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God Cannot be Boxed                        Job 19: 23-27                   November 11, 2007

The story of Job is not only one of the greatest stories in the Bible, it is one of the greatest stories in all of literature. You know the gist of it, I'm sure.

Job is the greatest man in his town. He is also a good guy. The kind of person we would want to know. When we first meet him, he has everything: God has blessed him with wealth, a wonderful, large family, lots of camels and such, plenty to eat and drink. Life is good.

And our friend Job is also a religious man. A pious man. A generous man. He gives thanks to God for everything he has. He goes to the temple every day and makes sacrifices on behalf of his children, just in case they may have sinned.

But then, without warning, everything changes. God turns on Job. God takes away Job's wealth, his family, even his health. This man who had everything now finds himself with nothing. Broken, covered with sores, lying in the heap of ashes his former life had become.

Why, we have to ask, does all this happen to such a good and faithful man? Why did God allow this to happen? Well, according to the writer of this Biblical account, all of these things happen in order to find out if Job is a just another fair-weather believer. To find out if Job worships God only when things are going well, only to keep God on his side.

The text we read a few minutes ago gives us the answer to God's question.

Even after Job loses everything and cries out to God at the top of his voice, again and again, about the unfairness of it all, even after his wife had advises him to curse God and die, even after his three friends try to comfort him with superficial answers that do nothing for him, Job manages to utter the wonderful, now familiar words; the words that have been set to music on countless occasions: "I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last God will stand upon the earth."

Clearly, Job's faith, expressed so beautifully and poetically in the midst of unbearable suffering and pain, is an example for every one of us. An example that has, correctly, caused us to make this man Job a metaphor for faith and endurance.

But this expression of faith is only part of the message of this story.

If we look a bit more closely, we see that Job made a critical mistake. He made a mistake that has been made over and over again throughout human history, and a mistake that you and I can easily make as well. His understanding of what God was about was flawed.

Job, you see, thought he knew what God was all about. He thought he knew the truth about God. He thought that so long as you did what was right and believed what was right, everything would fall in place for you. He figured, like most people do, that if he did good deeds and went through all the correct motions and ordered his life just the right way, God would look with favor on him and reward him with success.

Job, like so many others, tried to approach God with what one scholar so aptly calls a "let's make a deal" attitude. He said "look, God, I won't cheat or lie or break any of your laws; I will even make sacrifices for you and do even more than you ask. You just need to live up to your part of the bargain."

And Job learns - the hard way, as it turns out - that God doesn't work that way. He learns that God does not operate a universe where you always get what you deserve.

Fortunately, Job eventually gets it right. He shakes his fist and fires question after question - angry ones - at God, and then, in the midst of his suffering, he cries out the affirmation that his redeemer lives. In the midst of his suffering, he finally surrenders his logical, if-I-do-this-then-God-will-do-that view of the world, and despite his suffering, he manages to hold on to his faith.

In the end, as you probably remember, Job does indeed get his life back. As one author puts it, tongue in cheek: "You know what happens when you play a country-western song backwards: you get your dog back, you get your truck back, you get your wife back-everything returns back to where it started from."

And so it happens to Job.

But before Job gets his life back, he stands face to face with God, who shows up while Job is still sitting on his ash heap, and reveals - for Job and for us - the central point of this story.

The God who shows up to confront Job does not come to bargain with him, nor for that matter does God come to console him. No, God comes so that Job can learn, in no uncertain terms, that any effort to put God in a box is doomed.

"Can you make an elephant, Job?" God asks. "A whale? A gnat, for that matter? Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? When you can answer those questions, come back and we can talk."

Instead of answering Job's questions, God touches Job by being present. "Here I am, Job," God says, "face to face."

"You are correct, Job," God tells him, with his very presence, "Your redeemer lives. And your redeemer is not a God of reward and punishment, but a God who created - and is still creating - everything that is, with a beauty and mystery that is beyond your comprehension. And best of all, your redeemer is also a God who is willing to meet you face to face."

My friends, we sit here this morning, on the 142nd anniversary of this congregation, about to commemorate that event by sharing a holy meal.

Let us remember, as we eat and drink together, that our God is the God of Job: the God who was there at the beginning, the God who causes the eagle to soar, and, best of all, the God who is willing to meet us face to face.

And let us remember that when we encounter God's Son around this table, raising up our prayers of confession and thanksgiving, it is not about how good or how bad we are, it is about how good and loving God is.

Each of us is in a different place in the Job story. Some of us look around and think, "We've got it pretty good." Others of us are feeling like our lives are a lot like Job's ash heap.

The lesson for us, this morning, is just like Job's. It is the lesson that our redeemer lives. And it is the lesson that no matter how surprisingly we have prospered or how unfairly we have not; here, around this table, God shows up. God shows up in a way that is fuller and richer and more surprising and more gracious, even, than all the ways in which God is present everywhere else.

You and I need not engage in a futile effort to try to force God into a box. All we need do is exclaim "Hallelujah! I know that my redeemer lives!" I worship a God who shows up.

Join me now, brothers and sisters, in communion with this God who has shown up in our midst today.

                                                                             AMEN