You and I are about to enter the realm of mystery together. I know of nothing which challenges the mind and the imagination quite so much as the mystery of human suffering. Why men and women should have to suffer physically or emotionally – that has never been answered completely.
In recent weeks I have noticed some of you suffering and asking the questions that are right and appropriate in the middle of that suffering.
Some have lost loved ones and have wondered why. What does it mean that someone I care about so deeply is snatched away from me? It seems so cruel and pointless. You have hurt and you have asked why.
Only a few days ago some of you who had been caught up in the struggles of Joanne Johnson, lost at the age of nineteen to a destructive disease, peered through your tears and asked the "Why" question. And you should have, you most certainly should have. Your pain is real; it is important, and it is mysterious.
Others have experienced deep disappointments of one kind or another. Someone has done something to you that angers you or upsets you, and you cannot make sense of it. That other person may be the one who did the wrong thing, so why is it that you are the one doing all the hurting? It makes no sense, but there it is. And you have asked why.
Still others, and I count myself in this group, have felt some kind of vague inner hurt. No particular logical reason, no real and tangible issue, but just an aching inside. Maybe we feel like failures: we have not been able to accomplish what we hoped to do.
Or we feel disconnected, hurting because nobody out there takes us very seriously.
Or we feel our mortality; we work so blessed hard and do try so hard to get moving, but we aren’t as young as we used to be, and our powers are waning, and we feel as though we’re not getting anywhere. After all, you have witnessed both of your ministers having birthdays in the last month, and we smiled and played and said it was a celebration, and one of us would not even tell his age – but who knows whether there is not some nebulous pain associated with getting another year older and still not having attained that unreachable star?
There is pain all over the human landscape, and it is mystery. Within these walls today, despite our smiles and our painted-on merry-making, there is a whole lot of inner hurt. Many of us groan inside. And that is mystery: God has made us that way, and we do not understand why.
And so we struggle with it and feel we ought to be able to learn, somehow, to handle it better. Surely somebody has some answers about how to feel better when life is burdensome. And so we try various remedies. Some of us go to various physicians and counselors. And that’s positive, that’s all right. Certainly both of your ministers want you to share that burden with us and let us walk with you as best we are able.
But some seek refuge in some negative things – mind-numbing substances from alcohol to cocaine. Or we deny that we have any problems and run off chanting, "Don’t worry, be happy; don’t worry, be happy". Or we listen to various TV evangelists exhorting us to be joyful in the Lord, if we’ll just mail in our check. None of that works for very long, does it?
But the mystery of pain deepens when you begin to thank about this season of the year. It’s Lent. Lent is the Christian season that is designed to focus on the suffering of Jesus of Nazareth and all that His cross means. And from a human point of view there is nothing more absurd, nothing more mysterious and even pointless than the pain of Jesus. He did no wrong, he broke no law, he injured no one, and yet, as the prophet said He wouId do, "He gave his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked out the hair. He hid not his face from shame and spitting".
And from that cross His cry of loneliness rings out across the ages as the most awful ever uttered by human lips. Who can feel pain any more deeply than this, to cry, "My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
And so in this season of Lent I have chosen to struggle with you along the theme, "The Cross at the Garbage Dump", "The Cross at the Garbage Dump". Why garbage dump? Just because that’s where a whole host of people feel they are: at the garbage dump. Discarded, thrown away, needing only to be plowed under, and buried.
And because that’s where the Cross was, you know. Outside that city wall, where the city’s refuse, both material and human was pitched, that is where Jesus died. I think of that memorable quotation from the great Scottish Christian, George McLeod, who commented that we should remember always that Jesus was crucified on the town garbage dump, between two thieves, not in a cathedral between two candles!
