The Accuser's Footprints Job 1:1, 2:1-10, 1 Cor. 3:10-24
Isaac meets Job and Job’s wife on the street corner and he says,
“Oy, Job, I heard the news!
Your company went bankrupt, your house burned down,
you lost your life savings in a real estate scam,
your dog got hit by an SUV
and your ten beautiful sons and daughters were killed in a night club fire!”
“Yes,” says Job, “That’s all true. But at least I have my health”
[poke in the ribs] “And my wife!”
It sounds like some sick, twisted kernel of a bad joke,
but that’s exactly where we pick up Job’s story in today’s lesson.
Job is presented to us in scripture as “a blameless and upright man,
who fears God and turns away from evil.”
In fact, we’re told, “There is none like him on the earth.”
But, we might conclude after reading Job’s story,
if this is what good will get you, we might as well be bad.
Job is the star of one of those books of the Bible
most of us know about but few of us have read.
He’s like Jonah in that most of us have heard of him through literary references
and popular metaphors – “He’s got the sufferings of Job”
but we don’t really know the heart of the story –
what it means to tell us about God and about ourselves in relationship to God.
The truth is, Job doesn’t really tell us much.
That is, Job doesn’t really give us many answers about God.
That’s what often disappoints people who manage to slog through the whole book.
They come to the end and there’s this remarkable poem in which God confronts Job
and basically says, “Who are you to complain to me?”
And then all of Job’s livestock and all of his children come back to life
and he lives happily ever after.
But the value of Job is not in the answers it gives about God.
The value of Job is in the way it helps us frame our questions to God.
And these are not simple questions.
These are questions that haunt every generation,
and they are as relevant now as they were to the original author.
If my courage doesn’t fail me,
I plan to preach from Job through the end of this month.
If I can pull it off, I’m going to follow the lectionary through Job
looking at some of the questions Job raises and presenting Job’s questions
not so that we can necessarily formulate the “right” answers,
but so that we can learn how to ask the same questions
in a way that is relevant and contemporary and meaningful to our lives.
Of course, we won’t forget in the process that we have information about God
that the author of Job didn’t have.
We are beneficiaries of the concrete example of God’s love in action
through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This legacy we bear as heirs to the Kingdom through Christ
will give us a leg up as we try to wrap our limited human minds and language
around the mystery of God.
Most of us assume that the only question raised in Job
is “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
That certainly is ONE of the questions, but it’s not the only one.
As we go through Job we’ll look at that question,
but there are other questions to ask as well.
The story of Job opens as any good story opens,
with “Once upon a time.”
That’s not an exact translation, but it might as well be.
The land of Uz might as well be the land of Oz.
It was a fictional place meant to evoke in the reader’s mind
the most ancient place and time imaginable.
And Job is not meant to be understood as an historic figure.
Like Adam and Eve he is representative, an amalgamation of all human kind.
We can tell by the fact that he has camels and sheep AND he has oxen.
Camels and sheep were the livestock of nomads.
Oxen were the livestock of settled farmers.
No real person would have all three.
The story then progresses like the script of a B movie.
Charlton Heston playing God, sits on the throne like a good Near Eastern despot
and the council of heavenly beings are gathered deferentially around God’s throne.
Suddenly, the door flies open and in comes Yul Brenner
with those naturally pointed ears,
walking the fine line of arrogance and obedience in God’s presence.
He is “hassatan,” the satan, or the Accuser.
This is where we have to pause and clarify the identification of “satan.”
The New Testament identification of Satan as a distinct being who is the source
of all evil is a later theological development not relevant to Job’s story.
In Job’s story, “satan” is a title, not a proper name,
and it is best translated as the accuser,
the one who’s job it is to wander the kingdom
making sure that there is no treason afoot, no plots being hatched against the king.
To put him in terms of “Law and Order” or some other television drama,
he would be the Prosecuting Attorney.
Our text today is a repeat of a similar scene that comes in chapter one.
In the first scene the Accuser comes back
to make his report on the state of the kingdom.
Before he can open his mouth, though, God blurts out like a proud parent,
“Did you see my servant Job? He’s one of a kind, he is!
He fears God and turns away from evil.
He is everything I hoped for when I created human life.”
No story is worth reading if it doesn’t contain a little tension, the promise of conflict.
The Accuser, who’s probably had it up to here with God’s bragging about Job
says in the first scene, “Yeah, well who wouldn’t be perfect?
