Of some folks they say, "He’s really just a big kid at heart". "He’s really just a big kid at heart." Which means that even if he is in his fifties and has grown-up children, a mortgage and a pension plan, even so he has that irrepressible urge to play. Even so he wants nothing more than to have fun, sometimes at others’ expense.
I’ve known people like that, and I expect you have too. I’ve known people who would tell a joke at the most awkward time, who would play a prank on anybody, anywhere, anytime, who would make remarks that other people thought were sexist or racist or bigoted or intolerant .. but who said that they meant no harm and that it was all in good clean fun.
I know a pastor in this city who regularly plays tricks on his church members. He sends them fake letters from fictitious government agencies, demanding that they appear at hearings about the ozone levels in their home. He makes serious-sounding phone calls, informing church members that their baptism didn’t take and will have to be done over again. He interrupts the worship services with quips, putdowns, and jibes at the ladies and what they are wearing - all in good clean fun, he says. Just a great big kid at heart.
I confess that with April Fool’s Day coming on a Sunday, I too had some thought of being the great big kid at heart. I thought about printing parts of the bulletin upside down. But I didn’t, because you all would blame the church secretary and not me.
I thought about writing a fake announcement or two, just to see if anybody would catch on. You know, something like the one that really did appear in a church bulletin elsewhere: "The ladies have cast off clothes in the Social Hall; you may see them after today’ s service." But I didn’t do that, either, for fear that somebody would think it in
poor taste. .
I thought about a lot of things, but decided against them all, largely on the grounds that I would be thought silly and foolish. And I’m just like most of you; I want to keep my dignity. Why, I even wear my dignity to bed at night. There are no fools here, are there?
You see, doing foolish things, April Fool’s kind of things, is something we tolerate and even expect in young people, but when somebody adds a few years we expect that he will put away childish things and become calm and sedate and boring.
Have you noticed that the older we get the more we seem to lose our ability to risk, we lose our willingness to take chances, we drop off our carefree sense of wonder? The older we get the safer we become, and we forget, I believe, that God, our God, in the springtime of his creation, did a foolish thing. Yes, God did a foolish, foolish thing .. but also a wonderful thing.
I
But more of that in a moment. Let’s set the stage back at the now familiar garbage dump, where for three Sundays we have been sitting with poor old Job and his sores and his misery and his complaining yet hope-filled voice. What a mixture of despair and of hope he has been!
To Eliphaz, who wanted Job to acknowledge that bad boys get bad things, and it’s just that simple, Job replied that it was not true, and that he wanted, he expected God to treat him seriously. Job also told Eliphaz that somehow, someway, he thought that there was a witness, there was an advocate already at work for him. Who and how he could not say.
To Bildad, who wanted Job just to knuckle under to the old-time religion, with its safe and. pious clichés and timeworn slogans, Job answered that he needed a fresh experience. Job asserted that new occasions teach new truths. But Job also cried out a word of ultimate hope, "I know that a redeemer lives for me.” Somebody is going to help me yet.
And then to Zophar -- rigid, lifeless, unhappy Zophar – who wants Job just to play it safe and sign on the bottom line of the creed and get a comfortable, quiet, boring life – to Zophar Job replies that his call is to live on the edge of the chasm, not in the rocking chair. And Job cries out once more that he wants to argue his case, he wants
to present his case to God .. and in the center of his cry screams out the ultimate question, "If a man die, shall he live again?"
I hope you saw the pattern in all of these. In every case Job rejects the worn-out, conventional, boring, safe theology of his counselors. And even though he has nothing to put in its place except that awesome human assertion that he has the right to stand before God and plead his case .. even though Job cannot develop a new theology that would satisfy the minds of his friends or the desires of his own heart .. still he dimly, faintly sees that somebody will have to do something for him, that somebody will do something for him.
That’s where a new character named Elihu rushes in. It is now April Fool’s Day on the garbage dump. Elihu rushes in, described as a young man, angry at nearly everything. Angry at Job because Job does not measure up to his standards of righteousness; Elihu has a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong, and Job doesn’t measure up.
And Elihu is angry at the three friends because they have failed to solve Job’s problem. Elihu is the angry young man, contemptuous of his elders because they have not properly and forthrightly, in his opinion, answered the issues before them. Elihu is the brash young answer-man, taken with a vision of what ought to be and not in the least comprehending why others have not done anything. Elihu
is the young idealist, a fool rushing in where angels fear to tread, not seeing that things are complicated, but seeing only the way ... the way ... to do it all.
It’s April Fool’s Day on the garbage dump. Listen:
"Elihu became angry. He was angry at Job because he justified himself rather than God. He was angry also at Job’s three friends because they had found no answer, although they had declared Job to be in the wrong." And, then, after a brief statement about how he had waited on the others because they were older and more experienced, Elihu comes down like a ton of bricks on his elders:
"It is not the old that are wise; nor the aged that understand what is right. Therefore I say, ’Listen to me; let me also declare my opinion. ’" Young Elihu is more than ready to offer his ideas, and he gets pretty arrogant about it, in fact. A chapter or two later he even describes himself as "having perfect knowledge". Sound like a fool to you? It does to me in my more than fifty-year-old perspective!
