Out of the Whirlwind

This is our last week with Job (bum, bum bum, Hallelujah!) Maybe that’s how you feel, maybe not.

We’ve been waiting for God to respond ever since God and Satan went to Vegas and God doubled down on Job’s religious integrity. Job proves that he’s not living the spiritual life simply because he wants to protect what’s his and get even more, he displays genuine gratitude for God’s gifts even in the face of loss. And Job’s been waiting for God to respond ever since he got into the debate with his friends. Job loses everything, curses the day of his birth and then he gets into a fight with his friends about how God is and how God’s world works.

Job’s friends say that God’s retribution governs the world. You do something wrong, you get punished. You do something right, and good things happen. Job says, “ but I’m innocent and all this bad stuff has still happened to me.” Job’s friends say, “you’re not listening. This is always true. This is how the world is. God couldn’t be perfectly just unless this was true.” Job calls his friends a bunch of windbags, and turns and talks directly to God saying, “I know if I could just make my case before you, you would prove me innocent.” And Job goes back and forth wrestling with this. You see he had believed in the view of his friends before now. But Job has to believe there’s another way of holding it together. Retribution can’t be the governing power of the universe, something else must be, but Job can’t put his finger on it.

Then in chapter 38 God speaks, out of the whirlwind. God always comes in style. This is what we’ve been waiting for, some answers. This is what Job’s been waiting for, some explanation of his suffering. Some vindication if the face of his friends, some explanation to why did this happen and why is it so painful and why didn’t you stop it God. Finally there will be some answers to why…

And God speaks out of the whirlwind, and starts talking about creation. We wanted answers about Job’s specific problems, and our specific problems and God’s showing us the highlight reel of the universe? We spent five weeks with Job for this? But there are some answers here. They might not be as neat and tidy as we would like them to be, but if the answers were too clean cut, they wouldn’t have much of a chance of being true.

God gives two different speeches, we read snippets of each this morning. You can read God’s tone in many ways. God seems angry perhaps, defensive, hurt, ready to challenge. Almost John Waynelike, “gird up your loins like a man, pilgrim.” “Ok Job if you’re so smart, figure this out.” If you were to create the universe, what would it’s measurements be? Where would you put the cornerstone, or how would you set the footings? How would you hold the sea in it’s place saying, “go there but nowhere else.” How would you weave together the clouds? Make sure their soft. How much snow would you store up for the winter? What about the hail, where would you keep it? And the rain. Do you think rain has a Dad? Do you think you’d be able to find the mother who gives birth to each little drop of dew? Can you hold the stars together, can you loosen Orion’s belt?

Somewhere in this speech though, God’s tone seems to change. It’s less defensive and more playful, more proud. And at the same time God starts showing Job, Job’s proper place. God turns to the animals, “Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Have you watched the calving of the deer? Isn’t it incredible? Have you watched them grow and go off on their own, isn’t it amazing? And the wild ox, was that created for you? No, it was created because I just wanted it to be. It doesn’t need you. If you tame it, you will depend on it for your grain and to help with your labor, it will not depend on you. What about the hawks and the eagles? They don’t depend on you, they’re not for you. They fly free because I want them to. And the ostrich, have you ever seen anything so silly. It’s to big to fly but it flaps it’s wings around and it sticks its head in the sand and it stomps on it’s eggs, it’s so stupid, but I love it. I created it, and it’s good and its free.

And Job answers God, “eep, I’m so small.”

We may feel like God’s speech doesn’t address Job’s particular situation, but God gives Job an answer he was looking for. Job’s been fighting with his friends over this issue of retribution. They have a view where this eye for an eye, reap what you sow business is what makes the world go around. But the speech says that grace, that gift is the heart of the world. At the center is the power of God that is just wildly throwing blessing and gift and creativity wildly out into the universe to be free and do what it will.

God’s answer to Job and Job’s friends will also reorient them and us. Job’s friends have a world where human beings are at the center. Everything is in service of human beings, including and especially God. In the world of Job’s friends, God is tied to making sure that every instance of right and wrong gets punished or rewarded. The speech says that God isn’t constrained by our human notions of justice, that God is free to do what God wants. And what God wants to do is create out of love. God loves to create and loves all that has been created. All of creation is given the freedom to be what it is intended to be because God loves it. Job and his friends were thinking that everything was created so that the world could make sense for them and serve them. But God is saying everything is created to be what God wants it to be, which means that human beings aren’t the point of creation, they’re one important part of creation. When God pauses, Job feels his smallness.

