Years ago the church of which I was then a member had an evening ice-cream social and service out on the church grounds one summer Sunday. It was a gently warm night, and as the sun went down and a little chill crept into the air, as the stars began to come out and faces began to disappear into the shadows, someone began the service by singing. First gently, then more clearly, finally loudly and vigorously we all sang: "Give me that old-time religion, give me that old-time religion, give me that old-time religion; it’s good enough for me."
I remember feeling just a little uncomfortable that night. I thought at the time I knew why, but I didn’t, not really. I thought I felt uncomfortable about singing "Old-Time Religion" because I knew better. I knew better. I had been to seminary, I had learned wonderful things about the Bible and where it came from, I had learned at least to spout the names of assorted German theologians, even though I may not have understood them. At least I was equipped to impress you with quotes from Barth, Brunner, Bonhoeffer, Braunschweiger, and Baloney. I thought that I didn’t want to sing "Old-Time Religion" because I knew that the old-time religion was not intellectually good enough for me. Emphatically not up to date enough for me.
But, to tell the truth, that is not really why I felt ill at ease with that song.
Last fall, we held a revival here at our church, and the Diaconate selected the theme, "Give Me That Old-Time Religion", and we sang that song again. Every night we sang that song. And, though I never said anything to anyone about it, again I felt a little uncomfortable. And again I thought I knew why. But I didn’t. Not really.
I thought I felt uncomfortable because we might be indulging in a nostalgia trip. I thought I felt uncomfortable because we might have been tempted to answer all the old questions that nobody’s asking any more. I supposed my discomfort with singing "old-time religion" had something to do with a fear that we were bypassing those who were too young even to know what the old-time religion was. I thought that I knew why I was uncomfortable, but I didn’t.
In truth, none of these was the real source of my concern. None of these were the cancers gnawing away at my brain last fall. The old-time religion: it just felt … not quite right. Why not?
Out on the town garbage heap, where rats play and scavengers feast, centuries ago there sat a miserable man named Job. He had not always been miserable. Once Job had been a prosperous merchant, landowner, farmer, and businessman.
But now he was deprived of everything that he owned. He couldn’t even afford the piece of pottery he was using to scratch where it itched.
Once Job had been a family man, surrounded by admiring children.
Children, after all, will admire you when you give them everything they could want. He had been a husband, adorned by a doting wife, whose doting got a little fierce when the adornments went away. But practically nobody follows you to the garbage dump; that’s where you are alone with your problems, your sores, and the vermin. Job has lost it all: his wealth, his family, his health, his community, his prestige, and, worst of all, Job has lost his peace of mind. Job wants to be left alone to die.
But out to the garbage dump come a few friends, drawn by old loyalties to a place they must have loathed.
The Scripture tells us: "Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to condole with him and to comfort him. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great."
After this week-long silence, it was Job himself who spoke the pain that was in his heart, and the first of his counselors, Eliphaz, offered up a theological nostrum intended to cover the situation. As we saw last week, Eliphaz said to Job, "You, sir, are in trouble, because if you had not sinned so badly, God would not have done this to you. And so, Job, since you are in such horrible shape, you must have sinned very greatly. And there is no other explanation. None, nada, zilch, zip. That’s it".
Job, however, as I trust you recall from last week, will not have it that way. Call him naive if you will; call him unrealistic, call him unrepentant; but Job does not believe that he deserves what he is getting. For Job, Eliphaz and. his cash-register religion, in which you get out exactly what you put in, that is spiritually lazy, that’s looking for simplistic answers; and Eliphaz thinks that you can, in the last analysis, earn God’s favor, and Job knows better. Job sees that this is a world in which bad things do happen to good people and bad people sometimes get good things, and the whole thing is topsy-turvy.
And so, as we saw last Sunday, Eliphaz strikes out with Job, trying to be his counselor and interpreter.
But today along comes Bildad, the second friend. And Bildad, though he does not disagree in the least with Eliphaz, comes along with a new dimension, a new way of interpreting Job’s pain. And, in the end, adding to Job’s pain.
Says Bildad to Job, suffering from his losses, his lesions, and soon his lessons: "How long will you say these things, and the words of your mouth be a great wind?” (In other words, Job, you are a great big windbag!)
"How long will you say these things, and the words of your mouth be a great wind? Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right?" So far he is right there alongside Eliphaz, insisting that you just get what you deserve, that’s all.
