32:1-10 So these three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. Then Elihu son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, 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, though they had declared Job to be in the wrong. Now Elihu had waited to speak to Job, because they were older than he. But when Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouths of these three men, he became angry. Elihu son of Barachel the Buzite answered: "I am young in years, and you are aged; therefore I was timid and afraid to declare my opinion to you. I said, ’Let days speak, and many years teach wisdom.’ But truly it is the spirit in a mortal, the breath of the Almighty, that makes for understanding. 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.’
In Pennsylvania, I am told, there is a town that had to be moved because of a slow burn. The story is that this was a coal mining town, and, over the years, the mine shafts had been dug right under the buildings and streets of the town. But some spark had caused a fire to start way back in one of those shafts. The unmined coal began to burn, so far down that there was no way to put the fire out. So the mine owners abandoned the mine and sealed the entrances, hoping the fire would burn itself out. Weeks and months went by, and nobody thought too much of it, until suddenly, one day, a crack opened in one of the town streets, and smoke and fire came belching up through that crack! What had happened? The fire, though it had been well hidden underground, had not gone out. It had done a slow burn, building intensity all the time, until suddenly it found a weakness in the surface above it, and it shot out in a fiery frenzy. The slow burn had done so much underground damage that the entire town had to be abandoned.
People also do slow burns. Someone called, and as he spoke, there was a certain intensity in his voice. It was not so much what he said as how he said it. Pastor, I need to come see you. I need to come right away. I have something I must say. There was so much urgency in it that I did not even bother to ask what it was about, I just agreed that he could come. It seemed as though I was still hanging up the telephone when I saw his car arrive outside, I watched him race up the walk, I heard him lean on the doorbell, and he rushed into my office. Almost before I could greet him he started in, disgorging a list of complaints and hurts. I found out that some of his disappointments were as much as ten years old; feelings had been seething inside for a decade. And now, suddenly, urgently, with burning passion, they were all pouring out. I had had no idea my friend felt all of these things; he had kept them hidden for years, and now, without warning, it was all erupting. My friend had been “doing a slow burn”.
Sometimes people keep feelings deep down inside, and you would never know those feelings were there. But they have not gone away. The passions have not cooled. They have just gone into a slow burn, which eventually erupts and flares out in all directions.
This happens with young people. That teenager who seems so quiet may actually be holding in a host of negative feelings, and you won’t even know it, until, suddenly, there is a torrent of anger or some kind of acting out that stuns you. That young adult who says very little, but when he does, it feels arrogant, intimidating .. that young adult may be nurturing feelings that he has just never found a way to express. But when he does, watch out! You may feel led to abandon the place where you live, just like they did in that Pennsylvania town! It does not matter whether those feelings are right or wrong; they feel what they feel, and it will break loose. But it is vitally important that they be heard.
Elihu, a young man, had been sitting silently off to the side while Job and his three friends were batting issues around. Elihu had weathered Job’s storm of complaints. He had endured Eliphaz’s eloquence, he had bathed in Bildad’s blather, and he had squirmed at Zophar’s sarcasm. Elihu had been doing a slow burn. But now watch him erupt. Elihu can contain himself no longer. He must speak! And in his breaking loose, I think we may all hear some things we have needed to hear for a long time. They’ve been doing a slow burn, but they are now ready to break out.
I
The first thing to break out of Elihu’s slow burn is a reaction to Job’s stubbornness. He responds to Job’s being closed up. Elihu has been doing a slow burn as he has listened to Job talk about what God will not do and cannot do. And Elihu erupts out of the slow burn to insist that God is still able to do more than all we ask or think:
[First Reader] 33:12 "But in this you are not right. I will answer you: God is greater than any mortal. Why do you contend against him, saying, ’He will answer none of my words’? For God speaks in one way, and in two, though people do not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on mortals, while they slumber on their beds, then he opens their ears, and terrifies them with warnings, that he may turn them aside from their deeds, and keep them from pride, to spare their souls from the Pit, their lives from traversing the River.
