Believe
it or not, I did not always have the loud “teacher’s voice” that I have learned
to use in church and in the classroom. As a matter of fact, when I was in first
grade, my teacher told my mother that every time I wanted to say something in
class (which, given my shyness, was not often) she had to get up and walk over
to me at my desk and put her ear down to my mouth, so that she could hear my
thin whispers and translate them for the other children. To top it off, I was
taught early in life that a polite and well-brought-up little girl does not
raise a ruckus or ask boldly for things.
“Don’t bother people,” I heard over and over again. Don’t call people on
the phone unnecessarily; don’t knock on your neighbors’ doors; don’t ask mom
and dad more than once for anything, unless you want a scolding. Perhaps some
of you, especially the women among us, were brought up with these guidelines,
as well?
Even as an adult, I can still remember
the horror of clinical pastoral education, when, as hospital chaplain, I had to
learn to knock on the doors of hospital patients whom I didn’t know, making
“cold calls,” with offers of prayers and help. I would stand outside each door
as tense and afraid as if a fire-breathing dragon were waiting for me inside.
Even now, making what I perceive to be possibly annoying phone calls to ask for
help in the parish goes directly against my childhood scripts. It takes quite a
bit of prayer for me to pick up that phone and ask you to join some committee,
and I doubt that I am alone in this reluctance—just ask our brave stewardship
committee members, who are fervently praying that you turn in your pledge cards
so that they don’t have to call you and ask for money.
Often, it’s the same thing in our
prayer lives, too. We tiptoe around God in our prayers: “O God, please help me,
if it is your will …. if I don’t somehow deserve this suffering …. If you have time … if you can hear me …. if it’s
not too much trouble …” God, however, doesn’t seem to care about our parents’
or our society’s rules or about any innate shyness on our parts. In today’s
readings, God seems to reward both Bartimaeus and Job for raising a ruckus as
they sit beside the Way, needing help and deserving justice. Surprisingly, both
men are allowed to clamor for help and justice from God, to shout outrageously
for God’s attention.
With Bartimaeus, the text is clear. He
is a blind beggar, subsisting by asking for alms by the roadside, brushed aside
and “beside the way.” Having heard of
Jesus’ powers, he begins to shout for help so loudly that he annoys everyone
around him. With all of his heart and soul and lung power, he hollers out our
desperate human cry to our God, “Have mercy on me.” I imagine that I would have
been one of the bystanders who was looking at poor Bartimaeus in horror as he
shouted at Jesus. “Show some manners,” I would have thought. “You are making a
fool out of yourself in public.” But Jesus doesn’t seem to be bothered by the
blind beggar’s behavior. Jesus does not hush him like the rest of the crowd
does. Jesus hears him, calls him,
heals him of his blindness, and pronounces him saved through his loud, annoying
faith. Immediately, Bartimaeus can see, and he takes off to follow Jesus, on the Way, rather than beside it. His story
seems to tell me that it is all right for me to clamor for salvation, for
healing, for help onto the path.
Job’s story is more complex. At first
glance, it seems as if our text from Job is in direct opposition to my theory
that God expects us to shout at Him from the sidelines. A few weeks ago in our
readings, we saw Job, in the prologue to the book, sitting in silence on the
ash heap in the face of his extreme suffering. Everyone except his wife seemed
to praise him for his silence, for his refusal to curse God for his misfortune.
In the middle of the book, however, Job does get to complain. He rails at God
for his suffering, as all of the impossible “why” questions come pouring from
his mouth. Finally, as we heard last week, God speaks in the whirlwind, bowling
Job over through the majesty of Creation and the utter incomprehensibility of
God’s ways. Today, at the very end of the Book of Job, though, it looks as if
Job is once again reduced to final silence upon his ash heap. “Now that I see
your majesty,” Job seems to say to God, with bowed head, “I despise myself, and
repent in dust and ashes.” Once he
repents of his sharp words toward God, having been humbled at the fragility and
sinfulness of his human condition, it then appears that God rewards him, giving
him back family and possessions and a happily-ever-after life. Would God really
restore our possessions, though, as a reward for silence in the face of
injustice?
According to scholars, God actually
goads Job on to loud and energetic protest. Like we heard last week, God twice
summons Job to get up off of his ashes, to “gird up his loins,” like a warrior
and to look at what God has to show him. Then, in the famous divine speeches on
Creation, God holds up to Job the examples of the monsters Behemoth and
Leviathan: proud, beautiful, strong, dangerous creatures that God has made.
Behemoth does not let itself be caught or trampled, says God. Leviathan has no
fear and “is king over all that are proud.”
Human beings are also created to have power and dominion over their
world, God seems to suggest. We must stand up and fight for justice, sometimes
with God and sometimes against God, even if it means that we will lose the
fight.[1]
Hebrew
scholars point out that Job’s admission in our reading, “Therefore I despise
myself, and repent in dust and ashes,” could well be a mistranslation. Without
putting you to sleep with a Hebrew lesson, let me just say that Job’s final
comment in verse 6 could read, “Therefore I retract my words and have changed
my mind concerning dust and ashes.”[2]
In Genesis, Abraham also calls himself a
man “of dust and ashes” as he argues bravely with God over the fate of Sodom—and
Almighty God remains standing in Abraham’s presence. The human condition of
“dust and ashes” does not necessarily produce silence and powerlessness. As 19th
century Rabbi Bunam points out, “’A man should carry two stones in his pocket.
On one should be inscribed, ‘I am but dust and ashes.’ On the other, ‘For my
sake the world was created.’ And he should use each stone as he needs it.’”[3]
Perhaps God wants Job—and Bartimaeus, and us—not
to take innocent suffering lying down. Perhaps God wants us not just to cry out
for our own salvation, as Job and Bartimaeus do, but also to protest all innocent
suffering and to contend with the powers that bring it about. I was interested
to read that the Law states in Exodus that a thief who is caught stealing must
repay his victim double what he took from him. That is strangely what God
restores to Job at the end of the story: double the livestock and fortune that
God had taken from him. When Job takes on the risk and responsibility for
standing with and against God, God—who stole unjustly from Job-- is also
perhaps the one who is being restored in the strange “fairy-tale ending” of Job’s
story. What if God needs Job’s courageous protest against unjust suffering?
Concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel
writes, “Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived … a just and
righteous man [named Job] who, in his solitude and despair, found the courage
to stand up to God. And to force [God] to look at his creation. And to speak to
those men who sometimes succeed, in spite of [God] and of themselves, in
achieving triumphs over [God], triumphs that are grave and disquieting… What
remains of Job? A fable? A shadow? Not even a shadow of a shadow? An example,
perhaps?”[4]
An example for us each of us whisperers
to take to heart, whether we travel on the Way or have been momentarily forced
to sit beside it. An example that shows us that God is waiting for us to gird
up our loins, to shake off our dust and ashes and to make our voices heard.
Voices that insist on nothing less than mercy and compassion—from God, from
ourselves, for ourselves, and for the whole Creation.