But listen now to Bildad’s particular advice: "Inquire, I pray you, of bygone ages, and consider what the fathers have found; for we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, for our days on earth are a shadow. Will they not teach you and tell you, and utter words out of their understanding?"
Bildad’s advice to Job is, "Get that old-time religion". "Get that old-time religion." Find out what the tradition says, and stick with that. Listen to the ages, listen to the teachings already confirmed by long use, listen to the old-time religion, and let it go at that.
Bildad is telling Job, “Friend, you are wasting your time trying to figure this out. We have a theology that’s been around for a long time, good enough for Adam and Eve, so you just ought to accept it for yourself."
Bildad is insisting, "Job, who do you think you are? Are you smart enough to figure out the ways of God for yourself? Just accept what we’ve always believed. Make it easy on yourself. Truth is truth, unchanging, sure, and certain."
And Bildad sounds good, doesn’t he? There is a whole lot of truth to what he is saying. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you face a spiritual problem. There are others who have thought about this before you. You don’t have to act as though no one has ever felt this way before. The whole of Christian history is out there to look at and to learn from. Bildad sounds good. "Give me that old-time religion, it’s good enough for me."
But Job objects. Job is not satisfied. Job is still hurting, and somehow it does not help him to be told that the answers are all known. The point is that he doesn’t know them. He hasn’t experienced them. They are not his answers. They might be perfectly satisfactory for somebody else, but they are not his answers.
In fact, Job wants more than answers. Job wants an experience of face-to-face-encounter with God. Job wants more than intellectually watertight propositions; Job wants to meet this God who is putting him through the wringer.
In Job’s reaction to Bildad’s advice, you and I can hear three cries from Job. We can hear Job asking for three kinds of relationships. We do not hear Job asking for textbook answers; we hear him asking for compassion, for relationship, at three different levels.
I
Job’s first call is for relationship with God. He pleads to be heard by God Himself: "If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand times … Lo, he passes by me, and I see him not; he moves on, but I do not perceive him … I will give free utterance to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God, ’Do not condemn me, let me know why thou dost contend against me.’"
"I will give free utterance to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul." Job has found his voice. Job is crying out for a personal relationship with the living God, and, quite apart from all the traditions, quite apart from the approved doctrines of the faith, quite apart from the theology of his day, Job is determined to break new ground and to meet God for himself.
And now I begin to know why I was uncomfortable singing about that old-time religion, good enough for the Hebrew children. I begin to know why I was uncomfortable singing out that the old-time religion was what I wanted: because it wasn’t. What I really wanted, and what Job wanted, and what I suspect many of you want, is a personal, face-to-face encounter, an audacious, bold, face-to-face relationship, with God himself.
You see, I can’t have somebody else’s experience; I can only have my own. I may be able to learn from somebody else’s history, but I cannot live their history. I need to make my own history.
This morning, if you are hurting, like Job was hurting, I want to encourage you to speak out, though the heavens appear to be silent. I want to ask you to cry out, though the earth itself seem unmovable. If you are on the garbage dump, as Job was, I do not know how to say it better than he did: "I will give utterance to my complaint." If you think God is unfair, say so and say it to Him. He’s big enough to handle it.
Because as long as you can pray in anger, you are alive. As long as you can lift up your voice to him, you have not given up. And you are demanding a fresh experience, not a second-hand doctrine. And that is the way to healing. Insist on the God of compassion hearing you, even when it appears that He does not. And the day will cane when you will be heard. Cry out, like Job, "I will give free utterance to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul." And don’t give up on it. Job’s first cry, and yours, is a cry for a real relationship with God, a cry to be heard by God. Don’t settle for sterile ideas, however much they may be the old-time religion. It’s not good enough.
II
Job’s second cry, over against Bildad, is for an authentic, listening, caring friend with whom you can share your complaint. Job wants a friend who is more compassion than doctrine, more ears than mouth, more caring than rigid.
As you follow Bildad through the three speeches he gives to Job, what you find is that he becomes progressively more rigid, more insistent on his correctness, and therefore more cruel. Bildad has one and only one way to respond; he approaches every issue with an open mouth. He becomes very, very committed to his point of view. And, worst of all, Bildad gets defensive himself. For Bildad, before long, the issue is no longer how to help Job but how to defend Bildad.
In the second Bildad speech he says, "Why are we counted as cattle? Why are we stupid in your sight?" Bildad has become all wrapped up in being right and being the winner in this argument. Don’t call me stupid, Job.
