Every human heart is so made that it can be hurt. Of that I have no doubt. Every human heart is subject to hurt, to pain, to shock. Every one of us is subject to feelings that we do not enjoy -- disappointment, anger, despair, guilt, anxiety -- a whole range of painful feelings. And we either deal with those feelings or we run away from them. We either take hold of the reality of what we feel or we deny it, we repress it, we push it back, we try to get rid of it.
In short, when we feel something painful, either we face it head on and take some risks to work with it, or we play it safe. Playing it safe, I submit, is the favorite indoor sport of a whole lot of us. Playing it safe with our feelings and with others’ feelings, too, is the way we choose to handle the hurts of life.
Nothing challenges us quite like having to deal with someone else’s pain. If you and I have successfully played it safe and have avoided confronting the hurts and hostilities we have within ourselves, then when we come face to face with somebody else who hurts, we get scared. We find that pretty threatening. And we again try to play it safe.
Walk with me down one of these usually quiet neighborhood streets, and we find a child standing on the corner crying his eyes out. What will we do? How shall we respond?
Now that seems pretty safe, and the person doing the hurting is also pretty safe. So more than likely you or I would stop and put an arm around that child and ask what the problem is or find out where Mom is and see to it that the hurt is helped. That doesn’t threaten us much. We can play it safe and still heal a human hurt.
But now let’s walk out here to Piney Branch Road and stand on the corner, looking at the stream of traffic. Sooner or later, I can assure you, two drivers will try to defy the laws of physics. They will try to occupy the same space at the same time.
Well, now things are a little different. We saw it happen. We have observed with our own eyes who is at fault. And we know that we ought to run out there and find out if anyone is injured, and, beyond that, that we ought to offer our services as a witness. But what goes through our minds?
"I might have to go to court" "I might get caught up in an argument" "This is going to cost me a lot of time" "I’d have to take sides; I just don’t want to get involved"
It is getting a little harder, isn’t it, to help the hurting? We would really rather play it safe. We are not sure that getting too close to this problem is something we want to do. Several months ago, when my wife was involved in an accident on Piney Branch Road, we were very pleased when somebody came forward and said, "I saw the whole thing. It was not your fault. I’ll be glad to be a witness on your behalf." That was very reassuring. But guess what? A few days later the insurance adjuster did call that man, and he said … can you guess what he said? "I don’t want ... •… come on, you know the rest …”I don’t want to get involved."
It seems as though playing it safe is a very powerful force with us. We see that others hurt, and something inside insists that we respond, but then something else takes over and tells us to play it safe.
Now come on a step further with me. We’ve walked in the neighborhood streets, we’ve stood on the Piney Branch Road corner. Now come on out to Georgia Avenue, out to one of those blocks where there are rumors of drug sales, where the reputation is a little unseemly and the folks hanging around the liquor store entrance do not exactly look like deacons. And out there on the Avenue, suddenly there is a scuffle just a hundred yards ahead of us, and the blade of a knife is flashing in the sunlight, and somebody is down on the sidewalk, bleeding, and people are running in every direction. When you and I gather our wits, we realize that someone is badly hurt and that we are the only ones left around to do anything about it. What will we do? What are our thoughts this time?
"This is a mean street" "Those guys could come back; they might attack me" "If I handle this injured fellow, I might get slapped with a lawsuit" "Hey, what if he has AIDS?" And the tougher the situation, the more everything inside us conspires to play it safe, to stay removed, to let somebody else do it. Playing it safe, even when every human instinct says, "Let’s help". Playing it safe, even when every Christian teaching we’ve ever heard speaks of reaching out to others in need. Playing it safe, even though at the very heart and core of Christian life we are urged to take risks.
That’s where Zophar was. Zophar had sat at the town garbage dump, alongside Eliphaz and Bildad, as each of them offered his words of sympathy and counsel to Job. And, misguided though they were, inadequate though they were, at least with Eliphaz and Bildad, there was a response to Job’s plight. At least they engaged Job, they took Job seriously, they wrestled with Job. At least Eliphaz and Bildad, hearing the story of Job and his losses, seeing the misery of a man who had lost his health, his wealth, his family, and his position – at least they got involved with Job. At least they talked with Job and heard Job.
But Zophar sits by. Zophar says nothing for the longest time. And when Zophar does begin to speak, Zophar talks past Job and not to him. Zophar opts for safety and security. Zophar is the counselor who plays it safe. Zophar is the person who knows he ought to help, but who is not going to risk anything. Zophar is the friend who will help you as long as he does not have to get his hands dirty. Zophar is the Christian who loves to talk about missionaries but who will never do any missions work. Zophar is the church member who enjoys being on a committee where all they do is make decisions, as long as he does not have to do the grunge work to make the decisions happen. Zophar plays it safe.
