Mooroolbark Uniting Church (St. Margaret’s) Pent 20B, 6-10-24

Sermon – Howard Wallace

Job 1:1; 2:1-10
Job is one of those biblical books that has had an impact on our wider culture. In fact, it has
taken on a life of its own beyond its biblical context. It has been:
 the subject of plays, e.g. Archibald Macleish’s play JB;
 a basis for a movie, A serious man by the Coen brothers;
 the subject of a book by the psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, An answer to Job;
 and it has entered popular culture in the guise of ‘patient job’, although in fact in the
book Job is patient for only a brief moment. For the most part he is angry and
insistent on looking for justice from God in the face of his innocent suffering.
I’d like to look at Job’s situation through the voice of the character who plays the smallest
part in the book; who says just one sentence at the end of today’s reading. It is Job’s wife,
Mrs Job (for want of a better name). She has not been mentioned before nor will she appear
again.
Because of a heavenly challenge between God and the Satan, or accuser, over whether Job
is as ‘upright and blameless’ as God boasts he is or whether he is only faithful because of
what he gets out of it, Job is stripped of his possessions, land, wealth, even his children in a
single day. In a second heavenly challenge the accuser is allowed to afflict Job bodily, but
not to take his life – after all the dead to not praise God.
Now Mrs Job enters. As Job sits there on an ash heap, devastated and covered with some
sort of sores, she speaks her one sentence. She asks: ‘Do you still persist in your integrity.
Curse God and die.’ Now ‘integrity’ is not quite the right word here. The word used is the
same as that which has been translated ‘blameless’ or ‘upright’ before this. Mrs Job is not
questioning Job’s moral status. Rather she is asking whether he will keep faith with God.
Job’s ‘integrity’, as it is translated, is not something relating to his behaviour – his honesty,
his consistency, his lack of corruption. It has to do with his fundamental relationship with
God, his faith, his trust in God. Job has been stripped of all that his society believed were the
blessings of God – his children, his property, his wealth. God boasted of Job’s uprightness
which related largely to his dependency on God and his gratitude for all God’s blessings. But
now, will he, in the absence of all that, continue in his faith. Does his faith rise and fall with
matters of God’s provision of blessings? How deep is his relationship with God? How
fundamental is it to his being?
Mrs Job puts this question bluntly to her husband. As I said, she appears only here in the
book with her one question. Nothing has been said about how she is coping with all this loss
and devastation in their lives. In that regard she is not a developed character within the story.
She is there to ask one question of Job, and we, of course, understand she does so from
one who shares his situation.
People have often puzzled over her role. Is she just another tempter, enticing Job to sin? Or
does she really understand what is at stake? As life throws up both joy and pain and as we
think of God as almighty and good, does Mrs Job put the easiest and simplest solution to her
husband – forget about faith, put God aside and let life take its course.

It is faith that Job will not give up on, even in the face of such difficult issues as the problem
of innocent suffering and evil in the world.
It is Job’s faith that drives him to seek an answer to that age old problem, especially now it
has come so close to him – ‘why do innocent people suffer’. The rest of the book details
Job’s quest for an answer. He dismisses the views of his so-called friends who argue in
various ways that his suffering is caused by some sin Job has committed, even if he is
unaware of it. In the end, Job demands an audience with God who at least should explain
himself to Job. Job shows the same courage in faith as the psalmist does at times,
addressing hard questions to God expecting an answer.
Now, at this point I have to announce a spoiler alert. If you are reading With Love to the
World or another devotional work you will read the end of the book of Job in a few weeks
time. The short of it is Job finally gets to hear from God directly but the answer he gets to the
problem of innocent suffering is not a satisfying one. The poetry section of the book leaves
us pondering this inexplicable mix of divine goodness and human suffering. Whoever added
the bit of prose at the end of the book tried to give a happier ending to it all as they have Job
getting back from God even more than he had lost earlier – he ends up with more children,
more wealth and a happy life. But I wonder is that in fact the case with most human
suffering. It certainly was not the view of the person who penned the long poetic story.
Well, what may we take from this intriguing, ancient attempt to grapple with a problem that
still confronts people of faith today? At the very least Job reminds us that faith and lingering
questions of doubt or uncertainty are not incompatible. Even questions that have no clear
answer like why do some suffer floods, drought, fire, earthquakes while others don’t. Why do
the innocent suffer so much in wars and conflicts while pride and revenge seem to spur on
others to cause enormous suffering?
But more than simply asking questions, Job wants to say to us that there is a level of faith
that is not confined by the arrogance of our own understanding or lack of understanding of
the world and its ways. Rather, there is at the heart of faith a relationship of trust that Job
was not willing to give up. Faith like all human relationships is not marked by security and
certainty, but by trust. This is what God finally refers to in the epilogue to the story when he
says to Job’s so-called friends who each tried to lay the blame for Job’s suffering at his own
feet: “you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant (Job) has.’ Job clings to a
relationship in which ‘goodness’ is defined in terms of intimacy and proximity and trust rather
than wealth, commodity and comfort.
And is this not another aspect of what Jesus conveyed as he drew a child near and said:
‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me and the one who sent me.’? A
child like many others, renowned for a questioning mind – why and how? but yet comfortable
to rest in the security of measureless love in spite of not yet understanding fully.