Walking with the Wounded (Aug. 26. 2007)

Walking with the Wounded
Text: Job 3-Job 37 (selected)
August 26, 2007

Big Idea: When people are suffering they need truths (not “explanations”) and tears (presence)….

When I was living in southern California, I became acquainted with a delightful young woman who was a first year student at the University of California (at Irvine). She ended up contracting cancer. She underwent chemotherapy which caused her hair to fall out.
I noticed that Jessica was so calm through this process.

I asked her, “What enables you to face your cancer with such poise?” And Jessica said, “One of the things that keeps me steady is my faith in God.

“Another thing that helped was that when I first got cancer, I kept thinking ‘Why me! Why me!’ and then someone in my life challenged me by simply asking, ‘Why not you?’ From that time forward I have taken the attitude, ‘Why not me?’”

When I think of a bubbly first year student at the University of California, I don’t associate that with a person having cancer…

But Jessica took on the attitude when cancer struck… “Why not me?”

And the fact is that hardship and suffering can inflict us or a loved when we don’t expect it.

This was certainly true of Job in the Bible.

As we saw last week, Job was living this “charmed life”, this “dream” life. He had a strong relationship with God. He was a person who was extremely wealthy, had a large family that loved getting together for BBQs and to simply hang out, Job was deeply respected, and considered the greatest man in the East.

Then a series of calamities struck Job. Job lost his businesses, the wealth of his entire investment portfolio wiped out in a single day, all his 10 children were tragically killed as a wind storm blew down their house where they were having a party… he was then overcome with a horrible, disfiguring skin disease, with open sores and boils all over his body, skin was falling off...” He responds (at first) with extraordinary strength of character.

When calamity befalls Job we read:

Job 1:20-21:
20 At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head (a sign in the culture that he was in mourning) Then he fell to the ground in worship 21 and said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised."
Job lived with the understanding that all he had, had been given to him by the hand of God, and God had simply taken away what he had entrusted to Job in the first place. Therefore, God was not being unjust… God didn’t “owe” Job…. And therefore Job did not charge God with wrong-doing…
In the stunned moment of tragedy, Job was able to stand tall. And for a while Job was able to ride atop the waves of calamity, but when we pick up the story in Job… in Chapter 3, the waves that job faces take their toll… we see Job crashing under the waves of despair. In Chapter 3 Job says, “O, obliterate the day I was born; blank out the night I was conceived. Why didn’t I die at birth? Why wasn’t I stillborn and buried with all the babies that never saw light?”
Job falls into a deep pit of depression and he curses the day he was born.
Chances are if we live long enough, we OR someone in our world will befall significant suffering… (likely not as intense as Job, but significant suffering nonetheless).
Today we are going to look at how we can respond to people who are suffering around us…
We’re going to look first at a couple of common two responses that are typically not helpful…. Then an approach that has the potential to offer life…
A common response to people who are suffering is to simply withdraw. We may not want to be around people who are in pain. Perhaps we are not sure what to say.
We wonder, do I spend time with the person or give them space?
Do I talk to the person about a person’s suffering or should I avoid bringing that up?
Should I try to cheer them up…or console them …or neither?
Sometimes the uncertainty causes us to withdraw.
Betsy Burnham, in a book written shortly before her death from cancer, told about a letter she received during an illness. The letter went, as follows:

