Beyond all human boundaries, O God, your deeds of power take place, and your healing mercy is at work. Ours is not to restrict the wonders of your saving grace but to give joyful thanks for your compassion wherever we may find it. Teach us to use well the riches of nature and grace to care generously for those in need and to look carefully to our own conduct. We ask this through Christ, with whom you have raised us up in baptism, the Lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year B, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
Some Thoughts on Mark 10:2-16
No longer running interference for Jesus--or creating interference for ourselves--we, like Abraham, know ourselves to be blessed in order to be a blessing to others, embraced by our Lord so that we may embrace others.
"Tuned Out, Tuned In," Chris Repp, Sabbatheology, The Crossings Community, 2009.
The anecdote on divorce may well derive from an historical encounter between Jesus and Pharisees busied with the issue of divorce, wanting his view. If this was anything like the earlier forms which most of Mark’s anecdotes took, it probably had as its punch line a typical two-liner quip on the part of Jesus: ‘What God has yoked let no human being separate.’ We have already found such quips in 2:9; 2:17; 2:27; 3:4; and 7:15. It is clever: of course it is outrageous for human beings to undo what God has done up, to un-join what God has joined. The effect was to shift the focus from what might justify divorce to the more fundamental issue: breaking apart what God has joined must be seen as departure from God’s intention.
"First Thoughts on Year B Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 18, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.
"A text like this already has taken, and will continue to take on, a life of its own given the current circumstances surrounding and challenges to definitions of marriage. A sermon, whether explicitly or implicitly, needs to acknowledge these assumptions."
Commentary, Mark 10:2-16, Karoline Lewis, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
"Tuned Out, Tuned In," Chris Repp, Sabbatheology, The Crossings Community, 2009.
The anecdote on divorce may well derive from an historical encounter between Jesus and Pharisees busied with the issue of divorce, wanting his view. If this was anything like the earlier forms which most of Mark’s anecdotes took, it probably had as its punch line a typical two-liner quip on the part of Jesus: ‘What God has yoked let no human being separate.’ We have already found such quips in 2:9; 2:17; 2:27; 3:4; and 7:15. It is clever: of course it is outrageous for human beings to undo what God has done up, to un-join what God has joined. The effect was to shift the focus from what might justify divorce to the more fundamental issue: breaking apart what God has joined must be seen as departure from God’s intention.
"First Thoughts on Year B Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 18, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.
"A text like this already has taken, and will continue to take on, a life of its own given the current circumstances surrounding and challenges to definitions of marriage. A sermon, whether explicitly or implicitly, needs to acknowledge these assumptions."
Commentary, Mark 10:2-16, Karoline Lewis, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
Jesus switches the conversation which begins focused upon human beings and reorients it towards a focus upon the nature of God to bring people together and build up communities. Jesus is clear that God draws us together and that we often defile this drawing together.
We could spend quite a bit of time on the nature of marriage as offered in the Gospels. I think Joel Marcus on Mark, vol 2, does a good job of taking a part Jesus and Paul's teaching on marriage. I want to focus on the broader theme which appears when we attach the second part of the lesson.
If we take a step back what we see is that God is constantly drawing people together. Mark's Gospel is a gospel of the new creation a recreation of drawing people together. God is drawing people who are different together and Jesus is clear that we are the ones who defile these relationships. We defile marriage relationships and we defile communal relationships. We do this by turning away from the "other". We are drawn away from the "other" into relationships that boost our power, our voice, and our authority. We engage in relationships that diminish the "other" with whom we are bound.
God is remaking a new community. God in Christ Jesus as bridegroom is recreating the world and his bride the community of "little ones" (the term Mark uses for the first followers of Jesus). So as we look and we read we must remember that the defilement of this wedding garment will take place with Peter at the cock's crow. It will be the crowd who shouts "crucify him."
Jesus knows all too well perhaps the fickle nature of God's people. Perhaps he is already aware of how easily they will be drawn to save themselves while he makes his way to the cross. Regardless what we see as he offers this message is that God is working in the world. God is bring and joining and knitting the fabric of creation and disparate lives together in Christ. God is joining many together and how easily we will chose another spouse and let loose the one who troubles us.
So it is that Jesus then offers an icon of this joining together. Jesus chooses the weakest, the poorest, the most powerless as an example of God's faithfulness. While the crowds and even followers will chose another lover of convenience, God will be faithful and will reach out and continue to love and embrace God's friends the poor and those in need.
