University Presbyterian Church - Chapel Hill, NC

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6. ABANDONED

  Job 23:1-9, 16-17
A Sermon by Robert E. Dunham
University Presbyterian Church
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
July 11, 2010

            The second week of May this year, UNC graduates Ed Chaney and Mandy Hitchcock were dragged into a living nightmare.  Their bright and beautiful seventeen-month-old daughter, Hudson, suddenly became very ill.  An unrelenting high fever...a doctor's visit... a trip to the ER...and three days later, on the thirteenth of May, sweet Hudson was dead, the victim of a highly aggressive form of bacterial meningitis.

            In the weeks after Hudson's memorial service, held here at University Church, her mother began to keep an online journal, hoping that processing her own grief for friends and family might help her put one foot in front of another. One of the most poignant posts for me was one that summed up everyone's experience of sudden loss. She wrote:

If only I had known these would be the last moments I had with her, I would have tried to document them all somehow. Where is the rewind button?

I'm even more consumed with all the memories we will never make. How is it possible that we got to celebrate only one birthday? Only one Halloween? Only one summer trip to the beach? How is it possible that there will never be the magic of lightning bugs? .... Or the joy of a big sister picture with a new baby? This is about as far as I can go in my mind's eye before I crumple.

.... The pain is so overwhelming and so constant that I feel at times like I simply cannot stand it, like I have no idea how I will make it through this.... I want her back so badly that I feel like I am breaking in half. [In my mind I think] if I only wish hard enough, cry hard enough, remember hard enough, imagine hard enough..., then this will never have happened. And she will come back to us. And we can go on.¹

            Sudden, unexpected tragedies often leave us in such states of disbelief, I think. Sometimes disbelief in what has happened...at other times a disbelief and distrust of the Source of life itself. I remember reading years ago in the autobiography of Russell Baker, the New York Times editorial columnist, of the day his father died.  Baker was but five years old at the time; his father was just 33. Baker's disbelief had to do with God's providence. He remembered being taken that day from his home to the home of a family friend:

Poor Bessie Scott. All afternoon she listened patiently as a saint while I sat in her kitchen and cried myself out. For the first time I thought seriously about God. Between sobs I told Bessie that if God could do things like this to people, then God was hateful and I had no more use for Him.

Bessie told me about the peace of Heaven and the joy of being among the angels and the happiness of my father who was already there. This argument failed to quiet my rage. "God loves us just like His own children," Bessie said.

"If God loves me why did he make my father die?"

Bessie said I would understand someday, but she was only partly right. That afternoon, though I couldn't have phrased it this way then, I decided that God was a lot less interested in people than anybody in [my town] was willing to admit. That day I decided that God was not entirely to be trusted.²

            Baker's words are uncomfortable ones to speak in church, where we are far more at ease with words of trust and promise like those from the 139^th Psalm with which we began our worship today. But Mandy Hitchcock's cries and bewilderment and Baker's hard words are not unfamiliar to anyone who has ever felt the withering grief of loss. Indeed, they are not far removed from words spoken in Scripture by an ancient Israelite named Job. You remember the gist of his story, I suspect. Job, a blameless man, loses everything - his wealth and his children especially - and is afflicted with a painful disease that makes his body break out in sores. He is thus made "unclean" under Jewish purity laws and forced to leave the community. In a time when disease and misfortune were always blamed on some personal sin or wickedness, Job was fully perplexed. He knew he was blameless. And so he cried out:

Though I am innocent, I cannot answer [God] ...
For he crushes me with a tempest
And multiplies my wounds without cause;
he will not let me get my breath
but fills me with bitterness....
I am blameless ... Therefore I say
He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.
When disaster brings sudden death,
he mocks at the calamity of the innocent. (Job 9:15, 17-18, 21, 22-23)

We hear a lot about the "patience of Job," but "patience" is the wrong word. "Torment" may be closer. "Bewilderment" might be even better. Though he refuses to curse God for the tragedy that besets him, still he rails against God's unjust treatment and pleads for justice. In this morning's text, he speaks of his desire to find a hearing with God... and his frustration at his inability to do so. "The sad result of his quest is reported in a sequence of deadening truths: "he is not there"; "I cannot perceive him"; "I cannot behold him"; "I cannot see him" (vv. 8-9)."³

