“Girded Loins” Job 38:1-7, 34-41

Intro:  Our reading this morning comes from the one of the last chapters in the book of Job.  Throughout this book Job has been  suffering and he wonders why out loud to God.  Now we hear God responding to Job’s request for a hearing.  The response comes in a whirlwind and it is not the answer Job was looking for.  It is worth noting that this is the last time in the Old Testament that God speaks.  Let us listen for God’s word to us.  //  

The questions sound loaded.  Who are you?  Where were you?  Are you able? 

At first glance the God that we meet in this morning’s text sounds pretty sarcastic and high-and-mighty.  Plenty of people have said they don’t like Job’s God.  It would be easy to see God here as uncaring or arrogant.  The questions God puts to Job sound intimidating.  “Gird up you loins like a man and tell me, who are you?”  Job can only say “I am no-one.”  “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”  “I was nowhere” seems the honest answer.  “Are you able to shut in the sea or cause eagles to soar?”  “No, I am not able.”    

All of this sounds demeaning.  Of course Job wasn’t there and Job cannot do all the things God talks about.  And how would Job have felt when God says “who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?”  Or in other words “how dumb are you Job?”  Job does not feel he is asking stupid questions.  He is in misery and he is asking why.

Job is in the worst of nightmares.  Ever since the beginning of his story, his has been the story of loss.  He’s lost his family, his property, his status in the community, and his health.  He has been sitting on a garbage dump listening to his well-meaning friends.  They keep telling him that his present circumstances must be the consequence of something he did to make God angry.  But he say’s I didn’t do anything to deserve this!  And he hadn’t.

Job sounds like a young child who is persistently asking “why” and for the longest time it seemed that God would not answer him.  Then after Job defies God to give him some reason why it seems like God responds as frustrated parent who shouting ‘because!”  It  does not look like God gives a sensible answer.  But we shall see that there is sense in this response.  The point of this story is not that Job isn’t entitled to ask these questions.  He is.  The liberating invitation of this story is the strong call to Job, and to us, is to hear God calling us to accompany God as the human creations that we are.  Being created in the image of God does make us special in all of creation.  God made Job and gave him the freedom and opportunity to live as he saw best, now would he live hand in hand with God.

Job is crying out to be heard by God.  He sought a word from the Lord to help make sense of his predicaments.  His world was collapsing and he wanted to know why.  He was boldly asking to see God face to face so he could ask some heart felt questions.  Profound questions that he wanted answers to.  He got his wish and he was surprised, transformed by his encounter with God. 

After chapters upon chapters of Job demanding to speak with God, after putting up with his friends trying to explain his plight, the Almighty speaks up, “Okay, Job.  I will explain it to you.”  Except the answers that God gives are non-answer answers.  Why is there suffering?  What have you done to deserve this?  Is there any justice in the world?  Good questions, here’s your answer Job:  Who are you?  Where were you?  Are you able? 

When God answers the most personal and deepest questions we ask, the answer God gives is unknowable mystery.  There are many mysteries in life we try to answer.  When terrible things happen the first question we want to ask is “why?”  Too often we try to give an explanation when there is none.  “Why did this accident happen?”  “Well, the car missed a turn, he driving too fast, ” Or we try to offer some thoughtless theology about God’s ways.  When what we need to do is sit silently in the dust of those painful questions.  (Job’s friends did the right thing at first- they just sat with him).  Most of the answers we attempt to offer go nowhere in the face of the most personal and profound questions.  We need to be embraced by something bigger than a quick solution.

Heaven knows we try to claim concise black and white answers from a predictable God. We are a country that loves prescriptions and recipes.  We see them in all the magazines in the check out line, 10 easy steps for better what ever.  Some people would like that in church as well.  Prescriptions for keeping healthy relationships; a prescription for keeping in God’s will.  A recipe for inner peace; a recipe for God’s protection, …

As we read the book of Job we see the answers God gives are hardly simple prescriptions and certainly not easy recipes.  When it comes to the profound questions of our existence God doesn’t clarify, God poses deeper questions.  When it comes to our core concerns God doesn’t spell it out for our satisfaction, God muddles it with mystery.

And for Job this is enough.  In part he understands that God is God and he is not, he accepts there are limits to the human capacity to understand life’s experiences, he comes to terms with God’s majestic presence which dwarfs even his personal suffering.  Even though this is a non-answer answer, it is enough. God speaks mystery and Job replies with a profound, “Yes.” Job is humbled.  He has experienced a personal encounter with God.  God has spoken to him.  Job learns to live with unanswered questions.  He will learn to trust God with the mysteries of Life, including the mysteries of his own life.

Perhaps another way to think of Job’s story is to imagine a conversation between a father and son.  The father is a quiet gentle man, the son has reached the age when he feels like he can do anything.  (I’m not sure is that 12 or 16 these days?) Full of confidence, maybe too confident having found some of the answers to his questions in life.  One day the father comes in his son’s room and asked him what he knew about life.  Had he ever lost a loved one?  No he hadn’t (but the father had).  What did he know about how inhumane people could be?  Not much (but War was something the father saw first hand).

Did the son know anything about the frailty of a person’s days? How could he, he was in the prime of life (the father, on the other hand, knew all too well what it’s like to watch one’s life “blip” “blip” “blip” on a heart monitor).  The questions from Dad go on like that for five minutes, then he gets up and walks out.  Questions from a typically silent man.  Questions he never asked again.  These were questions for which the son couldn’t possibly have an answer. What could he say? He hadn’t lived these things, but the father had.  He had lived them and his living had been the answer to them.  And because he knew the son, loved him, quietly watched over him, the son knew the answer to these most personal and profound questions rested with his father.  Even if he didn’t know, the son knew the one who asked this question, he knew that the father knew; and because of that, he felt safe even when he didn’t have the answers.  He knew the one who did.

So it is with us.  When confronted with life’s most profound questions, questions which sometimes we can’t begin to define, let alone solve, it is then we find that we have been embraced by something bigger:  the One who loves us, who watches over us, and who holds the mystery of our life that is not ours to know.  We can and should ask why.  But the answer will come only in experiencing the mystery.   It is by experiencing the mystery that when we can see past the pain of our immediate circumstances.  Then we can take a new perspective on the  questions of who are you?, We can each say “I am yours God”.  Where were you? We can respond  “I have always been with you.”  Are you able to do amazing, incredible things?.  Yes God with you help.  That is the new life we live once we see how God answers us and invites us.   Amen.