Why?

The dead ranged in age from 18 to 67. One of the first-year students was active in Future Farmers of America. Two had just started college. Another was studying chemistry and volunteered at an animal shelter. One of the dead was one of six daughters of a local landscaper. Another had just returned to college to study alongside her daughter. Another student had come back to school after recently turning his life around. The oldest of the dead was an adjunct professor who loved literature and was also an avid outdoorsman. Despite the best efforts of an Iraq war veteran to protect them, in all ten people died, and another nine were seriously injured.

By now you know that I am talking about the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Along with the devastated families of the dead, perhaps you too are grieving. I can’t even place myself in such a situation or begin to imagine what those families are experiencing. Perhaps too you are thinking of those who died at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, SC, or of the children in Newtown, Connecticut, or of those who died in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, or of Gabby Giffords, whose rising Congressional career was tragically cut short in Tucson, Arizona by a deranged gunman. As those other tragedies flash by in your mind, perhaps you are tempted to ask what those who died or their families and communities did to bring about such suffering. After all, isn’t that basically what the disciples asked Jesus when they saw the blind man, “Rabbi,” they asked, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” And maybe, as you grieve, perhaps the only word that comes to mind is “Why?” Why do tragedies happen? Why do we suffer?

Why? It’s an age-old question. It’s the central question of the book of Job, but it’s not unique to Job. In fact, long before Job was composed, ancient writers of the Near East asked these questions. And every faith community since has some version of this question. Actually, the book of Job is a strange and difficult book. We will hear three more readings from Job in the coming weeks. It is part of what is called Wisdom literature, which includes the Book of Proverbs, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, and other similar books. Often there is no mention of God in these books, as their goal is to teach us something about how to live moral and upright lives.

The book of Job is essentially a fable. It is intentionally not set in any recognizable time or place. Like the opening of Star Wars – long ago in a galaxy far, far away – it’s intended as a universal story, applicable to everyone. It begins and ends with a frame story. In between the frame are many dialogues between Job and his friends – his tormentors, some would say – as wells as complaints from Job to God, and God’s final answer to Job. Today, we’ve heard the opening scenes of the frame story, in which the Lord has convened a heavenly council. The Adversary has posed a challenge to the Lord concerning the steadfast commitment of Job. An aside here: Satan here is not the devil of later popular lore. This Satan, rather, is a kind of check or challenger to the Lord. The Adversary, the word used in the Jewish Publication Society translation, is one of the Lord’s councilors whose role is to make sure that the Lord considers all angles of a situation. So today, we hear the Adversary’s suggestion that Job would forsake the Lord if any harm came to Job’s body. It would be as if you lost your faith if you came down with shingles. Next week we’ll hear Job’s complaint that God has abandoned him. Two weeks from today we’ll hear God’s response to Job’s questioning, and, finally, three weeks from today we’ll hear the end of the framing fable.

As a fable with much embedded dialogue, the book of Job raises many difficult and important questions, even for us Christians. Perhaps the most serious question is, why do we have faith? Why indeed do we hold fast to a belief in God? Isn’t that what Job’s wife is really asking when she says, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die.” Job holds fast to his commitment to God. But why? What has his commitment given him? When he was wealthy and happy, was it his faith that blessed him? Does faith save us from suffering? Clearly, Job, as well as the faithful Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, the innocent people who have been condemned to death, and the families of victims of mass shootings would emphatically say no, faith does not save us from suffering. So what good is faith? Why does Job, why does any of us, believe? Is belief just a habit, something we’ve always had without thinking or questioning? Or do we believe, as the Prosperity Gospel suggests, so that we might be wealthy and happy? If we’re not wealthy and happy, is it because we don’t have a strong enough faith? At some point in our lives – perhaps at many different points, perhaps even in response to personal tragedies – all of us must grapple with these questions – and there are no easy answers.

The story of Job also raises the question of why people suffer. Do people bring their own suffering on themselves? Are they responsible for the bad things that happen to them? That was surely what the disciples thought when they posed their question about the blind man. And wouldn’t we agree? We moderns don’t believe in fate, so it must be our own fault when something bad happens, right? The book of Job says emphatically, “No!” Despite all the attempts of Job’s “friends” to get him to justify his suffering by “confessing his sins,” Job steadfastly maintains his innocence – and is ultimately vindicated. And in our hearts we know that Job is right. In truth, most of what people suffer it totally undeserved. None of the people who died in Oregon deserved to die. None of their families deserved to have to mourn their deaths. Gabby Giffords did not deserve to be shot in the head. The children and teachers in Newtown did not deserve to die. Suffering and death simply are.

However, the book of Job also reminds us that we don’t have to accept suffering stoically or uncomplainingly. As we will hear next week, Job vigorously questions God and complains to God. Job knows that God is part of what’s happening to him, and Job expects answers! Towards the end of the book, Job succeeds in getting God to answer him. And does Job get the answers that he wants? For many of us, as we’ll hear in two weeks, Job does not. Spoiler alert! Speaking out of the whirlwind, God will say, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” God then goes on to thunder questions back at Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth…. Who determined its measurements – surely you know….” Can you make it rain, or send forth lightening, or create dust storms? Did you create the animals? Whether or not we want to hear it, God reminds Job that the nature of God is a mystery, that truth is more complex than we with our limited minds can comprehend, and that ultimately humans cannot know the reasons for suffering – or often for anything that happens to us.

So what can we take from the story of Job? There are no easy answers to the questions this book poses. However, even if we find God’s answer in chapter 38 unsatisfactory, we can be assured of this: God is present in the complexity of our lives, in our griefs and sorrows. God doesn’t cause our suffering – please no trite sayings, “God doesn’t give us more than we can bear,” or “God needed another angel in heaven” – but neither is God divorced from our sufferings. God is with us in our suffering. While life offers us no guarantees, Job reminds us that nothing can separate us from God’s love. Other books of the Hebrew Bible affirm God’s nearness in our suffering. What is more important for us Christians, we believe that in Jesus God experienced all that we humans experience, including suffering and death, and that eventually all our suffering will be redeemed through Jesus, as we will hear repeatedly in the Letter to the Hebrews this month. And we cling to the hope that in God’s good time, we will be reunited with those we have lost, and that all creation will be made whole.

Meanwhile, we pray for forgiveness for the sufferings and wrongs that are within our responsibility, most especially for those we have inflicted on others. We pray for the grace to trust in God’s love for all of us and to have compassion for those who suffer and mourn. Perhaps most important, we pray for the energy to do what lies before us to mitigate suffering: to seek sensible gun laws, to work for the end of capital punishment, to broaden the availability of mental health services, and to actively work for justice. As we live out own brief lives, may God help us to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God, as children worthy to bear the name of the Prince of Peace.