Jesus embraces a child and in so doing he is offering us a view that God embraces the lowly. The children have no voice, no cultural value, an no political or religious worth. As Jesus embraces them he offers a vision of the kingdom of God that exists for those who are outside of the world's systems of power and authority. Just as Jesus is continuously clear with his followers that he has come for the sinner and not the righteous, so too here at the end of our reading he shows us through this physical embrace, through access to himself, that God is present in the world for just such as these. He blesses, he touches, and he embraces those wholly other.
God is faithful. God will not chose a marriage of convenience with the righteous, but the God we believe in will chose a marriage of trial with the very ones most in need.
As I reflect on both of these pieces, here combined into one reading, I realize that I am blessed by God. I am the other. I am one who is loved and upon whom God's grace falls. For my sins, for those things done and left undone, and so I am sure that God loves me and God embraces me. I am beloved of God and I trust that God will be faithful no matter how often I stray into convenience and ego satisfaction.
And, at the same time I am keenly aware that in my powerful, loud voice of authority, and influence I must be challenged to look around me and see those to whom Jesus is embracing. I must own my own unfaithfulness. I think this lesson always reminds me that our lord will always be about embracing those who live and move and have their being in my blind spots. God have mercy on my soul for not seeing my own infidelity to the join the wedding feast of our Lord - the kingdom of God, the dominion and mission of God.
Some Thoughts on Hebrews 1:1 - 2:12
"In the city of Macon, Georgia, the Harriet Tubman African-American Museum honors the memory of the 'Black Moses,' the best-known conductor on the Underground Railroad..."
Commentary, Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12, Pentecost 18, Bryan J. Whitfield, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.
"...Hebrews holds together a profound image of Jesus as God's very reflection with a very earthy and human figure just like us. That reinforces also our understanding of God and of the spiritual life not as something from or in another world, but as something which fully enters the here and now of flesh and blood."
"First Thoughts on Passages on Year B Epistle Passages in the Lectionary,"Pentecost 18, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.
"The concept of incarnation is an affirmation that Jesus really and truly does show us what God is like. When we look at Jesus, we see him embracing the ones nobody else would embrace. We see him confronting the religious people with the falseness of their self-righteousness. We see him forgiving sinners and restoring people to their right mind. And we see him freely and joyfully playing with children!"
In seminary we were taught that there is no such thing as a God of the Old Testament and a God of the New Testament. Yet, Christians have struggled to always put into context the reality of violence throughout the scripture including in the New Testament. Somehow we have never really quite figured out how to deal with the various rules, covenants, demands, and variety of things God wants or doesn't want for us. Even Walter Brueggeman when asked about such things says something like, "I like to think God is getting over his use of violence."
The author of Hebrews is certainly trying to figure out how to speak of these things and to parse clearly the trajectory of a God who is both alpha and omega while at the same time exhibiting different behaviors and desires.
God communicates to Israel and God communicates to us. We believe as theologian Ben Johnson once remarked, a God who raised Jesus out of death and raised Israel out of Egypt.
What is clear for the author of Hebrews and for Christians there is a clarity that all is to be defined now through the words and actions of God through Christ Jesus. It is his work and words that are to define and radically focus our attention across the great expanse of God's communication with his creatures.
The Incarnation of God in Christ Jesus is a particular vision of God - revealing to us God's intent to be with us and to bridge the chasm between heaven and earth. Sin and death will not be victorious over this divide. Moreover, that this person of Jesus is a forerunner of our humanity.
We are in some miraculous and mysterious way to become like Jesus in this world making here heaven on earth - just like we pray in the Lord's Prayer. We are to make here God's neighborhood.
What is an interesting part of this passage is the unique and important reality that the author offers a special place for humanity within the cosmos. Using the words of the psalmist (Psalm 8:4-6), the author reminds us, "What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor..." I once mentioned that the angels are jealous of humanity for what we have in Jesus and in the holy communion and how special this is for us in the order of things. We are blessed as humans to experience God in and through Jesus in this world and through the inbreaking of God in the incarnation and in the bread and wine. I really got skewered online when I said this. People thought it was heresy. I am of course in good company with the psalmist, the author of Hebrews
and the polish Roman Catholic St. Maximilian Kolbe who once said, "If Angels could be jealous of men, they would be so for one reason: Holy Communion."
