The Wisdom to figure life out

July 5 2020

Job 28

         The other week, my Mom was sharing that how she fills up her spare time now with devouring as many books as possible. She even showed how she is getting callouses on her elbows from where she leans on them to read. She went on to say that my Dad on the other hand loves to watch Westerns, watching the same Western several times. Now she found it a little weird that Dad could watch the same cowboy show again and again but you know, I get it. I can’t tell you how many John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movies I’ve seen or how many times I’ve seen them. It’s hard to say what makes cowboy movies so appealing whether its that they’re set out west or whether there’s a lot of action, with hard fighting, shoot em up, round em up, fight it out kind of stuff. Perhaps what makes these kinds of shows so appealing in an age such as we’re living in is that they portray swift justice.You know, in cowboy movies there’s no guessing who the good guys are, they’re the guys who wear the white hats, the ones who are polite to the ladies and treat everyone with respect. The bad guys are the ones who wear the black hats, the ones who scowl and are mean to everyone they meet, the ones who kick puppies if they get in their way. These are the guys that we know by the end of the movie are going to get what’s coming to them. We don’t know how, we don’t know when but sooner or later the bad guys are going to know what justice means.There will be no plea bargaining, no slick lawyers, no “get out of jail” card for them; no, their punishment for their crimes will be swift and sure. As it is put in one of my favorite lines from the western, “Lonesome Dove”, “If you run with horse thieves, you die with horse thieves.” That’s swift justice. 

         It is this kind of justice that helps bring stability to the world we live in even though we may not always see that justice carried out. We like to think that ours is a world where the good people get rewarded with good things and bad people get punished. That’s a very basic lesson that we are taught from a very early age which is supposed to train our little minds that we should want to be good people who end up with good things. It is this understanding that good people get rewarded with good things and bad people get punished, this is how we try and make sense of this world we live in that sometimes doesn’t make much sense.

         Job’s story is a story of a man whose life in a matter of days ceased to make much sense. First, he lost all of his wealth and then tragically, he lost all ten of his children. Job, to his credit, would not curse God in spite of his overwhelming grief. Yet, if that were not enough for Job to endure, he then found himself covered in raw oozing sores but even though he was rocked with unrelenting pain, Job would still not curse God. Job’s life went from what seemed a well ordered life to one of the deepest and most tragic chaos. Job’s friends come to sit in silence with him, to weep with him, to grieve with him and eventually to help Job make sense of his tragedy. They tell Job their story of God that they know as the Creator, the one who spoke all of our world into being. It is is because God created our world with a purpose that we can know that we were created for a purpose. None of us were an accident but rather all of us are someone God created for a reason.This is the foundation of all of our hope, that God has a reason for us to be here and a purpose for our life. This purpose follows God’s purpose for his creation which is that it is to be a world overflowing with life. We are to join God and be creatures who are life givers, laying down our life for others just as Jesus has done for us.This is what brings order back to a chaotic world.

         Job’s friends went on to urge Job to pray because it is prayer that makes the story of the creation our story. Prayer is the conversation of the family of God. God is not some greater power that we have a contract with that when we are obedient to him he in exchange will bless us. No, God is a covenant God, the creator God who by grace has given us life and we respond with gratitude. This is the basis of our relationship with God and this relationship, this bond, is our covenant with God. This bond is the bond of family and it is a bond of trust. When we trust God, have faith in him despite our circumstances, this is when we join God in his rest and peace. This is the power of prayer, that through this speaking with God we come to agree with God and grow deeper in our trust in the ways of God.

         So, as we go along in this story of Job it is easy to see that this is a story that is about these themes of chaos and order and it is a story about trying to make sense of a world that quite frankly just doesn’t make sense much of the time. Job’s friends told Job their story and they comforted Job by speaking to him about prayer but in the end they failed Job because in their arrogance they believed that they had the wisdom that Job lacked. You see, what Job wrestled with is the “why” of his situation.  Why had this tragedy befallen him? He had gone over and over in his mind to figure out if he had done some horrible evil that would justify the punishment that he had received.What Job was searching for was the wisdom to make sense of a world which seemed horribly out of whack. In this sense, Job is a stand in for so many people in our world, who are wondering, why? Why is there such suffering for those who have done nothing to deserve it? Why is it that evil people get off scott-free and innocent people are punished? Why is it that the rich just get richer and the poor suffer for basic needs? On this Fourth of July weekend, we can’t help but think about what the hope was for this country when it was founded and yet here we are over two hundred years later and just like Job, there a lot of people asking the question, why? Why is there not liberty and justice for all? As Job speaks from our scripture today where is the wisdom to figure this out? Job’s friends were absolutely certain that they had the wisdom to give Job the answers he desired as to why this tragedy happened to him but he was not going to like their answer. You see, it is the wisdom of swift justice, the kind found in good old fashioned westerns, those who are good, those who fear the Lord are blessed by the Lord and the wicked, well, the wicked are punished. If you want to figure the world out, this is where you start. So, as Job’s friends insist, if we put this yardstick of wisdom up against the life of Job what we find is that it is obvious that Job has been punished therefore Job must have been very wicked. Now, this seems as if they have added just more hurt to the tragedy that Job is experiencing. I mean in essence what they are saying is, Job we are sorry for your loss, but buddy if you weren’t so wicked none of this would have happened. It’s not hard to see that Job ends up pretty disgusted with his friends and so does God.You, see the problem with the friends take on wisdom is that it doesn’t hold water. As Job points out in the twenty first chapter, the wicked do prosper. In the thirteenth verse, Job tells his friends, “They spend their days in prosperity and in peace they go down to death. They say to God, “Depart from us! We do not desire the knowledge of your ways., What is the Almighty that we should serve him? And what profit do we get if we pray to him? Behold is not their prosperity in their hand?” What Job speaks of is something we see everyday. You don’t have to look very far to see evil people enjoying their prosperity living their life far from God. It might be true that God punishes the wicked and that the wicked will suffer just as Job’s friends insist but as Job points out that reality is not what we see on an everyday basis. Job’s point is that is if we see the wicked prospering then the opposite is true, we also see the righteous suffering. These are all of the thoughts that bring us to the twenty eighth chapter of Job’s story. 

