People who don’t like religion are often, nevertheless, quite fond of the Book of Job. And this is so not simply because it is great poetry – which it is – but more, I think, because Job seems to confirm all their prejudices and negative opinions about the religious enterprise. The shortcomings of conventional religion, the problems religion gives rise to, the problems religion apparently fails to solve – all these things are quite clearly displayed and regretted by the author of the Book of Job.

We’ve all read it, I hope. And so let’s think back for a moment and recall this singular book of the Bible. In the first place, what is Job about? Quite simply, this: the perennial and unsolved problem of all religion, the suffering of an innocent man. No, more than that, the suffering of a just man. Job – who is righteous in the eyes of God – seems to be punished for things he didn’t do and the reward of his righteousness is cruelly taken away. And faced with this inexplicable and outrageous calamity, we are forced to ask ourselves: what kind of God would allow such a thing to happen? This is one of the underlying questions of the whole book.  What kind of God would allow such a thing to happen? A god who is a beast or a bully? Or a sadist? Or is the problem, rather, that it is beyond God’s power to do anything about it? Perhaps this god is not really in control.

And what is this about a moral order? Religion teaches that there is a moral order. A moral order in life. A moral order in the world and between God and man. Throughout the book Job and his friends are always appealing to a moral order, but it would seem that no such order exists if the innocent and righteous are in pain.  And so, are we obliged to conclude that this God – if there is one – must be immoral or at best amoral. What kind of God is that? And if you say, as do the opening chapters of the Book of Job, that the whole thing was just a test of a righteous man’s faith and that the order of good and evil was suspended for a time, well, that just won’t do, for, you see, a moral order which can be suspended is no moral order at all. And isn’t it unspeakable that a god would allow such testing of one of his creatures simply because of the taunting of an unruly angel? Don’t you remember? At the very beginning of the book Satan challenges God, “Put out your hand, afflict his flesh and bones, and see if he will not curse you to your face!”

And then, of course, there are those religious friends of Job: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. What a bunch of pious hypocrites and windbags! They come, we are told, to comfort him, but where is the comfort? All they do is tell him over and over again that he’s wrong. They’re more interested in defending dogma than in comfort and kindness. “Don’t confuse us with the facts.” They insist on their own point of view and refuse to consider the painful truth which Job is living and has to tell. In the end they turn their backs on him and walk away.

And finally there is the conclusion of the Book. And this brings us to a real division. People who don’t like religion hate the ending; people who are religious get the point. The ones who hate it hate it because it confirms every foul thing that they suspected was true.

We heard part of that conclusion last Sunday as one of the lessons. After thirty-some chapters of Job’s quarrel with God, protesting his innocence, God appears to Job. And God overwhelms him with a vision of His majesty as it is reflected in the magnificence and mystery of the creation. Job falls back in awe and wonder, and he confesses to God:

I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.
Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? Therefore have I uttered that I
understand not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.
I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.
Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:1-3,5-6)

Religion’s opponents see this as just another example of God – the idea of God, if you will – squashing man like a bug. Here, they might say, are the ideological/theological underpinnings for all the systems of oppression of which organized religion has been a part. God is everything; man is nothing. God gets off the hook; man must comply. And the Church or synagogue or what-have-you thrives without a challenge.

And though there may be truth to such a charge, you and I know better than that, don’t we? Is not Job’s experience – being overwhelmed by the mystery and the majesty of God – the primordial experience of all religion? Something you and I have ourselves known. And does not such an experience somehow impose itself upon all other experience and even life itself? Job’s vision of God does not, to be sure, make sense of his suffering and the injustice of it all. And yet it “somehow” puts that suffering and injustice in a context in which it can be borne. The mystery of evil is met and countered by the mystery of God. God’s glory is the mystic consolation of Job’s pain.

And you and I, have we not had such an experience? Have there not been moments in our lives when pain, injustice, irrationality threaten to undo us? Have there not been times when despair was lurking just around the corner and death seemed a welcome friend? ... And yet and even so – the remembrance of glory, the memory of spiritual joy and mystic elation was there to get us through. To put things in a context of splendor and sustain us with an underlying joy. We’ve all had such an experience – perhaps more than once – and if we have, we get the point, we know what the Book of Job is all about.

* * * * *

But there is more. There will be more. It comes later. In Job God grants a vision of Himself to man on earth. What will happen when God Himself comes to earth, there as man to deal with the things which afflicted Job? And more. Indeed, to become a new Job Himself who by His suffering and His death will take away the power of all that brings pain and sorrow into the life of the world.  What will happen then?

Listen to St. Paul. From the Epistle this morning:

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. (II Corinthians 8:9)

And from the Epistle to the Romans:

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed … Who (then) shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or the sword? For I am persuaded that neither height nor depth, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor anything in all creation, shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:18,35,38-39)

Amen.