We are to see who God is and how God is moving in the world through Christ Jesus as is present in scripture and in the communion itself. And what do we see? We see a God who lowers God's self and breaks God's self open for the sake of those other than God or even godlike. God becomes one with the other and so raises the other up into community. Here is the Gospel.
Some Thoughts on Job 1:1; 2:1-10
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| Job and his friends by William Blake |
"Just Who Is God, Anyway?" John Holbert, Patheos, 2015.
"Perhaps the biggest question for people of faith is this: How can a God whom we believe to be good and just allow or even instigate what we see and experience as evil?"
Commentary, Job 1:1, 2:1-10, Karla Suomala, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
"We enter this week into one of the most difficult and theologically sophisticated books of the Old Testament: the book of Job."
Commentary, Job 1:1, 2:1-10, Kathryn Schifferdecker, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
"The idea that God blesses the faithful, rewarding the righteous with what they deserve, and that the opposite, trials and tribulation, are signs of being out of sync with God?apparently the prosperity gospel is nothing new under the sun?is rejected outright by Job."
Commentary, Job 1:1; 2:1-10, Karl Jacobson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.
Commentary, Job 1:1, 2:1-10, Kathryn Schifferdecker, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
"The idea that God blesses the faithful, rewarding the righteous with what they deserve, and that the opposite, trials and tribulation, are signs of being out of sync with God?apparently the prosperity gospel is nothing new under the sun?is rejected outright by Job."
Commentary, Job 1:1; 2:1-10, Karl Jacobson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.
Oremus Online NRSV Text
So let us talk about Job the devil and me.
We have a precious few weeks to talk about Job as it is rare that the book comes up in our reading. This is a very important biblical text, almost always misunderstood, and avoided because of its odd nature. Job is God's suffering servant. Quotes about Job fill our cultural vocabulary like "suffering like Job" or the "patience of Job".
The text is a really a tale, a story, a narrative with characters of virtue. It is one meant to be told and listened to. I find it loses a bit when it is read. There is some biblical criticism that seems to prefer the unity of the soliloquies of Job to his friend's speeches. Moreover, there is some critical argument about the integrity of the text. There is a popular theological view that winds its way from the discourse that invites us to think that Job is God's suffering, patient, and faithful servant.
We in church have a kind of popular sentimentality towards Job's cause. We recognize his complaining in our own complaints. We make Job into a modern man with modern sensibilities and philosophies. His internal angst is appealing and his speaking out against God gives voice to our own hostility towards transcendence. In Job we project all of our post modern anxiety. Out of his mouth we hear our own frustration with our adopted therapeutic moral deism. In Job we see our frustration with God's distance and our fractured narratives.
We enjoy the friends' taunts and their holding him accountable. We allow him to be our psychological scapegoat for our feelings of theological discomfort with a God who allows evil in the world. Job is a book that allows us to in a sense put God, the Bible, theology, and religion on trial for the horrors we find in the world around us.
When we do this, and this is how we so often read and talk about job, we engage, as René Girard the religious philosopher explains,
"a naive theodicy that would serve as a paradoxical pretext to its contrary, the questioning of this theodicy, and from there the shaking up of religion, which modern interpreters consider the necessary goal of all sincere reflection on the misfortune of human beings... So concerning what is essential in the book of Job, there are two responses. The first is the patience of Job, his obedience to the will of God. The second, the modern response, is Job the rebel, Job the protester en route toward the virulent atheism of the contemporary Western world."There is a second reading here as well. Perhaps it is a subtext to the first. This reading proposes that Job is actually poorly treated by God. This may appear like the same argument. It is but from a slightly different angle. But the angle is important. The first reading allows us to focus on God and God's seeming injustice. This second subtext is about how evil and bad things are completely exterior to human control. In other words, evil in the world is divorced from humanity. It is independent. Such a reading verges on the ancient heresy of dualism where God and the Devil have equal power and humanity is caught in the middle. You can read about dualism here or here.
[Before we go much further, I want to be transparent and say that the most influential writing that has both enlivened a rereading of Job and challenged me is the work of René Girard. If you are not new to the blog you know that I like his writing a great deal. As we parse out this passage I am going to lean heavily on Girard here - shall we say exclusively? I am going to paraphrase Girard's argument in part to continue to deepen my own understanding and in part to connect it to our present day work. I am writing with with the following in mind: Chapter 12 - Job as a Failed Scapegoat, by René Girard found in Excerpt from The Voice from the Whirlwind: Interpreting the Book of Job, edited by Leo G. Perdue and W. Clark Gilpin, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992, pages 185-207. You can read this chapter here.]