You’ve pampered him like some overpaid pro athlete,
who wouldn’t love that?
I’ll bet If you were to just take away a couple of his camels
or blow down a barn or two he’d fold like a two dollar umbrella,
call you every name in the book!
If the story presents Job’s character as good in the extreme,
then it also presents the calamity that befalls him in equally extreme terms.
It’s important to note that it’s not God who afflicts Job.
God give the Accuser permission to use the Accuser’s power,
but God sets a limit saying, “Do not stretch out your hand against HIM.”
This may seem like splitting hairs, but it’s important.
In the space of ten minutes Job gets word that everything he owns has been wiped out
including his ten beautiful children.
Any normal man would crumble. It would be a devastating blow.
But Job responds out of his deep faith.
“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Then, as we read, the Accuser returns in a repeat performance of the earlier scene.
God can hardly contain God’s glee.
“Did you see my man Job? He’s STILL blameless and upright.
He PERSISTS in his integrity despite what you did.”
“Yeah, well,” says the Accuser, “Anybody can lose what they have and survive.
But if Job himself were to suffer agony, THAT’S when he’ll break for sure!”
Again God gives the Accuser permission to act,
but again God sets a limit. “Spare his life.”
Job develops horrible sores all over his body,
and he sits on the ash heap scraping at them with a piece of a broken clay pot.
Still, however, his integrity is intact – his outer actions a reflection of his inner faith.
Even his wife, who’s horrified by his misery, urges him to curse God
so God will strike him dead and end his pain.
But even then he keeps his mouth shut.
It’s hard not to read these opening scenes of Job’s story
as an indictment against God.
At first glance God comes across as a spoiled child
eager to take the Accuser’s dare to just to liven things up
regardless of the consequences to an innocent man.
But look closer.
In God’s praise of Job, God is saying, “This is why I created human beings,
to live in perfect harmony with me and with each other.
Job is my crowning achievement; the heart of my heart.”
But the Accuser isn’t buying it.
At least he can’t help but play Devil’s Advocate.
It’s possible Job is as good as God thinks,
but isn’t it also possible that Job is just going through the motions,
PRETENDING to love God, so God will keep giving him stuff?
Maybe it’s all a sham.
Maybe God’s grand experiment with human kind;
this great desire to have a covenant people is an utter and complete failure.
If Job, who is God’s best and brightest, is a fake,
then God might as well take his loss and write it off on his taxes.
Even Job’s own wife indicates that life is only worth living,
that God is only worth loving as long as you’re getting some kind of payoff.
What about Job? What does Job REALLY believe.
Will that belief hold up under extreme duress?
Do you see what this means?
It means that from the very beginning,
God has at much at stake in this test as Job does.
And God is putting the Divine reputation in a vulnerable spot.
God is staking the success or failure of the grand experiment of all creation
on the integrity of one fragile human being.
So the question, at least in this first part of Job’s story,
is not, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
The question is, “Can there be a human being of such incorruptible integrity
toward God and people that not even the worst imaginable experiences of life
are capable of destroying that person?”
That sometimes may seem like an academic question. But not this week.
It’s the very question that has been played out in media outlets.
We’ve watched this week with horror and fascination
as the peace loving and peace living Amish people of Lancaster Co, PA
have dealt with the intrusion into their quiet community of unspeakable violence.
I won’t recount the crime here.
Suffice it to say that some Amish school children suffered terrible violence.
A stunned reporter was shown interviewing the grandfather of one of the children.
“Have you forgiven the man who did this?” she asks, almost in a confrontational tone.
The grandfather replies, “Yes, in my heart I have.”
“How can you do this?” the reporter challenges.
“With God’s help,” the grandfather replies.
A rabbi who has written a book on forgiveness was asked later
if he thought it was psychologically healthy to forgive so soon
or if it is a sign of denial.
The rabbi said, “This forgiveness does not happen in a vacuum.
It is the result of a daily practice of forgiveness in little things.
The little things prepare you for the big things.”
Paul writes to his friends in Corinth.
“You build on a solid foundation, that is, Christ.
In the end your building will be tested with fire.
If you have built with stone or with gold it will withstand the heat.
If you have built with straw it will be consumed.
So I leave you with this question. It is Job’s question,
but I urge you to make it your own.
Can I, with God’s help, live with such incorruptible integrity
toward God and people that not even the worst imaginable experiences of life
are capable of destroying me?”
