This (long) post is largely the text of my sermon yesterday at The Good Shepherd, Lee, when we were concluding a short series on the book of Job as well as reflecting on the resignation of Justin Welby during the preceding week, and the events that led up to that.
On Friday, Jane and I went to see Small Things Like These. It’s a lovely film starring Cillian Murphy based closely on a lovely little book by Claire Keegan. It’s set in a small town in 1980s Ireland where the main character is a father to five daughters. As the local coal merchant he delivers sacks of coal all around the town from the back of his truck, and while doing this becomes aware of some awful things happening at the local Magdalen Laundry attached to the convent. The story is of how he processes this knowledge and considers what action to take, in the knowledge that, whatever he does, there will be serious ramifications for people he knows. I won’t tell you what happens – read the book or see the film!
Of course it’s not only on the big screen that we’ve seen this week the fall-out from those who knew about awful things, taking decisions about who to tell or not tell. I think that we can say something useful about that looking at Job, and so I will warn you that I will, a bit later, be mentioning some of the background to Justin Welby’s resignation, which involves criminal activity and the abuse of boys and young men. This is difficult to hear and talk about, and so if you need to move around, to take some time outside, or find someone to talk to, please make sure you do.
And we’re finishing up with Job – someone else whose situation raises some hard questions as we’ve been hearing about over the past few weeks. One of the issues of having four different speakers talk about Job is that you might get four quite different takes on what it’s about.
And that’s OK – this is ‘wisdom’ literature in the Bible – literature that draws us in and makes us think. Yes, it shows us something of what God is like, but it also throws a light on what humans are like, how we think and act in the world, how we respond (or not) to God, and how we treat each other. In texts like this there are no easy answers – maybe just questions, nudges and pointers.
We’ve had three personal takes on Job and his story, and I’m probably bringing another. In particular I want to look at Job through some ideas and thinking around trauma. Trauma is maybe a bit of a buzzword that gets applied too widely, and so sometimes it’s easy to be a bit dismissive, but I think it helps us to see what might be going on here.
In chapter 1 we met the man Job – blameless and upright – he feared God and shunned evil. He was a prosperous man with a large extended family, but then (for reasons that needn’t detain us this morning) bad things happen to him. His family all die, except his wife, and Job himself is struck with very painful illness.
Job’s response is summed up in a couple of verses: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” and “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”
Note that, despite the modern song based on these words, Job does not address God directly here.
This encapsulates Job’s worldview at the start, and we are assured that in saying this Job did not sin. But as we shall see, events conspired to challenge this view – the Lord God is indeed the creator and sustainer of life, the universe, and everything, but it is more complicated than that.
We went to chapter 23, which begins “Then Job replied…”, suggesting that we’ve been dropped into the middle of a conversation, as indeed we have. Since Job’s troubles at the beginning, three friends have turned up and are having a long extended conversation with him. At heart they are saying that God rewards good people with good things, and curses bad people with bad things, so, Job, what have you done wrong to deserve all this?!
And Job says, yes I know that’s how God works, but I also know that I haven’t done anything wrong, so I don’t know why all this is happening. As we read the chapters of the conversation we see that Job is quite conflicted, one time expressing faith in God and another cursing the day he was born.
In trauma studies it is recognised that individuals experience major shifts in worldview assumptions, and disruption to basic belief systems, as a result of trauma. We all have stories we tell ourselves about how the world works, and these are good and helpful most of the time in our navigation of the world around us. But traumatic events challenge those stories, and perhaps cause them to breakdown.
Job’s assumptions about God, especially about God’s justice (good to the good, bad to the bad) are suddenly and radically challenged by his experience of trauma. And this goes on and on with Job and his three friends having round after round of conversation (all in poetry!).
After all that we get to chapter 38, where (at last?) God speaks. God’s intention is to open Job’s mind and heart to a bigger picture. He says: Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and shall answer me. I hope you’re noticing that there is a lot of speaking in Job – raising the question: what is correct to say and to whom?
And then God does indeed question him! Where were you…? Have you ever…? Do you know…? It’s all about God’s sheer delight in creation, and one thing it’s showing Job is that there’s a lot more to the created universe than Job knows. Yes, God is over all creation – he made, knows and loves it. But maybe Job doesn’t know everything about the way it works. Anyway, at the end of God’s first speech, Job falls silent and (ironically) says that he will say nothing.
And then God is off again (40.7) – Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you shall answer me. More questions – this time about huge sea monsters, that are also part of God’s creation even though they would have been understood as maybe a force of evil.
And at the end of that we come to today’s reading – Job replies to the Lord. Job acknowledges that God can do all things – God’s purposes will prevail. And then he quotes back God’s question from the start of God’s first speech – You asked, “Who is this who obscures my plans without knowledge?” – and goes on to acknowledge that he didn’t understand what he was talking about before, about things ‘too wonderful’ – too big and complex – for him to know about.
And then, in verse 4 of ch. 42, Job quotes from the beginning of God’s second speech. The NIV translators have inserted the words “You said” to make it clear that Job is quoting what God said. But I want to suggest (the suggestion is not just mine) that they’ve put those words in the wrong place! Look back to the start of chapter 41 and you’ll see that God did not say “Listen now, and I will speak” – God did say, “I will question you, and you shall answer me.”