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23 Then, if there should be for one of them an angel, a mediator, one of a thousand, one who declares a person upright, and he is gracious to that person, and says, ’Deliver him from going down into the Pit; I have found a ransom; let his flesh become fresh with youth; let him return to the days of his youthful vigor.’ Then he prays to God, and is accepted by him, he comes into his presence with joy, and God repays him for his righteousness. That person sings to others and says, ’I sinned, and perverted what was right, and it was not paid back to me. He has redeemed my soul from going down to the Pit, and my life shall see the light.’ "God indeed does all these things, twice, three times, with mortals, to bring back their souls from the Pit, so that they may see the light of life. Pay heed, Job, listen to me; be silent, and I will speak. If you have anything to say, answer me; speak, for I desire to justify you. If not, listen to me; be silent, and I will teach you wisdom."
“.. in this you are not right ... God is greater than any person. Why do you contend against him, saying, ’He will answer none of my words’? For God speaks ... though people do not perceive it. One thing young people find fault against us is that we are not faithful enough. Our youth tell us that we do not expect much from God, and that’s why we don’t get it. Some of us enjoy our run-down little lives! We get a big trip out of being failures! We like it that we aren’t much. We like it, because we don’t have to live up to high expectations. Some of us have given up on ourselves, and more, we have given up on God. And, I tell you, we will forfeit this generation if we do not start believing. Believing!
Believing what? Believing that God is involved in our lives. Believing that God speaks to us with clarity and power. Believing that Christ redeems lives and brings back the lost from their loneliness and the messy from their miry clay. We have become incredibly cynical! We suspect that no one can really be changed, and that once your life is in a witches’ brew of despondency and deceit, that’s it. No changing. Nothing new. What a sad commentary on our cynicism!
The other day I caught it in myself. I was driving downtown to a meeting about missions. On my way I saw some men hanging out on a street corner, outside Central Union Mission, begging a few dollars. Do you know what my first thought was? I’m ashamed of this. I thought, “You see. The mission is doing all this for these men. But it isn’t working. Nobody can help them. They are gone. They are ruined.” That’s what I was thinking as I drove two more blocks, and turned into the parking lot of the Baptist building to talk about missions. To talk about missions?! Great God, when I doubt that people can really be changed? When I don’t even acknowledge God’s power to make a difference?! What a sad commentary on the negative spirit that so easily seeps in!
But I hear from young Elihu another word. I hear from young Elihu and from young people, too, the insistence that men can be redeemed. I hear the haunting hope that broken lives can be put back together again. Some of our young people are breaking out of their slowly burning anger and are shouting, with Elihu. “In this you are not right. I will answer you: God is greater than any mortal. Why do you contend against him, saying, ’He will answer none of my words’? For God speaks ... though people do not perceive it.” Our young Elihus believe that God will still speak and act, and they are right. Let them erupt from their slow burn and teach us to believe God!
II
Something else. Elihu, in his slow burn, found fault with Job, for, in his mind, Job was hypocritical. Job was two-faced. The young Elihus of our day are doing a slow burn, and may erupt any minute now, because they can read our lives as well as our language, and they can see that what we do and what we say do not connect. They find fault with Job’s two faces:
[Second Reader] 34: 2 "Hear my words, you wise men, and give ear to me, you who know; for the ear tests words as the palate tastes food. Let us choose what is right; let us determine among ourselves what is good.--
7 Who is there like Job, who drinks up scoffing like water, who goes in company with evildoers and walks with the wicked? For he has said, ’It profits one nothing to take delight in God.’
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31 "For has anyone said to God, ’I have endured punishment; I will not offend any more; teach me what I do not see; if I have done iniquity, I will do it no more’? Will he then pay back to suit you, because you reject it? For you must choose, and not I; therefore declare what you know. Those who have sense will say to me, and the wise who hear me will say, ’Job speaks without knowledge, his words are without insight.’ Would that Job were tried to the limit, because his answers are those of the wicked. For he adds rebellion to his sin; he claps his hands among us, and multiplies his words against God."
