Wednesday • 9/11/2024 •
Wednesday of Proper 18
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49-72; Acts 14:19-28; John 11:1-16
Job 40 (a departure from the Book of Common Prayer)
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1-3,11a,14c,18-19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68-79, BCP, p. 92)
Job & the Problem of Evil. Throughout the Book of Job, Yahweh is there, and he is not disengaged. It’s not that he doesn’t listen; thus, he speaks from quite near us, within the very chaos (“the whirlwind”) that surrounds us (Job 38:3; 40:6). However, he would have us understand that his moral governance of the universe includes: a) things that appear to us to be evil or harmful or bad; and b) things that appear to us to be arbitrary or frivolous or meaningless. It is prideful to think that we can wrap our heads around it all, much less do a better job running things if we were in charge.
Yahweh’s final proofs will be the Behemoth (Job 40) and the Leviathan (Job 41), both of which are beyond human comprehension and control, and each for its own reason. I will compare their attributes tomorrow. But for today, notice the first half of chapter 40. The most dangerous idea that Job has flirted with is the idea that there is a law of justice that stands higher than God himself, and to which God must be held answerable.
Image: Jules Bastien Lepage / MBA Nancy, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
God’s answer is basically that there is a pride in the human heart that you, Job, cannot fix: “Look on all who are proud, and bring them low; tread down the wicked where they stand… Then I will acknowledge to you that your right hand can give you victory” (Job 40:11-12,14). Here is OT scholar Bruce Waltke’s elegant summary: “Human beings cannot impose through irresistible power from the top on down perfect justice. God did not endow them with the power to impose a utopian state here and now (v. 14)” (Waltke, Old Testament Theology, pp. 942-943).
Evil sucks. Even so, in this fallen world it has its place in God’s governance. What makes him God is that his good governance allows for and works through the existence of evil in humans, and of harmfulness, arbitrariness, and frivolity in the natural world.
As he is beginning to understand all this, Job wisely shuts his mouth: “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but will proceed no further” (Job 40:4-5).
Not that Job leaves us with a counsel of despair. Not that silence in the face of the impossibility of attaining perfect justice means resignation to, or compliance with, the reign of evil in this life. No, it means simply giving up triumphalistic delusions about our own powers to right all wrongs, not to mention to dictate the terms of our “best life now.”
There is good counsel and helpful perspective in today’s New Testament readings.
John: Death & God’s Glory. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of God’s promise to put an end to evil once and for all, to overthrow death’s reign, and to end the long season of night that began in the Garden of Eden. John 11 chronicles one of the most magnificent displays of that promise in action. Jesus will proclaim himself in this chapter as “the Resurrection and the Life,” as proof of which he will raise his friend Lazarus from the dead.
But today’s reading in John is merely the preface to that story. Here we find Jesus, having been informed that his friend is in danger of dying, intentionally staying away long enough to make sure that Lazarus is good and dead: “Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (John 11:5-6). What nobody else knows, but Jesus does, is that Lazarus’s dying “is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (John 11:4).
Hard to swallow though it may be, that truth has animated generations of believers in Jesus Christ. Knowing that no death died in him is final, we see our deaths—and all the “little deaths” that lead up to it—as ways that God’s glory and the Son of God’s glory come to light. It’s why we can say, with Thomas (minus the Eeyore-like resignation), “Let us go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16).
Acts: Suffering & the Christian Life. A remarkable thing happens at the end of the First Missionary Journey, as Luke describes it in the Book of Acts. Paul has received brutal treatment in city after city on the mainland of Asia Minor. His last stop is Derbe, where there turns out to be a good reception. Surprisingly—indeed shockingly!—Paul turns around and retraces his steps through Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch. He goes back to the cities from which he has been bounced, and in one case beaten and left for dead.
He has two purposes. The first is to explain that the sufferings that the new believers in these cities had seen in him are part of the “normal” Christian life: “They strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying, ‘It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God’” (Acts 14:22).
The second purpose is to put in place competent and godly leadership who can mold these new believers into churches, for worship, mutual support, and extension of the ministry: “And after they had appointed elders for them in each church, with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe” (Acts 14:23).
What’s remarkable about Job is how much faith he exercises in the absence of the full revelation of “the Resurrection and the Life,” and minus the support of a community of faith to cheer him on. With so much more going for us on this side of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, may we know that in whatever whirlwind surrounds us, the same Lord is still present, still hears our cry, and still speaks.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+