The problem as Girard points out is that both readings don't actually go with the book/story. Satan is not equal to God and must get God's approval to act. This leads us down the road that God takes our parents and our children from us. "God needs them in heaven" we suggest poorly. Or, "God is punishing us", we tell ourselves. This of course is hogwash theology and really bad pastoral and self care!
There is another problem as well. We are tempted to put Job in the part of a character in a Greek tragedy. He was happy, now he suffers. Job was a good and faithful man. Job had friends, family, and wealth. He was looked to as a leader and a man of honor. All of this is lost. In his lostness he must be being punished. The friends who taunt, cajole, and practically celebrate his demise are those who appear to speak for God. What is interesting though...is that in the Greek tragedy the hero who falls quickly understands his place in the drama. He agrees with the voices of the God's. Girard exegetes Oedipus as an example of a Greek character who "quickly agrees with his persecutors."
Job on the other hand does not do this. Job takes the role of living out the psalmist's cries to God. In this way the place of Job and his suffering in the world rejects the notion that God is the one who is making the suffering happen. The psalmist, like Job, defends himself against the "collective" voices and ideas of those who surround him like dogs surround carrion.
What do we have left? Who is this Job? How are we to interpret the texts over the next few weeks? How do we do so with integrity to the tale as a whole steering clear of poor dualistic theology and even worse pastoral approaches to evil?
What the friends mimic an perpetuate is the misinformed notion that religious violence is acceptable. In this way the friends see Job as the scapegoat. He protests his innocence, which is not a lie. Yet his friends offer a theology of violence where God punishes the deserving. But this is not at all what is happening in the story! Not at all.
What the friends do is what people do when they perpetuate mimetic violence in religion, they side with and justify the idea of a violent God. They have a false piety that places them with the lesser mythological gods of violence that demand sacrifice. Girard writes, "
What the friends do is what people do when they perpetuate mimetic violence in religion, they side with and justify the idea of a violent God. They have a false piety that places them with the lesser mythological gods of violence that demand sacrifice. Girard writes, "
"...The theology of the four friends is nothing but an expression, a little more refined and evolved, of the theology of violence and the sacred. Any sufferer could not suffer except for a good reason in a universe governed by divine justice. He is therefore punished by God, and pious conduct for those surrounding him consists in their conformity with the divine judgment, treating him as guilty and so multiplying further his sufferings. This is indeed the theology of the hidden scapegoat. Every sufferer must finally be guilty because every guilty person ends up by falling into misfortune, and if God delays a little too long in executing his justice, human beings will take it upon themselves to speed up the process. Everything is thus for the best in the best of worlds."
The poor, the migrant, the homeless, the hungry, and the abused (sexually, violently, and psychologically) must in the end deserve what they get. This is how pervasive violence is in the subtext of our religion and how it misinforms the subtext of politics and societal norms. Again, Girard,
"The evil one is cursed by God, and the worst disasters will certainly befall him. And when the friends of Job speak to him, they evoke plague, the sword, fire, flood, famine, and poison (see 20:22-29)."
Why is Job so difficult? Because we in our own time perpetuate mimetic desire, that leads to violence, and scapegoating. In this way our society and culture informs the narrative of Job instead of the other way around.
But the theology is clear once the enmeshed culture of violence and its hermeneutical lens is removed. In this way we cannot preach this first passage without first removing the lens of religious and cultural violence; and secondly, without reading the whole passage.
As you do so you will no doubt see at the climax Job is surrounded by his frenemies and begins to echo their own words. Here is the high point of the false God proclaimed, here is the climax of religious violence sanctioned, and here is the worst of prehistoric violent religion. See 19 when Job himself echoes the words of his friends: "Pity me, pity me, you, my friends,for the hand of God has struck me.Why do you hound me down like God, will you never have enough of my flesh?" (19:21-22)
Yet this is when things change radically. As if waking from a dream Job realizes that this theology, his religious understanding of suffering and who God is, is quite different. Here then is the God of the Bible. Here is the God of peace. Here is the God of love. Here what was hidden by our human blindness, our own self orientation, is now seen clearly. Job, as if having his eyes open, rejects the hermeneutic lens of religious violence that his friends have suggested. Job instead sees the situation that he is in as that which is perpetrated by humanity. He sees that his suffering is not condemnation by God but instead a deep theology of shalom. Job sees clearly he has been a pawn all along in the game of religious violence. Here then he takes up this theology over and against those that surround him. Job reveals, what Jesus reveals, and that is that God and God's ways are stumbling block for humanity.
