Job and Remembrance

 

“I know,” said Job, “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.”

We are all very familiar with those words,

whether we know them from Handel’s Messiah

or from Martha’s reprise of them in John’s Gospel,

or even from this bit of the book of Job, which is where it came from originally.

It's a funny old story, isn't it, this story of Job.

Do you know, nobody knows anything about it –

what you see is totally what you get!

Nobody knows who it was written, or when, or why,

or whether it is true history or a fictional story –

most probably the latter!

Apparently, The Book of Job is incredibly ancient, or parts of it are.

And so it makes it very difficult for us to understand.

We do realise, of course, that it was one of the earliest attempts someone made to rationalise why bad things happen to good people, but it still seems odd to us.

Just to remind you, the story first of all establishes Job as really rich, and then as a really holy type –

whenever his children have parties, which they seem to have done pretty frequently, he offers sacrifices to God just in case the parties were orgies!

And so on.

Then God says to Satan, hey, look at old Job, isn't he a super servant of mine, and Satan says, rather crossly, yeah, well, it's all right for him –

just look how you've blessed him.

Anybody would be a super servant like that.

You take all those blessings away from him, and see if he still serves you!

And that, of course, is just exactly what happens.

The children are all killed,

the crops are all destroyed,

the flocks and herds perish.

And Job still remains faithful to God:

“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.”

So then Satan says, well, all right, Job is still worshipping you,

but he still has his health, doesn't he?

I bet he would sing a very different tune if you let me take his health away!

So God says, well, okay, only you mustn't kill him.

And Job gets a plague of boils, which must have been really nasty –

painful, uncomfortable, itchy and making him feel rotten in himself as well.

Poor sod.

No wonder he ends up sitting on a dung-heap, scratching himself with a piece of broken china!

And his wife, who must have suffered just as much as Job, only of course women weren't really people in those days, she says “Curse God, and die!”

In other words, what do you have left to live for?

But Job refuses, although he does, with some justification, curse the day on which he was born.

Then you know the rest of the story, of course.

How the three "friends" come and try to persuade him to admit that he deserves all that had come upon him –

we've all had friends like that who try to make our various sufferings be our fault, and who try to poultice them with pious platitudes.

And Job insists that he is not at fault, and demands some answers from God!

Which, in the end, he gets.

But not totally satisfactory to our ears, although they really are the most glorious poetry.

Here's just a tiny bit:

“Do you give the horse its might?

Do you clothe its neck with mane?

Do you make it leap like the locust?

Its majestic snorting is terrible.

It paws violently, exults mightily;

it goes out to meet the weapons.

It laughs at fear, and is not dismayed;

it does not turn back from the sword.

Upon it rattle the quiver, the flashing spear, and the javelin.

With fierceness and rage it swallows the ground;

it cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet.

When the trumpet sounds, it says "Aha!"

From a distance it smells the battle, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.”

Wonderful stuff, and it goes on for about three chapters, talking of the natural world and its wonders, and how God is the author of them all.

If you ever want to rejoice in creation, read Job chapters 38, 39 and 40. Indeed, my father asked me to read Job 39 at his funeral, which I duly did, with a brief explanation. And we read it to him a couple of times as he lay dying. He especially loved the bit about the warhorse that I quoted above.

And at the end, Job repents "in dust and ashes", we are told, and then his riches are restored to him.

But would even more children and riches really make up for those seven children who were killed?

I doubt it, which is one of the reasons it’s probably a story, rather than actual history.

But even still, Job makes one of the central declarations of our faith:

“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.”

“In my flesh, I will see God.” I wonder how much comfort that verse really is, when your cities are being bombed and your energy supplies disrupted, your children’s education interrupted and maybe you are even forced to flee your country and depend on the kindness of strangers for a roof over your head.

As has been happening, as I’m sure you know, in Ukraine over the past few months and, although things seem to be going badly for Russia just now, there is no sign of an end, or even a ceasefire. Many of you may know, or know of, Ukrainian refugees who are in this country temporarily until things improve. My sister-in-law is giving house space to one family, and I believe they are great friends, but naturally the family wants to go home. The son has already gone – he wanted to go and fight, but I think he has been persuaded to finish his university course first. But there are plenty of others – I know a girl who needs a room to rent; she has a good job that she can do remotely, but can’t afford a flat at London prices on Ukrainian wages!

You know, in many ways we have been very lucky here in the UK. Yes, this war is bringing increased energy prices – and increased profiteering by the energy companies – but we don’t, yet, have to suffer bombs and foreign soldiers stamping around killing the men and raping the women on the slightest provocation. Not yet, and I pray God we never will.

We were blitzed once, still just about within living memory – you can still see the scars in many local roads, with 1950s housing next to the 19th-century stock that remains. I pray it will be the last time, and I pray our armed forces will never be required to go and bomb foreign cities, too.

Today is the day we remember those servicemen and women who have given their lives in the service of their country. I don’t know about you, but I do know that I lost at least three relatives in the First War, two of whom have no known grave but are commemorated on the various memorials in and around Arras. The third one has a grave – my brother has just visited it and sent me photographs – in a tiny cemetery literally in the middle of nowhere, about two kilometres from the main road! And my father, and one of my grandfathers, saw service in the Second World War, too. I’m sure your families may have similar stories to tell, of people who served their country in this way. And, of course, not just those in the armed forces, but those who risked their lives bringing desperately-needed provisions across seas studded with enemy submarines, or who were dropped “behind the lines” to help the Resistance movements. And the countless millions whose lives were simply interrupted by the way – evacuated to safe areas, or directed to jobs that helped the “war effort”, such as making munitions or working on the land. All these we remember, too.

There are those who say that Remembrance services glorify war.
I think not.
They are not easy, of course.
For those who have been involved in war,
whether actively or by default because their whole country was,
they bring back all sorts of memories.
For those who have not been involved, they can seem irrelevant.

Many Christians, too, think that all fighting and killing is wrong,
and refuse to join the armed forces, even in a time of conscription.
I’m inclined to agree, I have to admit, but for one thing –
do we really want our armed forces to be places where God is not honoured?
That’s the big problem with Christian pacifism –
it leaves the armed forces very vulnerable.

We must, of course, do all we can to bring peace.
But almost more important is to bring hope.
To bring the good news that
Job, and then Jesus proclaimed.
“I KNOW that my Redeemer lives.”
“God IS the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.”

We all find the concept of eternal life enormously comforting, of course.
You may well have known people who have died very suddenly; I know I have.
We may have known people who have been the victims of terrorist attacks, or just the random shootings and stabbings that seem to have happened far too often recently.
And we wonder, as Job must have done, where God is in all this.
Job, we are told, never lost faith –
but many people did when they saw the horrors of war.

But if God grants people eternal life,
if this life is not all there is,
if the best bit is still to come,
then death isn’t a total, unmitigated disaster.
Of course it is a disaster.
Of course we hurt, and ache, and grieve, and miss the person who has gone.
But we can know they haven’t gone forever, and it does help!

“In my flesh I shall see God.” It may not be much comfort when God seems far away and the enemy near, but it is something to hold on to in times of trial.

I certainly believe in eternal life!
Some preachers will say that God limits those who can get into heaven to those who have professed faith in Jesus,
but I think it is rather we who exclude ourselves than God who excludes us.
People who are seriously anti-God,
seriously anti-faith,
wouldn’t be comfortable in eternal life, would they?

God is a God of love, a God who delights in us,

who loves each and every one of us so much that Jesus came to die so that we can have eternal life.
“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.”