The End of Job

Wednesday, September 20, 2006 -- Week of Proper 19 (John Coleridge Patteson)

"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html


Today's Readings for the Daily Office (p. 985)
Psalm 72 (morning) // 119:73-96 (evening)
Job 42:1-17
Acts 16:16-24
John 12:20-26

I'm convinced that for most of us, just knowing about God is not enough. Most people have a hunger to know God, to experience God.

Throughout the narrative, Job has demanded to see God. His friends cautioned him and told him about God. Their words were unsatisfying. The Job had an experience of God "out of the whirlwind." God doesn't offer any satisfying logic or argument about the questions of suffering and justice. God shows Job a small part of the whole. It is enough. Job says, "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you."

Job intuits that he had "uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know." In a sense, he doesn't have "an answer" for his questions about suffering and injustice. Instead he has an experience which transcends them.

His final phrase is ambiguous. Scholars have debated its meaning. In the original Hebrew, there is no object for the first verb. The phrase "Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes" could be rendered "Therefore I despise and turn around in dust and ashes" or "Therefore I retract and give up my dust and ashes." Job abandons his lawsuit. He does not necessarily admit he was wrong, however.

In the prose epilogue God scolds Job's friends for their poor theological counsel. Job intercedes for the friends and God accepts Job's prayer. Then Job is restored. The final scene is one of harmony, healing and reconciliation.

The "Job" in me finds much to ponder. On one hand, I've had experiences of knowing God that transcend knowing about God. I trust in a felt way that is different from trusting in a "knowing" way. But I also find myself unsatisfied in the presence of great suffering and injustice that finds no happy ending.

I trust in the tradition of Job that God honors our honest complaint. I can contend with God. I can also dissolve before the Mystery. I find comfort having intuited a vastness that relativises all that is in a whole which reconciles. But I am more comforted by the personal presence of God in our suffering and injustice revealed in the story of Jesus. Jesus offers his pain and the evil his cross to God in trust, and look what God does with that offering. That is personal. We can also offer our experience of suffering and evil to God and ask that God use our offering as well for the healing and reconciliation of the world. Resurrection is more, ultimately, than restoration.

Lowell
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The Rev. Lowell Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, AR