But I am choosing to treat this whole subject by going to one of the great classics of the Old Testament and, indeed, of all of the world’s literature, the Book of Job. The Book of Job is an awesome probing of the hurts of humanity, and yet it is also an astounding monument to the audacity of our question-asking. The thing about Job which will capture our attention during these weeks in the Lenten season is that not only did he feel pain, but also he complained about it. He voiced his pain. He argued out his pain. With rigorous intellectual honesty as well as deep spiritual sensitivity, Job will help us see that it’s OK to scream out against God. And, though it is Old Testament and a long time before the coming of Jesus, a long time before the events we remember during Lent, I think you will find the meaning of the cross presented in the Book of Job in a wonderful way.
Now the ancient drama of Job is played out on a heavenly stage, and I cannot go into all of the background details. I assume you know the basics of the story: how in the heavenly councils there appeared the adversary, Satan, who bargained with God over the life of Job. Satan was so sure that Job served God only because life was going well. And God permitted Satan to destroy Job’s riches, his family, and his health to test him. You may have problems with the picture of a God who would allow that to happen; and I would say, well, go ahead and have your problems with that God. I have them too. And that’s the point. In a very real sense, that is the point. The point of Job’s complaint is that it doesn’t look like God can be trusted!
For now, it’s enough just to say that after Job has been stripped of everything, he is left out on that town garbage dump. Left out there scraping at his body sores with a broken piece of pottery and scraping at his soul with despair.
The Book of Job, once the story is laid out in a few paragraphs of prose, moves into some 40 chapters of the most sublime poetry the world has known. And five characters appear in that poetry, each with his own set of answers to Job’s complaints. These five friends of Job will be the prosecuting attorneys during our Lenten season. These five friends will dish up answers to Job and his suffering, and we will look at those answers during these Sundays. We will try to feel what Job feels. And most of all, we will look for the awesome mystery of the cross as a response to the reality of human pain and suffering.
There is so much Biblical material associated with each of these friends of Job that I cannot read it all for you. What I will do is to pick up the highlights, the key passages and ideas of each of these encounters, and lift them up for you. I hope you will read the whole thing for yourself.
The first of the friends of Job is Eliphaz. To Job’s suffering and despair, Eliphaz’ s answer, essentially, is "It’s all so simple". Job, you must know that good people get good things and bad people get evil things. It’s all so simple. You have done something wrong; now admit it, confess it, and come clean. You get what you deserve, Job. You get what you pay for.
Eliphaz says it this way: "Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.” Eliphaz is one of those folks who see the world in terms of black and white, right and wrong, is and is not. Eliphaz has a bank account religion; he thinks that you get out what you put in, and that if you want to be saved, then you have to live good. And if you don’ t live good, according to Eliphaz, well, then, you won’t be saved. It’s all so simple.
There are several things wrong with Eliphaz’ s ideas. The first thing that’s wrong with it is that it is a spiritually lazy answer. It is a spiritually lazy answer. Eliphaz thinks that the mystery that is God, the mystery that is human suffering, can be boiled down to a couple of easy slogans and cloying clichés. It’s all so simple for Eliphaz; but that is spiritually lazy.
When we go and visit one of our friends who has lost a loved one, we don’t know what to say, and what do we end up doing? We end up reducing the tough questions to a few good slogans. When you sit down with someone who has just lost a loved one, don’t you find yourself saying, "Well, you just have to accept the will of God"? Pop theology, but it is spiritually lazy.
We work at getting someone to make a commitment to Christ and to come to the waters of baptism. And then when that person disappears a few weeks later, we dismiss the problem with a wave of the hand and the old slogan, “Once saved, always saved". Pop theology, but spiritually lazy.
You and I and Eliphaz would like to solve our spiritual issues on the cheap, but that just will not work. And Job punctures that balloon in hurry. Job speaks of the mystery that is God. Job speaks of a God who does not give up His secrets easily. Job tells us we are going to have to work at this mystery.
Says Job, “0h, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come before his presence! I would lay my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me … Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him … I am hemmed in by darkness."
Friends, Job is saying that God is not so easy to understand, and that God’s ways are not reduced to a couple of slick slogans or pat formulas. Job is saying that ultimately God is mystery, and some things are just not answered in the way you might like them to be. Let’s not settle for the quick and easy answers. Let’s not reduce somebody else’s pain to cheap clichés. We would do a whole lot better just keeping quiet than offering up lazy answers to people.
