He doesn’t promise us that our parents won’t get divorced, or that our marriages won’t fail. Nor does he promise us that we will have perfect children who always make the right decisions. He doesn’t promise us that we will never be hurt or experience doubt and confusion.
We have someone who is “compassionate” in the true meaning of that word, “to suffer with.” We have one who suffers with us, not someone who takes the pain away, not someone who gives easy answers. Jesus is steeped in our humanity and all that it entails. But there is more, after the cross, there is the Resurrection.
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