Dear Betsy,
I am afraid and embarrassed. With the problems you are facing, what right do I have to tell you I am afraid? I have found one excuse after another for not coming to see you. With all my heart, I want to reach out and help you and your family. I want to be available and useful. Most of all, I want to say words that you will make you well, but the fact remains I am afraid. Signed: Anne
And like Anne, some of us are afraid to be near someone in great pain because we don’t know what to do.
We are afraid, or perhaps we are too self-absorbed to move in the direction of others when they are in pain…
And so, for various reasons our inclination may to withdraw from people who suffer.
Typically this is not helpful…
Another tendency some people have when we are faced with people who are suffering is to try to explain “why” people are suffering—that’s what Job’s 3 friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar do for Job. They try to explain why Job is suffering.
First, when they see how grossly disfigured their friend Job is from his skin disease, they simply sit with the “elephant man” in silence.... But when Job (in Chapter 3) breaks out into his complaints, his friends feel compelled to explain why Job is suffering.
Job’s “friend” Eliphaz in Job 4:7-9 argues that Job is suffering because he has sinned…
Job 4:7-9:
"Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed?
8 As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.
9 At the breath of God they perish; at the blast of his anger they are no more.
Eliphaz says to Job you’re suffering, because you must have done something wrong… you must have sinned in some way…
Job’s “friend” Bildad (Chapter 8:4-6) explains to Job that the reason your children died was that they sinned. Bildad said that if you want the calamity against your family to subside seek God more passionately.
And Job’s “friend” Zophar also (Chapter 11:13-17) points out that if Job simply seeks God more earnestly, his troubles will vanish:
Job’s friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar… in the following chapters in the book of Job, try to argue with even more intensity that Job has suffered because he has acted wickedly and if he really seeks God he will prosper.
Does Job find all these explanations helpful? Job in Chapter 13, verse 4, calls his friends useless physicians and comforters. In 16:2 he calls his friends “miserable comforters.” Job friends were well-intentioned. They tried to explain to Job the “why” of his suffering, but their explanations did not comfort him. Instead, they antagonized him.
If we try to explain the reasons why they’re suffering chances are good we’ll antagonize them as well.
Part of the reason, of course, that trying to explain why they are suffering is often so unhelpful is because there is often no direct cause and effect relationship between how we live our lives and whether we suffer or not. There are times, of course, when suffering is result from sin… if “do drugs” we’ll likely suffer because of that… if we engage in high risk-sexual behavior—we will likely suffer because of that, but often is no hard and fast correlation between our suffering and what we’ve done…
And if we think consciously or unconsciously there is, then, like Job’s friends, that people suffer suffering can always be traced back to something they have or have not done--we will likely try to explain to people “why” they are suffering--and instead of bringing comfort, we’ll bring misery.
And so, when others are suffering around us, a temptation may be to withdraw, or to temptation to “explain” the why of suffering, but often when people are in pain this approach is not helpful…
Some approaches are unhelpful and some are helpful.
At this time, I want to invite Dalen Friesen, a member of this church who serves as a fellow board member here and was part of our Cambodia mission team to come and share.
Dalen in the last year or so, you experienced a very significant loss. Can you describe that? (he talks about his mom’s death)
2nd In terms of how people responded to you in this time—what was helpful and what was not helpful? (he talks about how a friend who avoided him was not helpful, how those who listened to were helpful, and how praise songs helped him to hold on to certain truths).
DALEN’s testimony HERE:

As Dalen shared, when people are suffering what they may well find most helpful is a person will be present, who can create space for them to talk and a person who will listen…
or depending on the nature of the suffering and the personality of the suffer what can most is just being with a person in silence…
Parker Palmer in his beautiful book Let Your Life Speak describes being in the snake pit of depression… he says those who said, It’s sunny outside, you should feel better were unhelpful because he couldn’t experience the beauty through his senses in his state of depression. Parker says those you should be down, you’re a good person made him feel worse because he didn’t feel like a good person—because of his depression. Parker says, there was a man Bill named who having asked my permission to do so, stopped by my home every afternoon, sat me down in a chair, knelt down in front of me, removed my shoes and socks, and for half an hour simply massaged my feet. He found the one place in my body where I could still experience feeling and feel somewhat reconnected with the human race. Bill rarely spoke a word; when he did, he never gave advice, but simply mirrored my condition. He would say, ‘I can sense your struggle today,’ or, ‘it feels like you are getting stronger.’ I could not always respond, but his words were deeply helpful. They reassured that me I could still be seen by someone--life-giving knowledge in the midst of an experience that makes one feel annihilated and invisible.”
One of helpful things for a person who is suffering is simple presence, creating a space for the talk or be silent which is most helpful… and to sensitively offer some through some truths (not “explanations”, but larger macro-truths), I see you… or God is good… or this will not go forever…can be helpful too.
I was with a friend who was telling me that when he was in a dark season, it felt like… everything was charcoal grey… and it felt like everything in the past had been charcoal gray (though it hadn’t been) and everything in the future would be charcoal gray… A friend called him on that and said, no it may be charcoal gray now… but it won’t always be this way… My friend that was a truth I needed… When I hear others say that I will be in this black, I bring in that truth…
As a mentor of mine says, when people are suffering they truth and tears… big truths, loving presence, truth and tears… People in suffering need both… they some truths to hang to and compassionate presence, truth and tears…
How do we become people who offer this kind of presence and this kind of comfort?
Where does the power come from to offer this kind of comfort to others?

