July 20

Job 3 and 4/Luke 14

As we left Job, his friends had gathered to grieve with him over his physical affliction, certain that he had kindled God's wrath by some wrongdoing.  With Chapter 3, we plunge into the poetic dialogue that forms the actual narrative.  Here we see Job beginning to lose patience.  In his physical agony, he laments that he was ever born—a very specific lament.  His is a passionate formal curse lamenting not his conception, but the very fact that he has been brought into the world, a world containing inexplicable sorrow such as he is now experiencing,  through birth.  Thus, he is not cursing God for giving him life, but rather the disorder and suffering of his worldly experience.  Yet, even this fiery response may well represent a quarrel with the God of nature as well as Job's despising the dignity of our essential being as humans.  Indeed, the very cosmos—day and night, clouds, stars—all is cursed into gloom and deep darkness as he imagines the rest and peace, the freedom from temptation, trouble, or imprisonment his body would have experienced had the day and night shut down his mother's womb, in other words, had he died during the birth process.  In his misery, he expresses the first of a number of philosophical questions that relate to his story.  "Why is light given to one in misery and life to the bitter in soul?" he asks in verse 20, followed by the question in verse 23:  "Why is light given to one who cannot see the way, whom God has fenced in?"  In short, he appears to be asking why God would give us that which we cannot always fully use or enjoy.  Of course, in asking such questions, Job risks appearing ungrateful for what God has provided.

 

Poor Job!  His situation moves his friend, Eliphaz, to speak tentatively and carefully in Chapter 4.  After all, his friends in their silence must have been wondering, could Job be a hypocrite?  So when he speaks, Eliphaz reminds Job that he himself has served as a model and support for others, and that perhaps he should not allow his physical suffering to skew his perspective, but rather should follow the wise counsel that he (good and upright Job) has offered to others.  After all, Eliphaz reasons, "Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope?"  (verse 6).   Eliphaz here relies upon moral certainties, presuming Job's acceptance of the principle of just divine retribution for "who that was innocent ever perished or where were the upright cut off?" (verse 7).  Since Job must have offended God in some way, his friend reasons, his only positive course of action is to acknowledge God's power to reprove God's creation, including humans, but also to heal their wounds.

 

Eliphaz is also the mystic in the group of friends, and so he can't help but relate a vision he has experienced during the night that he thinks might prove helpful to Job.  The spirit form that brushes past Eliphaz and stands before him offers two more, presumably divine, philosophical questions:  "Can mortals be righteous before God?" and "Can human beings be pure before their Maker?" (verse 17).  In short, since God even "charges his angels with error," (verse 18), how much more prone to error must humans, created a little less than the angels, be?  So, they perish or are destroyed both day and night and "they die devoid of wisdom" (verse 21).  So much for friendly, helpful support and comfort!

 

As we shall see as Job's story progresses, his friends are of little help because their understanding of his situation is obscured by their moral orthodoxy, by their narrow focus on a formulaic notion of God and God's working in the world.  The Pharisees and lawyers in Luke 14 also hold such a legalistic view, inviting Jesus to the large extra Sabbath meal served right after worship, so they could entrap him.  The biblical text notes that they were "watching him," and the verb used indicates a sinister kind of espionage.

 

Since spectators were often present to witness large meals such as this one, the presence of the man with dropsy, what we would now call edema, is not unusual.  What is unusual is Jesus' response, since upon his seeing the man he addresses the thoughts and intentions, the planned entrapments for him,  of his legalistic hosts, asking if it is lawful to cure people on the Sabbath—a question that voices a moral dilemma since the Pharisees and lawyers could not reply in the affirmative since that would undo the legalistic trap that they had prepared for Jesus.  Nor could they reply in the negative since the law clearly does not condemn acts of mercy.  Wisely, they remain silent observers of Jesus' act of healing here. 

 

Addressing their superior attitude further, Jesus comments upon the presumption and arrogance of those in authority by immediately offering a parable on humility followed by one about guests invited to a great dinner who spurn the hospitality of their host, finding an array of worldly affairs to attend to as reasons for not attending.  In both parables, he chastises those who believe it's all about themselves.  He bridges these two stories with the advice, starting in verse 12, not to invite to meals exclusively those guests who can repay the invitation in kind, but also those in need of the meal who cannot repay this gesture of hospitality.

 

Resonating throughout this chapter is the theme of the nature and cost of discipleship, which is not dependent upon or tied to worldly power or position, but rather rests upon our willingness to heed God's call to meet our fellow human beings in their humanness and care for them despite the costs, a call that involves the cost of leaving behind possessions and persons whom we care about—parents, siblings, spouses, and children, even our very selves. 

 

Jesus here provides one more metaphor in verse 34:   "Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?"    Since ancient salt was not pure sodium chloride, the other materials present in the salt could frequently spoil, causing the salt to lose its integrity.  It is just such a potential loss of integrity that prompted theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer to write The Cost of Discipleship, a book that reminds us that easy Christianity in which God is not sovereign and Jesus is not lord, and cheap grace—empty religious practice and the expectation of salvation without discipleship—are not adequate responses to God's call.    

 

·         What is the nature and cost of discipleship in today's postmodern world immersed in rapid snippets of communication via social media and concern for surface appearances?

·         Can humans be righteous enough before God?  Does righteousness matter?