What's the answer to the meaning of life the universe and everything?
In 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' a computer was asked this question
and everybody held their breath as they waited for the ultimate answer.
The answer which did not please them nor help them? 42
Nor is the Monty Python answer any more helpful
in the film 'The Meaning of Life'
'Always keep looking on the bright side of life'
Of course those are comic, satirical comments
but the serious and often very orthodox attempts of Job's friends
don't help him or us.
They know what to believe, they know about God and sin and suffering
but it seems the best thing they ever said was at the start to say nothing
when (as we saw last week) they just sat in silence with their friend.
Once they start to pronounce, both they and Job get angry with each other.
Maybe they were looking for the wrong kind of answer.
I think of a friend who was killed in the Enniskillen bomb tragedy,
a policeman with a simple faith.
Some months before he died,
he gave a talk to a Christian Policeman's Fellowship
and he addressed the problem so ever present to him and his colleagues
how to come to terms with the suffering faced almost daily,
how to reconcile that with their faith in God.
This is what he put in his notes: 'Don't ask Why? Ask Who?'
The answer to suffering is not in a reason but in a relationship.
Yes, sometimes we can say suffering helps us avoid a danger,
as a toothache is a warning sign of infection to be dealt with.
Or suffering can help us grow as we learn to endure and learn about ourselves.
Or suffering can sometimes be God's way of correcting us
because we have broken his laws
I find when I really lose my temper I suffer with a headache afterwards.
but things can happen as they happened to Job
and they are not a punishment - he had done nothing wrong
and they are not a warning.
Although maybe there is something of a growing experience in them
we soon come to an end of easy, plausible answers for Job or ourselves.
We just want to be able to meet God for ourselves
and tell him or even scream at him.
CS Lewis, the writer to the Narnia stories, was a well known Christian lecturer.
He was famed for his ability to defend the faith and take on the sceptics
He even wrote a book about suffering, called 'The Problem of Pain'
and his books still make a lot of sense.
But as you may have seen in the film 'Shadowlands'
there came a time when his intellectual grasp of faith was not enough
as his wife whom he had married late in life lay dying of cancer.
Lewis went through an experience not unlike Job's
an experience of agony and questioning.
It is described in one of his last writings: 'A Grief Observed'
'When I lay these questions before God, I get no answer.
But a rather special kind of 'No answer'. It is not the locked door;
it is rather more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate gaze.
As though he shook his head, not in refusal but waiving the question.
Like 'Peace, child, you do not understand.'
(CS Lewis A Grief Observed p 58)
When Naomi was only a baby a few weeks old
we took her to the clinic for her first set of inoculations
How soon the tears flowed, with such an expression of shock and outrage.
She was soon comforted but no words of ours could comfort or explain -
Even of I had pronounced loftily to her
that the long term protection was well worth the short term pain
It would have been nearly worse than useless.
What she needed and received was a hug and every assurance of love.
What Job's story shows us is not reasons for suffering
but ultimately a relationship with God which can sustain us in suffering.
That is perhaps the 'bottom line' of Job
a relationship not a rationalising
This is of course an inadequate sound bite to try and sum up 40 or so chapters
of the great debate between Job and his friends.
as my Old Testament professor wisely remarked lecturing about Job
"Job did not need a professor, he needed a pastor!"
Rather than preaching 40 sermons to cover each chapter
or even keeping you for 40 more minutes to sum up the whole debate
let me give you some snapshots of particular passages
to challenge and stimulate us in our own struggles.
We may not see ourselves in all of these moments in Job
they may not all speak to us with equal force
but see which one of these snapshots could be God's special word
for your personal situation today.
SNAPSHOT 1 DON'T GIVE UP ON FRIENDS WHO LOSE FAITH
6.14 'A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends,
even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty
Job cries out at the harshness of his friends.
He was cracking up; they condemned him.
He needed love, they offered a lecture.
Jesus was harsh with the proud and gentle with the broken:
have we got it the other way round,?
or as the saying goes
the Holy Spirit comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable
but Job's friends bring harshness to the afflicted
and get angry with his temptation to despair
Let's pray for a gentle spirit as we approach those on the edge of despair
Their unbelief may distress us, it is indeed 'wrong'
but they need comfort more than condemnation.
SNAPSHOT 2 LOOK FOR THE GO BETWEEN
9.32 "He is not a man like me that I might answer him,
that we might confront each other in court.
If only there were someone to arbitrate between us,
to lay his hand upon us both,
someone to remove God's rod from me,
so that his terror would frighten me no more.
Then I would speak up without fear of him,
but as it now stands with me, I cannot.'
We have had a classic example in the public glare of the need for a mediator
between Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy
someone with the trust of both sides to go between, arbitrate, reconcile.
Don't you feel for Job struggling to confront God?
How privileged we are to have a mediator.
As the hymn says
Who can sound the depths of mercy in the Father heart of God?
For there is a man of sorrows who for sinners shed his blood.
He can heal the wounds of nations, he can wash the guilty clean,
Because of Jesus, because of Jesus, have mercy Lord!
Some people talk, perhaps lightly, about 'the man above'
but there is a 'God Man above' Jesus Christ fully human, fully God
who can bridge the gap
the one mediator between God and man as Paul says in 1 Timothy 2.5
Don't try to solve the problems of evil and suffering
without bringing in the man of sorrows into account.
Don't try to get a grasp on who God is and leave Jesus Christ out.
It is through Jesus that God and the world come into true focus.
Even in his darkness, long before the time of Jesus on earth
Job seems to have had a similar glimpse of gospel light:
19.25 I know that my redeemer lives
and that in the end he will stand upon the earth
and after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him with my own eyes - I and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!'
SNAPSHOT 3 IS YOUR GOD BIG ENOUGH?
Not so much a snapshot as one of those long expanding shots in a film
where from a close-up the camera pulls back
and shows the figure standing in a huge landscape
It was the title of a book written years ago but still sadly as true today
'Your God is too small'
For how many of us is our God too small?
The God of the comforters is too small
Sometimes they say correct things about him, but in the wrong way;
at other times they naively think of suffering as always a punishment
and prosperity as always a sign of God's blessing.
Job's insight is greater than that. C 28 is one beautiful example
asking 'where is wisdom to be found?'
But even Job's God is too small as we read in their meeting at last in c 38
' Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. He said:
2 "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
3 Brace yourself like a man; I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
4 "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone-
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy? '
(in c 42) 1 Then Job replied to the Lord :
2 "I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted.
3 You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?'
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
4 "You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you shall answer me.'
5 My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."
Job has now seen God, met with him closely and repents
and God restores him.
DON'T GIVE UP ON FRIENDS WHO LOSE FAITH
LOOK FOR THE GO BETWEEN
IS YOUR GOD BIG ENOUGH?
Almighty God
May nothing of what I have said be like the words of Job's comforters
giving neat answers for messy suffering
but as we grapple with these things
may the ultimate answer for each of us be that we meet you
Be persuaded that
neither death or life; neither angels nor demons;
neither the present nor the future, nor any powers
neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation
will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord
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