Comforting the downcast: some thoughts on the friends of Job

“...For He casts down the pride of the arrogant,

but He saves those of downcast eyes. He rescues

anyone who is innocent...”

--Job 22:29-30

“Have your hands clean, and you will be saved...” is how the above passage ends.  Eliphaz is telling Job what sounds like good advice.  It seems true. I think that is part of what makes it sound so strange to me.  Here we have one of those famous friends of Job who have come to comfort him in his hour of need. According to the story, this man has sat in the dirt in silence with Job for three days out of sympathy for his friend.  He (along with Bildad, Zophar and Job) has –at this point in the story—now engaged in a spirited debate about God’s justice and mercy for almost 20 chapters (and there are still a few more to come).  And in the end the main thrust of his argument (and of Zophar & Bildad) is that if you repent and confess your sins, God will be merciful. God saves “...those of downcast eyes. He rescues anyone who is innocent...”  And one can imagine these same words coming out of a minister today:

Brothers and sisters!

The cleansing power of Jesus has come to wash your sins away!

He will wash the stain of sin from your hands.  His saving blood

will wash your whiter than snow. Let Jesus wash you! Let Jesus

wash the stain of sin off your hands and you will be saved!

I can hear it.  But the problem is –the complication here in this particular story is—that Job is not being punished for any particular sin.  And though this supposedly wise friend doesn’t know that, we do –because we read chapters 1 and 2 and we saw God talking with Satan and handing Job over to him.  We know that what has befallen Job has nothing to do with any sin Job has committed but simply because God has allowed it. God has allowed Satan power over his servant Job as part of some heavenly “test.”  And so, in the back of my head as I read this advice, what am I supposed to make of it? What am I to make of Job’s friends and their seemingly wise (if banal) theological advice?

Too often these three are simply dismissed as stooges; straw men.  The fact that they don’t have any idea what is going on between God and Job, is used as an excuse to dismiss without consideration them and the theology they rode in on.  And this is all because of the context.  We know the story and so we know their basic premise –that Job has brought these afflictions upon himself—is wrong.  And in the context of the book, it begins to seem a little ironic that such seemingly good advice (or theology) is so very wrong.  Which leaves me only to remark on the inspired use of irony by the author of this book:  A character (3 of them, in fact) propose something we believe to be true about God and His justice, His mercy, and yet the in the context of the narrative these truths are shown (ironically) to be completely false.  That seems kind of bold –on both a literary and a theological level.  And yet, to push my point a little further, let me move forward to chapter 25 & 26 where Bildad offers a vision of God that prefigures God’s own response to Job at the end of the book. Bildad asks whether anyone can be virtuous in God’s eyes? God, who “spreads the North above the void” who “fastens up the water in the clouds” who sets a boundary between light and dark, who crushes Rahab (i.e. the behemoth, not the woman from Jericho), whose breath gives light to the heavens; a God who transcends human imagining... who of us can be virtuous in His eyes? What right do we have to question His judgment? Well, that’s certainly true.  And yet, Job responds to this with a statement so bitter and sarcastic that it made my heart leap.  He says:

“To one so weak, what a help you are...” (26:1)

I almost laughed out loud when I read this; it caught me off guard to stumble upon something so sarcastic and obviously humorous in the midst of all this suffering.  It is as if Job says to his friends:

Oh, of course you are right. Yes. It is such a comfort to know

that my children died, my crops failed, my property has been destroyed

and my skin is falling off and my wife is encouraging me to commit

suicide –but God is so amazing and transcendent that I shouldn’t
question His plans!  Anyway, I’m sure I must have done something
wrong. Yes, even these running sores must be part of God’s amazing plan.
Thank you. Now I understand and now everything feels better. 
Thank you. What a comfort and a help you are; such dear dear friends!

Please come again!  Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
–If only I still had a door.

It also struck me as a kind of slap in the face.  I recognized in it an honest and bitter response to such theologizing of pain.  “To one so weak, what a help you are...” Those words spoke to me about the value of such talk; to speak of suffering and God’s majesty in such a way suddenly felt sacrilegious. And I began to wonder, how many times have I been like Bildad or Eliphaz?  How many times have I –sincerely trying to comfort someone—fell into the trap of platitudes about God’s glory and mercy and love and how we can’t understand –but God has His plans and we just need to repent and... And I wondered, how much harm have I done?  How many hearts have I hardened by my words of comfort?