If it’s Job saying to God, “Listen now, and I will speak”, that fits with Job’s progression through the book. At the start, Job said, “May the name of the Lord be praised”. And there’s been a great long conversation about God between the various characters. It’s a bit like God has been sitting there waiting for them to speak to him. God’s there, in the corner, overhearing the conversation, getting a bit frustrated, until at the beginning of each of God’s speeches we hear: “you shall answer me”!
And now Job says, “I will speak” – this is what God wanted all along, for Job to speak to God, not just about God.
Job says, My ears had heard of you – previously I knew you only by hearsay – but now my eyes have seen you – now I know you directly, we are having a direct conversation. And this will reshape his understanding of God’s justice. Job’s simple rules about God’s justice have broken down, but that’s OK – he’s come to a deeper place with God, where he knows he doesn’t know or understand. God can make a house pet of the biggest monsters (41.5) – God can certainly handle all the suffering and injustice in the world in God’s own way.
In verse 6, Job makes his final declaration of trust in God. It’s an extraordinarily hard verse to translate from Hebrew, and to understand. But there’s a translation that says this: “Therefore I retract my words, and I am comforted concerning dust and ashes (i.e. the human condition)”
In other words, “I take back what I said about you, God (that you were unjust or cruel). My heart is moved, my mind is changed. I am comforted just to be human (and no longer to demand to understand the things of God)”.
But let’s come back to now…
For much of this week my thoughts have been dominated by what’s been going on in the Anglican church. Of course, Justin Welby’s resignation hit the headlines, but in the days before that there was also the news about the report that had been published into abuse over many years by a man called John Smyth. Over many years, in the 1970s and 80s, he had regularly been beating young men and teenage boys, to the point where they were bleeding. He wasn’t ordained, but he was connected to powerful people within the church, and he had access to boys through a Christian summer camp and through that to students at elite public schools.
That is all very shocking, but the report also went into what was happening around him that allowed the abuse to go on for so many years. And what was happening was that a number of clergy knew pretty much exactly what was going on, but chose to keep it secret between them – not just to keep it a secret (which is what some of the boys’ families wanted) but they also failed to act to stop the abuse continuing, both in the UK and later in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Justin Welby was not one of that small group, but the report found that possibly then, and certainly later, he knew enough of what was happening so that he should have made sure something was done about it.
But what hit me, personally, hardest is that among that group that kept that secret was the vicar of the church I attended while I was at university in the late 1980s. I didn’t know him well, and he would not remember me – I was just one of many students attending his church – but we looked up to him in his leadership of a vibrant church fellowship. And at the same time, he was active in keeping secret from the church authorities, from the police, this awful abuse.
You may have had a similar reaction, you may not. You may have felt a similar reaction to the disclosures about Mike Pilavachi over the past couple of years. There may be other situations where your gut reaction has been: How can this be? I thought I knew this person. God, what is going on, where is the justice in this?
When Chris spoke, he referred to his reaction to the Chris Kaba case, and his gut-felt sense of injustice. We see it when there’s a serious case review into the death of a young child at the hands of those who were supposed to be loving and caring for them – parents, or other carers.
Maybe you’re the victim or survivor of some form of abuse – we don’t all have to know each other’s stories, but God knows.
And we want to shout, with Job: This isn’t how the world is supposed to work! This isn’t how I thought the world did work! What is God doing?
I think Job’s story, in the wisdom of the Bible, can help. God’s speeches confirm that God is the creator of the universe – God delights in creation – God loves creation and the creatures in it, including humans – but God does not micro-manage creation – God, in love, allows autonomy for creatures, and so some of them will do awful things that God does not want them to do. So what does Job do in response?
- Job speaks – God does not want Job’s silence, he wants his speech. And it doesn’t have to be well ordered, well thought out speech.
- We are invited to speak to God – not just about God but to God – speak, shout, rage, whisper – to take our questions and anger – Why did this happen? Why did no one stop it? How could he have done this?
- Job listens – again Job listens to God, not about God – no longer relying on hearsay, he has a direct experience of God
- We are invited to listen too. When I was thinking about this earlier this week, I found it had to be a conscious choice to direct my speech to God, but when I did, I sensed God’s first response was, Yes, I hate it too.
- Maybe that doesn’t take away the questions about why God didn’t stop what was happening, but it puts God on the side of the abused, on the side of the oppressed, on the side of those who suffer injustice.
- Job acts – there is an epilogue to the book of Job, which we heard some of earlier, in which he gets a new family and wealth – there are big questions about whether these could ever substitute for what he had lost, but that’s not for now. But right at the end we see that Job did something very radical, for his time. He gave his daughters an equal inheritance as his sons – this may not sound much to us, but that was a step towards justice that Job took which stood out from the practice of the time, the practice that we see through much of the Bible.
- Bill Furlong, the main character in Small Things Like These had to decide how and whether to act, given his knowledge of injustice.
- We are invited to act too, to take what steps we can towards justice, not to cover up injustice.
I should stop – I’ve probably fallen into Job’s trap of talking too much about God. At some point, take time to talk to God – express how you’re feeling, and then express how you’re really feeling – anger, dismay, shock, weariness – and then listen for the voice of God.