July 21

Job 5 and 6/Luke 15

Now that Eliphaz has begun offering advice, he warms to the task, confidently launching into a disquisition on the principle of divine judgment.  He cautions Job to avoid rage against God and the heavenly council, noting that "surely vexation kills the fool" (verse 2) and listing all of the terrible consequences (including, rather insensitively, the crushing of one's children) of such an action.  Still convinced that Job has provoked God's wrath, Eliphaz asserts that affliction such as Job's does not come by chance, from fate, or even ultimately from God.  Rather, it is, at its source, the product of our own sinfulness since "human beings are born to trouble just as sparks fly upward" (verse 7).  And Eliphaz even constructs a great play on words here that echoes Genesis, Chapter 3 when he says that trouble does not originate from the ground (Hebrew adamah), but from mortals (Hebrew adam). 

 

He still holds onto the tried and true formula to explain Job's circumstance:  One's suffering in life is in proportion to one's sin.  Suffering is dispensed by God.  God is just.  Therefore, Job must be guilty of a great and grievous sin.  So, he advises Job to put his case before God since God does infinitely marvelous things, which he proceeds to list, just for emphasis.  Great advice—except Eliphaz misses an essential human element here:  Job's pain.  Perhaps we have all had—or maybe we have been—friends of this sort, friends who are so wrapped up in explaining how the suffering friend got into this fix or what the hurting friend should do next that they talk right past the friend, forgetting to closely look and carefully listen in order to understand the deeper dimensions and possibilities present in the situation, to be completely present with the other person.

 

But—maybe Eliphaz isn't really speaking to Job here at all.  Maybe he is speaking to his own fears.  What if Job IS innocent?  How could he (and other humans, for that matter) make sense of God and God's justice then?  It's much safer to believe in the simpler version of divine justice that works similarly to Newton's Third Law of Motion (to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction) within a world of hopelessly sinful humans and a tyrannical God who cannot trust even the angels.  So to end his part of the debate, he challenges Job to justify himself.

 

In Chapter 6, Job responds by asserting that the degree of his suffering far outweighs any sin he may have committed.  As he begins to speak, we witness his change from a symbolic, archetypal figure (the righteous and prosperous man who has lost his possessions as well as his children) to a real human being.  He makes clear that he knows his suffering comes from God.  In fact, he goes on to explain that he is consoled to know that even though he suffers greatly, he has not concealed the fact that his suffering comes from God (verse 10).  Yet, he is also keenly aware of his human weakness—his is a body of clay, not stone or bronze—and so why should he be patient, since he, a mere human, cannot stand against the power of God?  His only desire is that God would put him out of his misery quickly.

 

The divine aspects of his condition clearly explained as he understands them, he turns in verse 14 to the responses of his friends, declaring that his friends are treacherous because they have withheld kindness.  They have not asked about or listened to his pain or his need, but instead Eliphaz has offered unrequested, impertinent, superficial advice, in his view, that amounts to a moral betrayal.  Challenging his friends in return, he asserts, "Teach me, and I will be silent; make me understand how I have gone wrong. . . .Turn now, my vindication is at stake.  Is there any wrong on my tongue?" (verses 24-30).

 

As we turn from the point in Job's story where all seems lost, in Luke, chapter 15, we find three parables of that which is lost and found:  the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the lost prodigal son.  The form of these three linked stories is the exemplary parable, or example story, a story like that of the Good Samaritan that addresses an essential question of how we are in human relationship with one another.  In this instance, the question that forms the underlying assumption or warrant for the parables stems from the Pharisees grumbling in verse 2:  "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."  So—the question becomes:  How are we, or how should we be, in relationship to sinners?  As is the case in the Job story above, the central issue here also turns on genuine listening and attention to others.  Only here such listening becomes an essential practice of discipleship.

 

The underlying issue that Jesus is addressing is not the state of lostness per se or how something or someone got to be lost, but rather what is worth finding.  In contrast to the Pharisees and scribes who believe that sinners and tax collectors deserve no attention, no welcome, no finding, these parables argue that what is lost is at risk, what is lost must be searched for diligently, and what is lost must be celebrated when it is found because the finding represents the restoration of wholeness and workings of grace.  Notice here that Jesus talks about finding, and thus about discipleship, not in the context of justice and equity, but rather in the context of grace.  The shepherd leaves the ninety-nine sheep to search for the missing one, the women turns her attention away from the nine silver coins on the table to find the lost tenth one, and the father turns his attention from the son who has not disobeyed to celebrate the return of his prodigal brother.  In each of these instances, the parable discusses not only the relationship between God and the individual, but also the relationship between the individual and the larger community.  Jesus rejects the formulaic, strict justice of the God that Eliphaz describes in Job for the God of grace, the God of potential, the God of love.

 

·         As Christians, how can we make sense of the injustice we find in the world?  After all, if God is the sovereign God in whom we trust and believe, shouldn't God fix injustice?

·         As disciples charged with finding what is lost so that it may be restored to wholeness, what is our responsibility to that which is not lost---to the ninety-nine sheep while we pursue the one who is missing?