When I was in my final year of seminary, I did my last placement at Sunnybrook Health Sciences, specifically the Veterans Long Term Care home there.  These were mostly WW II veterans with some Korean War vets and some who had served in both.  I was there one day each week, Thursday.  This was the day that the chaplain with whom I was working, Wes, held two chapel services on different floors. 

The first day I was there, Wes asked me if would go sit with a woman whose husband had just died.    The second week, Wes asked if I would go sit with a wife (now widow) and two daughters whose husband and father had just died.  They had been waiting for one of the daughters who was flying in from out west.  Wes told me that the daughter had arrived.  He was about to start one of the services and asked me to go in and sit with them while he held the service.

I remember walking to the closed door of the room where this woman and her two daughters were sitting with their late husband and dad.  It was not something I wanted to do.  I had told Wes “Yes” though and I found myself walking toward the door and reaching my hand out to knock.  I can still see his kind of first-person perspective in my mind when I think of the day.  I don’t know what good I did on either of those days.  It didn’t become a weekly occurrence but I often say I had more experience with exposure to suffering and grief there one day per week for 8 months than I might have in a year in some other ministry setting.  I was really thankful for it actually.

Now you might be thinking at this point “What a big downer!”  I’m kind of thinking that myself.  We’re going through the book of Job this summer and it’s not easy to sit with suffering (and this is only the second week).  The subject matter belies sunny days and summer breezes coming in the window, making us feel fine, making us feel like something… lighter?

This story is not light, but the thing about this subject matter in Job is, it gives us the chance to get real.  I told the story about my experience at Sunnybrook Veteran’s because it taught me something very valuable (many things in fact but this one thing in particular for our purposes this morning).  Being in a room with strangers who are suffering from the loss of a loved one makes things very real.  Things just got real.  There is little desire for small talk in such a situation.  It is time at that point to get to the essence of things.

The essence of things.   This is something that the book of Job gives us the opportunity to do.  Get to the heart of things.  Your listening to this story together with us is indicative of a level of interest in getting to the essence of things.  Of coming to know something about the essence of God; of how God relates to us and how we relate to God and one another.

The essentials.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we come back to our story. When we last left Job, he had lost all his wealth.  Camels and oxen stolen.  Sheep burned.  Servants killed.  Even worse was the fact that he had lost his 10 children.  In the face of this loss Job acted and he spoke.  Job shaved his head and tore his clothes.  He worshipped God.  We heard him speak – “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.” (1:21)

The question has been posed, “Is God worthy of our worship, of our love, of our adoration, no matter what our circumstances?”  We are invited to live into an answer. 

At this point in our story, the ante is upped as it were.  The Accuser said, “Skin for skin!  All that people have they will give to save their lives.”  At the end of the day, in other words, everyone is in it for themselves.  People will do anything to save their own skin.  “Stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”  It’s one thing for God to give and to take away and we can say “Well at least you have your health.”  It’s quite another thing for bad things to come to us in what seems like a more active way. 

Like all the many ways in which bad news can come to us physically.

We come back to Job and read that the Accuser has inflicted him with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.    Job is scraping himself with a potsherd.  A piece of broken pottery.  We don’t know if this is an act of self-flagellation or if poor Job is just trying to find some relief in the way we would scratch an itch or want to bang our head against the wall in the middle of a migraine.  It seems that he is at the town landfill - hence the broken pottery and ashes from burning garbage.  He's cut off.  We don’t know if he’s removed himself from others or if he’s been told to remove himself, as one with a skin condition might be.  There’s a lot of ambiguity here.  A lot we don’t know.

We do know this.  Job has been thrown.

Everything has changed.  Someone has said that often we go through our days with our personal stories meaning so much to us.  Memories of family, friends, good times.  Making new memories – adding to our personal stories as we go through our days.  Oftentimes too we find solace in the universal.  Everyone has a time to die.  No one lives forever.  That kind of thing.

When we’re thrown, these things cease to matter as much or at all.  Time can seem to stop or stand still.  Universal truths mean very little when we are in intensely personal pain. 

In the middle of this, we also have endurance.  Job is enduring.  He’s not saying anything now note.  He’s acting.  He’s sitting in ash.  He’s scraping his skin.  We don’t know why and we needn’t fear not knowing.  There’s ambiguity in our story just as there is ambiguity in life.  Let us not read this story and simply say, “Job is a good role model.”  Very few, if any, people are simply one thing.  Job’s wife is not simply Satan’s accomplice.

