Mystery of Suffering

Do you have a situation in your life which you wish would change, one that you neither bargained for nor expected? 

Or, is there something that you long to have happen, something which you wish for which has not happened yet? 

Difficulties in life fall into these two categories: those we wish weren’t happening, but are, and those  we want to have happen, but aren’t. I wager that just about everyone is this room falls into one or the other of these groups, and maybe even both. 

And, as we all know, when we do get what we want it doesn’t last long. That taste, that new car smell, the pleasure of any experience is only for a moment. 

Our human dilemma, described by the Buddha when he became enlightened, is that life is suffering. This sobering statement can be translated more precisely that Life is unsatisfactory Life has that “not quiet there yet never can hold on to it” aspect which leaves us feeling unfulfilled. And so we find ourselves, confronted by this mystery of the unsatisfying in life, and the suffering that this dissatisfaction brings. 

If you came to church for some good news this morning, don’t despair.  There is good news, in our reading and even in these difficulties of life, but it will take some time for us to make our way there. While or story from the Hebrew scripture does have some important insights for us, the answers we receive are not necessarily what we want to hear. And neither did Job. 

Will you pray with me? God, we are thrown into this world, finding ourselves in the great mystery of creation and redemption. We are here to learn that you are in the mystery.  You do not offer an easy way, but you do offer us presence and meaning and companionship and community. Open us to your word to Job, so that we might come to know ourselves better and to embrace this great adventure of being human, following the way of your Christ. Amen. 

In order to understand the reading we have just heard from Job I think it is necessary to give an account of the larger story and refresh our memories of what happened to this just man of God. 

This story is one that has penetrated deeply into western consciousness as a question of why the innocent suffer. There are movies—the Tree of Life is one, and plays—Archibald McLeish’s JB another, that plumb this theme. And that question of why the innocent suffer is before us every day, in newspaper stories, in television broadcasts, in doctor’s rounds and in our own lives. It is inescapable. 

Job was a righteous man, whom God decides to test. Right away, we enter into a problematic depiction of God as one who would take a good person and put him on trial to see how good he really is. The Tempter, Satan, inveigles God into this and God accepts the bet, that Job will not stay faithful under the pressure of grief for family, loss of livelihood, and illness. Job has done nothing to cause God to treat him this way. He is an innocent who suffers. And perhaps Job is one, like many humans, who think that his good fortune depend on the fact that he has done the right thing. 

This is a typical trap we fall into when things are going well. We feel that we deserve on some level the good fortune that we receive, and find it hard to compute that in fact, good fortune often doesn’t have anything to do with what we have accomplished or how faithful we have been. We have a basic sense, almost primitive way of thinking, that the righteous should always be rewarded and wicked should always be punished. And if things don’t go that way, we feel affronted. 

This is very hard for us to understand, and the idea that “God’s ways are not our ways” is scarcely consolation when we are faced with misfortune that seems to come out of nowhere. And so it was for Job. 

He loses his children, his flocks and his health. When he is in mourning, three of his friends come round to help him to make sense of it all. After days of respectful silence, they begin to speak. They look to pin the blame on some one, some thing, some action, that will explain why this is happening to Job. They believe that the righteous should be rewarded and the wicked should suffer. 

The more they try, the less convincing they become because the answer is not in the tit for tat justice that is so inviting to the human mind. The three friends are joined by a forth man, who does say that while Job has been a righteous man, he is not perfect. And that God is mighty, just and forgiving.  These words do not explain entirely Job’s situation but God does not dispute them, as God has with the opinions of the first three men. Finally, Job takes his beef directly God and says, “hey, why me? What did I do here to deserve this deal?” 

And that is when where we find ourselves in today’s reading. 

God’s answer is magnificent but not pastoral. It is magisterial but not comforting. God challenges Job by saying “where were you when the world was made? And since you were not there, how can you even know what is happening, to you or to anyone?”  Only I, God really know. 

William Safire, long time a columnist for the New York Times wrote a book about Job. His comment on this passage is telling.  Safire writes, God’s response to Job is “as if God appears a tie dyed tee shirt, emblazoned with the words:   “Because I’m   God, that’s why.” 

Not much comfort, if comfort is to have our way, if comfort is understanding, if comfort is compassion. 