“Oy, Job, I heard the news!
Your company went bankrupt, your house burned down,
you lost your life savings in a real estate scam,
your dog got hit by an SUV
and your ten beautiful sons and daughters were killed in a night club fire!”
“Yes,” says Job, “That’s all true. But at least I have my health”
[poke in the ribs] “And my wife!”
It sounds like some sick, twisted kernel of a bad joke,
but that’s exactly where we pick up Job’s story in today’s lesson.
Job is presented to us in scripture as “a blameless and upright man,
who fears God and turns away from evil.”
In fact, we’re told, “There is none like him on the earth.”
But, we might conclude after reading Job’s story,
if this is what good will get you, we might as well be bad.
Job is the star of one of those books of the Bible
most of us know about but few of us have read.
He’s like Jonah in that most of us have heard of him through literary references
and popular metaphors – “He’s got the sufferings of Job”
but we don’t really know the heart of the story –
what it means to tell us about God and about ourselves in relationship to God.
The truth is, Job doesn’t really tell us much.
That is, Job doesn’t really give us many answers about God.
That’s what often disappoints people who manage to slog through the whole book.
They come to the end and there’s this remarkable poem in which God confronts Job
and basically says, “Who are you to complain to me?”
And then all of Job’s livestock and all of his children come back to life
and he lives happily ever after.
But the value of Job is not in the answers it gives about God.
The value of Job is in the way it helps us frame our questions to God.
And these are not simple questions.
These are questions that haunt every generation,
and they are as relevant now as they were to the original author.
If my courage doesn’t fail me,
I plan to preach from Job through the end of this month.
If I can pull it off, I’m going to follow the lectionary through Job
looking at some of the questions Job raises and presenting Job’s questions
not so that we can necessarily formulate the “right” answers,
but so that we can learn how to ask the same questions
in a way that is relevant and contemporary and meaningful to our lives.
Of course, we won’t forget in the process that we have information about God
that the author of Job didn’t have.
We are beneficiaries of the concrete example of God’s love in action
through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
This legacy we bear as heirs to the Kingdom through Christ
will give us a leg up as we try to wrap our limited human minds and language
around the mystery of God.
Most of us assume that the only question raised in Job
is “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
That certainly is ONE of the questions, but it’s not the only one.
As we go through Job we’ll look at that question,
but there are other questions to ask as well.
The story of Job opens as any good story opens,
with “Once upon a time.”
That’s not an exact translation, but it might as well be.
The land of Uz might as well be the land of Oz.
It was a fictional place meant to evoke in the reader’s mind
the most ancient place and time imaginable.
And Job is not meant to be understood as an historic figure.
Like Adam and Eve he is representative, an amalgamation of all human kind.
We can tell by the fact that he has camels and sheep AND he has oxen.
Camels and sheep were the livestock of nomads.
Oxen were the livestock of settled farmers.
No real person would have all three.
The story then progresses like the script of a B movie.
Charlton Heston playing God, sits on the throne like a good Near Eastern despot
and the council of heavenly beings are gathered deferentially around God’s throne.
Suddenly, the door flies open and in comes Yul Brenner
with those naturally pointed ears,
walking the fine line of arrogance and obedience in God’s presence.
He is “hassatan,” the satan, or the Accuser.
This is where we have to pause and clarify the identification of “satan.”
The New Testament identification of Satan as a distinct being who is the source
of all evil is a later theological development not relevant to Job’s story.
In Job’s story, “satan” is a title, not a proper name,
and it is best translated as the accuser,
the one who’s job it is to wander the kingdom
making sure that there is no treason afoot, no plots being hatched against the king.
To put him in terms of “Law and Order” or some other television drama,
he would be the Prosecuting Attorney.
Our text today is a repeat of a similar scene that comes in chapter one.
In the first scene the Accuser comes back
to make his report on the state of the kingdom.
Before he can open his mouth, though, God blurts out like a proud parent,
“Did you see my servant Job? He’s one of a kind, he is!
He fears God and turns away from evil.
He is everything I hoped for when I created human life.”
No story is worth reading if it doesn’t contain a little tension, the promise of conflict.
The Accuser, who’s probably had it up to here with God’s bragging about Job
says in the first scene, “Yeah, well who wouldn’t be perfect?
You’ve pampered him like some overpaid pro athlete,
who wouldn’t love that?
