Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 18, 2009

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

So. This week Job finally gets his answer from God. All through the book to this point, as Job has suffered calamity after calamity, he has insisted that what has happened to him is unjust and that God should therefore fix it, or should have prevented it from happening in the first place. The calamities that have befallen him are unjust because he is a righteous man, and God, he is absolutely certain, doesn’t do these bad things to righteous people. Job is certain that he knows God and how God is, how God works, how God behaves. Job is certain that he knows that God rewards the righteous and punished the wicked. He knows that God is the cause of whatever happens. He knows that God does not reward the wicked or punish the righteous, and he expects—no, he demands—that God be God the way Job knows God is.

Then, in our reading this morning, God appears to Job. God replies to Job, and boy is Job surprised. God says, basically, Who are you to question me? I am the God of creation. You aren’t. So stop speaking about things about which you know nothing! You think you know me, punk? You don’t know me. You can’t know me. I am too far above you. Get used to it! That’s a paraphrase of course, but it pretty well sums up God’s response to Job, I think. And it’s all the answer Job gets. No explanation. No divine self-justification. Just I’m God. You’re not. Deal!

And, frankly, it strikes me as a rather problematic response. Just what are we to make of it? On the one hand, what it says is pretty obvious. God is God. We are not. But is that all there is to it? It seems to me that there must be more to it than that. So, let’s dig behind the answer and see what else we can discover.

When I dig into God’s answer I find that the answer—I’m God and you’re not—tells us something about what God thinks Job’s basic problem is. If God’s answer is you have to let me be God, Job’s problem must be that he’s not letting God be God. So we need to ask: How is Job not letting God be God? He’s not letting God be God, I think, because he is so sure that he understands God. He’s so sure that he knows how God works, with his “God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked” theology. Job has in effect built a box out of that theology, and he has tried to cram God into his box. He’s even convinced himself that God actually fits into his box and that God has settled comfortably inside it. He’s packed God into his box, tucked in any loose ends that were sticking out, and closed and sealed the lid. Voila! Done! God’s in a box, something we can understand. Something we can control. Something non-mysterious, non-threatening, non-challenging.

Then along comes God and blows Job’s God box to smithereens! You can’t put me in a box! I’m God! God! Do you get that! Do you have any idea what that means? Have you considered what I have done? Have you considered the wonders of my creation? Could you do that? No! You couldn’t even begin too that! So be done with your putting me in a box! I don’t fit in no stinking box! I’m not limited by your certainties about me! I’m God, and I will be God my way not your way! Don’t’ tell me that your suffering is unjust! Don’t tell me that I have to reward righteousness and punish wickedness. I’m God. You’re not, and that’s all there is to it.

So much for the idea, that is so prevalent in the Old Testament, in books like Deuteronomy and in many of the Psalms, that the righteous prosper in this life and the wicked perish. Job is the great Biblical reply to that very common theology. It blows the whistle on it and says that’s not really how things are. That is the principal point of the book of Job. That is how it functions within the Old Testament canon.

And perhaps we’re thinking: But I’ve never tried to put God in that box. I know that things don’t work that way. Just look at all the innocent people who suffer in this life. And look at all the crooks and thieves, many of them in three piece suits and corner offices, who prosper. I’ve never tried to put God in Job’s box. Fair enough, but I suppose that it will come as no surprise to you when I say that I don’t think that truth ends our inquiry. In our reading God says to Job you can’t put me in your theological box. We may not have the same box that Job had, but this story demands that we ask ourselves: Do we try to do the same thing Job did? Do we try to put God in a box? Do we try to put limits around God, to pin God down to something we can understand? Maybe even to something we can manipulate? I know that a lot of people do. I worry that I do. Perhaps we all do. Here are some of the ways I’ve seen people, including myself, try to lock God up in a box.

Christianity tries continuously to lock God up in a book, and not just in a book but in a particular interpretation of that book. We make the Bible literally God’s words. In doing that we limit God to the words in the Bible. We lock God up in the Bible, something we can understand—or delude ourselves that we understand. Something we can carry around with us. Something we can point to and say See? Here’s God. Here’s how God is.

Once we lock God up in the Bible box, we can make God the ultimate authority for our ways of thinking about things, just as Job did. We can, for example, make God the final authority for our various prejudices. You want to justify slavery? Point to God in the Bible box. You’ll find a way to do it. You want to dehumanize gay and lesbian people? Point to God in the Bible box. You’ll find a way to do it.

Yet there’s something even more fundamental than that that we humans do to put God in a box. We refuse to be satisfied with being creatures and not gods. We refuse to live with God as a mystery. We demand all the answers. We can’t live with not knowing. We can’t live with uncertainty. We can’t live with the limitations our status as creatures imposes on us. So we reduce all knowledge to the kind of knowledge we can comprehend. We insist on reading the Bible literally, that is, factually, because we can comprehend facts. Facts leave no uncertainty. We reduce all truth to scientific truth and say that anything that science can’t prove isn’t true, anything science can’t study and measure isn’t real. We arrogate omniscience to ourselves, and we deny all ultimate mystery. We fight against the limitations of our status as creatures.

And God says to us just as God said to Job: I’m God and you’re not! I despise your arrogance! I laugh at your claims of omniscience! You think you know me? You don’t know me! I don’t fit in your book box! I don’t fit in your science box! I’m God! You’re not! Deal with it! That’s the lesson for us this morning. It’s not an easy one, but it is one we need to learn.

Now, I know as well as anyone that we humans have a drive, indeed a need, to have some knowledge about God. I’ve even written a book that claims to say a good deal about God. I preach to you about God all the time. So am I contradicting myself? Well, almost, but not quite. The thing we need to remember is that any knowledge we claim to have about God is partial, is conditional, is tentative. We must always leave open the possibility that we’re wrong. We must always say: God, this is the best I can do. I pray that it is faithful to you. Forgive me if it is not. In other words, in our struggle to know at least something about God, we must always remember that we are not God and never claim to have absolute knowledge about God like Job did. When we do we will never be arrogant toward those who believe other than we do. We will never claim to have the only truth about God. In other words, we will let God be God. Amen.