Too Wonderful
“Too Wonderful” by Pastor Rosanna McFadden
Good morning! I mentioned at the beginning of the service how much I love autumn colors and changing trees. If you have lived, as I did for twenty years, or currently live in a place where you don’t see this change of season, you may have a different appreciation for it. I was at Mission and Ministry Board meetings last weekend, and a fellow Board member from Florida who teaches pre-school brought a bag to collect colored leaves to take home to share with her class. Trees — especially in spring and fall are just one of things which qualify as “wonderful” for me — there are many, many others. I don’t know what qualifies as “wonderful” for you. Actually, I do know a couple people here for whom having the Dodgers win the World Series would be wonderful. Indiana University football is unexpectedly wonderful this year. Big things, like a change in the season can certainly be wonderful, but small things — at least in my world — can be wonderful, too. An expression of care or affection, a good night’s rest, the news that someone I care about is OK.
I don’t want to negate those experiences for myself or for any of you, but I want to wonder about wonder specifically in the 42nd and final chapter of Job. Some of you will remember that I preached — reluctantly — from Job two weeks ago, before you were pleasantly interrupted by Robin’s sharing last week. The text from Job 23 was difficult — difficult and significant — because it highlighted what most of us already know: there is no simple or glib explanation for why bad things happen to good people. Job had lost property, wealth, his children and his health, and was understandably pretty angry at God. “Friends” tried to comfort him by saying things like Surely all these bad things happened because you did something wrong — this is your fault somehow — it must be God’s will. Job was NOT having it. He was a righteous man who did not deserve all the suffering that had come his way, and he wanted the chance to take his grievance directly to God and hear what possible explanation God could make.
This morning’s text from Chapter 42 is Job’s response after God showed up as Job had been wanting. In Chapter 38, God arrives and speaks out of a whirlwind — in some of the most beautiful poetry in the Old Testament. In the tradition of rabbinic teaching, that answer is in the form of a question. In this case, a torrent — or maybe a tsunami — of questions. Questions such as Who are you? Where were you when I was laying the foundations of the earth? Have you entered the storehouses of the snow? Can you send forth lightning? Do you know when the wild animals give birth? Can you tame the great monster of the sea? You get the idea. The clear implication of all these rhetorical questions — Job does not attempt and answer, nor is he expected to, because of course he can’t do or doesn’t know any of it — the message is that God was there, God understands, and God can do all of these things. Job is way out of his depth and way over his head immediately.
It is worth noting though, that in this whirlwind of questions, this blizzard of poetry, God does not give Job a direct answer. At no point in the four chapters of God’s response does God ever say, “OK, here’s why you lost everything, your children were killed in an accident, and you have festering sores all over your body.” God’s answer to Job — if we can call it that — pretty much boils down to this: I am God. You are not God. Any more questions?
To Job’s credit, at the beginning of chapter 42, he acknowledges and accepts God’s response saying, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know. “ And Job repents of challenging God, whom he knew of, but did not really know. All the details of Creation which God shared, the foundations of the earth, the snow, the lighting, the wild animals — it is all wonderful stuff; but the insight which changes Job’s perspective on his situation is that human beings cannot dictate to God how their lives ought to go. Being righteous is a good thing, but it doesn’t obligate God to act in a certain way. Righteousness doesn’t even mean that other people are going to treat me fairly. God never scolds Job for being angry, but Job’s anger is irrelevant to God being God. It is Job’s repentance, not God’s explanation or justification which changes Job’s heart.
Are you with me here, because that is what I believe is the important lesson of this story. In fact, I struggle with what happens next. I’m sure many of you already know the end of the story. Job gets it all back — double what he had at the beginning. Everybody who knew him before feels bad about what happened to him and they give him money. He ends of with 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen and 1,000 donkeys. I don’t know much about ancient Hebrew economics, but that’s a lot of animals. Even just the 1,000 donkeys sounds like a lot. But wait, there’s more. He has seven sons, and three of the most beautiful daughters anyone has ever seen. One of them is named Keren-happuch — with a name like that it was probably some consolation to be good-looking. Job sees four generations of his family, and dies at the age of 140: two times the allotted three-score and ten years of a long life.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for Job. He was a good guy, and I was rooting for him. But here’s why I struggle with this ending: what message does it give us about human suffering? I’ve seen enough suffering to know that it doesn’t always work out like it did for Job. Being righteous does not exempt us from suffering, and being a righteous person who has suffered does not guarantee a pot of gold at the end of the story. Not in the way Job experiences it, anyway. Sometimes what we have lost cannot be replaced — grieving the death of a child is not solved by having two more children. Prosperity and wealth don’t make everything better — although it’s hard to see how they’d make it worse. Many of us may feel like Tevye from the musical Fiddler on the Roof who said “If riches are a curse than may God smite me with it! And may I never recover.”
For me, it is not the riches to rags to riches which is the wonderful part of this story. The wonderful part of this story is the power, mystery and creative energy of God. And it is not until we acknowledge that power, and especially when we realize that power is beyond our understanding, beyond our control, beyond our imagination that we begin to see how wonderful God is. The appropriate response to the wonder of the Divine is confession: I confess that You are God. I confess that I am not God. My God, how great Thou art. This correct alignment of who we are and who God is; of our work and God’s work is the foundation of worship and identity. It is never transactional: if I just do everything right and say all the right words, God will bless me with good health, lots of money, and 500 extra donkeys.
I will say — again — that there are no simple answers to the problem of human suffering. The friends who tried to explain Job’s suffering by saying it must be his fault did him a dis-service. Folks have been saying ill-informed and unhelpful things ever since. But I believe it can be helpful for all of us to claim a sense of awe and wonder. I would commend to you reading or re-reading the book of Job, particularly chapters 38-41. We need a sense of wonder for who God is, and the ways we see that manifested in things as large as the heavens and Creation, and as intimate as a spontaneous gesture of kindness of care. Along with that wonder is a humility about who we are, and that the world is a much bigger place than just me or my tribe. The earth is the Lord’s, and that is a wonderful thing. Amen.