Thus, Job's pain and loss are compounded by having to suffer alone, in the absence of divine comfort or aid. Theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff wrote a book some years ago after his son died tragically in a mountain climbing accident in the Alps. Wolterstorff is a faithful Christian teacher, but the torment he felt in those days was tortuously palpable, and so, Job-like, he gave voice to his lament:

How is faith to endure, O God, when you allow all this scraping and tearing on us? You have allowed rivers of blood to flow, mountains of suffering to pile up, sobs to become humanity's songs - all without lifting a finger we could see. You have allowed bonds of love beyond number to be painfully snapped. If you have not abandoned us, explain yourself. We strain to hear.⁴

We strain to hear. We strain to understand. Reading his words this week, I couldn't help but think of Ed and Mandy's grief over Hudson's death...or others of you who have lost children.  I couldn't help but think of those along the Louisiana coast who seem to have lost their whole way of life... or the families of the thousands of American soldiers and the tens-to-hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis killed these last years in desert wars, or of some of our own families, whom tragedy has visited so harshly.

            In the midst of so much torment, one cannot but wonder where God is at work for good. There are times when the best way to be faithful is to cry out with our own sense of forsakenness, to ask God to be God for the sake of justice and grace. Old Testament scholar Sam Balentine says that Job offers us a model for doing so:

Those who search for God with Job's eyes will refuse to accept that this is the world God intends.... They will not believe that faith must be forever construed as silent submission to injustice that terrorizes the innocent and subverts the moral foundations of creation. Like Job, they will take their lives in their hands, fill their mouths with arguments, and stubbornly insist that the absent God remain committed to a world that has the capacity to be "very good."... Until God speaks and settles these matters one way or the other, every steward of Job's faith listens for God with ears attuned to the cries for help of the wounded and the dying.⁵

            Sometimes those who lose the ability to trust God do so, not only because of the tragedies they've experienced, but because their skeptical questions alienate them from the religious community. In the Book of Job it looks for a while as though the same thing is going to happen; Job's friends offer no comfort, but try over and over to defend God against Job's questions and protests. Barbara Brown Taylor says:

Job's...friends, who were full of compassion for him when he could not say a word, become defensive when he starts railing at God. They tell him he must have done something to deserve it all, since God does not make mistakes....  Only Job knows he is not guilty, and so does God.  What is happening to him defies all ...logic, which the three friends cannot stand, so they [answer his pain] with more pious theories to explain it....

[But Job, with] nothing left to lose... sits out on a dung heap covered with boils, yelling at God.... "I have done everything you ever asked me to! Why is this happening to me? Answer me!"

Finally, the Lord does just that, speaking to Job out of the whirlwind. [It is a thundering rebuttal and a strong reminder that God is God...and Job is not. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? God asks. Who determined its measurements? Who stretched the line upon it? Who laid its cornerstone?] God's rebuttal goes on for four whole chapters, but never does answer Job's question. Job's question was about justice [and fairness]. God's answer is about omnipotence, and as far as I know that is the only answer human beings have ever gotten about why things happen the way they do. God only knows. And none of us is God.⁶

            It is not a very satisfying response, by any means. Not for anyone who has known unspeakable loss. But I like Taylor's way of assessing it:

[Some people] say that... God [comes off] as an arrogant bully who reaches down a thumb and squashes Job like a bug, and that a God who shows no more respect than that for human suffering doesn't deserve the title....

I prefer to take my cue from Job, who sounds anything but crushed when it is all over. "I have spoken of the unspeakable and tried to grasp the infinite," he says at the end. "I had heard of you with my ears; but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I will be quiet, comforted that I am dust." Why quiet, since he never got an answer, and why comforted that he is dust? Because Job, of all people, saw God face to face and lived to tell the tale.

