Oct. 14th 2018 Job laments, so do I Job 23 : 1-9, 16-17

Whoever coined the phrase “the patience of Job” has probably never read the whole book! In today’s passage we see a Job who is fed-up of his situation. His misfortune has gone on for too long. But even more than impatience we see that Job feels abandoned by God. “I go forward and I go backward and God is not there. Neither to my right nor to my left do I see God.”

To recap last week’s reading, a debate goes on in heaven between God and an entity named the accuser. The question they are discussing is whether people would believe in God and God’s goodness, if their whole lives were to become an unending misery. Job is selected to be the guinea pig in an experiment. Although he has led an upright and faithful life, he is stripped of all his wealth. He loses his whole family and even his good health. It is a test to see if he will continue to trust in the goodness of God. His friends come round and accuse him of some hidden fault. Surely God is punishing him. “No” Job insists. He is completely innocent and he proceeds to lament. He rails against the injustice of his situation, his blamelessness, his incomprehension of God’s seeming disinterest in his grievances. For 37 chapters of poetry, Job laments.

His words have a universal ring to them, mirroring the sorrows and pain inflicted on every soul that has suffered unjustly. There is much in our world we also could lament. On a world wide scale we witness the unending greed and acts of senseless violence. We see the grasping for power and the unequitable treatment of earth’s citizens, the abuses of human bodies and human souls. We see the wanton raping of our once pristine water and air and earth. On a personal scale we each hold our share of anguish, things that break our hearts and cause us to be inconsolable. Although none of us like to dwell there, I would invite you to enter those broken places in your own hearts now, knowing that each of us carries these burdens as part of our human condition. We have just to consider the children we know, to witness to their joy and bubbling energy and to remember that we were once like that too. Life wears us down and destroys our illusion that bad things will never happen to us! Bad things do happen and when they do, a little more of our hearts crack, leaving us a little more humble, a little less carefree.

As I was researching the topic of lamentation I came across a book named Psalms of Lament by Ann Weems. In 1982 she lost her 21 year old son Todd. 25 years later she published this collection of modern day psalms composed over those intervening years. Her words have touched me deeply. As some of you know my own son Arthur died at age 19. That was almost 12 years ago now. Although words can never adequately describe the anguish a human heart goes through, words are all we have to share with one another and there is something actually satisfying in describing the depth and breadth and width of one’s suffering soul. Hear now the words of Psalm number nine by Ann Weems. ( poem read)

In this poem Ann begins her lament with words of accusation and petition, but ends with words of praise. My words of lament are not nearly as eloquent. Nor does this particular piece I will read to you end in thanks giving. Sometimes we must simply sit in that place of the ash heap, feeling the abandonment and desolation. If we are fortunate thanksgiving does come, but later. This was written 4 months after Arthur died. It is entitled Spring 2007.

Spring 2007

Today the crocuses are peeking out

Today the sun is shining

Today the birds are singing

Today a family is celebrating a birthday

Today a circle of young men are gathered

telling jokes

looking at cars

talking about girls.

But there’s an empty spot in the circle

And there’s an empty place at the table

And there’s an aching in the heart

So loud it’s hard to hear the song

So dark it’s hard to see the light

So strong it hurts to look at new life.

Each of us holds our lot of sorrows. I know that mine are not any more or less than the ones each of you carry. But they are mine. Each of us is called to honour these wounds in our hearts. We must not be hide them away for fear they are any less important than the wounds of another. We must not leave them unexamined, for fear that they will destroy us if we look too closely. For we have every right and even an imperative to call out to God and lament these things that have happened to us, through no fault of our own. We are innocent victims and we have every right to demand justice and redress from God. What kind of a world is this that causes us to suffer and leads us to feel abandoned by God? This is the lament Job leaves us with today. And though there does not appear to be a satisfying answer to the heartache we suffer, within all this suffering we do have a choice.

We can abandon all belief in a loving God who cares about our human condition. If we feel alone, it must be that we are. Or we can hold onto that thin, thin thread of a hope in a presence that guides and cares for each and every one of us. We can hope and we can pray that though darkness surround us all around, light will eventually come and we will be guided home to the centre of the presence of the one who gives us life and breath. May it be so. Amen.