“Who is there like Job, who drinks up scoffing like water, who goes in company with evildoers and walks with the wicked?” Elihu throws up his young hands in frustration, for Job, in his opinion, is just like the world. Job may tell you that he is righteous and upright, but Elihu has seen something different. Elihu has seen in Job a willingness to compromise, get along, politically correct. Elihu has seen what our young people see of the church: that it will not stand for something. They see a church which has lost its voice. A church that cannot speak clearly and without hesitation to the moral issues of our time, because we want just to keep peace in the family and muddle through, somehow.
I hear our young people calling us to be consistent. If you believe something, go for it. If you stand for something, stand up for it. Otherwise we show two faces.
A church that says that it embraces all people, and yet draws lines: color lines, class lines, culture lines; that church is two-faced, and it will disgust young people. A Christian who prays long and ardent prayers about saving sinners over there in Africa or out in Upper Mongolia, but who will say not one word about Christ to his next-door neighbor, that Christian is two-faced, and Elihu won’t have it. A believer who affirms that God is the Lord and giver of life, but who is indifferent to the violence that takes life on the streets or the hunger that grinds life out of human hearts. Elihu finds fault with that. Young people see right through that. Young people are doing a slow burn about hypocrisy.
You know, it has become terribly important to me that we as a church move forward with redemptive things. It has become critically important to me that we find more ways to reach people and heal them. Some folks from the University of the District of Columbia interviewed me the other day. They were doing a little study of churches with ministry groups, and they had heard about us. They came to see. Well, I gave them the talk. You know, the talk. A little band of believers, 1919, a Sunday school; dually aligned and multiracial and ordaining women. All the neat stuff. I told them our history, I spoke about our values, I shared neat little stories about what we believe. And then they asked the killer question, “How many ministries does the church have and how many people do they serve?” “How many?” Why is everybody into statistics? Why isn’t it good enough just to believe good things? How many? I didn’t want to answer that question. I had to hang my head in shame, because, although we are doing some ministries, and we are serving some needs, our reality does not match our rhetoric. Our walk does not equal our talk. God forgive us! We are creating a slow burn of anger in our community, where they expect us to do what we say we are about.
Let Elihu’s slow burn of anger break out, and break out soon, if it will move us not only to talk the talk, but also to walk the walk.
III
There’s more. There’s more from young Elihu. His slow burn is seething still, and it breaks out again. This time it is not only that Elihu believes that God is still capable of acting and changing lives; and it is not only that Elihu fears that Job’s generation are all talk and no walk. This time it is that Elihu has discovered our dirty little secret, that we do not even know how to cry out to God for our own needs. We do not even know how to ask God to help us when the crunch times come. Not only do we not think that God is able to do anything for the derelict and the wino in the street; we have not asked Him to do anything for us. We have not, because we ask not. We are practically atheists! That is a terrible fault to find, but Elihu insists on it:
[Third Reader] 35:9 "Because of the multitude of oppressions people cry out; they call for help because of the arm of the mighty. But no one says, ’Where is God my Maker, who gives strength in the night, who teaches us more than the animals of the earth, and makes us wiser than the birds of the air?’ There they cry out, but he does not answer, because of the pride of evildoers. Surely God does not hear an empty cry, nor does the Almighty regard it.
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Job opens his mouth in empty talk, he multiplies words without knowledge."
“No one says, ’Where is God my Maker, who gives strength in the night?’” No one asks for God’s help! Wow!
The most serious fault that Elihu can find with Job is that Job has not asked God for help. Now Job has complained against God, but that’s a far cry from asking God for help. And Job has wept bitterly about how God has treated him, but that’s hardly the same thing as simply being open before the Father of mercy, and asking to be taught. Elihu’s indictment of Job is that he is not teachable. He is not open. He asks for no help, and so that’s exactly what he gets. He seeks no new light, and so he wallows in darkness. Job is closed up tight.
