Monday, September 28, 2020           (today’s lectionary)
Not stones but pearls
This week six out of seven days our lectionary will take us through the book of Job. Come, and together let us enter the throne room of God.
One day the angels of God came to present themselves.
Satan was one of them, and the Lord said,
“Satan, where do you come from?”
Satan didn’t beat around the bush. “I have been roaming and patrolling the earth.”
God invites Satan to appreciate “his servant Job.”
There is no one on earth more blameless. Job fears God, and he avoids evil.
Job has been greatly blessed, and Satan uses his prosperity against him. He and his wife are healthy, wealthy and wise. Their family flourishes, and are rich with livestock and land.
You have blessed the work of his hands.
Just see what happens if that is all removed from him.
God surprises everyone in the room and says, “OK.” God temporarily removes himself from Job’s life (except his health). And Satan can hardly believe his luck. What could God be thinking?
Of the many commentaries on Job, Richard Rohr’s is my favorite. (Of course, semi-scholar that I am, I haven’t read many others.) Rohr doesn’t try to make the book something that it isn’t:
No piece of religious literature teaches the way of descent more daringly and effectively than The Book of Job. Even the name Job is considered by some linguists to be an acronym for ‘Where is the Father?’. The name and the story cry out against a darkness that refuses to reveal itself—and a path that does not, at first, feel like life at all. Surely, no book is less an answer book than The Book of Job. No book is less therapeutic or less “helpful,” as we ordinarily use the term. It fixes nothing, explains nothing and dismisses those who even try to explain.
The four horsemen of Job’s personal apocalypse bring him news of loss and destruction. He knows nothing of Satan’s meeting with their Creator. His oxen and mules, herdsmen, sheep and shepherds, even the camels, gone. But then …
The fourth messenger came and said,
“Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine together.
A whirlwind from the desert blew over them, their house collapsed, and they are dead.”
Job’s dark night has begun, but not yet begun to wear on him. Awful as it is, this disaster is a new thing. For now, Job can respond as he has been taught.
He tore his cloak, cut off his hair and cast himself down upon the ground, and prayed.
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb
And naked shall I go back again.
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away,
Blessed be the name of the Lord!”
What’s fair here? Wrong question – it can’t be answered because God’s in charge.
Lord, from you let my judgment come.
But even in my testing, don’t I expect God to love my righteous deeds and reward me?
Though you try me with fire, you shall find no malice in me.
You will answer me, O God.
Show your wondrous mercies.
In Gibson’s Passion of Christ, I remember the cawing of Satan in the black crow’s costume hovering above Gethsemane. The disciples look up, Caiaphas and Judas look up, Jesus looks only at the ground. He seems downcast and defeated.
But he is not, and neither is Job.
The one who is least among you is really and truly the greatest.
He casts these words down, not stones but pearls. Who will be the first to pick them up?
           (Job 1, Psalm 17, Mark 10, Luke 9)
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