Job says that the people have made him a dung heap, a burning pitch, a burnt offering. (17:6) Job has become, he suggests, their scapegoat. he has become their example. Societal violence, political violence, justifies itself by suggesting the guilt of the innocent. Here is an important precursor to Jesus...is it not?
Job has been the sacrificial offering to help purify his community, he has been the exemplar of what happens when you do not behave, for surely this man is guilty say his friends. This is of course the opposite of the servant girl's words at the thought of Jesus unjust death, where at the same moment Peter (Jesus' friend) denies him, and should these not be the words of the reader of Job, surely this man was innocent!
Girard picks up Aristotle here and points out that we need, like his friends, for Job to be guilty. There is a lesser god mythology played out in our religious violence when we read the text. That is one of greek katharsis. This of course is not at all what is going on. Yet, so pervasive is our own civil myth and cultural religious and societal violence that we must read see Job as God's victim so that we might live just lives. Job himself points out the truth of his friends' theology, and the truth of our own when he says,
As for you, you are only charlatans,
physicians in your own estimation. (13:4)
And in a passage of closely related meaning he says:
You would even cast lots over the fatherless,
and bargain over your friend. (6:27)
The friends themselves are the ones who perpetuate the myth. Read now again, as for the first time, their words:
Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?In this theology, as we have said above, only the wicked suffer. God punishes the wicked and Job must be wicked for he is suffering. This is the lie that unravels the Gospel paradox: in death one gains life, in suffering one is Christ like, in being lost one is found. What becomes ever more clear then as we read our passage for this week and over the next few Sundays, is that Job sees clearly that humanity relishes violent religion. Moreover, the lesser violent gods of society, politics, and religions are not the God he worships. In this way Job suggests (13:7-8) that humans are taking the role of the satan - of the accuser.
Or where were the upright cut off?
As I have seen, those who plow iniquity
and sow trouble reap the same.
By the breath of God they perish,
and by the blast of his anger they are consumed. (4:7-9)
Girard is brilliant in framing what happens next. He writes,
"Unable to find a defender among human beings, Job has no choice but to address himself to God. It is there that the Judaic religious genius shows through so brilliantly: Job addresses God against every probability, so it seems, for everyone agrees in saying that God himself punishes him, that God himself puts him on trial. Very often he bends before it, and the appeal that he launches is so contrary to good sense (even he himself thinks) that it sounds almost ridiculous:
Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven,Here is what is so beautiful. The God that Job begins to speak about is the God of the victims. This is a God who takes up for the victims. This is the God who heard people crying out in slavery. This is a God who looks for the lost. This is a God who cares about the widow and the orphan. This is a God who is interested, very interested, in the victims of political, social, and religious violence. This is a God who weeps at the religious sacrifice of Abel by Cain who is jealous. It is the same God who rejects the religious sacrifice of Isaac.
and he that vouches for me is on high.
My friends scorn me;
my eye pours out tears to God,
that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God,
as one does for a neighbor. (16:19-21)
Ahhhh...and here enters the Incarnation. Here enters the Christ! Job suggests that if God could be go'el (19:25), the redeemer, the defender of the oppressed, the advocate, then this god would be truly the messianic God.
I, like Girard, recognize conflicting material here. It is the same in the story of Isaac and elsewhere. Girard generously says, "the text hesitates." It is, Girard, suggests the Holy Spirit, that supports Job in this moment over and against his friends who so clearly want to see this as religious violence. It is the living word I believe that bolsters Job in this moment.
Girard points out that the traditional read deals with theodicy where in bad things happen to good people and the problem of evil in the world. But this is nothing more than repeated the ancient theology of the victimizing religion of Job's friends. Evil that is done by humanity is very present and to project that into the divine is to repeat the victimization and scapegoating of that old time religion. Girard puts it this way, "The evils due to human agency are the most terrible and must engage our attention more than the evils produced by nature." This becomes ever clearer when we put the hermeneutic of the gospel over this story. Think of Jesus speaking about the accidental collapse of the tower and how this is not divine action at all. (Luke's Gospel chapter 13) Jesus clarifies and puts an end to the theology that perpetuates that the good things and bad things that happen out of circumstance and context, by weather, by storm, by accident are some how divinely ordained. Here then is the affirmation of the Gospel lens attached to Job.