I have to ask you something. Is there anything in your life that frustrates you? Is there anything that you just can’t get a handle on, it just won’t budge? Have you prayed about it? Have you asked God’s help in getting it solved? Have you trusted God for what God wants to do in you? My suspicion is that most of us, when we get frustrated with something, we try to manage it. We try to manipulate it. Force it. And we don’t even touch the power that is right in front of us.
Several years ago I was in my driveway, trying to work on my car, back before cars were rolling computers and you have to be a systems analyst to make sense of them. I had a loose compressor belt, and I was trying to tighten it, all by myself. So I had a big pry bar in one hand, to put some tension on the belt; and I had a socket wrench in the other hand, so that I could snug it up. I was lying on the driveway, with one foot braced against a wheel and the other foot waving around looking for something to do. My son came out and asked if he could help. Now you all already know that one thing this stubborn soul does not do is ask for help. He does what he does on his own, thank you very much. And so I said no, and continued to struggle. Push. Snug. Brace. Wave. Could not get the thing right. Try again. Push. Snug. Brace. Wave. That turned out to be a deadly combination, that belt broke, that prybar came at my head, and the next thing I knew I was one bloody mess, being shouted at by one teenage son, “Dad, lie still. Just lie still. Don’t do a thing. I am taking over.”
He’d been right there, available to me all along, but no, I had to wait until I messed up and got bloodied and then I had not choice but for him to take over. When we get frustrated, even though there is God standing by to take over, we ignore Him. We shunt Him aside. We do not use what we have. The dirty little secret that Elihu uncovered is that we are just about atheists, not inviting God’s help in all things. Young people find fault with our arrogant self-sufficiency. And they should. They should. Let Elihu break out of his slow burn and tell us straight up that we must pray and seek the face of God in all things. All things.
IV
Still one more item. Elihu’s slow burn is hotter yet. It erupts again. Elihu sears the conscience, young people find fault with the generation before them, because we do not give witness to the blessings we have received. We do not speak of the deliverance that God has given us. Elihu sees that Job’s generation has a very short memory, and cannot seem to recall or to report what God has done.
[Fourth Reader] 36:16 He also allured you out of distress into a broad place where there was no constraint, and what was set on your table was full of fatness. "But you are obsessed with the case of the wicked; judgment and justice seize you. Beware that wrath does not entice you into scoffing, and do not let the greatness of the ransom turn you aside. Will your cry avail to keep you from distress, or will all the force of your strength? Do not long for the night, when peoples are cut off in their place. Beware! Do not turn to iniquity; because of that you have been tried by affliction.
“He .. allured you out of distress into a broad place where there was no constraint, and what was set on your table was full of fatness. But you are obsessed with the case of the wicked.” With what penetrating insight Elihu finds our fault: that we have come a mighty long way, but we don’t want to talk about it. We don’t want to remember it, and we don’t want to tell our young people what it all meant. How strange, that we should receive so much from God, and then not want to tell anybody about it. We are ashamed of where we’ve come from, and so we act as though we have no testimony to share.
Several years back I sat down some of the chaplains and students at Howard University. We were going to plan a Maundy Thursday, a service that would focus on how God delivers His people from oppression. The service was to be a kind of blackenizing of the Jewish Seder that tells the story of Israel being freed from the oppressions of Egypt. We thought it would be a great time of worship and witness about freedom from oppression. But can you guess what those students said? They said, “Oppression? Who’s been oppressed? We don’t know anybody who’s been oppressed. Life is good. We’ve got money, we’ve got clothes, we’ve got cars, we’ve got it all. So who needs to celebrate deliverance?” And when somebody in our group began to talk about slavery and segregation and civil rights and all of that, these students, who would have been about five or six years old when Dr. King was killed, said, “Nobody ever told us about that. As far as we know, our families have always been free and filthy rich.” How soon we forget!
