Then Job replied to the Lord: “I know that You can do all things; no plan of Yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures My counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of You but now my eyes have seen You. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” ... After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before. All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring. The Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job's daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers. After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so he died, old and full of years.
(Job 42:1-6,10-17)
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And so, today we come to the end of the story. Job’s is a difficult story for us to deal with, either because so much of what happens to Job – so many of his troubles, so many of his tragedies and so many of his fears – either mirror our own or serve as an uncomfortable reminder to us of how easy it can be for things to be going well for us one day and then have everything collapse the next, although such, I suppose, is the way of the world. There are no guarantees. Those of us who find ourselves blessed in a worldly sense need to remember to be thankful for what we have because none of it is ours by right and all of it is so very fragile, and those who from time to time may feel as if they’re being cursed in a worldly sense need to try to hold on to the hope that God offers to us all. Through it all, there’s the reminder to all of us that in a life of faith there is no room for pride, because, to use an old phrase “there but for the grace of God go I.” In a month whose central celebration is that of Thanksgiving, the story of Job is a powerful reminder for us to be grateful in all things and for all things. It’s a reminder for us also to be both compassionate to and understanding of those who are less fortunate than we are, because their misfortune doesn’t make them any less worthy of the love of God, and certainly, therefore, it doesn’t make them unworthy of our compassion.
In today’s reading, we come to the end of the Book of Job, and for Job, in the end things worked out pretty well. With God’s help he made it through the dark times that he faced and he rebuilt his life quite successfully. In fact, he emerged as a wealthy man. Such material blessings won’t always come to those with faith. Job isn’t normative in that sense, but what the story does teach us is that God will see us through our difficulties. The 23rd Psalm gets read at many funerals, and I often remind those in attendance that this most famous of psalms doesn’t promise that we’ll avoid dark valleys, but it also doesn’t tell us that we’ll get stuck in them. Instead, we’re told that we’ll “walk through” those dark valleys we face. If we get nothing else out of our look at the Book of Job, that in itself is worthwhile – the reminder that no matter how tough our times might be, we will get through them, if we remember to depend on God for the strength. But if that learning alone is worthwhile, there are still other things we’ve learned from Job, and I want to offer you what might be the three most important learnings we get from this story after that most basic principle that I just shared, with you. What three things do we learn from Job?
The first thing I would suggest to you is that we learn from Job to live not by feelings but by faith. Our society today celebrates feelings above all else. Counsellors instruct their clients to get in touch with their feelings and to learn to be comfortable expressing those feelings. I have no argument with that advice. God created us with emotions, so to keep them completely bottled up would be to be less than human. That doesn’t mean wearing your emotions on your sleeve, so to speak, but it does mean to at least be in touch with what you’re feeling. That can be a slippery slope though. Being in touch with your feelings can easily become a form of idolatry, as we start to let ourselves be led by our feelings, then controlled by our feelings and ultimately dominated by them. “If it feels good it must be OK.” That becomes a common justification for engaging in actions we know darn well we shouldn’t engage in. Job reminds us to be not without feelings but to always remember to ensure that our feelings are subordinated to our faith. Feelings don’t guide us; faith guides us. Our emotions are not our god – we have only one God. After Job lost his family, his wealth and his health, he expressed his feelings, but in the midst of it he kept his faith in God. “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.” We live in uncertain times – economically, environmentally, socially, politically. We live in uncertain times. In the midst of the uncertainty, may we also say “may the name of the Lord be praised.”
The second learning I hope you take out of this look at Job is to avoid the temptation to try to figure everything out, and to learn to accept the fact that there are some things that only God has the answers for. Curiosity is a great thing. If we weren’t curious most of the scientific marvels of our age would have gone undiscovered. So, yes, curiosity is a great thing, but remember too that “curiosity killed the cat!” Some things are best left to God. That’s not a cop-out, nor is it blind faith. It’s an acknowledgment that we need to become comfortable with uncertainty and with mystery if we’re going to be in a relationship with our God. After everything that happened to Job, he and his friends tried to figure it out together. They debated, they deliberated, they argued - and in the end they couldn’t figure it out. Maybe the point is that we don’t have to figure everything out. We don’t have to understand the reason behind every difficulty, every disappointment, every divorce and every death. Sometimes perhaps we need to simply accept that only God has all the answers, and stop tormenting ourselves trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. When those uncertain times come upon you and you find yourself asking that unanswerable “why” question – try to remember the example of Job, and remember to simply trust in God, because only God has all the answers!
The final thing I hope you learn from Job is not to live by your misfortunes but rather by your blessings. I know a lot of people who live by their misfortunes. They feed off them hungrily, they wail about them incessantly, they shed tears over them constantly, they complain about them bitterly, and they take the joy out of their lives. I understand the temptation. When things aren’t going well, it’s hard to try to focus on the blessings, because the apparent curses are so powerful. And it’s OK to vent sometimes. But at some point faith has to teach us to let go of venting. And we should be able to do that because blessings there are – blessings there always are, and with God’s blessing, we’ll make it through the storms we face, and the sorrows we endure and through every ridiculously unfair situation life throws at us. With God’s blessings, Job made it through his and with God’s blessing we’ll make it through ours.
So, what have we learned from Job? What would Job tell us today if he were here? I have no doubt that he’d say, based on his own experiences: don’t live by feelings but by faith, don’t try to figure everything out because only God has all the answers, and don’t live on your misfortunes but on God’s blessing because God’s blessing will see you through. As the Rev. Scott Hoetzee wrote, “The only hope for a truly 'happy ending' for us all is that we truly do serve a God of all grace who is rich in mercy and compassion and kindness.” Just ask Job. He knew that - and he made it through!
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