No, the true evils suffered by Job are those that come from his fellow brothers and sisters.
Girard has a great metaphor for the theology of the friends: tourist theology. They inhabit a metaphysics of those who think life is a deluxe voyage. Girard writes:
"To pose the question of evil as though evil were in every case a matter of one problem, that is, anything that affects my own precious self, making it suffer, or simply irritating me, is not to pose the question of Job. This self-concern is rather what I would call the metaphysics of the tourist, who conceives that his or her presence in this world is essentially like a deluxe voyage. He or she happily admires the lovely terrains and sunsets, is moved by the monuments left by past civilizations. He or she deplores modern ugliness and complains of the general insipidness, because now everything resembles everything else and there are no more differences. He or she becomes noisily indignant about the poverty encountered, is perpetually engaged in head-shaking, like Job's friends. But above all this tourist complains about the organization of the voyage and is going to transmit a complaint to the management. He or she is always ready to return his or her ticket, and the expression "return one's ticket" is typical of those who travel for their own pleasure or who go to a spectacle. This mentality of the frustrated tourist produces vehement curses concerning what is called the problem of evil. If God exists, how can he tolerate the evil present in the world? If God exists, he can be only the supercop, and in his mode of being as supercop he could at least protect us against the many disagreeable incidents of our passage through the world."There is one response to this which says, "Yes, but what about death. No one escapes the grave." But the Gospel again comes to the Job's of this world with help. Christ is the conqueror of this death. Christ put the end to human sacrifice. Christ put an end to needing to adhere to religious scapegoating. Christ put an end to the violence of humankind (in word and deed) that works on behalf of powers and authorities. When we go down to the grave, making our claim, "hallelujah, hallelujah, death meets there not our fallen selves but the Christ of the cross, death, and resurrection.
Not even our sibling rivalry of mimetic desire can possibly keep us from an eternity spent in the grave.
What I am saying here, and I find myself in deep agreement with Girard, is that we must read the book of Job not as a text that in itself is self referential. To do so is just another humanism that pulls from the text the Gospel and incarnation that is present within the story. No, we are to read with the eyes of the Gospel of Resurrection and Jesus. Girard concludes his essay/chapter on Job with these words, "In the world where the vicious cycle that imprisoned Job is opened up, everything becomes allusion to the Resurrection!"
Turning to Job's Text this week
In today's passage we have the story's context set up for us. Job is from the land of Uz. He was blameless and upright. He was faithful and turned away evil.
In today's passage we have the story's context set up for us. Job is from the land of Uz. He was blameless and upright. He was faithful and turned away evil.
Where is evil from? Evil is from humanity and has been dwelling in the midst of humanity. It is not an equal power God or even a creature of God.
We then see in our passage that old time religion where God punishes humanity. That religion tells people that God allows Satan to test people through natural illness, plague, collapsing towers, and even human towers. This God becomes a sinister being and the preacher who undertakes this preaching must lean on the above and proclaim the Gospel that redacts this teaching.
This is a difficult passage for you must redact the words of Job. Our lectionary does you no favors. And, to let Job's words echo in the ears of our people is to do perpetual religious damage. God does not give some evil and some bad; and, certainly not to test people.
What you can do is speak to the fact that Job denies the idea that God should be cursed for the evil in this world - the corrupted human desire that uses violence for the gaining of powers. God is not to be cursed for human perpetuated evil and religious sacrifice. God is not to be cursed for our human love to devour each other, or enact the great sacrifice of Isaac. No, that is humanity's work. God is not to be cursed at all but instead praised for not allowing evil, violence, victimization, scapegoating, and even death to have the last word.
No God in Christ Jesus becomes a fellow victim of human evil. The Christ becomes a scapegoat. Christ even joins us in the grave. Moreover, Christ suffers all at the hands of humanity's search for stable power and religion. Christ suffers all by the hand of human violence that seeks to quiet the truth of God's love.
We might end by saying that only the foolish perpetuate the old old religion of mimetic desire and violent scapegoating!
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