"Curse God and Die!"

There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before God. and Satan also came among them to present himself before God. And God said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it." God said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason." Then Satan answered God, "Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face." Then God said to Satan, "Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life." So Satan went out from the presence of the Holy One, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes. Then his wife said to him, "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die." But he said to her, "You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips. Job 1:1, 2:1-10

I have to tell you that sometimes, coming up with a sermon title is harder than coming up with a sermon. I thought about calling this sermon "Tough times never last, but tough people do," but I think Reverend Robert Schuller called one of his possibility thinking books that, so I couldn’t call it that. Then I thought about calling it something like "when the going gets tough, the tough get going," but I think that’s some football team’s slogan, so I couldn’t call it that. So I asked Anne to see if SHE had any bright ideas for a sermon title. And she reminded me of my great love of the scriptures, and suggested that I just go with what the scriptures have given me by way of catchy phrases.... "Curse God and die."

Honest.... this is not another one of my weird translations. It’s right there in verse 9 – "Curse God and die."

And yet.... one of my duties as your pastor is to preach and teach and learn and pray with you in such a way that we are all prepared in heart and mind and spirit, not to curse God when the toughest times come. Even more – that instead of cursing, we might worship God and bless God, no matter how intense the grief or how deep the pain in our lives. To find, and to help all of us find, how God’s love is present in the Biblical record, because what this is is God’s story, and our story.... and if we can find God’s ineffable love in here, we can find it in our lives.

So today I’d like for us to try to understand the message of the book of Job, and be changed by it. In this book, God’s love really DOES seem ineffable, because we look at what happens to Job, we just shake our heads and ask, "Why?"

Virtually everyone in this room will experience a bitter calamity sooner or later, if you haven’t already. And you can mark this down ahead of time: when – not if, but when – it comes, it will almost certainly seem absurd and meaningless.

You know how those moments are.... Everything’s changed, in an instant. You may be sitting in a restaurant on Church Street, or tooling down the 401, and you get some awful news. You may be shaving when you find a spot on your neck. You may be lathering up in the shower and find a lump in your breast. Or you’re wondering why your partner is late coming home from work, and you see the policeman coming up the walk. You may be stocking up on a twelve pack of paper towels at Zeller’s, when all of a sudden you realize your two-year old is gone.

And when it happens, it’s going to seem utterly absurd, and you’re going to cry out "Why?" a hundred times before the storm passes by. And you may never get an answer to that question. Sometimes we know why things happen to us. Sometimes we know, deep down, that we’ve put actions into motion that come back and bite us on the tail. But more often, our most crushing grief and pain doesn’t come as a clear punishment for sins. Often it comes out of nowhere and it just baffles our sense of justice.

That's why the book of Job is so relevant. Job's suffering seems to come out of nowhere and have no connection to his character. His story’s recorded for us so that we’ll have some help in living through these calamities – not just keeping a stiff upper lip but trusting in the sovereign love and goodness of God.

We’re told that Job was "blameless and upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil." If suffering is intended as a punishment for evil, Job’s not a very likely candidate. He does good. He pursues what’s right. His reputation is blameless. His reverence for God governs everything he does. He worships God ALL the time. And why not? God’s been very, very good to Job.

But you know the story, don’t you. All Job’s goodness doesn’t seem to mean squat. We’re told in chapter one, which we skipped over in today’s reading, that, owing to a little wager between God and Satan, Job loses everything he has. And he had a lot. He was a very wealthy man, but in one day, thieves and terrorists and storms killed ALL of his oxen, ALL of his donkeys, ALL of his sheep and camels, ALL of his servants.... and ALL of his children. All of his children. Ouch.

And what was Job’s response to this? The scriptures report that "Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped God. He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; God gave, and God has taken away; blessed be the Holy name.’ In all this Job did not sin or blame God." Which, considering all that WE know that Job doesn’t know, I happen to think is mighty big of Job.

See.... y’know that little wager I mentioned before? The scriptures describe a couple of behind-the-scenes meetings between God and Satan. It’s recorded that Satan spends his time walking to and fro on the earth. Then God puts on display a trophy that he delights in very much. He says, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil."

It's as if the owner of Tiffany’s met a diamond thief at the back of the store late at night. The owner says, Hi.... Whatcha up to? And the thief answers, Oh, just walking around, to and fro, in your store. And then the owner says, Did you see our most precious diamond up there at the front?

Now, I rule out the possibility that God is an idiot. That leaves us with another disturbing possibility: God is setting Job up for trouble. Make no mistake about this. Satan’s not acting on his own here. God is incredibly proud of Job. Job's fear of God has endeared God to Job in a very deep way.