Last year, the film Journey of the Universe, produced by John Grimm and Mary Evelyn Tucker, two Yale professors, was screened on PBS, also here at Spring Glen and in many other venues in Connecticut. I had the opportunity to see it and if you did as well, you will surely remember the sheer beauty of the film and the awe it inspired. Journey of the Universe is about the 13.5 billion year universe of which we are an infinitesimal part. It is not directly a religious film and makes no mention of the divine hand in creation. But anyone with the eyes of faith cannot help but be awed by the immensity of our multi-verse and the infinite patience of God to work through this long arc of creation so that today we are part of that ultimate plan, obscure as it sometimes may seem to us. If you have not seen this film, I urge you to do so. It will challenge and heighten your faith. This film communicates the same message as this passage of Job, that creation is far beyond anything our minds can take in. 

And so the biblical writer, without the help of physics, geography, astronomy, anthropology, or zoology, or cinematography points us to the reality that God’s creativity is bigger than anything we might have imagined. And this is always good to keep in mind in our daily rounds, as we try to understand the situations in which we find ourselves. We did not create the world; we are creatures, of God’s hand. We are subject to our human condition and God’s sovereignty. 

But then again, we still have to live with the suffering we have. What can we say that would be comforting or pastoral? 

As I have pondered this question in my own life, I have come to appreciate, if not fully accept, that being told, this is the way it is, is healing in its way. And I think that is what the writer of the book of Job is doing, in giving this voice to God as the creator beyond all knowing. We cannot know.  It is as simple and as complex as that. 

But are we left alone, with our feelings and our pain?  

A few weeks ago, I was channel surfing and came upon an old episode of Leave it to Beaver.  (Note the channel surfing part, I don’t want you to think I sit around all day and watch ME TV) The Beaver, always the good and innocent voice on the show, had won a prize of a sports car in a raffle. His parents wouldn’t let him keep the car, reasoning that since he was only 10 years old he would not have any use for it for years. Better to sell the car and put the money in the bank  and use a small part to buy a new bike. Beaver wasn’t having it. He carried on for a while and then his brother said to him.  “Beaver, you know that mom and dad are right, why are you sulking and crying?” 

And the Beaver said, “I know they are right, Wally, but I don’t’ have to like it.” 

God gets that. We don’t like it when we suffer. We grieve, we are upset, we get angry and there is room for those reactions in our relationship with God. It is all right to say that to God. In fact as we do, we develop are real relationship with God, that will bring meaning into an experience of suffering that could be very lonely if we didn’t. 

In our faith, in the heart of our faith, is a suffering Christ who is with us in our suffering. Now this is not an easy thing for us to understand, as Paul say, this is a scandal and stumbling block for many. And we have to be careful not to glory suffering for its own sake or to minimize it saying that because Christ suffered, so should we. That would be a perversion of the cross. We are called to help relieve suffering whenever we can and not to accept the fatalism of “ well that’s just the way life is” or that it is futile to try to make things better for those in need, including ourselves.  We must instead find that right balance where our work to increase human love and care, and decrease suffering, is understood in within this given reality, life is filled with suffering. 

This is why in the end the Buddhist insight that life is unsatisfactory does not meld completely with our Christian faith. We can learn something important from the Buddha about this basic diagnosis of the human condition. But in the end, Christian faith will always be pulling us towards a future in which suffering ends and the reign of God is more fully present. In our faith, God enters into our lives and is asking to help us carry our burdens. 

And God is also saying through this story that there is an aspect of reality that we will never grasp. That creation is a book of revelation in itself, telling us as God did Job that it beyond us to understand the universe and our part in it. 

Our story takes us into the mystery of suffering and shows us that there is no reason that we can fathom. And yet we can know that God does suffer with us. Through Christ, God has made Godself as vulnerable as we are. This is indeed as unfathomable as creation itself. 

We humans have been given a wild world, and exciting one, a scary one. Its not a safe world and it’s not easy to live this life we are given. But it our highest calling to do so.  Like Job, we may face moments of searing loss, and like Job we will think that it is because we did something wrong. Not so. 

And like Job, may we be in awe of a God beyond our grasp, but who knows our human condition. For the cross shows that Godself is  not fully protected nor sheltered from suffering, but knows human life in its complexity and depth and pain.  And from this knowledge come new life, and the hope of the ages. Amen.