Sermon for March 19th, 2023
Job 42:7-17
7 After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. 8 Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering, and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done.” 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the Lord had told them, and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.
10 And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends, and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. 11 Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring. 12 The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning, and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. 13 He also had seven sons and three daughters. 14 He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. 15 In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. 16 After this Job lived one hundred and forty years and saw his children and his children’s children, four generations. 17 And Job died, old and full of days.
Job's Delivering Prayer
A woman is at the beach with her young grandson when a huge wave suddenly washes the boy out to sea. Grief-stricken, she falls on her knees, looks up to the sky and implores: "Oh Lord, please return my grandson to me and I promise--I'll devote my life to prayer, I'll come to church every Sunday and I'll never complain about anything again! Suddenly, the clouds part, the sky clears and another wave washes the boy back on the beach, completely unharmed. The grandmother looks at at the sky... then looks at the boy again... then looks up at the sky and cries out: "He had a hat, you know!"
Today we conclude our series on prayer in the Book of Job, and we come to the final chapter, chapter 42, where God restores all the fortunes of Job, gives him back everything God had previously allowed to be taken away...and then some! It's pretty easy to get distracted by that wonderful happy ending and forget that we're talking specifically about prayer, and how Job's prayers are a model for our own--both in good times in our lives and in difficult times. And there is one last prayer right here in chapter 42. I think it's a really important one--especially in understanding the "happy ending" to Job's story.
But before we get to that prayer, and what we can learn from it, let's go back a bit and set the stage.
When we last left Job (back in chapter 14) he was sitting on his pile of ashes, grieving the loss of his children, his livelihood, his health--pretty much everything. Job's three friends (Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar) had come to comfort and console him, but Job did not want to be comforted and consoled. He wanted to be angry, and he wanted a face to face confrontation with God.
Job's three friends are appalled at his almost blasphemous attitude, and (no doubt fearing God's wrath against their friend) they try to talk him down from the ledge with all kinds of words about God, and why God does things that we find it hard to understand.
Job eventually grows tired of his well-meaning friends, turns away from them, and (this is where we were last week) begins to address his grievances, his complaint, his request for a hearing, directly to God.
Fast forward several more chapters, and Job gets his wish--God shows up in a whirlwind and speaks directly to Job about the wonders and mysteries of creation. God never quite answers any of Job's questions, and never really explains why bad things sometimes happen to good people... but by the end of God's response, Job comes to the realization that he may have overstepped his boundaries just a little bit! Job repents--although we're not really ever told what he's repenting of, but presumably he and God both know.
And that brings us to today's scripture passage.
Your NRSV pew bibles have a well-intentioned but sometimes bad habit of putting a "chapter sub-heading" or title on some of the passages, and this one, they label as "Job's friends are humiliated." I think that's a horrible misunderstanding of this passage, although it's a pretty common one.
In art, music, and even film versions of this story, Job's three friends are often depicted as evil villains, who accuse Job of bringing all his losses upon himself, or who somehow delight in kicking a friend while he's down.
But I don't know many wicked friends patient enough to sit with you for three days and nights in silence, just for the opportunity to make you feel bad. That doesn't add up to me. Besides, as I've said in many previous sermons--Job's friends never once say anything that is theologically inappropriate. Mostly they are quoting from the books of Psalms and Proverbs. They're saying all the things that good friends (or pastors) are supposed to say!
No, it's only Job himself that (understandably, perhaps) says outrageous things, inappropriate things, the kind of things that if you said in front of a licensed counselor would get you referred to the authorities as a risk for self-harm or harm to others.
