Job 38: 1-11 (New Jerusalem Bible)
Mark 4: 35-41 (Common English Bible)
Jesus was on the move in this gospel story. He left Capernaum to enter Gentile territory. To arrive there, Jesus and his disciples enter a boat to travel the Sea of Galilee. A furious storm arrives and Jesus commands the storm to stop. That ends the gospel story if you just want it to stay frozen in the 1st century. But there is a story behind the story that makes this reading as relevant as it was in the 1st century.
While Jesus calms the elements of nature with one word, he names the internal, spiritual storm raging in his followers with a question, “Why are you so frightened? Don’t you have faith yet?”
To voyage with Jesus is to travel in peace and calm even in the wildest storms of life. Jesus gives us peace in the storms of sorrow. He gives peace when life’s problems give us doubt, tension and uncertainty.
People often try to get away from the storms of life, only to find those storms have followed them. This is part of the reason Jesus went to silent places to meditate apart from the crowds. We are tempted to follow the crowd, but we need to be sure what crowd we are in. When public opinion isn’t faithful to God’s Word through Christ we should be hesitant on who we follow.
In Mark’s gospel, the sea represented the evil forces which oppose God. The ancient Hebrews were not seafaring people like the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. But Jesus wanted to cross that foreboding sea to spread the Good News, even to the Gentiles.
The storm made the disciples terrified. They were shocked that Jesus was asleep during the height of the storm. They wanted Jesus to be awake and take command of this dire situation.
Storms often bring out our true spiritual condition. Too many want a faith that is nice, simple and easy. Real faith involves coming out of ourselves to trust and care. Discipleship is a life of faith. If we lose faith, we lose the ability to care. Fear can wipe out faith. When the storms of life occur, we come close to the truth of just how deep our faith is. Tragedies can separate not only families and also our relationship with God.
Jesus told the disciples they would get to the other side of the sea, but he did not promise calm weather all the time. The same is true for us. Despite the storms of life such as death, shattered dreams and job loss, the faith of a small mustard seed can sustain us.
Sometimes, we can be like the disciples in this story. Sometimes we feel we're in the midst of the storms of our life and feel like Jesus has abandoned us. But that is not true. Christ is with us in the middle of that storm. The real test involves holding onto Christ’s presence even when Christ is still and silent. Just remember the much beloved story, “Footprints In the Sand.” It’s a good answer for good people who have faced tragedies. “Why” is always the question.
Both the gospel story from Mark and the Book of Job basically ask the same question, why do bad things happen? The Book of Job is one of only two books in the Bible that could be considered philosophical. Ecclesiastes is the other one. Even though most Bible scholars regard the person “Job” as fictional, scholars do proclaim the Book of Job as the finest wisdom text of both the Hebrew and Christian Bibles.
The story begins with God at a council with heavenly beings attending. One of the “beings” was the Accuser otherwise known as “satan.” God tells the accuser, satan, there is no person is as devout as my servant Job. The Accuser tells God and I’m paraphrasing it here, “I bet Job wouldn’t be so devout if he had a lot of bad luck.” God takes the challenge and tells the Accuser, “do anything to Job, just don’t kill him.” I like to visualize this scene between God and Satan as a kind of chess game between the two. And Job is the figure they move around the chess-board.
And then suddenly all kinds of calamities strike Job. Job loses his family and property. Then his health is attacked. It’s a downward spiral for righteous Job, he has had enough. Time to ask God, why is this happening to me?
Eventually God does respond to Job. And then God unexpectedly changes the conversion and talks about knowledge and not physical destruction and harm. Now there are so many interpretations of this dialogue that makes it difficult to mentally digest all of them. God does explain to Job the universe does contain chaos within it. The unpredictability of life is not evil, nor is it evidence of God’s failure. Life is a process of expanding and the unfolding of growth. The term “Entropy” might best describe it. But that growth must include death, receding and collapsing. Growth and decay are the two sides of the same coin. For growth to occur, some things will fail. For there to be space, some things will die. Compare it to a garden transitioning from summer to winter vegetables. Newness and change involves overturning the previous way. Our Neanderthal ancestors are no longer around. They were overtaken by the Cro-Magnon human species. But you can still find Neanderthal DNA in human DNA samples.
The world is full of beauty, creativity and danger. Did God intend for white sharks and humans to coexist together? Maybe yes and no. Probably “no” if the “Jaws” movie traumatized you. But I do believe God created the earth for all species of animals, and not just the human ones. Instead of answering Job’s questions, God reframes the questions and offers him a new way to see the world through God’s eyes. Job’s grief and bad experiences are not the final end of his story. And checkmate, God won the chess challenge.
In 1981, Harold Kushner wrote the book, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” His book became a best-seller. He wrote it in response to the death of his 14 year old son, who died of Progeria. Progeria is a rare but fatal disease which causes premature aging when a child is very young. Very few survive past their teen years. And Howard Kushner as a Jewish Rabbi wanted to do a deep-dive into theology why God lets people suffer.
Rabbi Kushner came to the conclusion God doesn’t cause or prevent tragedies. However, God provides us with community, religious or secular, for strength to find a way through the pain. Kushner feels the proof of God’s existence lies in our own moral responses to help those in pain or grief. This can be physical assistance and also compassion and empathy. He believes in a God of Love who grieves with us during times of turmoil and heartbreak.
So when it comes to bad things happening, and we see that every evening on the news, we need to realize there is often no reason or logic for it, except the world as it is now, can be chaotic. It’s how we deal with the chaos that makes us truly human, like Jesus the Human One (“son of man”) AMEN.