But if our young people do not know their history, whose fault is that? If our children do not understand that some came out of the muck and mire of the sharecropper’s farm, who is it that has not borne witness? If our children do not treasure the struggle for dignity, then who has forfeited that memory? I believe our young people are crying out for us to tell our stories. Our human stories, our personal stories, our spiritual stories. If we do not tell them what God has done for us, then how can we expect them to be tuned in to what God will do for them? If we have no history, how can we have a future?
Elihu finds fault with Job. “God led you into a broad place, where there were no constraints; He set a table of fatness in front of you, and you were obsessed with the case of the wicked. You didn’t tell the good news. You didn’t tell the story.” Elihu does a slow burn and seethes with rage because Job’s generation just never got around to sharing anything of their story. Elihu’s generation is getting short changed and is just waking up. We need to tell them, in no uncertain terms, what God has done. We need to get over our spiritual amnesia.
Conclusion
All over this land, do you know that there are young people coming out of slow burns and erupting into commitment, blossoming into service for Christ? All over this land, hundreds of young people are willing to build housing for the poor, dig wells for the thirsty, create food banks for the hungry. All over this land there are new expressions of worship, new songs are being sung, new rhythms are being felt, new joys being expressed. The slow burn of anger in many young people, who have felt cheated by a generation riddled with faults, is blowing wide open. I cannot go into all the details, but you can get the feel of it from Elihu, who, though he did a slow burn, finally sounded a note of positive excitement:
[Fifth Reader] 37:1 "At this also my heart trembles, and leaps out of its place. Listen, listen to the thunder of his voice and the rumbling that comes from his mouth. Under the whole heaven he lets it loose, and his lightning to the corners of the earth. After it his voice roars; he thunders with his majestic voice and he does not restrain the lightnings when his voice is heard. God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend. For to the snow he says, ’Fall on the earth’; and the shower of rain, his heavy shower of rain,
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"Hear this, O Job; stop and consider the wondrous works of God. Do you know how God lays his command upon them, and causes the lightning of his cloud to shine? Do you know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of the one whose knowledge is perfect,
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19 Teach us what we shall say to him; we cannot draw up our case because of darkness. Should he be told that I want to speak? Did anyone ever wish to be swallowed up?
“Listen, listen to the thunder of his voice and the rumbling that comes from his mouth. ... he thunders with his majestic voice and he does not restrain the lightnings when his voice is heard.” Listen, listen to the thunder of his voice.
One day that voice, that voice that thunders, cried out to a young man, “Set your face toward Jerusalem, where you must suffer and die.” And that young man went, his slow burn erupting in obedience.
One day that voice, that voice that thunders, called to that young man, “To Calvary. To Calvary.” And with painful steps and slow, that young man trod up that hill, carrying on His shoulders the very weight of the world. A long slow burn. Long. Slow. Difficult. Agonizing. But for this cause He had come into the world, for this cause He had prepared, for this cause He had burned from the beginning of time.
One day that voice, that voice that thunders, screamed in bitter anguish, as they flung Him, high and wide, against an Eastern sky. They stretched out His arms and drove great nails through His hands. The long slow burn of pain had now become a torrent of searing shouts. “My God, why have You forsaken me?” And they left Him there, left Him to die.
Listen, listen to the thunder of his voice and the rumbling that comes from his mouth ... “It is finished. Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” Listen.
Listen, listen to the thunder .. and he does not restrain the lightnings when His voice is heard. Listen to the earth tremble, and the veil of the Temple rent in two. Listen to the very bowels of earth open up, and it is as if all hell has gone to war against Him. Hell’s slow burning is erupting all around. But listen to the thunder of his voice. For “when I survey the wondrous cross, where the young prince of glory died, my richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.”
We owe our young Elihus a hearing. They find fault, and rightly, with us. But they find no fault in Him. We owe their slow burn a hearing.
“Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small; love so amazing ... when the slow burn of Christ’s love has flamed into this ... love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”