But I want you to see this morning that playing it safe never helped anybody. Playing it safe never healed an illness. Playing it safe never won a spiritual victory. Playing it safe never accomplished anything worthwhile. You have to take risks. You have to engage. You cannot play it safe and solve anything.
I
For one thing, Zophar tried to play it safe with Job by sticking to the realm of ideas rather than dealing with Job as a person. Zophar tried to deal with Job and his pain by talking theology and preaching dogma, and the problem is not whether his ideas were correct or not correct. The problem is that Zophar decided not to get too close.
Now the way to keep from getting too close is to talk ideas at People. You just dish up religious maxims at them. And it’s bloodless, it’s impersonal. You don’t run any risks; you play it safe.
Zophar said to Job: "Should a multitude of words go unanswered, and a man full of talk be vindicated? Oh, that God would speak, and open his lips to you, and that he would tell you the secrets of wisdom!"
Zophar is saying, Job, you need a good theology lesson. You’ve said a lot of stuff, and it needs to be answered. And so then he moves in for the kill with his propositional theology:
"Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves. Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty? It is higher than heaven -- what can you do? Deeper than Sheol -- what can you know?" And Zophar moves on to snarl at Job about his ignorance, "A stupid man will get understanding when a wild ass’s colt is born a man." In other words, you’re so stupid, Job, you won’t understand this until hell freezes over! How’s that for sympathy?!
And then Zophar proceeds to lay out his dogma, step by step, idea by idea, proposition by proposition, in a water-tight case, as if to say, Job, accept these ideas and you will live. Accept these book-learning truths and you’ll be all right.
And that, friends, is playing it safe. That is dodging behind ideas rather than dealing with persons. That is pretending to help when all you are doing is relieving your own guilt by filling up the air. That’s playing it safe instead of taking the risk of hearing, really hearing what someone else feels.
A friend of mine who is a pastor in St. Petersburg, Florida, told me about going out on the beaches one summer when an evangelical group went out to convert the sand-suds-and-sex crowd. He wanted to learn more about these Christians; he thought maybe they really had something, because it feels like quite a risk to take your faith out on to the beach and to witness to strangers.
I don’t know what it would be like to witness to somebody in a bikini. I might like to try!
Anyway, my friend Ken found that these Christians were so intent on getting him to listen to their propositional theology that they never took the time to listen to him. They never stopped talking long enough to find out who he was. They never tried to discover what makes him tick.
They were so intent, he says, on getting people to agree to four simple propositions about God and thus to increase their statistical success that he finally gave up and every question they asked he just answered, "Yes", in the hope that he could talk with them person-to-person. Ken says he got counted as a new Christian eight times that afternoon before he found anyone who would just take the risk of talking with him, person-to-person!
That’s Zophar. Full of ideas, but no humanity. Full of correct truths, but always playing it safe.
II
Now when you go beyond that and look at what Zophar had to say; when you measure what he had to offer Job -- you find that there is only one message: and that is safety and security. Safety and security. Zophar’s theology is all safety and security.
He thinks this will be attractive to Job. He thinks everybody would want to be caged up in a spiritual cocoon which nothing can penetrate. Listen to Zophar’ s word, and you can almost see his finger wagging:
"If you set your heart aright •.. if you put iniquity far away ... you will be secure, and will not fear. You will forget your misery … you will be protected and take your rest in safety. You will lie down, and none will make you afraid."
Playing it safe, Job -- that’s what you ought to do, just like I do. Don’t you want that?
But Job doesn’t want that. Job won’t have anything to do with that. And even though you might think that anyone who has suffered as much as he has would find it attractive to do anything that would give him peace, Job instinctively knows that his calling is not to play it safe but to take a risk. Job understands, through his pain and in the midst of his tears, that somehow God has called him to be on the edge of life and not bottled up in a cocoon.
Job responds to Zophar and his detachment. Job cries out against his distancing friend: "In the thought of one who is at ease there is contempt for misfortune; it is ready for those whose feet slip." Did you hear that? "In the thought of one who is at ease there is contempt for misfortune". Zophar, you’ve got it made, and in your uppity theology you really do not care about me. You don’t care how I feel. You are contemptuous of me, and you can afford to be, because you haven’t felt what I feel.
But Job’s objections go even deeper. Not only does he charge his counselor Zophar with never having been where he is. Not only does he see Zophar as too detached, too remote, too cool. Job also rejects Zophar’s claim that it’s a good thing to have safety and security. Job says to Zophar, what you have to give, I don’t want. I don’t want to play it safe. I want to gamble with my life. In fact, I want to gamble with God. I want to gamble that God will hear me. I want to risk confronting God with my need.