“Do you still persist in your integrity?” she asks.  “Curse God and die.”  You have to watch who you call Satan’s accomplice.  It’s true.  Augustine called Job’s wife the devil’s accomplice.  Calvin called her an instrument of Satan.  She can be seen in this kind of light.  A temptor.  Tempting Job to curse God (though the word here for curse is the same as bless, speaking of ambiguity).  Encouraging Job to curse God. These are her only lines in the story.  It seems a little harsh to me.

We may think of her another way.  Job’s bone and his flesh have been afflicted remember.  What is Job’s wife if not bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh?  This is what spouses are after all.  When we read about bone and flesh we are reminded of those words that Adam spoke about Eve back in Genesis – “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” (Gen 2:23)  It’s good to be reminded from time to time.

Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.  We needn’t see Job’s wife as working against her husband here.  If she’s a helper to the Accuser, the Accuser is in a way a helper to us.  Asking the question “Is God worthy of worship in any circumstance?” moves us beyond a simple “What is in this God thing for me?”  Posing the question “Do you still persist in your integrity?” gives Job the opportunity to answer the question.  Posing the question, “Is God worthy of worship/adoration/devotion/trust/love in any circumstance?” gives us the chance to consider and answer.  Let us hear the question this morning.  “Do you still persist in your integrity?” no matter what circumstances we are facing?  Hearing and responding to this question gives us the opportunity to move into a deeper relationship with God.

I should say it can move us into a deeper relationship with God.  It may not.  This stuff is not automatic after all, and that’s why we are all involved in determining the answer to the question with our lives.  Job’s wife is laying out the choice to a question that Job himself might not have dared speak up to this point.  This is the thing about rhetorical questions – they open up possibilities.  What would it be like for us to…?   What are you going to do in the face of losing everything including your good health?  What are you going to do in the face of loss of your health, spouse, parent, child, livelihood, vocation.... whatever suffering we are talking about? We don’t face these questions alone.  Job’s wife, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh is facing them too.  Job answers in a way that suggests that his knowledge of his wife is that she’s not a foolish woman.  He doesn’t say she is foolish.  “You speak as any foolish woman would speak!”  Job then asks aloud rhetorical question of his own, because we shouldn’t consider these rhetorical questions on our own:

“Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (2:10)  Even if we are perplexed.

In other words, do we say “God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good” only when things are good, or do we say it all the time.

We’re talking about what it means to follow God, follow Christ in the face of suffering.  What it means to endure. What it means to hold fast no matter what is going on.  The Psalmist sings of this holding on which is made possible because God is holding on to us.  “My soul clings to you: your right hand upholds me.” (Ps 63:8)  Do we persist in our clinging on?  Knowing that any clinging on that do is rooted and grounded in the truth that God is holding us fast, holding us securely.

Job is enduring.  He’s not sinning with his lips.  I’ll leave it up to debate whether this means Job was sinning in his heart.  Once again there is a lot that is unknown here, and we know that we can sin with our hearts and not our lips.  I don’t want to add to Job’s misery here.

Neither do his friends at this point.  Eliphaz.  Bildad.  Zophar.  You don’t ask these questions on your own and we don’t let one another suffer on our own.  I’m thankful to have learned something about not running away from suffering in my days at Sunnybrook.  I continue to learn and I pray we all are continuing to learn.  Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative is a stance one may take. Keep everything nice and light.  We’re called to carry one another’s burdens though.  We’re called to mourn with those who mourn; to grieve with those who grieve.

Job’s friends come to condole.  It’s not a word we hear very much outside of condolences.  It simply means to grieve with.  I grieve with you.  They came to console and comfort.  The words here connoting sitting on the ground and rocking back and forth. Sharing distress.  To follow Jesus is to be part of his body that is called the church.  When one part suffers we are all suffering.  “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it.” (1 Cor 12:26)

Job’s friends come to condole and comfort.  We can’t help but think of Paul’s words to the people of Corinth about being consoled by Christ to be consoling when he writes “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.” (2 Cor 1:3-4)

It’s like a never-ending spiral of consolation.  It leads to endurance.  To holding fast.

How do we live in the face of suffering?  We’ll keep on answering the question in our lives.  Today let us leave Job and his friends in their silence.  Let us consider the questions that have been asked in silence.  Do we persist in our integrity?  Is God worthy of our love/adoration/devotion/worship on matter what?  In our own silence let us remember the One who showed the Accuser’s to be a liar.  “Skin for skin, all that people have they will give to save their lives,” was the Accuser’s claim.  In Jesus we have an answer to the Accuser’s challenge.  All that people have they will give to save their lives?  No.  In Jesus, we have someone who gave everything he had to save our lives.  No matter our situation, thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.  Thank be to God for his indescribable grace.  Amen