This smallness is tricky. Many people are deeply unsettled by this view. For some, if humans aren’t at the center of God’s world and creation isn’t solely for human use and consumption, then the universe seems pointless and cold. I don’t think that is where this view needs to lead us though. Are parent’s only able to love one child? Do they see one as less important than another? Couldn’t God love the family of creation as a whole, love each child and part for who and what they are, wanting them to grow to their fullest potential, and delighting in how everything is interconnected in a beautiful organic whole?

I find myself drawn to places where I feel small, oceans, mountains, open spaces. I think the smaller I feel, the more I’m overwhelmed by a sense of God’s creativity, generosity, and beauty. The smaller I feel, the larger and more powerfully present God becomes.

And as counterintuitive as it seems, I believe this view has healing and comforting power even in the midst of suffering. I’ve been reading a book titled, Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv. The book is about how our children’s connection to nature is fading fast. But in one chapter about the healing power of nature the author shares a story of a twenty year old college student who described the importance of nature to her emotional health, “Growing up, I lived in a house that had a fairly big back yard and a creek across the street. Nature was the one place where, when everything in my life was going bad, I could go and not have to deal with anyone else. My dad died of brain cancer when I was nine. It was one of the most difficult times for my family and myself. Going out into nature was one outlet that I had…I believe there is something about nature – that when you are in it, you realize there are far larger things at work than yourself. It helps put problems in perspective.”

Now I wouldn’t say that nature put things in perspective for this nine-year old child. Losing a father is a big problem no matter what our place in the world is. I wonder though, if that child experienced the overwhelming creative power of God when she was in nature. Maybe she sensed that at the heart of everything was a power that created because it chose to do something beautiful, it wanted to give. Maybe she could sense deep within her that at the heart of this immense generosity must be an equally powerful and overwhelming love. Her smallness made the overwhelming love and generosity of God even bigger, big enough to be of some comfort even when she was losing a love that was central to her life.

After Job expresses his smallness, God brings Job face to face with Behemoth and Leviathan. Behemoth seems to be a sort of Hippopotamus plus, a land animal that cannot possibly be tamed. And Leviathan is a mythic sea monster that occurs from time to time in the Bible. Both represent chaos and limit for human beings. These are simply places where humans can’t go. To the second speech, Job’s response is, “I know no purpose of yours can be thwarted. I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. Some scholars suggest a better translation of Job’s response, which is I recant, and I repent. In other words, “I take it back, I change my mind. I don’t see the world the way I did, the way my friends do.” I see things differently now.

In the second speech, God is very honest with Job. There are limits on human beings. You don’t live forever. You depend on the rest of creation and on me for survival, God says. You can’t defy the laws of nature. In other words, the same creation that is beautiful is also chaotic, the same creation we depend on can do us harm. But set in the context of what God has revealed about God’s nature, that the universe at its heart is about a power that is self-giving, that at the heart of this generosity is love, we have assurance that though there is chaos in the world, the world is not chaotic. Though there is evil in the world, the world is not evil.

Job gives us a vision of God who is creative and generous, a God who has such great admiration and respect for creation that it requires the giving away of control and power. God loves the ostritch and it’s free. God loves the eagle and it’s free. God loves you and me and we’re free. We’re free to do good, and we’re free to do harm. Just as everything in creation is given power, we too are given great power. Out of respect and love for creation, God gives up control, just as parents must give up control if they love their children. And when you give up control over what has been created, you can’t protect creation from all harm.
But the world is not left on its own, there is still this holy power of love at the heart of everything. This love will call us to be open to it. This love will encourage us to love what God loves. The love won’t force anything, but this love is powerful and it will seek to bend our behavior. It will show us that our power is not to be used over others, it is to be used to serve others. It will call for a specific kind of justice from us. Though God’s respect for all of creation will not force justice, God’s love for all of creation still requires it. Love will call us to value humanity that is undervalued. Love will call us to expand our reverence and respect to non-human creation. Love will call us to pour out our hearts for those among us who are hurting and broken, to join our hearts with those who are suffering. And when that happens, when love lives on despite suffering, when hearts are joined together with the great love at the center of everything, God finds ways to do something good and new and beautiful out of love once again. Thanks be to God. Amen.