I wonder how you feel about existential questions.  To put it most simply, existential questions are questions about existence.  Of course, there is nothing simple about them.  They’re foundational to our lives.  Questions about the fact of being alive - who we are and who we are becoming.  You may be really into that kind of thing.  You may think they’re a waste of your time and energy.  We don’t need a degree or even a course in philosophy to consider them.  We’re going to be talking about them and having a chance to sit with them quite a bit over the coming weeks of summer.  The thing about existential questions is, they don’t care if you care about them or not.  They’re in front of us and we answer them in how we live, even if we never think about them.

“There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.”  A serious man.  We want to be serious about our faith.  The story of Job invites us to consider the most meaningful questions of our lives. We want to consider these things together with God, even in the hazy lazy days of summer.  Life is going on.  Someone asked me recently how things were going.  My immediate and regrettably glib reply was something like, “Oh fine.  Keeping things together.”  After some more conversation which took a turn to the serious,  I said, “What I should have told you when you asked how things were was that I’m living between joy and sorrow.”

As I was reading for today, I came across this subtitle in one book – “All humans face adversity in some form or another.” “Mmm hmmm!” I thought.  If you know anything at all about the book of Job as we start to read, you know what’s coming.  If you know anything at all about life, you know what’s coming.  I’m looking at my NRSV version and the section that starts at Job and continues on through Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon is called Poetical and Wisdom books.  One thing about these books, you really don’t need to know anything else about the Bible or the story of God for them to resonate.  They speak to human experience in a way that transcends time and place, culture, and race.  The story of Job in particular speaks of suffering and questions are asked about God and suffering.

The thing is with these questions, they’re not so much asked by us but of us.  We’re going to have a chance to sit with these questions and consider these questions over the coming weeks.  I’m thankful for this – not everyone has the will/inclination/opportunity to do this kind of thing you know – sit with such questions at length.  Spend time with them in the presence of and with the guidance of God.  Let’s come before God in prayer as we start.

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.  Much around this book is uncertain.  Where exactly was Uz?  When was this story written?  Was it written all at once or over a period of time?  Is it about a historical person?  Does any of this really matter when we consider the message or the purpose of this story?

Speaking of questions we don’t have an answer to, let me say off the top that this book does not answer the perennial question “Why do the innocent suffer?”  Why do the good suffer?  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Job speaks to suffering and we will look at it over the coming weeks.  I suppose this is the thing that is difficult to think about, difficult to sit with.  It’s hard to sit with suffering, whether it’s our own or someone else’s.  It’s hard to sit with questions we don’t have answers to.  It’s hard to sit with perplexity.  So often we crave clarity.  Will Shortz is the crossword editor at the New York Times.  He was asked in an interview once why crosswords and puzzles in general are so popular.  This is what he said:

“The fascination is feeling in control. So much of life we have no control over. We just muddle through our private problems and move on to the next thing. With a crossword or other human-made puzzle, you have achieved perfection. That’s very satisfying.”

We muddle through.  In the face of questions like “How can God let this happen?”  “What was this for?”  “How do we find meaning in this?”  “How can we go on?”  “How are we going to live?”  I think of hearing about a child of 10 dying of leukemia in Sick Kids and the father having a conversation with my brother saying “I have a lot of questions to ask God.”  I think of a dear friend who loses their father to a stroke and on the same weekend finds out their mother has an inoperable brain tumour.   Why?

These are questions about our existence.  The “Why do the innocent suffer?” question is not answered in Job.  If anyone told me they have a good answer to “Why do bad things happen to good people?”, I would tend not to believe them.

There’s a deeper question though here for the one who would follow Jesus or the one who is considering what it means to follow Jesus.  No matter where you are on your following, we’re all going to suffer.  I’ve said here before that if you don’t know what acute grief is like you will one day.  I skated through life for 34 years before finding out what acute grief is like.  We will all of us go through circumstances which cause us grief. The deeper question, and it is posed in the heavenly council here in Job 1, is this - “Is God worthy of worship no matter what our circumstances?”  Is God worthy of our worship, adoration, and devotion, matter what is going on?  If not God, then who or what is?

The thing about existential questions – questions that speak to the deepest part of our existence – is that it’s not like we are given the answer to them.  They are not questions that are posed because we lack information and then we get the information and then we say “Oh right thanks for that!”  We who ask the questions live into or become the answer ourselves.  I heard someone say once that there are two existential questions that we start to ask when we turn 12 or 13 or so.  The first is “Who am I?”  The second is “Will they like me?”   Dallas Willard writes about four existential questions that are somewhat similar “What is real or what can you rely on?  Who ‘has it made’?  Who is a good person?  How do you become a good person?”  Even if we are not consciously thinking of these questions, we answer them in the way we live.  We are living answers.

We are living answers to the questions “Where is wisdom to be found and where is the place of understanding?”  To put it another way -“Is God worthy of our worship no matter what our circumstances are?”