It was as if a flea had insisted that the lion on which it was riding stop - stop right now - and explain why the ride was so bumpy and hot. The flea roared and roared as loud as it could, never expecting to be heard, much less answered, until one day the lion turned and roared right back, so that the flea saw itself reflected in both golden eyes at once. Never mind what the lion said. The lion turned around. The lion roared back. And that is enough for anyone to live on the rest of his life.

If there is an answer to the problem of unjustified suffering in Job, then, it is only this: that for most of us, the worst thing that can happen is not to suffer without reason but to suffer without God - without any hope of consolation or rebirth. All other pain pales next to the pain of divine abandonment (ask Jesus about that), and what Job wants us to know is that God does not finally abandon us.⁷

Indeed, by the end of the story, Job's relationship with God is restored. His questions are still substantial and pertinent; he knows he did not deserve his suffering. But he also knows first-hand God's holy and healing presence.  He comes to know that he is not, finally, abandoned...that in the presence of God, his complaints can find a resting place, if not an answer. The experience of God's presence, in the end, is enough.

            Such an experience of God, of course, cannot and does not take away Job's pain of loss or his grief. The memory of the death of his family will haunt him all his days. The questions yet remain...for Job... and for us. But Job does find healing, at least in part, when he lets go of his conception of God as all-controlling power, of God as enemy, of God as the one who crushes him. In the end, the God Job sees is the God who is with him in his suffering and whose presence heals him. In the end, Job repents, and turns once again to hold fast to the One who holds fast to him. Says Burton Cooper,

[Job] does not repent of his concern for God's justice; biblical faith can never have enough of that concern. Job repents of his loathing for life, his [utter] despair, his lack of faith in the goodness of creation. Thus, he is ready to return to life. He can love again, work, and have children. [And] he can die, as the text says, "full of days."⁸

            That, of course, is our hope and prayer for everyone who has suffered heart-rending loss - that they may know that they are never abandoned or alone, and that there is a future for them beyond their seemingly endless pain. I think of the remarkable words Mandy Hitchcock spoke in this sanctuary at Hudson's memorial service - words she addressed to her young daughter:

There are so many things that should and shouldn't be today, and there will be so many more in the future as we are forced to live our lives without you.

But of the many things you taught me, one of the most important was not to worry about what should or shouldn't be, but simply to enjoy and cherish what is. When you got a little older, I was going to start a ritual with you that I was going to call "One Good Thing." Whenever something bad happened to one of us, we were going to try to think of one good thing that came out of it - to enjoy and cherish what is rather than worry about what should or shouldn't be. I thought I was going to teach you that lesson, but now I realize it was the other way around. You've already taught it to me and so many others.

It's a lesson that we all know inside, but one that we need to be reminded of often-to love and treasure every moment in this all-too-short life, to hug, kiss, and laugh often, to soften in our anger, to love unconditionally and overwhelmingly...to enjoy and cherish what is and stop worrying about what should and shouldn't be. Your life and death are the most powerful reminders of that lesson that any of us could have received.⁹

I don't know if we will ever stop worrying about what should or shouldn't be, or even if -in deference to Job - we should stop worrying about such things. But I do know that Mandy was also right: learning to love and treasure every moment... to cherish what is...such practices can open us to life beyond tragedy, can give us our future back...even in those seasons when all we can feel is abandonment and all we can see all around us is desolation and death.

[1] Mandy Hitchcock's blog, One Good Thing, post for June 21, 2010, "Stop All the Clocks." http://hudsonsonegoodthing.blogspot.com/ 

[2] Russell Baker, Growing Up (New York: Congdon and Weed, 1982), 61-62. I am grateful to Burton Cooper and his article "Why God? A Tale of Two Sufferers," Theology Today, January 1986, 423-424 for pointing me to this account.

[3] Samuel E. Balentine, "Between Text and Sermon: Job 23:1-9, 16-17," Interpretation, July 1999, 290.

[4] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmanns, 1987, 80.

[5] Balentine, 292-293

[6] Barbara Brown Taylor, "Out of the Whirlwind," in Home By Another Way, Cambridge, MA, Cowley Publications, 1999, 165.

[7] Taylor, 166.

[8] Cooper, 433.

[9] Mandy Hitchcock blog, post for June 6, 2010, "One Good Thing."