And looking back into the story and wondering what should his friends have done? What should I do when faced with someone who is in crisis and in need of comfort?  And I keep coming back to one moment in the story:

“The news of all the disasters that had fallen on Job

came to the ears of three of his friends.  Each of them

set out from home... and by common consent they decided

to go and offer him sympathy and consolation.  Looking

at him from a distance, they could not recognize him;

they wept aloud and tore their robes and threw dust over

their heads.  They sat there on the ground beside him

for seven days and seven nights; never speaking a word

for they saw how much he was suffering.”

–Job 2:11-13

I am thinking about those times I went into a hospital room and began to theologize about suffering and I wonder if my words weren’t more to protect and comfort me than the person I was visiting.  I wonder if perhaps I shouldn’t learn a lesson from Job’s three friends.  Perhaps the best thing we can do when we are faced with suffering is just that: sit with them in silence as best and for as long as we can, and if there is something needing to be said, perhaps you can just let your tears speak for themselves.  There is a lot of comfort in a friend’s silence and in a friend’s tears, and a lot of truth in someone willing to just sit and be present with us in our time of need.

And I can speak to that, from experience.  I remember waking up in the ICU and seeing an unexpected face sitting nearby, just waiting with me, in silence, tears glistening in her eyes.  There was no need to speak. That unexpected presence was all the theology I needed.

If Job’s friends had only remained silent... but that would be a different story.

The Law & the Good News--a meditation for the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

 “He has anointed me to bring

good news to the afflicted...

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

sight to the blind... to proclaim

a year of favor...”

--Luke 4:18-19

In today’s first readings we hear that stirring passage from Nehemiah (cf.8:2-10) that tells of the unrolling of the scroll and the reading of the law before all the people and how the people began to weep when they heard the law.  But Nehemiah, Ezra and the Levites remind the people that this is a day not for weeping but for celebrating. The law is supposed to be a source of consolation and renewal and joy, not an oppressive burden.

And there is an echo of this story in the Gospel for today.  Jesus unrolls the scroll and reads from Isaiah the passage I quoted above. And when He finishes, says something so beautiful it astonishes His audience: Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. (cf. 4:21)

Jesus is the Word of God, the Law come in person into their midst –and what does he bring? Fearful judgment and hard justice? That is not what He comes to proclaim.  He comes to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, and good news to the afflicted! Liberty, sight, and good news; a year of favor.  Quite a jubilee, I would say.  That is what Jesus brings, the same Jesus who tells us elsewhere that He has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.  He is the fulfillment of the law.  In the next several chapters of Luke we will see Jesus go about healing the blind, setting people free from illness and demons, feeding the hungry, cleansing the leper, and proclaiming a message of love and mercy.  This is the law in its fullness abiding among us; He is the law.

When I wrote about that passage from Nehemiah a few months back I focused on the weeping of the people. I was struck by their tears, because I had recently read Deuteronomy (and Leviticus and Numbers) and the echoing of all those laws, those restrictions, regulations was still reverberating in my head.  In a half ironic mode, I had to wonder if some of those tears weren’t tears of dread: Lord, what have we got ourselves into! Weren’t we better off not knowing? But, in all seriousness, we are never better off in ignorance. Because ignorance is captivity.  Ignorance is slavery; it is life in Plato’s cave; fearing shadows.  The law sets us free.  But how can that be?  If the law sets regulations on our behavior, then aren’t we simply trading one for of slavery for another?

And I guess that depends on how we look at the law.  Do we see “the law” (the Ten Commandments, the Deuteronomic code, etc) as a rule book meant to control our behavior, a way of keeping us in check?  Or do we see it as a guidebook, an instruction manual, that helps us live our lives more fully, more completely, more joyfully?

Do you hear the law as good news? Does it set you free? Or does it sound like the turning of a key in a lock, the clanking of shackles fastened to your ankles?

Does it open your eyes? Or does it feel like a darkness cast over them?

How do you see the law?

Recently someone at my house told me I was being passive aggressive. Their words hurt. It was like a stinging slap to my face (or my ego).  And my gut reaction was to lash back. To defend myself with excuses and reasons for why I had behaved and spoken the way I had.  But, whether my reasons were valid or not, what I was really saying is: I don’t want to see that truth.  I don’t want to know that truth.  I would rather be blind to it. I would rather be ignorant.