By centering our lives on the one who eventually came face to face with Job as we’ll see next week…. offering grace and truth… By centering our lives when we were spiritually suffering because we were cut off from the one true source of life in the universe, did not simply send us a e-card but became one of us, became a human being, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
His name is Jesus Christ—and also Emmanuel, which means God with us.
And it is, as Paul points out in 2 Corinthians, 1:3-5:
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.
God, in coming to us, comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. And it is as we receive the comfort of God through his presence in our lives through Jesus Christ, we can comfort others just as we ourselves have been comforted…..
As some of you have heard, I went through a rough time of as I begin my pastoral work in the mid-nineties… A woman that been dating for a couple of years and I broke up… and I felt I was in the black pit of despair… I was a person who loved life, loved to get up early run each morning along Kits Beach and False Creek but in that season, I could barely get up out of bed. A friend reached out and walked and talked with me through that time… He gave me a book called the Inner Voice of Love by Henri Nouwen, which poignantly describes a painful relationship loss that he had experienced and offers some big truths about God and the world that I needed to hang on.
During a time when God felt mostly distant, there when God’s comfort was so sweet, that it eclipsed the high points of the romance…
I feel that because of the comfort I receive from this friend and from the Spirit of God, I in turn have been more able than I would otherwise be to be with people in that kind of loss…
So, it is when we receive the comfort of God. If receive the comfort from God in our pain, we turn and walk with others in their pain and thus show people the face of God.

Pray.

Job's Great Test (Aug. 19, 2007)

JOB: M1 Job’s Great Test:

August 19, 2007

A number of people summer sabbatical… thank you Bruce Smith and Mardi

Doug Banister, a pastor I trained with and who now serves in Knoxville, Tennessee, describes how a mother of a 14-year-old girl named Kristy handed him a folded sheet of notebook paper (use prop) when he saw her that Saturday outside her daughter’s room in the hallway of the children’s hospital.

Doug said he slowly unfolded the paper and on it he saw that Kristy had written a question, “Why does God let 14-year-old girls die from leukemia?”

Kristy was losing a 2-year battle with cancer. She was dying and she knew it. Several hours after Doug had read this note, Kristy slipped into a coma. Many of Kristy’s friends and family had prayed earnestly that Kristy would be healed. Kristy’s elders had anointed her with oil and prayed for her. And then Kristy died.

A week later, Doug was chopping wood in his back yard when the phone rang. It was the children’s hospital. Doug was asked, “Can you please come down immediately?” A routine ultrasound had identified a 3-pound cancerous tumor on Doug’s daughter’s kidney.

The doctor, Dr. Pace, who was also Kristy’s doctor, would see them in an hour. The same people who Kristy also came around Doug and his daughter and prayed earnestly for her. She was also anointed with oil and prayed over. This time God answered, “yes,” and Bryden was healed. Today she is free of cancer.

And we ask the question, “Why? Why was Kristy not healed and why was Bryden healed?” Some people might say that Doug and those prayed who for Bryden had more faith than those who prayed for Kristy. But Doug would say without any exaggeration, “no”, he had no more faith than Kristy’s dad and mom, and many of the same people who had prayed for Kristy had prayed for his daughter.

We ask the question, “Why one, and not the other?”

One of my close friends, Elizabeth Archer Klein, loves to ride horses. One afternoon, a number of years ago when Elizabeth was off her horse and walking behind him, he kicked her in the head, fracturing her skull and causing her to become blind in her right eye... People gathered around Elizabeth. They prayed over her, and after that prayer within a 24-hour period sight came back in her blind eye. God miraculously healed her.

Last year, my friend Elizabeth was thrown off her horse and badly injured her back. I remember seeing her hobbling around. And while people prayed for her healing, she did not experience any kind of miraculous healing as before, though, in fact, her faith is considerably deeper and stronger than when she was kicked in the head by her horse.

Sometimes we ask, Why does God occasionally intervene with a miraculous healing, and at other times does not?”

“We ask, “Why does God allow suffering?”

Perhaps use words similar to Rabbi Harold Kushner’s best-selling book and ask, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” (We’re generally ok if bad things happen to bad people… if Conrad Black… committed crimes, if he was in fraud and in fact store millions from Hollinger shareholders, we’re ok if he’s punished for those crimes… but we have trouble, if bad things happen to good people.)

This morning and over the next two Sundays we are going to take a brief walk through the book of Job….

The book of Job describes a good person, a person of faith who suffered deeply. While the book of Job does not give us any kind of definitive answer to the question, “Why does God allow suffering?” it does give us a window that enables us to see suffering in a wider context….

(If you have your Bibles, please turn to Job, Chapter 1, just before Psalms.

Job is a book with 43 Chapters. We are not going to read all 43 chapters this morning, or over the next 2 Sundays. We will look at excerpts. As you are turning, let me give you a brief summary of these 2 chapters.)

As we see in Job 1:1-3:

1 In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. 2 He had seven sons and three daughters, 3 and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.

