How I read: a meditation on certain passages from Job 38

 “Who makes provision for the raven

when his little ones cry out to God

craning their necks in search of food?”

--Job 38:41

This morning as I read chapter 38 in the book of Job, I was struck by a few things and they made me reflect on how I read and why.  The first thing that I underlined was this passage above.  I found that image of the baby ravens, the “little ones,” crying “out to God” very delightful.  The idea that the birds are calling out to God, singing to God, delights me.  In the context of the book of Job, this is the voice of God calling out to Job from the whirlwind, and challenging him to a kind of duel; or to a reconsideration of his complaint, his position in the grand scheme of things.  God keeps asking Job these wonderful intensely primal questions:

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

What supports its pillars at their bases?

Who laid its cornerstone?

Who pent up the sea?

Have you ever given orders to the morning?

Which is the way to the home of the light?

Where does darkness live?

Have you visited the place where the snow is stored?

(cf. 38:1-22ff)

Questions that Job clearly cannot answer.  And yet God continues.  And in the midst of all this there is this wonderful question about the ravens and their “little ones [who] cry out to God...”  I don’t have any deep insight into this, only the urge to pause and ponder it.  The little ones of the raven cry out to God.  It reminds me of a line from Wallace Stevens’s wonderful “Sunday Morning.”   

“I am content when wakened birds,

Before they fly, test the reality

Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings...”

I love that idea: the birds testing the reality of the morning or crying out to God for food.  It feels true to me. I believe in the truth of those birds crying out to God and anxiously testing the reality of the dawn... That makes sense to me.  It is how I read not only a book or a poem, but the world.  I don’t know why this is, but I think that all my life I have read with eyes that are constantly looking for God.  And finding Him –everywhere.

Here are two more passages that caught my eye; and not for any spiritual reason, but because they gave me pause.  First was verse 30.  I read:

“when the waters grow hard as stone

and the surface of the deep congeals...”

And I had to stop and wonder: Does Israel ever freeze? What parts of the Middle East experience this kind of cold; where a lake or a body of water would freeze over “hard as stone?”  I checked the Internet and there are occasions when Israel experienced deep cold snaps and had snow storms, but no mention of ponds or lakes freezing over.  So, then I wondered: does this detail give scholars some geographical clue about the author’s homeland? Clearly he or she was aware of such weather phenomenon’s as a hard freeze. Hmmm...  makes me wonder.

Second, I was curious about 38:31-33:

“Can you fasten the harness of the Pleiades,

or untie Orion’s bands?

Can you guide the Crown season by season

and show the Bear and its cubs which way to go?

Have you grasped the celestial laws?”

This little celestial moment gave me a brief thrill.  And it was especially that reference to the bear and her cubs.  According to the footnotes, the bear the author refers to is Ursa Major and her main cub is Ursa Minor.   Reading that got me wondering about ancient peoples and the stars, and my first thought was to wonder if this “bear” was an imposition of the translator. Did the ancient author actually refer to the constellation as a "bear?" (Biblehub.com is a good place to look for answers to questions like that. Find your verse, and click on the interlinear translation link. In this case the word translated as "the bear" is a feminine noun that could mean a female bear, but not necessarily. Much is being derived from the context.) Also, how do we know what ancient people saw in those constellations?   But when I did a little research I learned that several ancient cultures actually did see in this constellation the shape of a bear[1].  Which, of course, gave me to wonder about Orion, the hunter.  Anyway, it was kind of fun to research weather and constellations during my Bible study this morning. To follow the text wherever it leads... And to ponder the cooing of the doves in my backyard, and the cawing of the blue jays and to hear in them not random instinctive sounds, but an early morning office; a call to prayer; a reminder that we are all dependent upon that same beautiful love that laid the foundations for the earth, that fills the storehouse of the snow and knows the home of the light and where the darkness lives.  Those little ones crying out to God remind me that I should get down on my knees this beautiful quiet morning and do the same –even if it is just to say a simple thank you, because I have hot coffee and cold toast and a quiet house.  And a “good book” to read.

And of course, tonight, when I go for a walk and gaze up at the stars I will feel a new kinship with the world, even with a Hebrew poet who lived perhaps 3000 years ago.  Anyway, that’s how I read...  How about you?

---

[1] Although some also saw in it a crustacean, among other things. For more information click here.

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.