Eliphaz’s basic problem, the problem with the answer, "It’s all so simple," is that it is spiritually lazy.
A second thing is wrong with Eliphaz. And that is that Eliphaz thinks he can earn his way to God. Eliphaz believes that he can add up enough brownie points with God to keep himself out of trouble. "It’s all so simple". "Those who plow iniquity or sow trouble reap the same." Just shape up or ship out.
A whole lot of us are trying to be Eliphaz. A whole lot of us are trying to live a decent and respectable life so that we can earn our way into God’s favor. Just a whole mess of us are plodding along with our middle-class virtue plastered allover us, glad that we are not like the crack heads and the addicts, feeling that we enjoy the special favor of God.
Every now and then, when I am asked to do a funeral for someone who is not a member of the church, and not a practicing Christian, the family members will tell me what a nice, hard-working guy Dad was and what a kind person Mama was and that surely that will admit them to heaven. We are, many of us, like Eliphaz, pretty sure that our goodness is buying us a place on the right side of the pearly gates.
But Job is quick to point out that no sin that he can catalog in his own life would deserve this kind of punishment. And he is equally quick to point out that all kinds of perfectly terrible people get by very well in this world. Says Job, "(There are those who) thrust the poor off the road … who snatch the fatherless child from the breast, and take in pledge the infants of the poor … There are those who rebel against the light, and do not stay in its paths …There are those who feed on the barren childless woman, and do no good to the widow, yet God prolongs their lives by His power, He gives them security and they are supported."
In other words, says Job, Eliphaz, how can you explain the fact that a Stalin can murder millions of people and get away with it? How can you interpret the harsh reality that folks steal and cheat and lie every day and get by with it, suffering no punishment from God or from anyone else?
No, Eliphaz, it’s not that simple. It is not that when you sin you get punished and when you are good you get rewarded. No, Eliphaz, it just does not work out like that.
And you and I know that Job is right. You and I know that bad things happen to good people and good things come to bad people, and the whole thing seems topsy-turvy all too often. There has to be something more.
The something more is faith in a God who accepts responsibility. What we need to get past the hurting points is faith, faith in a God who accepts responsibility. You may not be able to compute God’s justice, but believe that God sees our hurt and accepts responsibility to do something with it.
Look what happens. Job cries out! Job speaks his mind. And out there on the garbage dump, the suffering Job begins to open up and lance the wounds and get relief, just from screaming out to a God he can still trust. Job still has faith … that’s the wonderful thing … Job still has faith.
And something strange and wonderful begins to happen. During Job’s discourse with Eliphaz he speaks of something mysterious and yet hopeful. He is in the middle of weeping and ranting and raving, and yet listen: "Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high." "My witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high."
What is Job talking about? Of whom does he speak? Who is this witness? Who is it that vouches for him? I know that Job is not Jesus and I know that the Old Testament is not the New, but I hear the distant hints of a God who in His own flesh will bear the burden of our sin. I hear the first faint suggestions of a God who has decided that the answer to our pain is to pay the price himself.
Hundreds of years before Calvary, we are beginning to look toward that day when, on a green hill far away, outside a city wall, there would be a cross on the town garbage dump. And there, on that cross, God in the person of Jesus Christ, would say to you and to me and to every one who suffers: there may be no justice, as you understand it, but there is one who understands. There may be no explanation in the way you would like it, but there is a God who identifies with you and suffers along with you.
Years ago my best friend was struck by a car out on the highway; he lingered a number of weeks, and then died. As we sat in the funeral home waiting for the service, I said to others standing around, "Why? Why him?" And somebody shrugged and said, as Eliphaz always will, "It was just God’s will". But my father just tapped me on the arm and said, "Listen to that. Listen to the music". I did. The music said, "God so loved the world that He gave … He gave His only begotten Son."
It’s not so simple, Eliphaz. But with Job, looking at the cross on the garbage dump, we can at least say, "Even now, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high."
