What does it mean to be great? That is the question our texts raise today. "Great" is a wide-ranging word: You can have a great king, great skill, a great storm, a great number, great joy, or great fear. You can use it in its Greek form, mega — as in megachurch; or in its Latin form, magna — as in magnify. It can refer to physical form, size, or height. Pull yourself up, stand tall, like the cedars of Lebanon! Be great!
Oh, just to touch on greatness! To shake the hand of an all-star, to have an audience with the president (or the pope), to crash a Hollywood party and mingle with the stars, to wave like a fool in front of the television cameras for the Today show. Oh, for that fifteen seconds of fame.
Well, Job was the greatest! "This man was the greatest of all the people of the east" (1:3) — until misfortune befell him! It is useless to try and quantify tragedy or grade degrees of suffering. Job's suffering is simply presented as a great fall, from most enviable to most pitiable. Now, we are all familiar with falls that are deserved, as when Enron officials go to jail or public officials get caught taking bribes. We also know that falls can be invited, as when we tempt fate. Other falls come inevitably from natural forces, as when the bloom fades from the flower. Robert Frost expressed this inevitability in his poem "Provide, Provide." "Too many fall from great and good / For you to doubt the likelihood."1
Job's fall is presented as arbitrary, brought about by a strange testing, suggested by the tempter and then permitted by the almighty. The fall is so great that we are left sitting in stunned silence, struggling for words. But still, Job worshiped! "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (1:21).
Last week, we saw the shift from story to argument, from the passive sufferer to the combative hero, from piety to protest. Job's world suddenly makes no sense; the law of retribution does not work; there is no justice! Job wants answers. He wants his day in court. He wants to take God on, face-to-face. He will defend himself and then see what God has to say. Sometimes he is presented as determined but still respectful; other times, he is defiant and seems to overstep the bounds of propriety. Either way, he is relentless!
Then, suddenly, in this text, God speaks — out of the whirlwind. The storm is a common mode of revelation in the ancient Near East and it is meant to invoke terror! "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" (v. 2). It takes a secular age like ours to be blasé about the voice of God — to think of an audience with God as some unambiguously good thing. Once God becomes a kindly old grandfather, you get pious politicians pronouncing God's truth and arrogant evangelists assuring us that they talk regularly to God.
Job suggests that when God speaks, you had better run for cover. Job had demanded answers, God comes with questions. "Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you!" (v. 3). With a kind of repetitive excess, the questions come with machine-gun rapidity. Where were you when? Can you? Do you know? Who but me has? In chapters 38 and 39 (seventy verses — we burdened you with only fourteen in our text), we are regaled with a poetic description of God's works, covering creation, the earth, the heavens, the natural world, the animal world, even the mythical or the primordial. God hammers away at the fact that Job is just an infinitesimal part of an awesome creation.
The sum of it is, "Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Any one who argues with God must respond" (40:2). Job is stunned. The "once great" Job answers, "See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth" (40:4). Then, as if to put the final nails in the coffin, God goes on for two more chapters! These chapters center on the great primeval creatures, Behemoth and Leviathan. They count iron as straw and bronze as rotten wood (41:27). Creatures without fear, they have no equal. They are symbolic of those edges of life that are a part of the created world and yet are chaotic and beyond our control. In an age that tames the wilderness, inoculates against disease, seeks to clone for perfection, and flies to the moon, it is hard to find an analogy (the Loch Ness monster?). Our monsters are microcosmic ... the fear that comes with a virus that won't be tamed, a potential plague that has no answers or the AIDS pandemic. Or, it may be simply the dread of death. God says of all monsters, "But I made them just as I made you!"
Does Job get an answer? To the questions that plagues us, the questions of justice, of fairness, of proper retribution, the answer is probably, "No." The chaotic may be contained, but it is not fully eliminated. Behemoth and Leviathan still lurk out there. Though we spend a lot of our energy denying, or controlling, the tragic in life, children still drown, spouses succumb to cancer, friends are hit by drunk drivers. Whether on the grand scale of the tsunami or in the anonymous death of an indigent, there is little clarity. We may be impressed by God's performance, but not satisfied.