Job, in these opening verses of the book that bears his name, is described as a righteous person. In the context, “righteous” does not mean “self- righteous”; it simply means that he was a person with integrity. A person devoted to God. He was also a successful entrepreneur. He was wealthy—had 7000 sheep, 300 camels, 500 of teams oxen, 500 donkeys, a huge staff of servants. In the eyes of many in his days, these material blessings would have been a sign of God’s blessing in his life.

Job also had a wonderful family life. He was married and had 10 grown children, 7 sons and 3 daughters who loved to get together and have house parties for each other. Job was not only devoted to his relationship with God, but also to his family’s relationship with God. After his sons and daughters had a party, Job had a habit of making a sacrifice on their behalf, just in case they sinned.

Job had what appears to be “a perfect life”—a dream life, a blessed life.

Then Satan appears in the court of heaven and suggests to God that Job does not really love God—Job simply enjoys God’s blessing and therefore appears to love God.

Look at Verses 9 to 11, if you will:

9 "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. 10 "Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. 11 But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face."

Satan is betting that if God allows Job to suffer, Job will no longer serve God (because is only interested in serving God because serving God serves Job’s self-interest).

God in effect takes up Satan’s bet and God allows Satan to touch all that Job has, but God does not allow Satan to actually hurt Job directly himself. Satan then causes disaster to befall Job. A messenger bursts in on Job and tells him that bandits have stolen his oxen and donkeys and killed the attending servants. While that first messenger is still speaking, a second messenger interrupts to announce that the fire of God, perhaps some kind of storm, has burst from the sky and destroyed his sheep and their shepherds. A third messenger rushes in before the second has finished and announces that a tribal rival has taken the camels and murdered the keeper of the camels. Finally, a fourth messenger appears with the most dreadful news of all—Job’s sons and daughters whom he loves were enjoying a meal at the elder brother’s home and they are now dead under a house blown down by a desert wind.

Four tragedies, one after the other, Job is completely devastated, but he stands up and tears his clothes in a sign of lament in his Middle Eastern culture and worships God.
20 At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship 21 and said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. [c] The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised."
Job recognizes that God is all-powerful and that God is just. Job recognizes that, in these terrible events, God has simply taken back what he freely gave Job in the first place. God owes Job nothing, so Job has no grounds to complain—and he does not.
If we knew that in 2 years all that we have: our partners, our families, our houses, our money would all be taken from us… most of us, myself included, would be in total despair or great anger… or both…
But, Job doesn’t react this way because he knows that the end of his life—all that he has received as gift, as a loan will be taken from him—it’s just being taken early…
Job praises God saying:
"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. [c] The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised."

Satan as we see in Job 2, however, remains unconvinced of Job’s faith in God:
4 "Skin for skin!" Satan replied. "A man will give all he has for his own life. 5 But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face."
And God again lets Satan inflict Job with physical suffering, but does not allow him to take his life. And Satan inflicts loathsome sores on Job from the scalp to his toes. Throughout the book, these symptoms are described “itching and open sores, ulcers, maggots, sleeplessness, nightmares, depression, ailing vision, rotting teeth, weeping, erosion of the bones, blackening and falling off skin. ”
Bible scholar, David McKenna, believes that Job is suffering from elephantiasis. Job likely looked not unlike the creature in the book and film, Elephant Man. And like the Elephant Man, Job would not just suffer physical agony of the disease, but he would suffer the rejection of his friends.
The book of Job describes the intense suffering of this man…
It does not give us an easy answer to the question of “why do good people suffer.” But it does provide us with a window through which we can see suffering in a broader context.
As we read Job 1 and 2, we are told that Job is God’s exhibit, but Job is not aware of this.
Many people are unaware we too are watched by God and by angels.
David says in Psalm 139… Lord you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise. Your discern my going out and my lying down, you are familiar with all my ways…
The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 4:9 borrowing from an image of the procession of gladiators in the Roman coliseum, said,” We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels, as well as people.”
This past week, I was with someone who recently climbed the Grouse grind with his baby son on his shoulders…… and a friend of his saw him on the news. Apparently television camera’s were placed at the base of the mountain, he didn’t know he his son were being watched, but they were!
There are times when we are being watched by others, and we don’t know it. Whetehr we know it or not, like Job we are on exhibit before God.
Like Job, God sees us.
Perhaps we wonder as one person among 6 billion plus people on our planet—as an inhabitant of simply one planet in our galaxy which among billions of galaxies… we perhaps do our lives matter to the maker of all things…
But we see from the book of Job that God not only sees us, but that he longs for our love.
We see from the book of Job that God wants us love him freely, not just because of the gifts that he gives us or the benefits that we get from knowing God, but that he longs for us to love him freely…
Suffering set a stage for us to show we really do love God.
C.H. Spurgeon tells the story of a man who grew an enormous carrot in his garden. This man loved his king, so he presented the carrot to the king, saying, “This is the best carrot my garden will ever grow. Receive it as a token of my love.” Now the king discerned his heart of love and devotion and saw he wanted nothing in return. This moved the king, so he gave the gardener far more land than he currently had for his garden. So the man went home rejoicing.
Now a nobleman at court overheard this conversation and he thought to himself, “If that is the response the King… makes to such a small gift, what will he give in response to a great one?” So the next day he brought the king a fine horse, and said, “This is the best horse my stable will ever grow. Receive it as a token of my love.” Now the king discerned the nobleman’s heart and in response he just received the horse, and dismissed the giver. When the king saw the look of confusion on his face, he said, “The gardener’s carrot was a gift indeed out of love, but you are just trying to make a profit. He gave me the carrot, but you gave yourself the horse.”
What God wanted from Job—what he wants from us—is a love freely given.
One of the opportunities of suffering is that it gives an opportunity to demonstrate to God that we love him, not just because of the things that he gives us, but for God being God.
Suffering set a stage for us to show we really do love God.