I’ll bet If you were to just take away a couple of his camels
or blow down a barn or two he’d fold like a two dollar umbrella,
call you every name in the book!
If the story presents Job’s character as good in the extreme,
then it also presents the calamity that befalls him in equally extreme terms.
It’s important to note that it’s not God who afflicts Job.
God give the Accuser permission to use the Accuser’s power,
but God sets a limit saying, “Do not stretch out your hand against HIM.”
This may seem like splitting hairs, but it’s important.
In the space of ten minutes Job gets word that everything he owns has been wiped out
including his ten beautiful children.
Any normal man would crumble. It would be a devastating blow.
But Job responds out of his deep faith.
“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Then, as we read, the Accuser returns in a repeat performance of the earlier scene.
God can hardly contain God’s glee.
“Did you see my man Job? He’s STILL blameless and upright.
He PERSISTS in his integrity despite what you did.”
“Yeah, well,” says the Accuser, “Anybody can lose what they have and survive.
But if Job himself were to suffer agony, THAT’S when he’ll break for sure!”
Again God gives the Accuser permission to act,
but again God sets a limit. “Spare his life.”
Job develops horrible sores all over his body,
and he sits on the ash heap scraping at them with a piece of a broken clay pot.
Still, however, his integrity is intact – his outer actions a reflection of his inner faith.
Even his wife, who’s horrified by his misery, urges him to curse God
so God will strike him dead and end his pain.
But even then he keeps his mouth shut.
It’s hard not to read these opening scenes of Job’s story
as an indictment against God.
At first glance God comes across as a spoiled child
eager to take the Accuser’s dare to just to liven things up
regardless of the consequences to an innocent man.
But look closer.
In God’s praise of Job, God is saying, “This is why I created human beings,
to live in perfect harmony with me and with each other.
Job is my crowning achievement; the heart of my heart.”
But the Accuser isn’t buying it.
At least he can’t help but play Devil’s Advocate.
It’s possible Job is as good as God thinks,
but isn’t it also possible that Job is just going through the motions,
PRETENDING to love God, so God will keep giving him stuff?
Maybe it’s all a sham.
Maybe God’s grand experiment with human kind;
this great desire to have a covenant people is an utter and complete failure.
If Job, who is God’s best and brightest, is a fake,
then God might as well take his loss and write it off on his taxes.
Even Job’s own wife indicates that life is only worth living,
that God is only worth loving as long as you’re getting some kind of payoff.
What about Job? What does Job REALLY believe.
Will that belief hold up under extreme duress?
Do you see what this means?
It means that from the very beginning,
God has at much at stake in this test as Job does.
And God is putting the Divine reputation in a vulnerable spot.
God is staking the success or failure of the grand experiment of all creation
on the integrity of one fragile human being.
So the question, at least in this first part of Job’s story,
is not, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”
The question is, “Can there be a human being of such incorruptible integrity
toward God and people that not even the worst imaginable experiences of life
are capable of destroying that person?”
That sometimes may seem like an academic question. But not this week.
It’s the very question that has been played out in media outlets.
We’ve watched this week with horror and fascination
as the peace loving and peace living Amish people of Lancaster Co, PA
have dealt with the intrusion into their quiet community of unspeakable violence.
I won’t recount the crime here.
Suffice it to say that some Amish school children suffered terrible violence.
A stunned reporter was shown interviewing the grandfather of one of the children.
“Have you forgiven the man who did this?” she asks, almost in a confrontational tone.
The grandfather replies, “Yes, in my heart I have.”
“How can you do this?” the reporter challenges.
“With God’s help,” the grandfather replies.
A rabbi who has written a book on forgiveness was asked later
if he thought it was psychologically healthy to forgive so soon
or if it is a sign of denial.
The rabbi said, “This forgiveness does not happen in a vacuum.
It is the result of a daily practice of forgiveness in little things.
The little things prepare you for the big things.”
Paul writes to his friends in Corinth.
“You build on a solid foundation, that is, Christ.
In the end your building will be tested with fire.
If you have built with stone or with gold it will withstand the heat.
If you have built with straw it will be consumed.
So I leave you with this question. It is Job’s question,
but I urge you to make it your own.
Can I, with God’s help, live with such incorruptible integrity
toward God and people that not even the worst imaginable experiences of life
are capable of destroying me?”
posted by David Cameron | 7:05 PM
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