So did Job get an answer? In a different sense, yes he did. God did not leave Job alone in his agony. For a time, Job's challenge is met with a deafening silence. But, finally, God does respond. Like other great heroes of the faith, Abraham, Moses, and Elijah, Job goes face-to-face with God and lives to tell about it. God goes from the hidden God (deus absconditus) to the revealed God (deus revelatus).
But the God revealed in the whirlwind is still ambiguous. Yes, the order of creation is made clear and proper places are established — God is God and Job is Job! But is it enough? The natural world and our role in it may be clarified, but is the moral universe restored? The story, or folktale, makes an attempt at that. We note that in the end, Job gets it all back and more — his dignity, family, friends, and double his possessions. Of course, there is a certain naiveté to that end of the folk story, as though such things as family can be replaced, or such suffering forgotten. In MacLeish's play, JB, Nickles says, "Job won't take it! Job won't touch it! Job will fling it in God's face with half his guts to make it spatter!"2 While such a response is understandable, we must acknowledge the human ability to persevere, as, for example, in Rwanda.
Just as after tragedy, with God's help one must learn to live again, to deal with memories, and go on with the story, so must Job. In fact, he becomes an intermediary, a priest, again. Just as he had made sacrifices for his children before his tragedy, now he must sacrifice on behalf of his comforters, who did not speak God's truth. So Job prays for them, and the Lord accepts Job's prayer (42:7-9).
Of course, we pray that our sufferings can be redeemed and that new beginnings can be made. Still, we know that it is never that simple! We may learn from a God who dwells in unapproachable majesty and reminds us of our place, and it is certainly helpful to know that behind the chaos is a God in control, but we are still left with that troublesome character of a God who banters with the tempter and permits his servant to be battered.
As we move to the New Testament lessons, we can move away from ambiguity, not to answers, but to paradox. Hebrews tells us that, in Jesus, we have a great high priest (4:14) who, like Job, makes sacrifices for us. In what sense is he great?
Hebrews says that Christ did not glorify himself, but was appointed by God to this task (5:5). So we look for the tasks God has for us. For Jesus, the task included sharing our humanity, as we learned last Sunday, tested in every way as we are, yet without sinning. Then we hear today, "In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death" (5:7). Jesus shares that human agony that we know so well through the story of Job and our own stories.
Then it says, "and he was heard because of his reverent submission." Once again, if we think about it, it becomes more complicated. We know that he was not heard, if hearing means deliverance from the agony of death. So it must mean that God had a different plan, that God hears in a different way. There is no dramatic turn around as in Job, no doubling of abundance to make up for the loss, but rather a paradoxical plot. "Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered" (5:8). His suffering was not an aberration, but a part of his perfection. This is God's way, salvation hidden in suffering, hope hidden in despair, life hidden in death.
In the gospel for today (Mark 10:35-45), this is what the disciples did not understand. They wanted the best seats in the house, but what they got was the cup of suffering. They wanted to be on the right and left, but what they got was the baptism unto death. This is God's way. "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones [note that word again] are tyrants over them, but it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:42-45 emphasis mine).
Jesus gives a counter-vision to the ethos of his day and of ours. Mark knew, from his encounter with Rome, that for an empire, the values are force, intimidation, and a network of patronage. For the kingdom of God, the values are suffering, submission, and servanthood.
But there is more to the story. Hebrews says of our priest, "And having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him" (5:9). Our story has universal scope. All are invited to be a part of Christ's salvation.
Only when we reach the end of the story, can we see the full meaning; only through the cross and empty tomb are things fully redeemed. The God who speaks from the whirlwind is also the God who hangs on a cross for us. The God who created the universe, Leviathan and all, is the God who has redeemed and will restore it. The God who was hidden in deep darkness will be revealed to us in glory. Amen.
1. Robert Frost, Selected Poems of Robert Frost (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), p. 201.
2. Archibald MacLeish, JB (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956), p. 147.