Thomas Green in his books on the spiritual life, Drinking from a Dry Well and When the Well Runs Dry, says when a couple gets married, they say to each “for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse,” and in the back of their minds, they are hoping that they will not have to love each other through the “for worse.” But Thomas Green, a Jesuit priest, points out that the “for worse” is just as important than the “for better,” perhaps even more important, because of the context of the “for worse”: experiences of adversity and hardship in the marriage, financial downturns, one spouse becoming ill, gives the other spouse an opportunity to demonstrate that they truly love the person… not because of what they are getting, but just because…
That they are not just with the other person because of something they can get, but because they truly love the person.
Suffering set a stage for us to show we really do love God.
In 1839 Benjamin Disraeli married the extremely wealthy widow, Mrs. Wyndham Lewis. The marriage was a great success. On one occasion Disraeli remarked that he had married for money, and his wife replied, "Ah! but if you had to do it again, you would do it for love." We come to God because of something we want or need…
Suffering set a stage for us to show we really do love God.
How do we become people like that? How do we become people who will serve God not only when the sun is shining down on us, when our work life is going well, when we are experiencing financial prosperity, when our family life is going well, when we have rich relationships?
How will we become people like Job who are faithful to God when the road is marked by suffering: when we lose the things we cherish? When we lose a love one? A baby, a family member, perhaps a dear friend? How do we continue to love God when things are not going in our relationships, our work, our financial lives, when perhaps like Job’s wife, we are tempted to curse God and die?
The way we become like Job is by looking to the one to whom Job ultimately points—the person who was truly righteous…truly blameless before God…a person who had infinite wealth, but allowed all his wealth be taken away so that we might be wealthy. The person who on the cross was disunited from his family so that we might be united be united with his family, with God.
When we focus on Jesus Christ and recognize that, though he was rich, as Paul points out, he became poor for our sake--so that through his poverty we might become rich--when we realize that Jesus became estranged from his father so we might be united to God, when recognize how faithful God in Jesus Christ has been to us, we also can prove faithful to God…
In the novel Kahled Hosseni’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns describes two Afghan women Mariam and Laila who are married to an abusive man named Rascheed. One night Rascheed takes off his belt, wraps the perforated end wrapped around his fist and starts to whip Laila the younger one with the brass buckle and then began to choke her…
Mariam the other wife risks her life by trying to save Laila, first by trying pulling Rascheed off… but when that doesn’t work and Rascheed is planning to kill both them that night… Mariam gets a shovel and hits Rascheed over the head with it and Rascheed dies.
Laila urgues Mariam to escape with her and her two children to edge of some remote village…where there will be trees and fields for the children to play in, a lake with trout, where they could raise sheep sand chicken but Miriam says… no… you’d I don’t want you running scared your whole life… a suspect… a fugitive… Mariam knows that if she turns herself in that the Taliban, they will execute her, but does so anyway… and she lays her life so that Laila and her children can be free… When does that, when is willing to die so that Laila and her children can be set free, you know she loves Laila and her children…
When one human being lays down their life to set another free, you know that person loves the other…
The Bible doesn’t give us a definitive answer to the question of why we suffering, but the Bible does show us that suffering is not the a sign that we are not loved… and we recognize that when we look into the face God in Jesus Christ.
Pray.