Job says to Zophar: "The tents of robbers are at peace, and those who provoke God are secure." Anybody can have safety and security, Zophar …thieves, bandits, sinners of all kinds … it’s no great shakes to have security.
"But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God. As for you, you whitewash with lies, worthless physicians are you all. Oh that you would keep silent, and that would be your wisdom!"
Job says, I am going to take a risk. I am not going to play it safe, I am going to take the risk of insisting that God hear me. And I do not want safety, I do not want security, I only want the radical knowledge of a God who will get close to me and care for me.
Back when I was a chaplain at Howard University, every semester they would have an orientation session for new students. And somehow they always put the chaplains on in the same time slot as the campus police and the campus safety office. They started making wry comments about the next hour will be given to "Safety, security, and salvation". Those things all seemed to go together. But, I tell you they do not. They do not. For Job teaches us that salvation comes not when you play it safe but when you take risks; salvation comes not when you retreat behind arid ideas or outworn propositions, but when you stand naked before God and demand to be heard. You risk everything that God is merciful.
We sing a hymn that frankly, makes me a little uncomfortable. It says, "Leaning on Jesus, leaning on Jesus, safe and secure from all alarms" … and I do not find that to be true. I do not find that leaning on Jesus keeps me in an isolation booth. I do not find that leaning on Jesus keeps me from living on the risky edge. I find that instead leaning on Jesus drives me to the front lines. It will drive me to an encounter with God. It will drive me to the front lines of where people hurt. Coming face to face with God drives me to take risks, not to play it safe.
We need to be brave enough to say with Job: "I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God. As for you …oh that you would keep silent."
Folks, if you want to help somebody, sometimes the best thing you can do is to be silent and let them have their experience of anguish. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to stand in silence and in wonder and let them argue their case before God. A few weeks ago I was called to the bedside of someone who was dying. The family thought it was the last moment. Some of them said, "We’ve made up our minds to let her go quietly." One or two of them said, "No, no, we’ve got to pray that God will heal her and keep her alive." They couldn’t really agree on what they wanted to pray for. Well, I started to do my pastor thing ... I called for a Bible and I found an appropriate passage and I got set to voice a prayer … but, you know what, it wouldn’t come. My voice literally would not work. I was too overcome with the emotion of the moment. But here’s the point: I believe – God help me, I hope this is true – I believe I ministered more by that moment of pain-filled silence than by any words I might have said!
Not safety, not security, not bland words of reassurance, not clichés, not slogans, not doctrines, but an argument with God... that’s what Job wants. And that’s what will help. That’s what you and I have to offer others, and that’s what a lot of folks want, helping them take risks rather than playing it safe.
III
Now hear the end of his dispute with Zophar, when Zophar finally shut up and left him alone. Job raised the ultimate question, the question we all still echo. For he cries out, whether with fear or with hope I do not quite know, "If a man die, shall he live again?" "If a man die, shall he live again?" And Job dares to take the ultimate risk: he asks the God of all creation if he cannot do a little better. God, you made us so that we die. Can’t you do a little better than that? Can’t you make it so that we have hope beyond this life? Can’t you offer us something more than a secure and protected life? If a man die, shall he live again?
Hear the beginning of the answer as it came centuries later:
"The angel said to Mary, ‘Hail, 0 favored one, the Lord is with you. Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High and of his kingdom there will be no end. ’"
If a man die, shall he live again? Of His kingdom there will be no end.
And God comes, not as a set of ideas, but as a person; not as a proposition, but as a living, breathing, understanding person. If a man die, shall he live again? If Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, should die, shall he live again?
God in Jesus Christ comes, allowing us to take the risk of confronting him, understanding when we argue with him. God comes and lives out His life alongside ours, understanding us. God comes in Jesus Christ, tempted and tried in every point, just as we are.
Oh that Job could have heard the announcements of the angel. Oh that Job could have known that God would come, come to live next to us, come to understand, come to die on a cross on a town garbage dump, right alongside the Jobs of this world.
And oh that Zophar could have learned that when truth comes, it comes in human form, in flesh and blood. 0 that Zophar could have had the great privilege of poking and bruising the Christ, so that he would know the joy of taking risks.
Oh that Job and Zophar and every one of us might see that God in Jesus Christ is the great risk-taker, and on that cross refuses to play it safe, suffering the worst that anyone could suffer, and all for us, all for us.
If a man die, shall he live again? I can hardly wait for Easter morning.
