Things Fall Apart: Resurrection
If You Want to Know What God Plan to do, Look to the Cross
Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. October 24th, 2021
Truth be told the ending of the Book of Job has always troubled me. God never lets Job in to his wager with the Satan. God vindicates Job in the presence of his friends, saying that he spoke rightly while they didn’t. But it’s unclear why Job should be in the right given the accusations he makes against God. God, making up for the loss of his family and household, restores his fortune and gives him double the property he had before. He gives Job new children, including daughters that are more beautiful than any in the land.
It’s a fairy tale ending, but it rings very hollow to me. The poet who wrote Job is very careful, so I have to imagine we are meant to think this is a hollow ending. Imagine yourself in Job’s shoes, you’ve lost everything. Your children all died when the roof fell in on them during a feast. Would being given more children make up for the loss of the first in any way? Who thinks gaining one loved one over another is a “restoration”? God gives Job a lot of gifts, but the pains and griefs of the evils that were inflicted remain with him. These are sufferings that can never go away. Seemingly inflicted on a mere wager.
First of all, I’m not sure we should take the frame story all that literally. For one, it anthropomorphizes God in a way that God’s appearance in the whirlwind does not. By anthropomorphize I mean make God out to be like a human being. God is Spirit, God does not act like we act. God does not have heavenly council with prosecuting attorneys. So the story is in some way a fable, but a fable meant to make a point for us. I imagine it’s there to explain to us that Job truly is innocent. God’s speech in the whirlwind seems pretty clear about our inability to understand such heavenly councils to begin with.
But I think the question of Job’s “restoration” and whether he is truly restored is far more difficult. God certainly blesses Job, and these blessings are meant to make up for the losses incurred. But it’s not a truly happy ending, because what was lost is not restored.
It is here that I want to step beyond Job in discussing the problem of evil, and how God acts. Oftentimes when we are troubled by the problem of evil, how a good God could allow evil things to happen in the world, we focus on God’s creation. How it is that God could have created a world where everything changes. Because change entails loss, it entails suffering. How could God have made a world full of death? And in such a world how can God allow injustice and unnecessary suffering? One thinks of Hurricane Ida, or other such natural disasters that ended in loss of life.
In the Book of Job the problem of evil is mostly on this horizon, though I think it hints at how a satisfactory answer cannot be found if we limit ourselves to looking at God’s actions in creation. The real answer the Bible provides to the problem of evil is in the New Testament. Job is not the only biblical figure to face great evil with great patience despite being innocent. Jesus, too, is innocent and is tortured. Jesus is innocent and he is put to death.
But Jesus’ denouement is very different than Job’s. On the third day the sinless and innocent Jesus of Nazareth is resurrected. He is given new life on Easter morn. This answer to the problem of evil, is not found in God’s creative power active each and every day, this answer to the problem of evil is found in God’s decisive and liberatory grace, that overcomes the powers of chaos and evil, and that will come to full victory at the end of this evil age.
The answer we find in the New Testament, then, is resurrection. This world is overrun by evils. By powers and principalities, murderous spirits, decadent vices, and great disaster. This truly is an evil age in revolt against God. All is not right with the world. But God is not satisfied to leave us to our fates, to leave us in bondage to sin and to the corruption of the flesh. God sends us his Son that we might share in the power of his resurrection, and that by his grace he might make all things new. That what was once lost, may come back. That Job might be fully restored, not in having received new children, but in seeing his old children again.
What is the answer then? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why won’t God feed the poor in Africa or prevent needless suffering? Frankly, that’s kinda passing the buck isn’t it? I’m sure God might ask us the same question. But more to the point, God intends to wipe out all evil. God intends to bring resurrection. If we want to know what God’s plan is, we need only look at the Cross.