         Job begins by speaking about mining for silver, about going deep to underground places where no one has ever set foot searching relentlessly for buried treasure What Job is saying is that we know how to go and search for buried treasure but where and how do we search for wisdom? Where, asks Job, is the place of understanding? What Job is stating here is that what he and his friends considered wisdom turned out not to be very wise in the end. The world is not all that cut and tried as to believe that those who fear God will live lives of blessed comfort and those who are wicked will suffer and be punished until they die. No, the world obviously does not work like that no matter how much we wished it would.So, this is where Job finds himself pondering just where is the wisdom and the understanding to figure this life out?Job laments that it doesn’t seem to be found in the land of the living, and it doesn’t seem to be able to be bought no matter how much riches one may have.Once again, Job asks, from where then does wisdom come? Just where is the place of understanding? Job says that he has heard a rumor that this wisdom surely exists. The answer of course, is that God understands the way to this hidden wisdom, that God knows the place where there is understanding. We read how God looks to the ends of the earth and God sees everything under heaven. Now, Job has just said that he had looked from one end of the earth to the other and went all over the land of the living and he did not locate wisdom yet here is God seeing what Job could not see. What is being pointed out here is that God is seeing the situation differently than Job did, and we are left wondering just why is this? The answer is found in the twenty fifth through the twenty seventh verses where we read, “When God gave to the wind its weight and apportioned the waters by measure, when God made a decree for the rain and a way for the lightning of the thunder, then God saw it and God declared it; God established it and God searched it out.” The “it” spoken of here is wisdom. God saw wisdom when he created the world. Wisdom is found there in the very act of creating our world that is where wisdom is to be seen.Where Job and his friends thought wisdom to be an object for them to possess, to flaunt in arrogance at people as they made quick judgments as to others situations, what we find is that wisdom is not an object at all. Wisdom is not some treasure to be sought and held on to; if this is what is searched for as Job said, it will not be found. No, wisdom is in creation, in the act of creating. What must also not be forgotten is that at various points as God created the world he would stop and declare his work, “Good”. So, wisdom was seen by God as he created that which was good.It is good which gives order to our world because even though it is sometimes hard to see, the truth is in the end, good prevails. The wisdom that it is the good that triumphs in the end though can only be understood as we participate in the creation of that which is good. This is what Jesus was trying to teach us in the seventh chapter of Matthew where he begins by telling his disciples, “Judge not lest you be judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured it will be measured to you.” Here Jesus speaks right to the experience of Job and his friends as they judged Job to be wicked according to their measurement that it is the wicked who suffer and in doing so Job’s friends find themselves to be quite wicked in their judgment. So, wisdom is not to be used as some yardstick to discover just how good or not so good those around us are.  Jesus goes on to teach his disciples that they were to not give dogs that which is holy and to not throw your pearls before pigs…” Here Jesus is saying that our wisdom is not something that we should force upon people as the right understanding that we possess and others don’t.Our wisdom might be holy but with an attitude like that we will be seen as simply as holier-than-thou. No, Jesus goes on to teach us, we should instead ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you;. For everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks, finds and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” Do you see how different this last teaching is from the first two? In the first two wisdom is the giving of what is not really wanted. Wisdom there is first, thought of as giving unwanted judgment and in the second case wisdom is the giving of unwanted pearls of wisdom. But Jesus tells us that wisdom is instead about not giving but receiving. Wisdom is asking, in order to receive an answer, seeking to receive that which is hidden and in knocking, to be received in a place of welcome. Now what is interesting is just what it is that we are to be asking for, to be seeking for and what door it is that we are to be knocking upon? In verse eleven, of this seventh chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells us that if we who are evil know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him.” Now, that is the typical translation for this verse however, the translators, thought the original did not make sense so they added a word to it which I believe takes away from its original meaning. The original wording was “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good to those who ask him.” Our Father desires to give us that which is good and we as his children, are to be people who are asking for that which is good, we are to seek for that which is good and we are to knock on the door where good resides and live in that good. This is the same understanding of wisdom that Job came to. Wisdom is found in the creation of that which is good. As we become people working for good, pursuing good, asking for the good, searching for the good, we will come to be more and more assured that it is good that will prevail over evil. This is what Paul was speaking of when in the eighth chapter of Romans he writes, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” God is working for good and we are working with him; this is where wisdom is to be found. Paul goes on in the twelfth chapter of Romans to tell us what it means to work for good. He writes, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink…do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” This is what it means to live by the wisdom of God because this is the wisdom of the cross. Jesus went to the cross having faith in his Heavenly Father, faith in the goodness of his Father’s power, the goodness that is stronger than death. This is the wisdom of the cross, the wisdom found in the holy pursuit of the goodness of God.

         The wisdom we find when we work with God for good is the wisdom that understands that yes, good people do suffer, and yes, evil people do prosper but above and beyond this reality there is a goodness that will prevail. This goodness reaches out to those who suffer and shares in their suffering offering love and life in order to help create good out of tragedy. This goodness reaches out in love even to the wicked who prove to be our enemy so that the evil in this world can be shown to be able to be overcome by good. I hope our lives will be marked by this wisdom, lives that are constantly asking for God’s goodness, constantly searching for God’s goodness, constantly residing wherever God’s goodness can be found. Amen.