But Satan’s not impressed. He insinuates that Job isn’t such a great example of reverence for God. He says that Job only fears God to save his own skin. So Satan says to God, "But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face."

Now, God COULD have said, "I don't need to prove anything to you or anybody else. I know the heart of my servant Job and that’s enough for me."

Well, God could have, but that’s not what happened. God goes for the gusto. A test will show that Job loves God more than any possession, any family member, even than his own health and life. So God says, "OK, he’s in your power; only spare his life."

And now, the scene turns ugly. We’re told that "Satan went out from the presence of God, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes." He strikes at Job’s very self, his very being, and all Job can do is mourn in silence.

Well.... not quite in silence. The silence is broken by Job’s wife. For a character with only one line to speak in the whole Bible, she’s made quite an impression. Job hasn’t QUITE lost everything, he still has his wife. But she’s lost everything too. So in her question to Job, you can almost hear her frustration, her alienation, her bitterness, which come from her immeasurable loss.... "Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die."

It’s as if she sees only two choices. If Job holds on to his integrity, and blesses God like he did before, she seems to suggest that he’s kidding himself. We sometimes sense a certain dishonesty, or at least a little self-delusion, when someone’s been hit that hard and keeps their rose-colored glasses on. And yet, if Job honestly acknowledges his pain and loss, he WILL want to curse God, and that’s not in his character either. It seems as if, in addition to everything else, he’s caught between a rock and a hard place. He’s got two choices. Hold on to the blessing, or curse God and die.

Things haven’t changed much since Job’s time, have they? We still have the same two choices, don’t we? We want a new answer, and all we get is the same old answer, and it doesn’t completely satisfy. But the bottom line is, like the old saying, "Pain is inevitable. Misery is optional." Or to put it in God terms, when we hurt, we can hurt WITH God, or we can hurt WITHOUT God.

But what IS it about suffering that some people hold on through it all, and some people curse God and die? What is it about suffering that makes it so, well, insufferable? It’s death. It’s our death, our fear of death, and most of all, it’s the death inside us, the death of hope, the death of the soul.

Now, I may not be the best example, but I gotta tell you, I’ve tried this both ways. I’ve tried to keep blessing God when rotten stuff happens. But, honestly, there’ve been times when I’ve failed. Times when I’ve cursed God. Times when I’ve called God names. I think I’ve told y’all about the times when I’ve started all my prayers with "You JERK." Or worse. Much, much worse.

You may be saying to yourself, "Aha! She didn’t die! You can curse God and live."

No. I’m afraid you can’t. At least, I couldn’t. When I cursed God, when I lost all hope in God, when I decided to go it alone with all my suffering, something died inside. Believe me, I’m living proof. But I’m also living proof of the resurrection of that hope that died. I’m living proof of the resurrection of hope in my life.

Hope’s a funny thing. You know, when I can’t think of what to write in a sermon, I sit around a play with the scriptures. I look up useless bits of information. And aren’t you glad, I so often end up sticking them IN my sermons. For instance, on the subject of hope.... what I discovered was, did you know that the word "hope" appears in 178 verses in the New Revised Standard translation of the Bible? And out of ALL the books in the Bible, more than ten percent of those occurrences are in the book of Job. In trying to figure out the answer to suffering, Job talks about HOPE more than anything else.

And you know what else I discovered? That the only book in the Bible that talks MORE about hope, is the book of Romans. And most of those occurrences are clustered in and around Romans 8. In Romans 8, verses 24 through 28, Paul tells us: "For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose."

Now, I have to tell you that sometimes I just want to throw those particular words right back at people who have quoted them glibly to me in times of great trial. Because sometimes it’s hard to hold on to hope.

Hoping’s hard... it means looking at what is, and seeing what can be.... it means holding on in the face of tremendous suffering... holding on for that blessing.... And sometimes, it means holding on like Christ did.... through death, and beyond.... And Christ himself, hanging on the cross, asked the same question we ask, the same question Job asks.... "Why?" And yet, we know the end of THAT story. He went through hell and back again, for our redemption. He experienced that death of hope and life,, and brought to us that resurrection of hope and life.

So, as much as I sometimes wince when I hear that passage from Romans 8, the bottom line is a simple but profound truth. It’s amazing how, when you actually go through hell, it really is true. Holding on to that hope really IS the only way to life, to the abundant life that we are promised in Christ and through Christ.

I said earlier that the book of Job is relevant to us. Job’s story is recorded for us so that we will have some help in living through calamities – and not just keeping a stiff upper lip but bowing reverently and trustingly before the sovereign love and goodness of God. So, if you’ve come here hurting today... if you came wondering "Why?"... if you came wondering if you can hang on for another day.... my prayer is that you will choose life, choose to hold on to hope, choose to hold on to God, and let God love you and transform you through it all.

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