The wild thing here in our story is that God and the heavenly council are involved in the question.  The really wild thing is that God involves us in the answer.  But before we get too far ahead of ourselves. There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.  He is blameless and upright.  Wholeness and fair treatment of others.  What you saw what was you got.  The outside reflected the inside.  He feared God and turned away from evil.  Awe and reverence and obedience toward God.  His life is perfect.  The greatest of all the people of the east.  Camels for desert transport.  Donkeys for regular transport.  Oxen for ploughing.  Sheep for food and wool.  Seven sons, and three daughters.  Even the number of kids he has is perfect – seven and three.  Job - this kind of larger than life figure 

But he is also one that enfleshes the questions that are being asked here.  This is not merely a philosophic exercise for those hanging out in student halls or message boards or comment threads. These questions are worked out in our lives.  We might not be able to identify with such riches but we’re given a look at Job’s interior life and he’s just like us.  He worries about his kids.  He wants what’s best for them.  When they’re having parties together (and what great scenes of family togetherness) he gets up early in the morning to offer sacrifices just in case they sinned and cursed God.  He worries about possibilities.  Is this not something with which every parent or child can identify?  I remember Barack Obama talking about peace and reconciliation in the Middle East saying “Don’t we all love our children?”  There is a commonality here.  Let us feel for our brother Job.

Just as Job’s family gets together, the heavenly beings get together.  It seems like it was the Satan’s job, the Accuser’s, the Adversary’s job to go around on the earth looking for virtue.  It seems to have made the Accuser cynical.  “Does Job fear God for nothing?  Have you not put a fence around him and his house and have shielded all that he has, on every side?  You have blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land.” (1:9-10)  Sure Job is pious but how could he not be – looks what’s in it for him!  Look out how materially and familially blessed he is!  Stretch your hand out now and touch all that he has and he will curse you to your face!

Do we fear God for nothing?  Do we make a choice for God?  Do we make a choice for God every day because of what’s in it for us or because God is intrinsically worthy of our worship? 

Let our lives give an answer.  Is God worthy of worship in any circumstance? 

Job receives some bad news.  Have you ever received some news where the person said to “Are you sitting down?”  It’s devastating.  The equivalent of “Are you sitting down?” here is “I alone have escaped to tell you.”  There was a Sabean raid. They stole your oxen and donkeys and killed your servants. Lightning fell and burned up your sheep and servants.  A Chaldean raiding party in three columns has stolen your camels and killed your servants.  Finally, a great wind from the desert collapsed the house where your children were, and they are dead.

I alone have escaped to tell you

Why are the righteous pious?  Job lives into the answer.  He got up, tore his robe, and shaved his head.  There are things we do when we’re confronted by grief.  Rituals.  In my background, you put the kettle on.  Formal rituals that help us.  Emily Dickinson wrote a poem called “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes”.  We pick out a suit or a dress.  Maybe we get dressed up.  We gather together.  We eat together.  Job tears his robe.  Shaves his head.  He worships God.  “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

We worship.

We remember.

We praise God.  It seems like I’ve been involved in more funerals than usual over the last five months.  At the beginning of each one, we praise God.  I read those words with which we began our service today.  1 Peter 1:3 - “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  By his great mercy, we have been given a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead.”  Every single time.  We praise God, you see, no matter the circumstances.

No matter what questions perplex us.  We shouldn’t be afraid of not knowing and we needn’t be afraid of being perplexed.  I know we like to be able to solve things.  We like clarity.  I received some good wisdom from the chaplain at Christie Gardens not long ago.  John Duyck is his name.  I was talking about the difficulty of living with a lot of unknown and uncertainty, and about praying to God for clarity.  He told me the story of a man named John Kavanaugh, an author and ethicist, who went to visit Mother Theresa and work at her “house of the dying” in Calcutta. He was trying to figure out what to do with his life.  He asked Mother Theresa to pray for him.  She asked what he wanted her to pray for.  “Clarity,” said Kavanaugh, “Pray that I have clarity.”  Mother Theresa said, “I will not.” She said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.”  Kavanaugh said that she always seemed to have the kind of clarity he was looking for.  Mother Theresa laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; I have always had trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

We needn’t fear perplexity or not knowing why.  Someone has put it like this – “… as perplexing as God’s work in the world often appears, he has given us one crystal-clear and utterly non-mysterious picture of his power and presence that we can lean upon. That is Christ himself.”  As Paul writes in his 2^nd letter to the Corinthians, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair.” (2 Cor 4:8)  Why?  Because we have not been left completely without knowledge.  “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor 4:6)

The one who brings life out of death and hope out of the deepest suffering.

The one who asks questions of us.  Perhaps these questions are more important than anything that could ever perplex us. They’re not questions that we have to go and search out answers for. We are to live out the answers in the power and presence of the Spirit of God.  Questions Jesus asks like:

Who do you say that I am?

Do you love me?

Do you believe I can do this?

Do you want to be well?

When the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on earth?

May our response to these questions be lived out in our trust, in our devotion, in our listening, in our remembering, and in all our living this day and every day.  May this be true for each and every one of us. Amen