At the end of the Book of Job, we are told, the Creator of all the vast cosmos spoke to Job from out of a tornado. Imagine that awesome scene! Sublime! Awe-some! Awe-inspiring -- not only that stupendous whirlwind but the voice of God thundering from it. Fearsome, threatening, issuing rebuke: Tell me, mere mortal, if you have understanding! Suffering Job had only wanted to hear from the Lord, only wanted to plead his case and be heard, satisfied with whatever the Lord replied. You are familiar with the tale: a pious and righteous man, Job was given into the hands of the Satan to be sorely tested whether or not he would continue to fear, love and trust in God if all his earthly good were stripped away from him.
Why should such bad things happen to good people? The Satan taunts God in heaven, “Of course Job fears you – you’ve done nothing but bless him. Let me take away the blessings and see if he still blesses you.” Job, we learn, passes this devilish test, saying, “The Lord has given. The Lord has taken. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” But tried and tested Job still wants to know why-- why me?
Curious thing: we who read the book of Job know the inside story about the Satan’s taunt but Job throughout remains in the dark. He is threatened, then, not just physically with the loss of all his temporal goods but threatened spiritually with the meaninglessness of his life’s tragedy. Resignation and despair are knocking at the door. He just wants to know why. In this light the ending of the story with the Lord speaking from the whirlwind may be unsatisfying to us since Job never learns the secret which we readers know about the Satan’s challenge that Job’s love for God be put to the test. Job gets only the bare minimum of what he asked for: to see the Lord face-to-face, to know that his complaint and lament has been heard by the Most High – but that’s it.
Other than the divine rebuke: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? 3 Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? And a little further on: Or who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth from the womb… and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, `Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed'?
Clothed in such cosmic majesty God is deeply hidden in the sense that we cannot make out rhyme or reason for the suffering inflicted upon human beings by the course of nature which goes its way indifferently to our concerns. The Satan works these through natural means to deprive Job of all his earthly goods and loves. To add to his torture, so-called friends urged him to confess some secret sin which has brought this series of disasters upon him. Job refuses, protests his innocence and appeals again and again to a hearing face-to-face with the Lord who alone can judge the secrets of his heart. \
It’s fascinating that when the Lord finally appears at the end of the book, he vindicates Job’s insistence upon his innocence and rebukes the friends for demanding that he unveil some guilt that merited his suffering. For his lament of innocent, underserved suffering, the Lord judges Job to be righteous. But with this verdict pronounced, God emerges from the hiddenness of his majesty to reveal himself as one who vindicates the innocent. These two ideas go together in the Bible: The God who reveals himself is otherwise hidden. The God who hides reveals himself. We echo this as we begin our Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven…” God is in heaven, states the book of Ecclesiastes, but we mortals are on the earth! God is God and we are not. And yet Jesus invites us in unity with him to address the heavenly God of unfathomable majesty intimately as “our Father.” As heavenly, God the Father is not like mortal fathers who ultimately pass away and so cease care for their children, let alone sinful fathers who abuse fatherhood to harm children. As our Father in heaven, the curtain of cosmic majesty is pulled back to reveal a heart beating with love for us. This self-revelation comes about in the Father’s Son, Jesus Christ.
And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care if we perish?" And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Awoken from seeming sleep by the desperate petitions of disciples in fear of drowning, emerging as it were from hiddenness, like the God who rebukes Job for disrespecting his cosmic majesty, Jesus rebukes the powerful natural forces of wind and wave threatening to swamp the boat. "Peace! Be still!" -- `Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed.' And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
We could be skeptical in either case, that God appeared and spoke to Job in a whirlwind or that Jesus calmed a storm on the Sea of Galilee solely by word in a majestic command. In either case we would be skeptical of the wrong thing. What should scandalize us is the combination. That the really hidden God emerges from the whirling wind and thrashing wave of his Majesty to humbly and helpfully appear as a fellow mortal, the human being, Jesus Christ. That’s the mystery or the stumbling block. Perceiving this, we would cry out with the disciples on the boat, "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?" -- just as he had sharply said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?"
In the gospel of Mark, fright and faith are often paired by way of contrast. The common assumption in this antithetical pairing is that human life on the earth is in perpetual danger. Job had been richly blessed but suddenly put to the test when the dangers materialized and robbed everything from him. As we’ve already heard, Job nevertheless courageously insisted upon his innocence, refused to curse God and rather implored God to appear and render an account. In that we see faith because faith existentially is courage, courage in the face of danger which is resourced not in our human ability to row the boat safely to shore or bail water rapidly enough, but courageous faith is resourced in the self-revelation of the God hidden in Majesty who speaks himself in Jesus Christ, the beloved Son of this Abba Father, the God of Israel.
The apostle Paul today puts on display the courage of faith. He announces the grace of God which has been revealed in Jesus Christ, making this moment and every moment in its hearing the acceptable time; the day of salvation. Is Paul boasting of his ministry? Strange boast! As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way, he begins, namely, through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, watching, hunger. Who would ever think that a man afflicted --like Job himself-- could credibly be ambassador of the majestic God whose kingdom comes? In the midst of this very real apostolic suffering, however, Paul points to the reality of the grace of God at work in his afflicted ministry: By purity, knowledge, forbearance, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left, in honor and dishonor. This is the courage of faith operating in love in the midst of real hostility, uncomprehending opposition, envious colleagues, suspicious neighbors, cruel authorities, material poverty. It is the same courage of holy Job, updated by the self-revelation of the God of Majesty who spoke from the whirlwind but speaks now again in the humble way of Jesus Christ.
Note well how Paul’s courage of faith is not resourced in his own wisdom, literary polish, oratorical skill, charismatic personality or any other human skill or talent. It is resourced in the conviction that God has sought and found him in Jesus Christ, when he was not looking for God – indeed when he thought he had God in the hip pocket of his self-righteousness. It is resourced in the self-revelation of God; so he confesses: We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything. As we glimpsed already in holy Job, the question, why do bad things happen to good people, has been left behind. The one good human being Jesus Christ was crucified.
All those captured by this one who loved me and gave himself for me know better than to make any claims on the basis of their own moral merit even as they often enough suffer innocently, indeed for righteousness’s sake, in this as yet unredeemed world. Now following Jesus they live courageously by faith - which faith as in Jesus Christ is operative in vulnerable love. Paul has put all his cards on the table and shown himself the improbable apostle of an even more improbable Lord: majestic in hardship, sovereign in adversity, valuing the new community bound together by self-giving love. So Paul concludes today: Corinthians; our heart is wide. In return -- I speak as to children -- widen your hearts also. This is a word that speaks also to us in the congregation. For our sakes the God of the whirlwind opens up his heart and speaks to us in the humble way of the man Jesus so that we open our hearts to God and to one another in the blessed ties that bind our hearts in Christian love. Secure in that love no wind or wave imperils.