We are reading from the Book of Job during October this year. Do you remember the story?

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very many servants; so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. His sons used to go and hold feasts in one another’s houses in turn; and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the feast days had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt-offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, ‘It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.’ This is what Job always did.

Then the angels are gathered before God and Satan is among them. Now, the word “Satan” that has come to mean the devil to us, the archangel Lucifer, who rebelled against God. In the Hebrew Scripture, the word was taken from Middle Eastern jurisprudence; it meant accuser and was the equivalent of “district attorney.” Satan was someone who was meant to prosecute wrongdoing.

God brags about his servant Job and Satan responds that Job is only just because of the blessings that God has conferred upon him. If these blessings were removed, Job would not be so righteous--he would curse God.

So God gives Satan leave and literally overnight Job’s flocks and herds are eliminated and in a single catastrophic accident all of his children are killed. But Job does not curse God.

Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshipped. He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.

Then Satan whispers in God’s ear that Job still had his health. If that were taken away, surely he would curse God. So God gives Satan permission to afflict Job with loathsome ulcers all over his body that burned and itched. He was reduces to sitting in wrags on the top of a dunghill, scraping his wounds with a broken bit of pottery. Even his wife bitterly tells him to just curse God and die. From this point, the book ensues with page after page of breathtaking Hebrew poetry struggling with the meaning of undeserved suffering. In today’s reading Job is complaining about the absence of God: “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.”

As I was reflecting on this reading, it struck me that I live my professional life immersed in the Book of Job. I remember reading a novel by Thomas Klise, The Last Western, written in 1974. In it there is a secret religious order, people who name themselves the Silent Servants of the Used, Abused and Utterly Screwed Up (they even use the initials SSUAUSU at the end of their signatures).

In many ways, I feel that God has called me to membership in that order. In my work as a nurse, I am forever standing as a largely silent observer attempting to ease the sufferings of people struggling with illness, death, and escalating disability. Whenever I think about Job on his dunghill, I see in my mind a man I cared for who had Kaposi’s Sarcoma lesions over every, I mean every, part of his body except for his face. They itched and burned fiercely. We (his nurses) would cover his body with an ointment meant to relieve the itching. I remember one moment virtually holding him in my arms, leaning his head against my chest while I used the ointment like massage oil, rubbing over his skeletal frame, feeling every rib and vertebrae, able (Thanks be to God) to give him some brief moment of pleasure in a life that looked to me to be the very definition of Hell.

The absence of God and the problem of suffering is something that has been plaguing western culture acutely for more than 100 years. With the explosion of technology, there has been an explosion of horror in war and seemingly in the talent human beings demonstrate at torturing one another. And this does not even reckon with the mental anguish (alienation, hoplessness, loneliness, depression and fear) that so many of us suffer in this age. Thoughtful people everywhere ask where now is God.

In the end of the book of Job, God answers him in this vein: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” This whole hymn of God’s power goes on for three chapters at the end of Job, amazingly beautiful poetry, but not much of an answer. God’s answer to Job’s question of why am I suffering when I have done no wrong, always seems to reduce down to “Because I’m the Mommy, that’s why.” Carl Jung wrote a little book “Answer to Job.” He believes the God of the Book of Job is an adolescent God with an immature sense of morality who toys with his creation with no compassion for their suffering.

The Gospel today gives us a different (if not an entirely satisfying)answer to that question. Jesus recommends to the rich young men that he not only endure loss, but seek it out and embrace it. “Jesus, look[ed at the rich young man], loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” The young man went away sad, unable to take this radical step of surrender. At the end of the gospel Jesus reminds us that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. We’ve probably heard this so many times that we dismiss it as an inscrutable Semitic paradox. But Jesus is not only talking about us. He is talking about himself and his Father: God who is first in being, eminence and power has chosen to be last. His response to human suffering is to endure it himself, embrace it like a birthright. Theologians often refer to this as “kenosis” or self emptying. God is a self emptying God more that an omnipotent God; she has chosen not to take our suffering away but to suffer it with, among and beside us. Today’s epistle reminds us: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

There is a story from the concentration camps of World War II, where a group of Rabbi’s assembled a court to prosecute God for abandoning his covenant people. At the end of the trial, God was found guilty. The presiding rabbi proclaimed the verdict and then announced that it was time for evening prayer, holding like Job to faith even in the light of ghastly suffering and loss.

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