My wife will tell you that when we have one of our family discussions … never an argument, mind you, just a warm, lively, animated family discussion … my wife will tell you that if she labels one of my thoughts as stupid or silly, I will go off in a tirade. I will get very defensive in a hurry if you think I am anything less than 100% alert mentally. We Bildads do not like to be wrong. We have studied, we have been to school; we think we have it all wrapped up.
The trouble is that we have it all wrapped up in the wrong sort of way. We have the truth, maybe, but it has no compassion in it. It has no blood in it. A pastor friend of mine is described by one of the members of his church as always right in all the wrong ways. Bildad.
I say again that what Job wants is not answers but relationships. And not only does he want and need relationship with God, he wants and needs relationship with authentic caring friends. Hear Job’s cry for someone who will care rather than preach dogma:
"All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me … Have pity on me, have pity on me, you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me. Why do you pursue me? Have pity on me, O you my friends."
Job has a spiritual need, but he certainly also has a human need. And we can wonder whether he went out on the garbage dump just because that was the only place available to him or whether he went out there because in his pain and in his self-rejection he thought that was the only place where he belonged. He went out there to reject those who were rejecting him.
If you feel like Job, cry out not only to God and demand to be heard. But cry out to your friends also. Look for human companionship. Look for somebody better than Bildad, somebody who may know the truth, but who does not feel it necessary to jam it down your throat. Look for compassion.
I want to say just a word for the ministry of counseling that we here undertake to do. We are engaged almost daily in the business of serving as pastor counselors. Sometimes people come to us ashamed of what they have done, but at the point in their lives where they feel they can go no farther. And they halfway expect to hear a lecture from us, full of "You oughts" and "Thou shalt nots". I just want to say that we try our very best to avoid being Bildad. We try our very best to hear what is being said. And we are very cautious about offering prescriptions or about handing out advice. Our ministry is to listen, to walk with you, to feel the depth of your pain, and, as best we can to share it with you.
If you hurt like Job, cry out for human companionship and for a partner on the journey, and find somebody who will do more than Bildad with his touchy, defensive, teachings.
When you hurt, you don’t need to get involved in theological debate. You need a warm heart, a listening ear, and a hand to hold.
III
But now there is a third kind of relationship for which Job cries out. He cries out for a face-to-face encounter with God; he asks his friend to be a real friend, compassionate and caring rather than professorial and judgmental. But he also cries out, dimly and mysteriously, for someone else too. There is another person to whom Job reaches out:
Listen to this and hear the distant, muffled sound of another garbage dump, outside a city wall:
"God is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together. There is no umpire between us, who might lay his hand upon us both... Then I would speak without fear of Him." Job is saying there needs to be a go-between, there needs to be someone who will bring God and me together. But who will it be? Who can accomplish that? Who will be this go-between?
Listen again: "I know that a Redeemer lives for me, and at the last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, God on my side. And my eyes will behold him, and not another. "
Oh for an hour to sing this out to you! Oh for a day, a week, to exhaust this theme! Someone to bring God and Job together, someone to redeem Job’s life someone to make it possible for God to be on Job’s side, someone to bridge the gap.
I want you to know that Job’s cry for someone to stand in the gap between him and God has been answered. The pleas of Job for a Redeemer to gather up the threads of his life and vindicate him has been heard. I tell you, in Jesus the Christ, impaled himself upon a Cross on the town garbage dump, God has done more than answer the questions. God has absorbed the questions.
In the crucified Christ, the victim therefore of fierce injustice, God has gathered up all our pain, all our need, all our knowing and our not knowing, all of our questions and all of our hackneyed answers, and has gathered us to himself. In Jesus the Christ, God has gathered up Job with his pain and has healed him with compassion. And in Jesus the Christ, God has spoken his magnificent YES to all humanity. God has even gathered up Bildad with all his doctrinal correctness and has smothered his smugness in love.
And so the song is not "Give me that old-time religion, it was good for the Hebrew children." The song is "Oh the love that drew salvation’s plan. Oh the grace that brought it down to man. Oh the mighty gulf that Christ did span, at Calvary."
Sing no more, "Give me that old time religion, it’s good enough for me." Sing instead, "Only faintly now I see Him, with the darkling veil between. But a blessed day is coming, when His glory shall be seen. Face to face with Christ my savior, face to face, to see and know, when with rapture I behold Him, Jesus Christ who loves me so."
"I know that my redeemer lives … whom I shall see on my side … and my eyes shall behold."