But –with time, and reflection—I realized there was truth in what they said. There was a truth that could only set me free if I accepted it and let it dwell in my heart.  There words opened my eyes to something I had not wanted to see, but something that was true and something that was becoming a bit of a habit.  And I could only be set free from the captivity of my own habits and ego if I listened and accepted and let myself hear them not as something to fear, but as “good news.” A chance to grow and change and become better. I had to adjust the way I received those words. I had to receive them not as a slap on the face, but as a kind of nudge –like bumping up against a guard rail that protects us from going over a dangerous cliff.  It is hard to accept sometimes, but occasionally we need to be corrected. That’s how we get better: whether it is at math or spelling, fixing a dryer, or just being a husband.

How do we hear the law? I think the good news is this: regardless of what we think, the sound of God’s law is always the sound of a door opening.   

Meditation for the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time

Meditation for the 2^nd Sunday of Ordinary Time

“Do whatever He tells you...”

--John 2:1-11

The last words we hear from the Blessed Virgin Mary are pretty good advice: Do whatever He tells you.  They are spoken in the famous Wedding at Cana story.  And much has been made of their important advice.  Do whatever He tells you.  Yes. Good advice, for sure. And because what happens next is the first miracle, or as John calls them signs, i.e.  the first manifestation of Christ’s glory, it would seem to be pretty important advice too.

In this too familiar story wherein Jesus turns the water into wine, we are presented with that striking moment when Mary comes to her Son and says: “They have no wine,” to which Jesus responds: “Woman, how does your concern affect me. My hour has not yet come.” (cf. 2:3-4) Mary then turns to the servants and gives them her advice: Do whatever He tells you.   And the servants do it and suddenly there is more than enough wine and the wine is so good that the steward thinks the hosts have held back their best wine for the last.  This wonderful little story (11 verses) is rich with theological truths that have been explored and expounded since the days of the Church fathers.  So, I wasn’t imagining that I would be making any new or important discoveries, however I wanted to try my hand at it. And yet as I set pondering Mary’s advice, I found myself instead drawn to something else even more:  What He tells them to do...

Jesus tells them to fill the jars with water, and they do. They fill them to the brim.  Then He tells them to “draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” (2:8)  And that was somehow the part that caught my attention as I listened Sunday during mass.  That part about the water.  Jesus didn’t ask the servants to do anything magical or dramatic or exotic or even out of the ordinary.  He simply asked them to fill the jars with water.  And then He asked them to present some of it to the “master of the feast.”  It was as if I had heard this story for the first time.  I couldn’t stop thinking about that water.  It’s just water.  That is all they bring.  And yet it is wine by the time they present it to the steward (or master).   And it isn’t just any wine, it is the good wine (sometimes translated: best).  What does this little detail mean? The water?

I can’t say for certain, but I want to propose something.  Water. It is common and every day we use it to rinse and wash and flush and soak and moisten and even to drink... We give it away for free at restaurants.  We forget to shut off the sprinkler (sometimes overnight) and waste it.  But, not to worry—it’s only water. I was thinking about that.  How Jesus asks the servants to do something they probably did every day of their lives: fill the water jars with water.  Nothing special.  Just do you work.  And they did. They did it with integrity. They filled those jars to the brim.  And that was all that Jesus required of them and that was how the first sign came to be; how the Kingdom of God began to be revealed; by some servants doing their menial everyday chore.  But there is one more piece to that puzzle: they did it for Jesus. 

Do you want to bring about the Kingdom of God? Do you want to be part of a sign, part of a miracle, a manifestation of God’s glory?  You don’t have to be a priest or a nun or a missionary to a foreign land; just do your work, your ordinary every day work –but do it for Jesus. Are you a math teacher? Teach for Jesus. You don’t have to proselytize, just teach each student with love and compassion and kindness.  Are you a salesperson? Then treat each of your customers as if they too were beloved children of God. Are you an executive, a company leader: then lead with patience and love and gentleness and integrity and honesty.

Jesus isn’t asking us to go out into the desert and wear sackcloth and eat locus.  He is asking us to bring our ordinary lives and work and live them and work them for Him. Bring Him your water: your tears, your sweat, your labor, your rest, your sorrow and your joy, even your laughter; give it to Him.  Fill the jars full with it. Even up to the brim. If we do that, He will do the rest: He will turn our water into wine. And not just Boones Farm; we’re talking something really good. We are all invited to this wedding feast –come. Bring some water with you. You don’t want to miss this.