But you know, Elihu is like a whole lot of young people are. He looks at the world of racism and of poverty, and says to my generation, "Why have you been asleep?" He examines the global arms race, even in the era of glasnost accounting for a three hundred billion dollar annual expenditure in this country alone, and Elihu and his brothers and sisters scream at your generation and mine, "What kind of madness is this?" Elihu ponders, "Other men look and say why; I look and say why not?"
You see, the heart of this is that Elihu is not afraid to play the fool. Elihu is not afraid of looking ridiculous. Elihu and a whole crowd of young people see that serious times demand radical actions, and they are not afraid to look like fools to do it.
And we ought to love them for it. Do you hear me, we ought to love them for their willingness to play the fool. We ought to value above all things the capacity of young people to get out there and ask all the questions other people thought were too silly to ask.
II
And, in fact, when you get down and listen to this intemperate young man, what Elihu teaches is something that is very important .. something that nobody ever really thought of before. What Elihu, in his brashness, discovers is just how much God is willing to play the fool himself. Elihu, I think because he is young and because he just does not have so many mistakes to defend as Job’s other friends have .. Elihu brings us the insight that God is willing to do a foolish thing for us. He says that God is willing to ransom us; he claims that God is willing to forgive us and deliver us, even before we ask Him to. And I say, that sounds pretty foolish to us.
Listen to how the young, opinionated, impetuous Elihu put it: "If there be for a man an angel, a mediator to declare to man what is right for him; and he is gracious to him, and says, ‘Deliver him from going down into the Pit, I have found a ransom … then man prays to God, and God accepts him, he comes into his presence with joy. He recounts to men his salvation, and he sings before men, and says, ‘I sinned, and perverted what was right, but it was not requited to me. He has redeemed my soul from going down into the Pit, and my life shall see the light. ‘"
What is it the young Elihu has found out? What great new truth has this foolish youngster brought out? That God will forgive us even before we know how to ask Him! That God will be gracious to us even before we pray for mercy! That God is a gracious redeemer, that God is a lover going after those He loves, that God cares more about helping us than condemning us, that God wants to save us .. He wants above all things, to save us.
And more than that, what Elihu has seen is that "if there be a mediator", if there be one who will stand between us and our condemnation .. deeper yet, if there be one who can say, I have found a ransom then .. listen again .. "Man prays to God, and God accepts him, he comes into his presence with joy."
Friends, I do not know whether Elihu fully understood all that he was saying. I do not know whether Elihu grasped all that was in his words here. But I do know that out of the mouth of a young man, not afraid to go beyond what he had been taught, not afraid to question his elders, out of such a mouth God has spoken a powerful truth.
And that truth is the foolishness of God. The foolishness of God. Why is it foolishness? Well, who of us grants a loan to somebody and then promptly turns around and forgives it? That would be foolish, but that is what Elihu’s God is doing: "Behold, God does all these things, twice, three times, with a man, to bring back his soul from the Pit, that he may see the light of life."
The foolishness of God? Who of us, seeing a friend pawn his possessions in order to pay his bills, goes out and ransoms those things and pays those bills for him? That would be foolish, extravagant, unwise! And there are no fools here, right? But the God Elihu sees does exactly that. "I have found a ransom; let his flesh become fresh with youth, let him return to the days of his youthful vigor. "
What a foolish God! What an extravagant God! What a God who is just a big kid at heart, delighting to do things that will give us pleasure! Forgiving before we know how to ask, paying the ransom for our indebtedness, planting the spring flowers of fresh new life in the middle of the dour and despairing winters of our discontent.
It must be April Fool’s Day at the garbage dump! Can this be true? Can this really be? Can God be so foolishly extravagant?
III
Oh, but now think of another young man, one in whom all of this has come to be. Think of another young man who saw things as they were and asked not so much "why" as "why not?"
Think of a young man not afraid to be thought foolish, who made himself of no reputation; who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness .. the foolish looking likeness .. of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Think of that young man.
Think this morning of the foolishness of that young man; who in his right mind will do what he did? Who will pay a price for us even before we ask for it? Yet, "while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man – though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." Think of that young man, squandering his precious life. What foolishness!
Think of that young man, and set aside your image-making. Think of that young man, and dispense with everything you think you know about behaving yourself so that you can earn God’s favor. Think of that young man, dimly perceived by the angry, excited, tempestuous, wonderful young Elihu, and know that today, April Fool’s Day at Job’s garbage dump, "we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."
Are there no fools here today? Are there no fools who will come and scavenge at this garbage dump, where the ransom has been paid? Oh, I hope there are!
