Sermon from Sunday, July 19, 2015

Reading:  Job 2:11 - 3:1; 16:1-4; 42:7-9
Sermon:  "With friends like this...?"

If you remember the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” you’ll remember Calvin as a bizarrely imaginative and recklessly adventurous young boy, who has a stuffed tiger named Hobbes as his constant companion, and a calm, philosophically forgiving victim of his adventuresomeness. 

In one arc of the story, though, Hobbes is lost.  Calvin has gone to the park to see what adventure he and his tiger can find, when suddenly Calvin comes running home and bursts through the front door of his house screaming, “Mom!  Mom!  A big dog knocked me down and stole Hobbes!”  He finds his mom – or she finds him, and as he hugs her legs and she bends down to touch his head, he says with terror in his eyes, “I tried to catch him, but I couldn’t, and now I’ve lost my best friend!” 

You feel so bad for him.  In the next frame, his mother kneels down to speak to him on his level, and these words come out of her mouth, “Well, Calvin, if you wouldn’t drag that tiger everywhere, things like this wouldn’t happen.”  In the last frame, Calvin is alone, and says, “There’s no problem so awful that you can’t add some guilt to it and make it even worse.” 

Anyone here ever found yourself in Calvin’s place – feeling bad at what’s happened, and then only feeling worse as the guilt for the way things are is piled on?  It’s a lonely and unhappy place to be. 

And what about the mom’s role in this little drama?  Anyone ever played out that role – “well, if only you hadn’t done such and such … you know why this happened, don’t you?”  I have some sympathy for the mom; she’s trying to turn a crisis into a teachable moment.  But I also know the times I’ve responded that way are among my biggest regrets as a parent, or a spouse, or a friend.   

And this is the role Job’s friends fall into as well.   

The Book of Job is an ancient tale of the universal experience of bad things happening to good people, of innocent creatures suffering needlessly or unjustly, of life not being fair.  Job is a good and righteous man blessed with good fields and farms, healthy herds and flocks, a good wife and prosperous children.  Then for no really good reason it is all taken away.  Fields and farms fail.  Herds and flocks are stolen.  The children all die in a terrible storm.  And Job himself becomes hideously sick, until all he can do is sit on an ash heap, near naked, his wife – embittered by it all, telling him to just curse God and die. 

At which point three friends arrive and for a week they simply sit with Job in silence.  They take into themselves the horror of all Job has lost and all he suffers.  They quietly share his shock, his sorrow, and his confusion, offering only their presence as support. 

Then Job breaks the silence, cursing the day he was born and saying he wishes he’d been still-born so he could have gone directly to whatever rest lies beyond this life, without suffering anything of life on Earth. 

At which point his friends reply, “No, no.  You musn’t say such things.  What will others think?  Have faith.  Turn to God.  Consider your life.  You’re sure you did nothing wrong?  Things happen for good reason even when we can’t see it.  Submit to God’s good will, and you will be saved.” 

Things any of us might say – and probably have said at some time to a friend in grief, or a neighbour or family member in trouble.  And none of it is untrue. 

But when Job’s friends try to say these things, and insist on saying them over and over again, it only leads to a breakdown in relationship between them and Job.  It happens over 28 chapters of back and forth argument about what’s happened and what it means – 28 chapters of Job’s friends telling his what he should believe and do and say – 28 chapters of Job saying “you just aren’t listening … you don’t really get it” – 28 chapters of increasing anger and frustration – 28 chapters of deepening depression and doubt. 

And maybe it’s because it is 28 chapters of Job’s friends thinking they know what Job should believe and do and say – for them to feel good, rather than letting and encouraging Job to come to his own way of believing and doing and saying.   

It’s interesting that it’s when the friends finally shut up and are quiet again, that Job is able to hear the voice of God for himself beyond the whirlwind of conversation with his friends.  And when you read what he hears and comes to accept and is able to live with, it’s really not a lot different from what his friends were trying to convince him of.  Except it’s in his own words.  It comes from his own interior encounter with God as he understands God.  It’s shaped in images he can see, and focused in questions and mysteries he can live with. 

When my dad died, my first and deepest thought when I and my sisters saw his body lying motionless and lifeless in the hospital bed at 3 or 4 in the morning, was “Is this what it comes to?  After all his lifetime of building, repairing, maintaining, helping and caring for others, is this what it all comes down to?”  It was not – and still is not, an easy question. 

And the way I come to peace with it, is with the image of him living in heaven now – one of heaven’s handymen – putting up shelves for people, building cupboards, fixing stuck doors, doing what he can to help maintain and repair the places people live in, in the Father’s household. 

And I know it’s my image.  It doesn’t come from the Bible.  When I mention it to my sisters, I get a bit of a blank look.  The minister who visited us after my dad’s death and who planned and led the funeral didn’t suggest it.  I actually don’t remember any real answers he tried to talk us into – and maybe that’s part of what freed me to come to my own answer. 

What I remember of his visit is that he shared with us what he knew of our dad, shared our sorrow at losing him, and said that like us, he wanted to help plan and lead a good funeral for him.  I don’t remember telling us what to believe, how to feel, or what to say.  In my memory, he gave us time and space to do our own work of listening for God as we each could understand God at that time. 

It’s St. Francis who is credited with saying, “Preach the Gospel always; use words when necessary.”   

I wonder if another way of saying this is that in some situations God – or at least what we think about God, is not the answer, but Love is – because God is love – and if we simply love, even silently, as we are able, the other will come to their own understanding of who God is for them.